Handcrafted

by Clint Harp

  I watched it. Ed Burns looked straight at the camera and confessed that he wondered when everybody would figure out that he was a phony. When would he be revealed for what he truly was—a normal guy figuring out what the heck he was doing every day? It made more sense to me than just about anything I’d ever seen. I knew exactly what he was saying. It was almost as if I was listening to myself. For years, I’d tried to cover up the fact that I came from nothing. When you’re wearing fire engine red sweatpants that are three sizes too small and nothing like the cool clothes that your classmates are sporting, it’s hard to hide the fact that you don’t have what everybody else has. But you still try to hide it. You get funnier. You get more sarcastic. You get nicer. When the cool guy, Patrick, is talking to other kids about his family ski trip, you chime in and say you’ve been skiing, too, when the closest you’ve ever gotten to a ski slope is sledding down the hill in your backyard on a trash can lid. You grab a guitar and fight like hell to rise above your situation. You tear a ligament in your elbow in the midst of JV baseball tryouts, go home and cut the end off the smallest sock you can find to make a cheap compression sleeve so you can still play. You fake it till you make it. You go to a college that’s more expensive than anything you can remotely afford, borrowing nearly all of the $50,000 it costs, and just figure you’ll somehow pay it off with money you can’t see coming. You hustle in a medical sales job, hoping others don’t see how much you hate what you’re doing and, above all else, that no one asks you a serious medical question.

  What don’t you do? Reveal your true self. Ever. You don’t let anyone get too close. You definitely don’t bare your soul to a life coach over two years and finally open up to your wife about your biggest insecurities. You don’t strip away all the facades you’ve put in place over the years, leaving yourself vulnerable to the judgments of everyone you know. And you don’t walk away from the highest salary you’ve ever seen, go into the garage, and make furniture building your new full-time job.

  Or maybe you do. Maybe you take a huge freakin’ jump off the side of the cliff and leave that scared, miserable version of yourself far behind. And maybe, if the opportunity arises, you trade the solitude of your shop for the possibility of an upward trajectory.

  From the moment Kelly and I learned there could be a pilot, we began discussing it nonstop. We had a million questions: What would this mean for our family and our company? Would I be able to sustain Harp Design Co. and be part of a show? Would one help or hurt the other? What would it feel like to build furniture with a camera on the sidelines, watching your every move? And how would being more widely recognized change things? Sometimes talking about it all was fun; other times, it made the waiting feel more excruciating.

  Our conversations shifted on the day Joanna stopped by the shop with the news that the show was no longer theoretical. The pilot was happening. Kelly and I had no idea what any schedule might look like. We just knew that life was going to get crazier. That’s when I recalled something Paul had often said to me: “Clint, all I can tell you is that one day, this journey will take on a life of its own,” he’d told me after I’d quit my job. “And instead of sitting around wondering how in the world it will all work out, you’ll find yourself hanging on for dear life.” How right he would turn out to be.

  * * *

  As we looked ahead to the pilot’s filming, a stark reality hit: even if this show worked out, we needed more money. And as I began to panic and even lose sight of going for my dream from behind the growing stack of bills, a regular paycheck seemed most logical. We had a third child on the way and a new mortgage. And sure, I had some clients here and there, but my earnings weren’t anywhere close to what we needed. One day over dinner I announced to Kelly, “I’ve got to get a job.” It was a tough realization for both of us, but it couldn’t be ignored. I wasn’t quite turning my back on my dream; it’s just that I could only continue giving it my 100 percent if our basic needs were being met. Having some kind of cash flow would, in essence, allow me to plug away, little by little, at our small business venture while on a bit more stable ground.

  The whole furniture-building thing was a great idea, but it didn’t bring in enough money for me to provide for my family, and I found myself reverting to my old ways of thinking. Get over it, Clint. Be a grown-up and do the responsible thing and find some work. I set out on a search.

