Ghostwood Farm

Heart cooks brain.

“In this life that we call home / The years go fast, and the days go so slow”
–Modest Mouse, “Heart Cooks Brain”

We have been building a deck for the past month or so. This morning, as I tried to get as much decking down as I could before the rain started AGAIN, I was reflecting on something kind of inane: my tool belt.

It occurred to me that my tool belt is one of my favorite things that I own. Why? I don’t really work with my hands—I’m not in construction or anything. I don’t even get to use it very often. I have it set up for me. Right hand pouches for screws and nails. Center knife and tape. Drill holster, retractable pencil, and hammer loop on the left.

I don’t build a lot, but I have built some stuff I’m quite proud of. It all started with the garage.

I. Garage 2015.

We moved to the farm in 2008. In 2015, we were finally ready to stop using the attached garage and build a separate building. I didn’t just want a garage, though. I wanted a house. My grand idea was to build a 25×50 building. The eastern half is a 2-car garage. The western half is split in two: the north half, a climate-controlled music studio and guest room, and the south half is a workshop. There is a 3/4 bathroom in the building (drains to a septic that was already in place from a janky old trailer that was there when we bought the place).

Now look, I didn’t build this thing by myself. My dad and my brother were absolutely essential to laying out the plumbing before the concrete was poured. Several friends came and helped over one weekend to get the main framing up. Melissa literally shingled the roof single-handedly while I was picking strawberries. Mom helped me a ton with the siding (and watching the kids while Melissa and I worked). And Dad’s input and help was critical all along the way.

II. Living Room 2019.

Now that we had a garage, it was time to expand our living area. Apart from individual bedrooms, there was no way for us to get away from each other. The living room, dining room, and kitchen in our house are all essentially a great room. Building a new living room in the old garage would allow us to get a little separation as well as making room for games and books in the main part of the house, which went from “living room” and “dining room” to “library.” Specifically, it is now known as the Richard and Catherine Davidson Memorial Library, because the garage conversion was largely paid for by money bequeathed to me by my friend and former boss at The Strathy Inn (in 1995), Catherine Davidson, when she died in 2019.

Anyway.

Building up and leveling the floor joists was a challenge. The geothermal is out there, so we had to build a little closet around it, and then we built a long, narrow mud room as the main entry, separated from the new living room by a pocket door. The whole thing is still separated from the main house by a door, only now it’s a nice poplar door, not an exterior. All this means that there is ample privacy in the new living room if needed. During COVID it was a real blessing to have a space where we could get away from each other, have private Zoom calls, etc.

III. Chanterelle Cottage 2023.

Next was what became known as Chanterelle Cottage.

When the kids’ old fort / swing set became an actual safety hazard and we had to take it down, Jamie was pretty upset. We decided that he would use his Christmas money to buy the supplies and he would help me build a replacement. We had an old cinder block foundation between the house and the barn, which I always assumed the original owners intended to use as a storm or root cellar. It is 10×8, which seemed like a reasonable size for a little house.

I spent a stupid amount of time on it, and probably six times the amount of money that Jamie actually had to spend, but what we wound up with is pretty special. It is uninsulated and there is no power to it, but it is in the woods in a beautiful setting. There is a sleeping loft in it, so that Jamie and his friends can cram multiple people in there. Until very recently there was a desk and chair as well, for drawing or writing or whatever.

The only real downside is that Jamie only uses it one night a year, during the open house. Otherwise, it just sits. But it was a ton of fun to build. I may eventually run power (just 20A) out to it and use it to paint miniatures to free up studio space.

IV. Deck 2026.

Somehow, for seven years, ever since the garage was converted to living space, we have been talking about building a deck, but putting it off. Lumber was mind-bendingly expensive in the early 2020s, so that didn’t help. We have been limping by with crappy stairs since 2019 (which does NOT seem possible).

Lumber prices have come down a little, and Menards has 12 month same as cash financing, so we pulled the trigger in March. We designed the deck on their online tool. It’s 21×12. As a recovering Rush fan, that’s kind of funny, but that extra foot east-west has cause SO many issues: we should have made in 12×20. Also, the deck goes across the “new” exterior wall onto the brick on both ends. This made the ledger board a challenge because the wall we built sits inside the brick by about 1 1/2″. I can never do anything the easy way.

V. So what?

As I run out of things to build, I was reflecting on how much this tool belt has done for me. I bought it when we started the garage, and built it little by little as I find pieces that help. But still, it’s just a tool belt, right?

WRONG. Ha, you fell for it!

What I realized today is that I really value this one item because it makes me feel capable. It’s a symbol. When I was a kid, my grandfathers, dad, and uncles built the house I grew up in, as well as my grandparents’ houses. We built porches, garages, additions. We roofed houses. I loved to help. My hammer? My dad bought that hammer for me when we roofed the porch on the house I grew up in when I was, I don’t know, in my late teens or early 20s. I pounded so many nails with it when I built the garage that I used to wake up screaming, with my left hand curled and cramping.

All of that experience made me associate tool belts with competence. Of course, having a proper tool belt does not indicate how competent a person is, any more than having an expensive car indicates how good a driver someone is. But as inept as I always feel when I’m building something, as loose as my tolerances can sometimes be, I think I’ve proven myself at this point.

At the end of the day, I love my tool belt because putting on my tool belt makes me feel like my dad.

VI. Final thoughts.

So I guess all of this comes full circle with me. Because, as a father, in some ways I think I’ve done okay. But one (of many, I’m sure) abject failure on my part is that I haven’t taught my kids how to do these things that my dad and grandfathers taught me. They are not going to have the associations with building things for their families that I have. That’s…I don’t know. That’s probably fine. The world is different now.

Iain is 18 and heading to college. Every day I think of all the things that I could have, should have taught him. But, damn, he was 7 YESTERDAY. There seemed to be no time. And now there really isn’t.

Look, I learned most of the stuff I learned from my dad well after I was out of the house. I think. Well, applied stuff like this, anyway. Iain going to college isn’t the end of my being able to teach him things he may need by any stretch. But I feel like I have done a wholly inadequate job to this point, and it only gets harder.

All that from a tool belt.

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