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Every year about this time, I look back at the last 12 months and ask myself, “What the hell am I doing wrong?”

The complete list is too long for a blog entry. The short list relates to Lost Art Press and my work as a furniture maker and teacher. So here it is, with as little navel-gazing as possible.

The good news is that 2019 has been Lost Art Press’s biggest ever by all metrics: sales, profits, units shipped, etc. It is shocking that the enterprise we started 13 years ago now ships more than 30,000 books a year. That’s still small potatoes in the publishing world, but it’s good to be small potatoes that are not in the toilet – which is where most of the publishing world is today. (Boy, the SEO on this entry is gonna be weird. Maybe I should throw the word “boobs” in for good measure.)

Thanks to your support, Lost Art Press is now big enough that I don’t need to teach classes or take furniture commissions to eat. And at 2:49 a.m. on Monday while I was laying out Chris Williams’s new book on John Brown, I thought seriously about putting a full stop to teaching and commissions. Maybe get some more sleep and become a moss enthusiast to relax.

The morning sunshine and coffee brought me to my senses. Teaching and commissions keep me honest. And they are a safety net if books become suddenly obsolete. But I should reduce my burden.

So I’ve doubled my prices for commission work. If I’ve quoted you a price, then it’s still valid. All new work will be quoted at the higher price. I really do enjoy building for other people, but I also feel bad about how long my customers (sorry Bill) have to wait.

Second, I’m significantly raising my day rate (again) for teaching, which will kick in in 2021. I’ll continue to teach here at the storefront. I make more money teaching here, I have all my tools at hand and I sleep in my own bed. But I’m sure I’ll be dropped by many schools.

One of the revelations I had this year is that every one-week class consumes three weeks of time. A week for preparation, packing and travel. A week of teaching. And one week of travel, unpacking and catching up on everything I neglected during the previous two weeks.

The bottom line is that I have too many books I want to write, dozens more books to edit by people I admire and several dark corners of the craft that I want to research. The only way to do this is to cut back in other areas of my professional life.

So if you are here for the books and the tools (as I am) then the news is good.

— Christopher Schwarz

There’s a widespread belief that anyone who can hold a brush is capable of painting. What’s up with the spatters on the baseboard and floor? I asked a painter hired by the woman who’d rented my bungalow back in 2003. “You need to get used to owning a rental” was his response. Translation: Shoddy work is good enough in rental properties. (I strongly disagree.) Between peeling or chipping paint due to improper surface preparation, varying shades or sheens caused by insufficient stirring, drips, spatters and bugs – literal or figurative – in the finish, America’s houses bear witness to generations of humans who should probably never have been allowed to apply paint.

A recent job reminded me that the same goes for those who work in paint stores. There’s a big difference between pressing buttons based on a manufacturer’s formula and understanding color theory, along with the chemical components of contemporary coatings. After days of anxious deliberation and nearly $40 in samples, my client decided on a cabinet color. I called in the order for a gallon and drove to the paint store first thing the next morning to pick it up. Before leaving the store I asked the clerk to open the can – experience has taught me it’s worth taking a minute to check the color instead of waiting until you’re at the shop or jobsite to discover it’s not what you ordered.

Most of the time the color is spot on and I go on my way, but this time it looked off. I asked the clerk, Chris Slater, to compare it to the card. It was not the same color.

Chris, who has worked at the store about 16 years, explained that the cause was likely the colorant; I was buying paint with a different base from that sold for samples, and although he had mixed the gallon with the formula designed for the product I was buying, on rare occasions the shades don’t match. Apparently we were dealing with one of those rogue, hard-to-match colors.

He said he would custom-mix a gallon. He began the process by using the computer to generate a formula for the match based on the color chip. The result still wasn’t quite right; he thought he could get closer with a custom match based on experience and his own eye.

The next morning I picked up the gallon of paint, which seemed perfect.

I applied the first coat to the smallest cabinet, just in case it turned out not to be right. Once it had dried, my client said it was close…but still a little lighter and yellower than she was hoping for. Had I been working in Bloomington, I would have run the can back to the paint store, knowing the crew would do whatever was necessary to get it right. But I was 60 miles away. (Fortunately, this is the first time I’ve had this experience in many years.)

The following morning I asked Chris to speak with his rep at Benjamin Moore. This was not the paint store’s fault, but an error by the manufacturers, whose job it is to ensure that each of the subtle gradations in color they advertise is reproducible across the range of bases they sell.

Chris went through his paces, mixing three new gallons of paint at no charge, authorized by the Benjamin Moore rep.

I brushed a sample of each on a section of wall that will be tiled and let them dry. Luckily, my client loved one of them and I was able to finish the job.

The Moral of the Story
This experience cost me several hours of productive work and meant that other customers in the paint store had to wait longer than they should have to be served, while Chris, one of a limited number of employees, was working to make our customer happy. Although it was frustrating for all of us, it was a great example of working together to solve a problem, demonstrating a level of knowledge and commitment you’re unlikely to find in big-box stores. The paint store I frequent, Bloomington Paint and Wallpaper, is family-owned and has been in business for almost a century. It’s still in business largely because, in addition to selling products of high quality, it has a strong service ethic and places a premium on training its employees.

I’ve found this kind of service invaluable, so in an era that’s increasingly tough on locally owned businesses, I do my part to keep it going.

– Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work”