  The whole time I looked around, I was worried that if and when a show was filmed, I’d end up missing the cut because I’d taken a job to keep the lights on. It was like suddenly having to go study right before the kickoff of your high school football championship game. Too bad. I had to make some dough.

  At the time, Waco was showing signs of a small growth spurt, but there weren’t too many job openings for an unemployed carpenter. My best bet, I figured, was some kind of position at Baylor. I dragged out my computer, updated my résumé, and submitted online applications for a handful of jobs. I’d done my best to re-craft my CV—a task I thought I’d never again have to do—and in a strange way, I felt hopeful. Maybe everything I’d done was somehow leading me to a wonderful position at a great university. My alma mater was growing fast, and working there could bring me a lot of opportunity, not to mention the possibility of reduced tuition for my kids one day. So I applied and waited for a response. I didn’t get a single one. Based on my grades there were probably alarms set to go off if I ever got within a phone call of the place.

  * * *

  Now, if you’re confused, know that I was, too. I had quit my job to go for my dream. But the realities were sinking in, and I was freaking out and desperately searching for a way out. Imagine a guy who knows the basics of swimming, who then tries to swim the English Channel with little training. After a couple of hundred yards the guy realizes, Holy crap! I can’t do this! and starts to flail about, even forgetting how to float. That was me.

  Around this time, my old friend John Alexander moved on from the fifteen years he’d spent building Waco Habitat. “It’s time for a change,” he told me when I dropped by to visit him. “I’m ready to explore new opportunities. But if you’re interested, my job will be open.” I walked back to my car with my head spinning. Habitat? Yes! This is it! This is why I once felt like my grandmother was telling me from the other side of the grave to go and volunteer with Habitat—so I could one day become director. I was absolutely convinced that this was the direction I should go in. Director of Habitat for Humanity Waco—it even sounded amazing. My grandmom would be so proud. I even came up with an idea for my first year there: I could add a furniture component to the equation. Habitat had scrap wood all over the place, and we could use those scraps to make tables for homeowners. It was perfect.

  It was also in line with my original vision for Harp Design Co. In the beginning, I didn’t just want to build furniture. I wanted to craft it and give it away. For every table I made, I hoped to donate another. Following in the footsteps of companies like TOMS shoes and Warby Parker, I envisioned launching a revolutionary furniture company. For a time, Kelly lovingly played along with my idea. But as I got incredibly close to making our company a nonprofit by filing a 401(c)3, my wife spoke up, and I finally heard her. Starting a 401(c)3 would come with too many restrictions. Kelly was right and we ultimately opted to launch, build, and sustain a for-profit company. We could still give away tables, and that’s how we started. But, even though we had given away some furniture, the plan hadn’t really worked out. Then, up from the ashes came the Habitat opportunity. If I got the director job, I could start my revolution there.

  Except there was one tiny glitch: I didn’t get the job.

  As I contemplated my next steps, the conversations I’d had with Paul replayed in my head. Every time we sat down together I was always hoping he’d say something like, “Don’t worry, Clint. It’ll definitely come together. You’re going to sell furniture and it’ll be awesome.” He never did. I should’ve known better than to expect concrete assurances from a man who jokingly des
cribed himself as an “agent of death.” That name made more sense to me the longer we worked together. Paul was the equivalent of 36 grit on an industrial belt sander, the kind you don’t want to touch while it’s running unless you want to see bone. After I met Paul, the layers really started to come off. He helped me to shed a false version of myself—to kill off the pretense so the real me could show up.

  In place of cheap promises, Paul let me sit with the fear. He let me wallow in it until it worked its way out of my soul. And along the way he’d continue to give me homework. I remember a film he told me to watch, Touching the Void. It was about a pair of mountain climbers who chose to scale one of the most dangerous peaks in South America. They were tied together so that if either one fell, the other could hopefully save him. As they climbed, the weather turned bad and one of the climbers slipped and tumbled down the mountainside. The other climber stuck himself in the side of the mountain with his crampons and held on for dear life. As he tried to pull up the fallen climber, both realized that it wasn’t going to work. The problem was, they couldn’t communicate about it: one climber was hanging off a cliff and the other was back up the mountain and beyond earshot. After what must’ve felt like an eternity, the climber who hadn’t fallen made the incredibly difficult decision to cut his partner loose.

