Deconstructing Garrison

Funny thing, Need and Resource.....

About a week ago, I finished up what I could get done. pretty much by myself on a project for my Good Wood enterprise. Pretty much single handed. I spent the last 3 months deconstructing what I could of a 3500 square foot farmhouse built around 1900. Two days ago what was left which was a lot was bulldozed and went to landfill because I was unable to recruit a crew to accomplish what the homeowner needed. Ok i was sad, Maybe i shed a tear but i get it.. totally and what I got in my back yard and in my head is worth more than the money Im making and the time it took.

He ended up paying about 2500 to bulldoze and bury it... theres one way to handle it. I unable to attract any of the reclaimed lumber companies even to take it... free... they all wanted significant sums of money for their service. Or were just too darn busy with other free houses, to even get to this one.

I understand this to a point, but the sustainable me thinks, that the homeowner should receive... something ... for his resource..not just me in there swinging away day after day. I tried to pay him every time i sold something, but he wouldn't take a dime. I mean I made and am making some good honest money on this.

I met the homeowner through social media and he was looking to get rid of this home so he could put up his dream home. After purchasing the land, he decided to renovate would cost much more than to start over. So he started getting quotes, knowing that there was.. a lot of material there. The cheapest tear down and haul off quote was 19k One was 26k.

I did a p/l on the house complete with a bill of materials. Had i had a crew that would work, and the cash to pay them daily, at the end of about 10 days it would have been down to the ground piled in sorted dimensional lumber piles. Quite gorgeous hand hewn dimensional lumber , beams, shiplap pine, beadboard, tile, and goodness, the pine flooring was, exquisite. Personally I took out board by board over 1100 square of this gorgeous stuff and have sold most all of it. Common price for heart pine reclaimed flooring just like this is about $9,00 a square foot. I charged my clients 3.50 a square, because thats about what I thought it was worth and would sell for quickly. It did. That P/L of what was in that house is as follows:

Total weight : 20 Tons. Comprised of over 2000 2x4x8 2x4x10 2x6x16 2x8x16 4x6x16 Dimensional Pieces of Lumber. And most all of it was Old Growth Pine. True dimensional where 2" is still 2" not 1.67 of today. Over 2500 square foot of hand hewn pine shiplap board, 2000 square foot of Antique Beadboard, 2200 Square of Tongue and Groove Pine Flooring, Two Fireplaces. Windows, Doors, Trim, etc.. After the labor part and renting equipment, and a container for what couldnt be reused I came to the bottom line. The p/l with what I knew I could quickly sell the project returned a profit (on paper) of 23k,

However, it went like this, no one wanted to invest , everyone wanted to buy and of those 6 guys who came out and took my time (and theirs) who had the heavy equipment and the crews that could do the work, to split the resources 50 / 50 with me... 3 were very interested, like ill be here ... Saturday interested... yet ... never called back.

So heres my takeaways. . and why my Good Wood Concept Company (deconstruction is going to be another offering should I ever launch, and we will PAY the owner for the resource not charge! ) is so important to me.

I value what I say and most importantly my time and yours.

TIME is money and Time is Valuable. Unlike the deadlines, commitments and goals of the corporate worlds teams and schedule .. here on the streets. too many people waste too many other peoples time and say too many thing that they don;t mean aren't willing to do and just flat out waste each others precious time. I was genuinely excited to tell the owner I have the solution.... its gonna happen...and then... nothing.... It sucked! I mean I just dont get it. I posted for people on facebook to come and get wood free. It was awful, wasting so much of my time typing and typing and showing pictures and getting commitment after commitment and no one showed. Not one!

Are we just wasting time creating no value and ignoring the past and the resources that we have . Pointing our fingers at this or that and ignoring what is in front of us that speed and innovation replaces while everyone makes their buck? Does everything that's good for us have to be not only expensive.. but Premium? Ive changed everything about my own diet and let me tell you I am as healthy as at any time in life, healthier even but its REALLY expensive. Look at Tesla, Look at the price of a piece of reclaimed lumber? Look at how much a transmission costs when the junk yards are full of literally thousands of them.. The Great Pine forests are dead. And the men and women who grew and worked in that simpler? time, those jobs are gone. Its all Tech and part time stuff now. What can we gobble up next except our own individuality and creativity.

Pay for what you take get paid for what you do..... I understand why this homeowner didn't want to pay to have this taken down, I tried to pay him, yet, he just had to pay a little in the end. I love Concepts.that scale and attract more people but I feel strongly it should be profitable to do good.....! I will never trade tax writeoffs for doing good. He didn't pay me but I earned quite a bit of cash and still am.. Its just like how I want to differentiate from non profit structures. I do not believe to solicit donations of money or time from private individuals should be the sole driver of research or concept or change to improve this world.

If there is a thing I want to create in my world If I ask for your time I will pay you. There's not enough free time anyways. Volunteerism is great but its not mandatory and certainly not something a business should count on and it also keeps people from following their dreams... We should all get paid for what we do well.

HARD WORK but gratifying and... work!

