An afternoon drive

After the big kids went to school on Thursday morning and Peelu and I walked back from school, Ross asked us if we wanted to head out to a job site he was working on to drop off some samples. The blue skies that morning looked promising, so we agreed. We haven't been out to one of his jobs for a while now.



Ross is a very skilled craftsman and his specialty is wood floors (although he also works with bamboo and cork too). Owning your own small business has its drawbacks (I could talk for hours about taxes and insurances...uughhh) and owning a construction type of business in our area (which has experienced an infamously ugly housing bust) adds it's own stress and worry.



But we are puttering along, thanks to Ross' incredibly insane work ethic and his fabulous skills. I am not one to toot our own horns, at least not in a public forum, but I am very proud of Ross' work and craftsmanship. And his love for his work, plus his flexibility at being able to make it to almost all of the kids' functions, makes the craziness of self-employment....worth it.




Anyway, we dropped off the sample at one job site and then headed over to another nearby job site to check on a friend's progress. Ross had already finished his work here and he asked me to take some photos of it while he helped his friend. So with my trusty assistant, I took some cool (at least I thought so) photos of his amazing work.




This job used a bunch of re-claimed wood. I am sure I will get it wrong - but I think the flooring is hemlock and the stair treads are fir. Ross has really been excited about working with re-claimed wood lately. It stirs his love of history and utilizes his artistic eye to get the wood just so. He loves to find cool pieces that have carvings or nail holes or old saw marks or beautiful grain and then use his skills to showcase that in a floor or on a set of stairs or when he's asked to build a mantle or something different.








In the top photos you can see some old nail holes in the floor. And the above photos show the wonderful grain and saw marks from the old fir timbers, which I think were reclaimed from a local (old) barn. I LOVE the rustic nature of those stairs. The photo below shows the stair tread wood "before" Ross got a hold of it.



Crazy difference, huh? Well, the small cabin was such a wonderful little retreat that I spent a few minutes dreaming of living in it. For instance, I was dreaming of a comfy chair in front of this window, where I could crochet and drink coffee.....



sigh...Well, they dragged me out and we spent a few minutes walking around the delightful property.




It was one of those afternoons that we don't take nearly enough.