  Once he cut the rope, his partner fell into a deep cavern. He somehow survived, landing on a ledge covered in thick snow attached to a wall of ice. He sat there. Confused. Scared. Weighing his options. With broken bones and his energy fading, scaling the sheer wall of ice above him wasn’t possible. Lying there on the ledge till he died seemed even worse. With the rope he had left, he lowered himself down, descending even deeper into the darkness. Upon reaching the bottom of the cavern with literally just enough rope, he discovered a way out. After days of dragging himself through the snow and down the mountain, he found his way back to camp.

  If that climber had sat there on the ledge, paralyzed by his fear, he would’ve lost his life. Instead, he lowered himself into the complete unknown. He wasn’t even sure how deep the cavern went or if he had enough rope to reach the bottom. But he went for it. And because he did, he saved himself.

  The point? Sitting on the ledge in my life was no longer an option. Sure, I was still yelling as loudly as I could to the top of the mountain to see if anybody could throw me a rope, but I refused to curl up and die. So I lowered myself, my wife, and our kids down a little deeper into the unknown, and I didn’t look back. Well, okay, I did look back a few times. Actually, I was freaking out. I continued to stress and hope for a savior to rescue me from this seemingly bottomless cavern I was in, and I even contemplated quitting the whole journey and shutting down Harp Design Co. But all the while, my feet were reaching for solid ground. And in time, I was building a few woodworking projects for the Fixer Upper pilot, hoping my anxiety wouldn’t be visible when the camera was finally pointed at me.

  PART THREE

  * * *

  JOURNEYMAN

  When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for.

  —John Ruskin, philanthropist

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  Chiseled

  A mortise is basically a square hole cut into one piece of wood, and a tenon is a projection carved into an adjoining piece that allows the two pieces to fit together. Both can be achieved with a hammer and a chisel. Some of the finest woodworking you’ll ever see is the result of the meticulous hand of a carpenter chipping away until every cut is as close to perfect as it can be. There’s something about turning off the saws and quieting the hum of the dust collection system to sit and work with a chisel. A nice sharp chisel can do the kind of detail work that makes the whole project come together. In chiseling and in life, slow and steady carries the day. You can’t finish a marathon in a single step, nor can you carve out a table in one sweep of the chisel. Rather, you stay alive and present to this one fine cut in this one moment—the only one you have for sure.

  “Hey, Clint!” a producer said to me over the phone. “Could you bring your tools from the shop and set them up here and just sort of build some stuff on-site?”

  The site, it turned out, was the driveway of a local couple, the McNamees. Their home was chosen for the pilot episode. As I would learn, when you’re filming an episode for an actual season, the story lines are somewhat structured and the filming schedule is pretty straightforward. But a pilot is different. You throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Yes, the producers have sketched out a general plan, which you follow, but you also film just about anything else that comes up along the way. You shoot what feels like enough scenes for a feature-length film so there’s plenty of footage from which to choose, and in the end, it’s boiled down to about forty-six minutes of television, which amounts to an hour-long episode once commercials are added. On day one, everyone is fresh, nervous, excited, and ready to make TV history. But somewhere around the third week, you find yourself in a long, seemingly never-ending grind. Joanna had already been at the pilot house for weeks, working her heart out trying to design this thing, and Chip was there doing his thing as well. Somewhere in the middle of that long grind and right after the house had been demo’d, I got the call from the producer.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. I was still a one-man shop, and loading up my table saw, planer, lathe, chop saw, hand tools, and everything else should’ve sounded like a pain. But to the ten-year-old in me, the kid who once figured out how to move his entire bedroom upstairs from the basement using a bedsheet as a furniture dolly, the producer’s request sounded like a challenge I wanted to take on. I loaded everything up, drove down the road, and set up a shop in the driveway.

