Handcrafted

by Clint Harp

  As the cameras rolled, I kept working. And of the three items I’d been asked to build, the table was my favorite. It had straight legs and a skirt that wrapped around the legs like the farm style Jo and I had used many times before. I stained the base and painted it white so I could distress it with sandpaper once it was dry. As I rubbed the sandpaper over the legs, it slowly brought out the darker-stained wood underneath. On the top, I applied poly to enhance the beauty of the natural wood. It was rough, and meant for the outdoors, as it would ultimately go under a newly built pergola. I loved it.

  In November 2012, filming ended; the pilot was set to air the following May. That December, Kelly and I cradled our sweet Camille for the first time. Time for me to buckle down, I thought, gazing down at her adorable tiny face. Time to get serious about making a buck as a full-time carpenter, with no cameras around.

  * * *

  In order for a business to grow, you usually need more money and more people. You need other things, of course, but I’ll focus on those two. For me, I couldn’t pull money out of thin air (let me know if you figure that one out!), but I had a sneaking suspicion that if I could find more help, more business would come my way. In other words, I had to increase my productivity and grow beyond my one-man woodworking operation to establish a sustained enterprise. So I did what any close-to-broke entrepreneur would: I spent more money I didn’t have. In March 2013, I invested in hiring someone to help me part-time. That person turned out to be Britt Duke.

  Britt and I met during my days volunteering for Habitat, where he still worked at the time I was looking for help. I’d heard from a mutual friend that he wanted to “build stuff” on the side—like maybe some kids’ toys. By this time, Kelly and I had started attending church again, and Britt and his wife, Holly, happened to sit in front of us one Sunday.

  During the whole service, all I could think about was whether I should say something to him, and if so, what. I didn’t want him to think I was attempting to pull him away from Habitat, but I had heard through a friend that he was interested in carpentry, and I needed help. I figured it couldn’t hurt to throw out a line. I caught up with him and his wife after the service.

  “Hey, Britt and Holly!” I said.

  “Hey, Clint,” he said. “How’s it going over at the shop?” Given that my shop had once been Habitat’s cabinet shop, he knew exactly the space I was working with.

  “It’s good,” I said. “Things are coming along. Listen, I was thinking the other day . . . well, a friend actually mentioned you might be looking into building a few things here and there. Do I have that right?”

  “Well, I guess,” he said. “I mean, it’s nothing too serious, but I thought it might be fun.”

  “Right. Well, look, absolutely no pressure here, and I know you’re busy working with Habitat—but I was thinking, if you had any time after work or on the weekends, I could maybe use a hand.”

  His face lit up. “Really?” he said. And then he added: “Well, actually—and please keep this to yourself for now—I’m considering moving on. I’ve been there for over ten years and I think it’s time for a change. I’m actually looking at another option right now, but if you’ve got an opportunity, well, I’ll listen. Why not?”

  We agreed to meet at my shop later that week and talk through the possibilities.

  Kelly and I went home and looked over our budget. Even though Kelly probably thought I was crazy—and for good reason, I might add—she once again braved the unknown with me as we sat on the couch and came up with a number that maybe, with such little cash flow, we could scrape together to consistently pay Britt. A few days later, I picked up lunch for us, and right on time, Britt and Holly walked through the door. There I was, seated on a workbench and surrounded by piles of wood and scraps. I greeted them and then dove right in.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” I began. “You know that I quit my job in Houston to pursue this dream of building furniture, and things have gone all right. I’m not completely overwhelmed with orders, but I hope I will be. I’ll be incredibly candid: I can’t afford to pay you much. Quite frankly, $750 every two weeks is really all I can do . . .”

  Before they could respond, I pressed on, telling them more about our company, what projects I was working on, and of course that little thing called Fixer Upper. “I know the money’s not much right now,” I said, “and quite frankly I can’t even guarantee that I’ll even have the cash when it is actually time to pay you. But I will promise you this: I’ll do everything I can to make sure we make some money, and if this Fixer Upper thing goes anywhere, we’ll be busier than we can handle. And regardless of it all, this will be a wild ride. I promise you that.” That was it, the only pitch I could possibly make. The honest one. He deserved that.