Deconstructing Garrison put me at a level of fitness I had no idea I could achieve. Deconstruction is nothing new, and in fact, other countries build to deconstruct late due to their own size and urban makeup. Personally I had some darn rough weeks soaking my hands wrapping them, sore as sore can be and waking up almost screaming in pain from carpal tunnel but. I changed my diet up a little and got thru it... alive.

Its really hard to take apart a house. But it does provide jobs, and skill and its very satisfying Additionally, the lumber and wood you get is seasoned by time and elements, has a lot of character to it, and theirs tons of studies on how much less of a footprint reclaimed wood uses than virgin. And its JOBS that most people today wont take. Can you believe I worked 8 hr days in the heat with tools.. power tools. But see, as layers came off I saw the most amazing things happening... old toile wallpaper behind sheetrock.. the 1938 McCalls that fell out of the rafter... And no one really knows how to act at a jobsite unless theres a foreman and rules, its like we have to be so regulated and programmed, to keep track of laws and etc etc etc. Cross a county line things change. We cant ...create .... or breathe or share even...because we are all...chasing the buck.

Ahhhaaa I say alone to my dog, looking up at me!

First I say Im so lucky and grateful for the training and camaraderie I had in the other world It wouldn't have made me as sharp as I am today! And secondly theirs nothing that beats doing what you want to do when you wake up in the morning. Nothing. Am I rich as I was in money.,.Hell no Am I happy as a person and feeling good about myself ., Yes. In a way I wish I always knew and felt. Like my CPG career ,, I guess you gotta do it. Or do you??

In the late 90's lots of government and environmentalists were pushing very hard to create policy. To force business to change.. its path, specifically the Construction business. Statistics from the EPA all public data. Reclaimed materials, wood is a very significant resource.. and it makes sense. ... Is not just a recycling thing though. We just waste and bury deep so much natural resource which has moved from a sustainable and important consideration to another statistic.. Something reported on in the late 90s. I had no idea, . There are many companies out there that take old buildings and barns down and remill them and sell it to you... Thats GREAT!

Go do it and thats good you make so much money and charge an arm and a leg. So it becomes more expensive again .. or charging to take it. And why not scale and associate with the Construction and Debris from commercial and residential building enterprises.

Obvious reasons and sublime.

I learned so much every day but I just cant stop learning and I do this only when I focus on my world first. We all are in America so... American..,everyone wants to be the best in their industry in their job sport, but... Just look deep inside and to those around you first . Be best to them. Period. I miss my parents and my family like nothing else I've ever felt. And I wasted a lot of time doing other things when I was that big corporate earner. And I produced a lot of sales but the most valuable thing I still think was turning on someone to sell in the stores on the streets. Thats what i miss.. Truly. Teaching them to sell one more thing this world really truly just doesn't need.

I love Good Wood! My company concept and the real thing...

Old Growth Pine, Old growth wood from virgin forests, is extinct. The nation was built on it We have addressed it here in marketing driven USA by stressing many of the benefits of reclaimed lumber, yet, it becomes a premium priced product, pretty much reserved for well off homeowners and commercial builders that love that rustic look. When you start peeling away Sheetrock and get down to the foundation wood on these structures you can see the saw marks. Its quite cool . Every good concept seems to springs a profit opportunity where the goal is share of market and profit, not good to man, but men.

Somehow we need to synergism in Business Operations.. if we are ever to get serious about recycling .and health and environment and .. anything.. People Things, Wood.. Transmissions .. It doesn't matter. Is your product really serving the purpose that your mind can conceive or just filling market share.

No more looking back or DENIAL

No longer do I wish I could have done it all differently I had to do it this way. , I was chasing something, but I still haven't found i I know its ahead of me which is how we all should live. I love selection, but ... now its getting a little insane... As we lie to consumers about health benefits or how they will feel wearing something, and we know darn well we are evoking emotions that things cant ever give people. And creating a lot of waste in the process.

Statistics that make you go Hmmmm

In 2014 the C&D (Construction and Demo) volume was 534 million tons or so... and 90 percent was demolition of that 80 percent could be reused,. That is double urban waste. Double what we landfill. To me its like . all the things that matter today dont, and the things that dont., seem to matter a lot.

I felt so many things in the last three months it opened me, I couldn't ever make a commercial to solicit donations for a non profit. by making people cry Good job achieving your goal even good thing that they are doing with the cash.

But dont make ppl dive deep and peel off another 12 bucks they cant afford because you are a marketeer. Even marketing is GREAT! And is volunteerism too. Just dont tell people how to feel or what to love unless you mean it and can do it yourself.

Finally,

Don't waste your own time lying to others. 'Yes all those people with all those good intentions they knew they weren't being truthful... but left and ill never see them again but that one on one time... It was special to me.

I say this often... sometimes technology, it forgets people, places, things. And it then doesn't serve its purpose any more. It serves men, not man. I cant save the world..certainly I can't conform to it , but I love it!

Particularity my world which is something I learned once again, how to be safe, how to be strong, how to create beauty. Good reminders for me very important that is ... while I was ....Deconstructing Garrison