A Stress Swarm! Coping with Business Issues, Personal Issues, Teenage Issues and Tax Issues

My plate is full.  The cup hath runnith over and is forming a very large pool on the table and cascading on the floor.  I am, in a nutshell - stressed.  I'm almost out of my mind.  To be honest I am not sure what exactly is keeping me together, other than two very common sense things.  Baby Steps and crawl if you must.  I'm serious.  We all learned how to walk that way.  We crawled, then took baby steps and if our walking was not fast enough to get that cookie, we crawled like Dale Earnhardt in record time.  The results were the same - we got there and we got that cookie.

I am not exactly sure if it is season or that we have found a marketing plan that actually works.  But me and my little company are very busy.  So busy in fact that I am backlogged and behind on orders.  The orders have not stopped coming in.  We have also been recognized and are nominated for an award (I am very proud of this, by the way).  I have hired an assistant to help out in the shop with sanding.  I had to rent another space to use as a staining/painting and assembly room.  So giving all this added expense, I did not get paid one penny for my 340+ hours worked in the month of March.  But hey, it's a little dip in the road to success.  This I know.  

My gorgeous teeny girls are apparently lined up with the insanity planets or something, because the teenage angst of your typical girl, has gone from normal level to well, insane!  I can't even look at them without them giving me attitude or seeing tears.  Wow - was I ever that bad?  I am trying my best to tell them, rub dirt in it, chin up, boobs out, walk on and get on with it.  They aren't listening.  I have been told I don't understand, will never understand and just don't get it.  That's the same thing as not understanding, by the way.  If looks could kill, I'd be dead at least a 1000 times by now.  So I put them to work during spring break to keep their minds off of whatever insanity was lurking there - um, the sacrifices us parents have to make to our own mental health to make sure our kids are alright can be very painful.   But hey, at least they got paid.  Maybe I can talk them into taking me out for a dinner. 

On top of all of this and the deepening tax bill that is ahead, we started having Earthquakes.  Not really big ones and no I am not scared, but it's turning into an Earthquake Swarm.  As of today, 233 since Friday evening when we had the big one.  A whopping 5.1.  Please, I am more shocked at my neighbors response than I am about anything else.  We live about 2 miles from the epicenters.  He is a native Californian.  I'm just along for the ride.  But again, it's a little worry behind everything else.  What if all my wood falls over?  

I had one customer ask me "When was your last day off?"  I actually had to think about that.  I think it was the day after New Years.  A full day that is.  I take a morning or an afternoon when I can.  I went out to lunch with a friend on Saturday before going into the shop and then took off early on Sunday (I left at 6pm) and enjoyed watching a few episodes of the Killing Season 3 on Netflix.  So a full day off, no can't recall what that feels like.  Little chunks of time to myself, I don't have those.  2 hour naps, I really miss those, ALOT.  So when i am reading about other Mom the Builders and Mom-prenuers - and they talk about down time.  I really want to call them and ask them, what down time are we talking about here?  Your brain never ever switches off.  If you are not physically building something, you are on the computer researching something else,  making to do lists, on a delivery, networking, on the phone, researching, pricing out options, writing blogs, you get the gist.  Working for yourself is not 9 to 5 it is 24/7.  It is who you are.  Stress is just one part of it.

Espresso - good for the soul, not good for wood -well not the kind you are used to anyway.

http://www.target.com/p/staten-furniture-collection/-/A-13717178#prodSlot=medium_1_1

A great example of the Espresso that apparently is all the rage and very popular.  But this is not real wood.  It is a Veneer.

Veneer;

1. A thin surface layer, as of finely grained wood, glued to a base of inferior material.
2. Any of the thin layers glued together to make plywood.
3. A decorative facing, as of brick.
4. A deceptive, superficial show; a façade: a veneer of friendliness.

 Veneer is the equivalent of a Formica or laminate counter surface, only thinner,  much thinner.  Imagine Paper Mache and that little crafty session you had with your kids and the balloon - that is exactly what veneer is.  Only used with larger pieces, stronger glue and harmful chemical hardeners.


Can you make real wood look like the Espresso veneer?  Yes, sort of.

There is more involved than one coat of stain.   It takes a a few different colors and a simple little wire brush.  A dark brown is put on first, let that dry and then an even darker brown or a brown/black is put on over the dry 1st coat.  While the 2nd coat is wet, you brush it down with the wire brush.  The result is very very similar to the veneer.  You have to have a steady hand for brush strokes or it will end up looking like Edvard Munch's The Scream - which might be cool in of self. Very Artsy.

Basically you can achieve many different types of looks with this technique - like the little engraving art kits we buy our kids.  Numerous combinations, numerous design ideas  - just let your imagination go wild.

Just take a very dark opaque stain (waterstain's work best) and go over what you did on the wood and then you can brush, scratch, scrape, or engrave what you want and the bottom color rises to the surface really well. Make sure you do small areas first until you are sure to of the drying time for that second coat.  Nothing like doing the entire table top and by the time you make it to the last corner - it's already dry.  On that note, some of the water-stains dry really fast.  Basically it is the equivalent of tempera paints for kids, only for wood.  So seriously keep that in mind when using this technique. 

This is a sample that I have done for a few customers on my version of the infamous Espresso Veneer.  I aptly call this  - Espresso, real Espresso.  And why shouldn't I, I drink enough of the get up and giddy go nectar in fact I am craving a Vietnamese coffee at the moment.  I think I'll make one.   