  We finished our lunch, looked at some tables around the shop, and talked for a bit more. He had to look into the other opportunity, he told me, and he’d get back to me after that played out. So I waited. And about a week later, he called with news that sent Kelly and me to the moon: “Hey, Clint,” he said. “I’m in.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I had my first employee! He gave his notice at Habitat, and a couple of weeks later, right before Easter, he started at the shop. The moment he walked through the door, my cool factor went up. He was a drummer. He wore these awesome dark-rimmed glasses and had a full-on beard. He actually looked like a carpenter. I, on the other hand, had just enough facial hair that I had to shave it every morning to keep from looking like I was in perpetual puberty. I wore these light-colored jeans and ugly T-shirts that Kelly hated. Britt was mellow and witty, and I was loud and goofy. “We should take a selfie to commemorate this first day,” he said. Until that moment, I’d never heard of a selfie. He grabbed his phone and snapped the shot. The picture was horrible, but it has become one of my all-time favorites, as has Britt.

  On March 29, Good Friday that year and soon after Britt had started, I walked into the shop with my eyes puffy and red. “Oh man,” Britt said. “It must be bad.” It was: moments before, my mother had called to tell me that my uncle Howard, her eldest brother, had passed away.

  Uncle Howard had stood six feet three and was as husky as an NFL lineman. My grandmother used to call him the “Rock of Gibraltar,” but not only for his size. He had a strong personality, just like his father; he was opinionated and fiercely loyal. When he was in a room, he commanded your attention just by standing there. At the same time, he could be the most loving person you’d ever meet, with his huge smile and rosy cheeks. A few days before Good Friday, he’d gone into the hospital with a serious infection. Due to major complications, he was gone. Just like that, our family was crushed.

  I got in my car and drove all the way to Alabama, where his family lived, so I could go to the funeral and say my good-byes. When I returned, I buckled down in the shop like never before. I was reminded how quickly life can be taken from any of us, and I resolved to do the job right. I wanted every breath, every experience, every moment, however many of them I had left, to matter. I didn’t feel pressure. Rather, I finally felt the freedom to relax and really enjoy this whole journey I was on.

  That headspace lasted until, two weeks later, I had to deliver my biggest project up to then: an entire bedroom set for a client in Dallas. Britt and I scrounged up some oak and pecan pallets and put all the pieces together. We worked right down to the wire, leaving ourselves just enough time to load up a moving truck and transport the furniture all the way to Dallas, and just as important pick up our paycheck. We were also picking up more wood in Dallas, thanks to a deal we’d made with a local businessman. We had to get on the road, and fast.

  But we still had one last thing to do: install the drawer slides. In hindsight, leaving this to the end was a major mistake. They didn’t fit. As the clock ticked, Britt and I were feverishly putting the drawer hardware on and then taking it back off to make adjustments. I was stressed, and Britt could tell. If I couldn’t make drawers fit on our first big project together, I th
ought, how could he feel confident in his decision to jump on the Harp train—and by “train,” I mean something closer to the one Mickey conducted in Disney’s first cartoon than a powerful locomotive. We stripped the screws. We couldn’t get anything to work. At one point I let out a frustrated “Aaaaahhhhh, dammit!!” which Britt would later admit almost made him throw up. It felt like the wheels were coming off our bumbling choo-choo.

  Settling myself down, I grabbed my chisel and went at it. There were fine little cuts I needed to make in order for the drawers to fit. It was the kind of task that requires you to stand still and work in small motions. This is the hardest work—the kind that, with sweat pouring down my face, I was attempting as I fine-tuned that chest of drawers. It’s the work no one will ever see. The little adjustments to make things fit. The quiet, stressful moments where if things don’t finally fall into place, you may just tear the whole thing up. This is usually when you want to give up. But you don’t. You just keep working that piece till it’s right. You keep shaving off little bits till it fits. You keep on telling your kids to say “Thank you” in the hopes that they will one day be contributing members of society. You keep talking with your spouse, all the while believing that you’ll somehow work it out. You keep running. You keep trying. You close the shop door and turn a leg one more time. You move forward. This is the work no one will ever see, but it’s the most important work that we can ever do.

