We had every service you could imagine going at once on that project. Mirroring the work that my Grandfather managed to do with three people, we had our whole family continuing a half century later. The roofing, the drywall, the painting, the cement work, the framing, the landscaping, the design, everything all coming together from a myriad of sources to create one thing, in juxtaposition to the one man who managed to do all those things on his own, it really made you sit back and appreciate all that he did with his own work ethic and determination, and we often found ourselves wishing we were half as capable as he was on his own.

The funniest part of the whole project, looking back anyway, was how much I appreciated working with my hands. I don’t know if it unlocked part of my ancestral genetic code hidden away, but the drywall work was actually some of the most fun I had on the project. Which I suppose is what got me into eventually working manual labor despite what I thought I would have happening throughout my life span. But, back to the tale at hand. It took us about five months to have the place completely finished and ready to open. It was no grand scene, but it was quaint, beautiful and filled with handcrafted pieces that were born and bred form the minds of my family.

My mother eventually quit working in the restaurant industry and went on to operate sales and lessons bookings at the shop. I went to work with my uncle in roofing, and then branched into my own handyman service, doing everything that I had learned to do throughout the process of building that shop, and turning it into my own second business. Now my uncles come and work for me on occasion, which is great. My wife still works as a designer, and often helps with projects that I may be working on at the time, only my one uncle is the long lost holdout still working in service, and he may get ribbed for it, but he’s happy.

Nearly a century after what started over in a new country, our family follows in the footsteps we walked for as long as we can reach back through the generations. Working with our hands, and bringing music and violin into the world. And I suppose that’s kind of the lesson of this whole blog that I want to get across, that it doesn’t matter what you do, whether you’re in drywall, roofing, painting, building, landscaping, design or anything else, what you do matters. It impacts the lives of those around you, and it carries on in legacy throughout your life. You are not a product of what you do for a living, but what you do while living, what you bring to the world. And whether that’s swinging a hammer, or drawing a bow across strings, you will live on if you leave something beautiful behind.