Let's talk about Country Living

I definitely get what you're saying about being able to build an easy rapport with a wide variety of people.That's a real asset. Most of the carpenters in my area (myself included) are a little bit rough around the edges. There are a few here and there that have a certain quality of grace. It's hard to define. They tend to do a bit better than the rest of us because they're so uncommonly good at working with the customers. Women in particular will comment on how nice they are.

It might sound crazy but customer satisfaction with the finished job is more important than actually doing a good job. Many times it's about how they "feel" about it. If they feel good you can gauge the job a success. If they're unhappy for some reason then all of your work is for naught.

IE: You do an outstanding roofing job. It's quality work that came on on time and on budget. Just one roofing nail out of the thousands you pulled escapes and lands in the driveway. She picks it up in her car tire and ends up stranded with a flat out in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain. She will never forget that you were the SOB that flattened her tire ! She will tell all of her friends too !

Yeah ... there are certain personality traits that draw people to certain occupations. I guess you could say that a lot of carpenters are a bit anal. A slightly different way of looking at it is that they have a strong attention to detail. That's an absolute must. If you think about it a house goes up in stages. There's the foundation, then the floor, then the walls and so on. Every step has to be right. If there are any errors along the way they start to compound themselves. By the time you get seven steps in the error in the work is so great that the job just won't come together.

That's the reason why these old places are so had to work on. Everything is a bit "off". You're constantly error correcting and that eats up a lot of time.

I don't take pride in my work anymore. When i'm down on the jobsite i park my ego at the door. I'm just one of thousands of carpenters that came before and many that will come after. Fifty years from now the work will speak for itself but the guy that did it will be long forgotten.

There's always a push <----> pull between quality and production. The sweet spot between the two is different on every job.



Obviously ... you don't do crap work but not every job needs the very finest that you're capable of. I'll tell ya the truth ... most of my customers aren't able to discern quality workmanship. All they see is the finished product. If it looks halfway decent they're satisfied.

I can't really blame you for wanting to get away from the business aspect. I get my days when i wonder if it's really worth doing or if i should hang up my hammer and go do something else. It will be at least another ten years before we see things pick up to the level of activity we saw before the recession hit. Even so .... the world has changed. You can scrape out a living doing service & repair work but the real prosperity is in building new places. It used to be that all new construction was stick built on site. That's been mostly taken over by the manufactured housing industry now.

Just do what's right for you. We're not all cut from the same bolt of cloth. For some folks, working for a boss on a regular job isn't a good fit. For others, the security of a regular paycheck and regular hours is what works well. There's no right or wrong to it.