  Britt and I made it to Dallas in time. Barely.

  That whole nerve-racking experience made me remember a woman I’d learned about and admired greatly, the sculptor Augusta Savage. I’m drawn to sculpture. I don’t study it, and I’m certainly not an authority on it. I just appreciate the work that goes into it. I love the tools, especially the chisels, and I love the idea that the artist starts out staring at a massive stone, allows the piece to reveal itself, and then tirelessly chips away until the art is born. As I was chiseling away at those drawers that day, trying to birth my own art, I thought about Augusta Savage. An African American artist born in the South in 1892, she grew up in a racist and male-dominated world, yet she carved out a life for herself through sculpting and even founded her own studio in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance.

  Her detailed, beautifully cast figures are a powerful reminder for me of the human ability to plow forward in the face of countless obstacles. Rejected from studying at an art institute in Paris because of the color of her skin, Augusta Savage was herself an extraordinary example of fortitude, sculpted by years of struggle. I’d imagine Augusta had days when she wanted to walk away. When she wanted to go inside, turn up the music, sit back with a cold one, and just say, “Forget it.” In the spring of 2013, I often had that feeling myself. But I had an employee. I had three kids. I had a savings account with not a single dollar left in it. So I kept chiseling away. I didn’t give up. And neither did Britt. Day after day, he showed up at that shop with no idea how everything would work out, or even if he’d be paid (miraculously, he was, though not always on time). And together, as more orders came in and the work slowly picked up, we just kept building furniture the best way we knew how.

  * * *

  May 2013 rolled around, and finally, it was time for the Fixer Upper pilot to air. Chip and Joanna invited Kelly and me and Britt and Holly to a local restaurant, Vitek’s BBQ, where they were throwing a watch party with all their friends, family, and coworkers. I hadn’t seen the final cut of the episode and had no idea what to expect. Would I even be in it? We all hunkered down, grabbed some barbecue, and turned on the show.

  The hour-long pilot literally flew by. We all sat there in the restaurant glued to the screens, feeling so proud of Chip and Joanna and our little town. I mean, this was happening in Waco, for crying out loud! We hadn’t received this much attention since our town had made headlines back in 1993 with a disastrous showdown between federal law enforcement and a certain cult leader. But this was positive. Waco looked darn good. And, yes, I was on camera for a brief moment, making plans with Joanna for a vent-a-hood. All that filming I’d done in the driveway, all that time I’d spent building the other pieces—none of it made the cut. But I was just thankful I’d made it into the episode.

  We learned soon after that the pilot had drawn sky-high ratings. In short, Fixer Upper was a hit. Throughout the entire episode, viewership just continued to rise, and the network paid attention. The excitement around town was palpable. No one really knew what would happen next, but you could feel that something big was coming. When the network ordered season 1, Joanna and the production team didn’t have to call me, but they did. I was now—officially and yet unofficially—part of the show.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  Joinery

  If I’m making a jewelry box for my girls, I might join all the sides of the box together using a decorative dovetail joint because it’s beautiful, it will last almost forever, and it shows them I cared enough to make them something special. Or if I’m building a table, I’ll usually use mortise-and-tenon joinery to attach the legs and skirt. The method is tried and true and tested. Of course with every project, there are surprises, but in the end, if the work is carefully done, everything somehow fits.

  A giant house, a high-rise among smaller houses, sits a few blocks away from my shop. A brave young couple bought the place, and it became the project for Chip and Jo’s first Fixer Upper episode of season 1. “Stop by and say hey!” Joanna told me on the day filming began late in the fall of 2013. I showed up and discovered this thing was totally happening: Hollywood had come to Waco.

