Boardroom Renovation

I quit trucking September 2001 and took on the position of international traffic and crating manager at a factory in my town which manufactured large heat exchangers. The company changed hands several times until December 2005 when it was purchased by the competition and dissolved. I started my woodworking shop then and for 17 months stayed on my own property until the need for a second income forced me to go back to trucking at night.

During one of the buyouts our manager felt the need to upgrade the boardroom and the pathway from the front door of the plant upstairs to the room where the “big deals happened” he said. He explained the importance of making buyers feel comfortable in a professional yet not overwhelming environment. He spent $80,000 on this room.

Initially the room was a robin’s egg blue, no moldings, closet or media cabinet, just a bare room with an oak veneer conference table and boring chairs. The manager hired a designer who came up with a very complicated ceiling and other upgrades.

My wife found these photos on an old floppy from a camera I’d used at the factory to record incoming damaged shipments. The town is very depressed employment wise and the building is still empty. I park my trailer there and bring my Freightliner home. I should ask the property maintenance guy for access to take digital photos of the ceiling. Talk about crown molding.

A neighbor of the manager was laid off from the railroad and was helping me out in the crating shop. He did all the construction, drywall and framing, and the busy drop ceiling the designer came up with. I did all the finish work, miles of crown molding, built the media cabinet in the corner and faux finished the chair rail molding.

The designer gave the manager an album of art prints to choose from to decorate the walls. I felt that she was marking them up pretty high and suggested for that kind of money I could do an original painting to sit at the head of the boardroom table. She wasn’t happy that I sold it directly to the company and forced the issue of supplying the frame as I was going to custom make my own, but she said it wouldn’t fit the decor.

It took me two months to do the acrylic on masonite original, a loon floating quietly among the lily pads. It’s the only photo of this piece that I can find. I’d like to have one without the flash glare.

I tried to buy it back from the new owners but they wouldn’t sell it. Another artist friend offered to buy it as well.

It was hard not to stare at my painting during board meetings and think “did I really do that” because it seemed beyond my cababilities. I used to have to sit at the head of the table with my back to it.

Every spare second I got between incoming and outgoing shipments and the volumes of research and paperwork required for international shipments, I would run upstairs and work in the boardroom. In a hurry one day, I was air nailing a large stud wall for a crate and holding the gun over my head when a nail went through the edge of the 2×4 top plate and hit my left hand 4 feet down. I shook my hand vigorously to relieve the pain and it felt funny. I looked down to see a 3 1/2 inch nail pinning 3 of my fingers together. I got a passing employee to pull it out while I held my fingers steady. He asked me “what do you want me to do with the nail”. I told him to throw it away, bandaged up my fingers and went back to work. He told everybody the story and I got called to the office and sent to the hospital.

The doctor put a cast on my hand to keep me from working. It lasted to the parking lot. I should have slowed down but it was next to impossible as there was so much pressure to get my regular work done and the boardroom. I almost lost that hand when it got infected and eventually had to have surgery to correct a deformity caused by the nail hole. Thankfully I can still play the piano and guitar, and do my art and woodwork.

-- Phil Brown, Ontario