The (Superficial) Namedropping Game - You're Such a Poser!

Namedropping is a common practice in many different fields.  There is no doubt that it can benefit the products sales, designers pocket and ultimately the bottom line. When it comes to a small business however, I personally feel it makes that brand or that company look very desperate for recognition for something that may not be there. Making you look better than you are, sort of.

Name-dropping is defined as –

The studied but seemingly casual mention

 of prominent persons as associates done to impress others - Merriam Webster

Me for example - I do not boast, brag or namedrop.  Regardless of just how "big" the person is. Trust me, living and working the Los Angeles area, I have made beds for small time and big time actors, musicians, comedians, designers and directors all the way up to the "oober goober" award winning celebrities.  I have met each and every one of them. I have been in their homes.  I have made beds for their kids.  I have let their kids help build the bed when we deliver it.  (The kids really like pulling the trigger on the drill). These customers invited me into their homes and guess what, they like to live a normal life and honestly, they REALLY are down to earth.   Ironically - I just tooted my own horn in this paragraph, didn't I. Oops, my bad.

Poser is explained as - 

is one who poses or habitually pretends to be something they are not. 

Maybe it is my own personal code that I have, I am not sure.  Maybe it is because I was raised by a "celebrity of sorts" and understood real fast, those friends that wanted to be my friend for notoriety and those that were real friends.  Trust me, when you are 13 and think you are all that, your world comes crashing down when you realize the only reason you were invited to a party was to please your parents.  This does no do good for the confidence or for your soul at all.   But after salvaging what self respect that I had - I learned and vowed that I wouldn't do the same thing to others - no matter my gain from it.  It's using people. It is wrong and I personally feel it makes you look, simply put, like a pompous ass.

My little don't namedrop policy - has actually gained me more business.  Seriously, I would rather have a customer come to me because I was recommended to them (within their own little circle) than have someone come to me to be able to purchase exactly what so and so has in their bedroom - that's just creepy.  All my customers, when I first talk to them are treated the same - I have no idea who this person is.  Sometimes the emails don't even ring a bell - but when I meet them, each and every customer (oober goober or your local janitor) gets the same handshake and same "it's a pleasure to meet you, where are we bringing your bed?".  It is an unspoken code between my customers and myself - I don't know who they are (and sometimes I do) and they know I won't say anything at all to other people or tag them in on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook with pics of the beds. That's just rude and presumptuous - if they want to tag me in to their own tweets and posts, though - I welcome that.  But I will never ask for, or expect it.

What I find entertaining - is that some of my pictures on my website are from the "celebrities" houses.  Like Andy Kaufman, sometimes I am the only one in on a joke.  But hey - I laugh.  Yes that was a namedropping line, but since the late great Mr. Kaufman is supposedly dead, and i was referencing his comedic philosophy - it in no way enhances my beds.  No, I have not met him or sold anything to him.  He is supposedly dead.  That would be creepy if I had and even if I did, I wouldn't tell.

I will say this though - If I ever meet James Hetfield from Metallica or Brian Urlacher, I don't think I would be calm and composed.  All bets are off.  I really think i would revert back to my teen age years and be freakishly excited and scary looking - like my daughter is with her band fav's. (That is a whole other blog post in the making and waiting to be written, "dealing with a teenage girl and her stalking tendencies"). I wouldn't mean to cause them harm, but my big bear hug may be misinterpreted as a tackle.  Urlacher would be ok with that I think, I hope.

The Dawn of the Stain

In my line of business I am forever stained.  Stained shirts, shorts or jeans (depending on how cold it is), shoes, face, hair and hands.  I do have a set of clothes that I wear to the shop on a regular basis and trust me when I say that I look like a bum, I really look like a bum.  This is on a good day.  On a bad day however, depending on the stain that I am using - I look like something from a serial killer movie.  Oh how I love working with the Varathane Cabernet stain.  It's red, it's wine'ish, it's perfect to give everyone the wrong idea.  I'm a wood worker, not a serial killer.  Sprinkle on some wood dust, sawdust and it's the instant and perfect Halloween costume.

Of course I wear gloves, most of the time.  I buy them by the box and try to keep up on having them stocked.  But there is always that odd day, when I run out of those hand savers.  So I root through my stock pile of weird things and usually find one, slightly used with no holes and I wear that one and lonely glove on my dominant hand.  Which leaves my left hand exposed to all that is gory and gooey and woodsy and pitchy. Seriously though, have you ever had a pitchy board and that pitch gets on your hand?  It works better than superglue.  Everything and I mean everything sticks to it.

So with pitch and stain on my left hand, I go through the day with one hand stained.  I run errands, go on deliveries, grocery store and usually go to the post office looking like this.  I look like something the cat dragged in.  Really, I do.

But how to get it off your hands - Dawn, a nail brush and some elbow grease.  I am the only person I know that has Dawn in the shower.  It only took one time to realize I needed something with a grip on the bottom of the tub, but I can safely say that I now have good reflexes too, now.  Olive oil, works well too - but a good scrubbing never hurt anyone and Dawn is gentle enough that I am not over doing chemicals on my body.  The olive oil tends to stick around for a little longer than I am happy with.  Dawn rinses away clean, which gives me that squeaky clean (I can hear it) as I am drying up.