Nov 2, 2026 

By a man who is currently between jobs, owns more power tools than a small Amish village, and has begun to suspect his garage is a lumberyard with ideas above its station.

When you find yourself between jobs, there are various respectable ways to fill the day. You can take up golf. You can learn watercolours. You can go travelling, find yourself in Thailand and come home with a tattoo you can’t read. Or you can sit in a comfortable armchair until the armchair stops noticing you’re there.

I took up woodworking.

Strictly speaking, I needed something to do after my last job chewed me up and spat me out like a bit of gristle at a wedding buffet. But that’s a story for another blog, and probably a stiff drink. Today we’re talking about the joyous, ruinous, occasionally baffling business of making things out of trees.

The plan was simple. Buy a few tools. Find some wood. Make something useful. Save a bit of money along the way.

Three out of four isn’t bad. Sadly, the one I missed was the one my wife was most interested in.

The Great Houston Hardwood Hunt

Houston isn’t so much a city as a weather system with ZIP codes. You can drive in a straight line for an hour and still be in it, which is fine if you’re delivering pizzas and less fine when the lumberyard you’ve been driving towards shut at four and nobody thought to mention it on the website.

I have been all over this sprawling place looking for hardwood. Walnut, cherry, pecan, white oak. Anything with a decent grain that doesn’t require me to remortgage the dog.

I’ve been to proper lumberyards. I’ve been to sawmills. I’ve been to a couple of places that might sell timber if you turn up on the right day, knock three times and ask for Earl. As a result I now hold strong opinions about wood species, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write.

I can tell the difference between a bargain and very expensive firewood. Mostly because I’ve paid for both.

And then there are the tools.

When I started, I told myself I needed a saw. Maybe a router. A few clamps. Nothing silly.

Today my garage looks like a hardware shop that’s been burgled by someone who panicked halfway through and put everything back in the wrong place. There are new tools, second-hand tools, tools I bought because they were a bargain, and tools I bought because they were on sale. These are different things. I’ve explained the difference to my wife several times. She remains unconvinced, and if I’m honest, so do I.

Lowe’s Knows Me Now

My relationship with Lowe’s has reached the point where it’s slightly awkward for everyone involved.

I’m no longer a customer. I’m a recurring character, like the neighbour in a sitcom who wanders in without knocking. The staff know my name. They know I’m the bloke who stands in the lumber aisle for forty minutes, turning boards over and squinting down the edges like a jeweller who’s just been handed a dodgy diamond.

And here’s the bit I’m genuinely proud of. Some of them now text me pictures when there’s good wood on the bargain cart.

“Hey Ariel, there’s some good wood on the cart today.”

I can’t tell you what that does for a man. You can keep your birthday cards and your scented candles. Send me a blurry photo of discounted timber and I’ll be there quicker than a teenager who’s heard a rumour about free pizza.

Now, let’s not get carried away. There is never any walnut on that cart. Lowe’s is not, and has never pretended to be, a hardwood emporium. The best you’ll usually find is red oak.

Red oak is perfectly decent. It’s honest. It turns up on time. But in woodworking circles it’s the Toyota Camry of timber. Nobody has ever stood in front of a red oak sideboard and wept.

Then there’s the white oak group, which takes in live oak and post oak as well, and which sounds like a country club that hasn’t revised its membership policy since 1954. I promise we’re talking about trees.

The difference does matter, though. Red oak and white oak share a surname, but they’re not the same animal. White oak’s pores are clogged up, so it keeps water out, which is why people have been making boats and whiskey barrels from it for centuries. Red oak’s pores are wide open. You can, in theory, blow through a short piece of it like a drinking straw. I have tried this. It works, and the man next to me in the aisle quietly moved away.

So there I stand, red oak board in hand, telling myself it’s exactly what this project needs.

It never is.

But it’s been marked down, and I am a weak, weak man.

The People Are the Best Part

What I didn’t see coming was the people.

Woodworkers, it turns out, are some of the nicest humans on earth. They’ll explain a technique, recommend a supplier, tell you where the good timber is hiding, and they won’t charge you a penny for any of it. In a world where a plumber wants a call-out fee to look at a dripping tap, that’s almost suspicious.

Everyone seems to accept that we’re all still learning. Some people are learning to cut a perfect dovetail. Some are learning not to glue their fingers to the workpiece. And a few of us are still trying to work out how a board measured three times can come out three millimetres short.

Nobody minds. They’ll show you their projects and, better still, their disasters. And when your latest cutting board looks less like a cutting board and more like a boundary dispute, they’ll say “that’s a good start” and actually mean it.

I’m very glad I wandered into this lot.

Two Hours of Measuring, One Wonky Joint

I should probably mention at this point that I’m an engineer.

I’ve spent years with technical drawings, specifications and the sort of infrastructure where “a bit out” means a train ends up somewhere it shouldn’t. I understand tolerances. I understand that when a drawing says twelve inches, it means twelve inches. Not twelve-ish. Not twelve if you squint.

And yet woodworking has found a way to make me look like a man assembling flat-pack furniture after a long lunch.

I can spend two hours on one joint. I measure it. I square it. I measure it again with a different tape in case the first one’s lying to me. I mark it, look at the mark, decide I don’t trust it, rub it out and mark it again.

Then I cut it.

And it’s wonky.

Not a bit off. Not “rustic charm”. Wonky in a way that makes you wonder whether someone quietly amended the laws of geometry while you were putting the kettle on.

Wood, I’ve learned, has a personality. It moves. It twists. It cups overnight purely out of spite. On some days I’m fairly sure it has something against me personally.

To be fair, the wood isn’t always to blame. Sometimes I’ve measured from the wrong end. Sometimes I’ve cut on the wrong side of the line. And sometimes I’ve forgotten that a saw blade isn’t a laser beam. It has a thickness of its own, and it takes that thickness with it, along with my dignity.

But I prefer to blame the wood. The wood can’t write a blog.

Never Looking Back

Here’s the strange thing. Despite the wonky joints, the ever-growing pile of tools, the endless hunt for timber I can actually afford, and a garage that now looks like a lumberyard that’s gone off, I have never enjoyed a hobby more.

There’s something deeply satisfying about taking a rough, grey, unpromising plank and turning it into something. A cutting board. A shelf. A clock. A little table. A thing that didn’t exist this morning, and does now, because you made it.

It’s never perfect. It’s rarely even close. That’s sort of the point.

I’ve come to love the grain, the smell of freshly cut cedar, the warmth of walnut, and wood’s unique talent for making you feel like a master craftsman and a complete idiot in the same afternoon. Often in the same cut.

And I’ve worked out that the best bit isn’t the finished piece. It’s everything that comes before it: the people, the bargains, the mistakes, and the stories you end up telling about all three.

So if you’re ever in a Lowe’s in Houston and you spot a man squinting down a plank of red oak like he’s defusing a bomb, do come and say hello.

It’s probably me.

And if you know where there’s any cheap walnut, send me a picture.

I’m probably already in the car.

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Thanks for dropping by my little corner of the world. If the story gave you a chuckle or made you pause and think, a like would be mighty kind. And if you’re feeling adventurous, well, hitting that subscribe button is like pulling up a chair and staying a while—always room for one more.

I subscribe back, by the way. It’s my way of saying, “Welcome to the club—snacks are in the back, good times up front!”

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