What did I do before I became a writer?

I don't talk about it much on this blog, but I figured I'd give people a chance to see some of what I did. I don't, sadly, have a portfolio anymore because I retired from the industry, but I do keep an updated resume which includes all of my previous jobs plus contact points for reference for individuals who want to know.

Basically, I was a third generation ceramic tile and natural stone contractor. I was on job-sites from the time I was 5 years old. My grandfather started out around 50 years ago, and three of his four sons went into the industry as well. My dad and his two other brothers have collectively done between them over 750 million dollars of work, nation-wide, with my dad running the more "commercial" branch of the family businesses. Both of his brothers have had extremely successful years as well, each with their own unique brand of success.

By the time I was 19 years old I was a supervisor for a multi-million dollar company owned by my father. I was overseeing multi-million dollar projects and running crews of up to 20-25 employees at a time. However, commercial work wasn't all we did. Some of the projects my dad worked on over the years included some extremely high profile projects for such individuals as Wayne Newton, Johnny Cash, and (forgetting the name) the CEO of the Denver branch of the Oppenheimer corp. I worked on many of these projects growing up.

By the time I was 22 years old I was starting to branch off on my own, but I had to take an 18 month hiatus for health reasons. When I came back to the industry in 2004 I went straight into forming my own company, which had a specific focus on high-end residential projects, with some remodels thrown in to generate some extra income from time to time when necessary. Two of the highest profile projects I worked on over the years were up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Namely, The Porches and Marabou Ranch.

I was not the contract holder on those projects (I worked specifically for John Porter of Classic Tile and Stone, who eventually partnered up with my dad's company, Artisan Tile and Stone), and I did a great many projects in between, including several high-end condos, as well as my spec home and remodel projects down on the Front Range in Denver, Ft. Collins, Greeley, and otherwise, but those two projects in particular I spent a great deal of time on. The Porches project I spent nearly three years working exclusively on, and one of the last projects I did before my wife and I moved to Europe was working through the two partnered companies listed above on the Marabou Ranch project for about 6 months on the owner cabins. I did not personally work on the other buildings listed, but Artisan Tile and Classic Tile picked up the contract after the previous company had proven unable to hold up their end of the deal. There was another installer on-site about 4 months prior to my own work on it, doing work on the other buildings.

The last home we did at The Porches featured an individual who purchased both sides of the duplex and ripped out the dividing wall between them. We spent almost 6 months in that home. Every single bit of it featured exotic natural stone from all parts of the world. The stairwell down into the basement featured coral reef slab from off the coast of Australia, with the skeletons of fish inside the stone all "swimming" down the walls along the stairway. The guest master upstairs featured this copper slate that took me nearly three weeks to install, floor, walls, and ceiling. The daughter's bathroom was a cream marble, floors, walls, and ceilings. The master bathroom itself took me and two other installers around 2 months to complete, and was this deep, green marble imported from India that went up into a vaulted ceiling above, and the entire thing was set on a diagonal pattern with 12x12 marble, with all of the interior and exterior corners having a 3 inch black marble strip.

It actually got me thinking the other day that I need to e-mail the guy I used to work for, John Porter, and have him e-mail me some of the portfolio pictures, because I know he keeps a detailed record of all the things we worked on. I did as well, but I didn't bring it with us, thinking I had retired from the industry. But I find myself debating starting a company here to do 2-3 spec home projects a year, and I might want to look into getting all my portfolios set up again. The main issue is that my portfolios were not digital...which is why I just left them behind. Not to mention, I didn't take as many pictures as I could have over the years, because I was always in a situation where I could point to my family's name, reference a list of jobs I had worked on, and didn't have to worry about pictures.

My dad actually told me that pictures do more harm than good, because anyone can claim a picture as their own. He also claimed that a "true" master craftsman doesn't need pictures to back up his work...he lets his bank account and his reputation do the talking for him. And while I somewhat agree, I've found in recent years that digital media is the world, and has been for the last decade or so, and it really does help if you can give people pictures IF you can prove that you were in fact the person working on that particular project. That's the beauty of having a detailed resume attached to your portfolio...people can clearly see the pictures linked to the jobs, and they can make relevant phone calls to verify your information.

I love writing, and I absolutely want to transition to full-time novel writing in the next couple of years, but I'm also in a unique position in the sense that Evy and I aren't locked in to only working on ONE project at a time, so we have a lot of different things we are trying out, and I'm thinking I may want to see about setting up a high-end, custom-home company next year just to do 2-3 spec homes or high-end homes for this part of Europe. There are a *lot* of Westerners coming here and buying homes, and let's just say the Bulgarian way of construction leaves a little lacking, and many people I've talked to wished they could find Western-style craftsmanship in this part of the world. It might be a niche market I could make an extra 30-40k a year out of. Have to wait and see.