08/02/2024
I was recently asked by a friend "Hey what's up with The Bent Nail?" So here's the lengthy explanation.....
I started off working in construction. My first experiences in building and construction was at the age of 14 while living in Brasil as a missionary's kid. I learned a lot in those years, particularly more with doing concrete the "Brasilian way" (mixed by hand on the ground or in a wheelbarrow). For 5$/ day I'd work alongside Brasilian men making the same wage as I was. Hard work for little pay; but the experiences were invaluable. Fast forward to 16 and I left home for the summer to work for a construction company in Pennsylvania. Here I learned an incredible amount over a few years. Ground up construction. Again not the most valuable monetarily, but the experiences learned completely invaluable. Now some might be asking what in the heck does all this have to do with anything. It's just a 2 minute intro to my "backstory". Since those days life has taken me down many different paths. Each one bringing about their own experiences. A few years ago, shortly after moving to East TN, I started a forever long (and continuing) building project(s). It was during this time that my brother and I came up with a fictitious building company called : Good Enough Construction. We've had many a chuckle over the years about this. After completing every project we laugh and declare "Good 'Nough". We currently have 3 divisions of this fictitious company: East Tennessee (main division), Northern NY division, and the Far North Division in Alaska. A few years ago after completing a couple landscape projects we declared a branch off fictitious company "That'll Do Landscaping". And yes after every project I do declare "That'll Do". Fast forward to last Summer and I was tinkering in the Almost completed barn building this and that for different ones in my family. So of course in similar silly fashion a new "company" was born: The Bent Nail. I had put up a post asking friends and family to help with naming it. A good buddy Al came up with this idea. The moniker "Fairly Fine Appalachian Furniture" came from another friend Chris Vanoy. Fast forward to today....
The Bent Nail is a simple guy tinkering in his barn. I call it "wood therapy". I like taking chunks of wood and crafting them in to simple and functional useful things. Fine Furniture is nice, but that's not me. (Maybe one day). I like taking things that might not be useful in their current state and using them to create other useful things. (In 2008ish I took a canvas over whaleback canoe and made a chandelier for our living room). I also have a heart for "old" Furniture. To be quite honest the mass- produced-modern-pressedboard junk annoys me. Trust me I've purchased more than my fair share of this garbage over the years. Recently purchased a dresser from Ashley Furniture for my daughter. It arrived in a box (pressed board junk), had corners already crushed in from shipping, took hours to put together, and had a piece break before we got it in the house. Unlike the furniture of days gone by, I imagine it'll last a couple years at best. (But it looks pretty, or so my daughter thinks). So in my "wood therapy" of late, I've refinished some "old" Furniture. Again taking that which has been beat up, scratched, wrote on and abused; smoothing out those rough edges and putting new life to it. I couldn't help but think about how this furniture/objects are much like people. No matter how much they have been battered and torn, there is always hope and a purpose for everyone. Just because a Nail has been bent, it does not mean it useles: it just needs a little straightening. I am The Bent Nail.......