  Those first scenes took only about fifteen minutes to film. “Do you think you can make an island to put here?” Jo asked me as we walked around the kitchen, with the camera crew trailing us.

  “Absolutely!” I told her.

  “And if we pull some of this antique pine off the walls”—otherwise known as the famous shiplap—“can you make a table out of it?” she asked. “Yes, ma’am!” I said. Joanna then added a final item to my to-build list: a vent-a-hood to go over the stove.

  At that point, I’d completed a couple dozen tables. I’d even built a few islands. But I’d never made a hood vent cover. I’d seen them, and I’d even installed a few exhaust fans at some of the Habitat houses. But making a wooden enclosure for one that would look pretty and be custom-built to house the fan? Well, it wasn’t impossible, but it was one more thing I was just going to have to figure out.

  The same was true with the filming itself. We zipped through the first three scenes I was in, with Joanna asking me about the projects I was set to build, and that was it. In my head, I’d envisioned a director occasionally stepping in to say, “Cut! Let’s do that again, only this time with a little more energy, okay?” That didn’t happen, and it’s not because I’m magic on the screen. When the filming ended, I grabbed my tape measure, got over the fact that I’d felt flat and wanted a do-over, and went looking to recruit a couple of guys on the jobsite with carpentry skills. No way was I going to take on the hood cover without help.

  The next day, with some reclaimed wood in tow, I pulled up to the driveway of the pilot house. The day before, the guys I’d found helped me put together a basic frame for the hood cover, leaving room for the fan and ductwork. Now, with the cameras rolling, I just needed to make it look great. That turned out to be harder than it seemed. Most of the angles I was trying to cut weren’t even possible with the only miter saw I owned, and I had to jerry-rig a contraption to make it work. It was the perfect recipe for an accident. Throw in the stress that comes with being filmed, and you can see why that was such a dangerous move. Thankfully, it didn’t cost me a finger. I tried to relax, slow down, and work at my own pace. Over the years, while singing or speaking in front of people, I’d learned to breat
he my way through nerves, but when that little red light on the camera flashed on, it changed everything.

  That pilot house was never quiet. Production assistants rushed around with clipboards and headsets. A saw was always running. No one seemed to stop. Amid the busyness, I continued making my pieces, and Jo filmed a few times around my makeshift shop, discussing each of the projects and how she was hoping they’d turn out. Occasionally, as I was minding my own business, a camera operator would walk by, aim the lens at me, and pick up some B-roll (extra footage used to fill in the gaps in an episode and give it a bit more depth). It was exciting and stressful, and everything in between. Each evening as I finished up, I moved the evolving pieces into the garage for storage overnight.

  Meanwhile at home, Kelly and I were still on the brink of financial implosion. After the job at Habitat didn’t work out, I was seriously thinking about going back into the sales field. The furniture I was building for Jo just wasn’t bringing in enough yet to keep us afloat. It felt, once again, like I was going to have to shelve the carpentry work and get back out in the nine-to-five. On one hand, I was all in as I built these projects for Jo and tried to make my impact felt on the show, but would it even register on the Richter scale? On the other hand, I was trying to find a way out of a money situation that felt increasingly uncertain. My world seemed to be simultaneously blossoming and narrowing, and I was reaching for some kind of sure footing. How long could I continue to show up and do work for a show that, frankly, felt like a long shot?

  And yet the miracle wasn’t lost on me. Just months after meeting a stranger at a gas station, I was making furniture on the set of a TV pilot. It was the last thing I would’ve imagined doing back when I was in my Houston garage trying to figure out how to make a table out of pallets. In leaving the sales job, I’d signed up for a life that would come with its share of twists and turns. But this twist—playing the go-to carpenter on an HG-freakin’-TV show—had been nowhere on my radar.