  When I walked up, Chip was over in the side yard, talking a hundred miles a minute to some lady I figured was one of the folks in charge. I wandered toward them and stood off to the side waiting for an opening in the conversation.

  “Hey, Clint, good to see you, buddy!” Chip said. “Let me introduce you to Lauren Alvarez. She and her husband, Steve, are the producers.”

  She gave me one of those total-body look-overs, her eyes going from my head to my toes and back up again.

  “Yeah, okay,” she said. “We can work with this.”

  Lauren would later claim that she was referring to the blue T-shirt I had on, which had our Harp Design Co. logo splashed across my chest. Kelly had worked with a local company to create tees in time for filming, as a way to quickly identify Harp Design Co. to viewers. According to Lauren, “We can work with this” meant the network would be fine with the branding on my tee. But I still like to pretend that she, a glamorous producer from LA, took one look at me and thought, Oh yeah, this guy looks good. It was most definitely about the logo on my shirt, but let me have my moment, okay?

  Chip told Lauren I was the carpenter guy who could custom-build just about anything for Jo. “We’ll call you with a date when you can come and shoot,” she told me. And that was that. I got back in my car and drove off, but not before I noticed piles of wood being tossed from the house and into the yard. The demo was under way.

  A few days later, I got the call. I showed up at the house, got mic’d, and went inside to find Jo. Inside, Jo stood with Steve while a couple of camera guys and a sound guy were walking around the house, which had been stripped down to the studs.

  “You ready to do this, sir?” Steve asked me.

  “You bet.”

  Other than during the pilot, this was the first time I was filming with Jo—and it would be like no other time ever again. With the crew trailing us, we walked around the space that would become the new kitchen and breakfast nook. As Jo explained her renovation plan, she spit out so many ideas that my head was spinning. I think her head was spinning, too. We walked and talked in circles, and the cameras just let us keep going, with no clear end in sight. Jo finally asked if I could make an island for the kitchen. Check. She also wanted a bench for the nook. Double check. The whole walk-through probably lasted only fifteen minutes, but six or seven design brainstorms later, I was exhausted.

  I walked outside to catch my breath.
I heard a loud bang and looked up. There, on the rooftop, a crew of workers were tossing ten-foot planks of antique shiplap pine from the second story of the house down into a dumpster below.

  “Hey, hold on a sec!” I yelled up as I ran closer. One of the guys looked down at me. “Hi, I’m Clint! Can you wait a minute so I can look in there to see what you’re throwing away?” He nodded.

  I climbed up the side of the dumpster and dove right in. I was right at home. All around me was beautiful wood, and it was all mine, if I could dig it out. And dig I did. I started throwing the wood back out and onto the ground, creating my own pile to haul back to the shop.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Clint! Stop!”

  I looked up and Steve was running toward the dumpster.

  “Hold up there, pal!” he shouted. “Let me get some cameras over here! We gotta get this on film!”

  And like that, the dumpster-diving, reclaimed-wood-loving carpenter was born—at least in the TV world. To this day it’s how I often get introduced, and when I do, I always think back to my first day of filming for the inaugural season of HGTV’s new show, Fixer Upper.

  * * *

  Kelly and I were committed to keeping Harp Design Co. going despite the challenge that it was. In terms of sleep deprivation, 2013 was proving to be a landmark year: a new baby kept us up around the clock, even as we juggled the growing demands of our three- and five-year-olds. And at the shop, orders were slowly ticking up.

  Around town, people were starting to hear about this guy who built furniture from pallets and scrap wood, and who’d appeared on the Fixer Upper pilot. Shortly after it aired, a local community college professor asked me to build him some simple bookshelves, which I happily did. He happened to be connected to Bohemia, a small local magazine that some of his former students had started. When the editor approached me for an article, I was stoked. Good thing I’d snapped some pics of the hutch and name tag cabinet I’d built for the church in Austin. Those photos were featured in the mag.