Planning and vision - one coin, two sides

Project planning - where to begin

My goals this week were all met. Sometime back, many years ago now, I learned not set unrealistic goals and so disappoint my expectations. But we live in a culture of non-commitment that undermines others who work hard to fulfil obligations. I have learned that without setting goals I underachieve and fritter my sacred time in the realms of the undone.

Critical project planning for a woodworker like myself begins often with an empty space. I am primarily a furniture maker, but I can and have built my house, several additions, a canoe,or two, a cello and other such challenging things. I can build a boat or a violin if I want to. That’s what woodworking is to me. I avoid specializing because the root of it originated with the industrialising of life, family, education and much more. I like making furniture the most, especially now that I am in my 60s and can choose my design, my work and my pace and method. When I was young it wasn’t that way at all.

Planning involves space that needs occupying in the same way space on a blank sheet of white paper demands lines, drawings, words and shapes or a fold or series of folds.

Often my customers know what she wants. The open area at the foot of the stairs and the wall above seem to invite something new. One time I stood with Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy discussing furniture designs. The paper was empty and ten minutes later the designs were rough on the page. Six designs resulted from my sketches in unoccupied space and we made a coffee table, a dining table, a bed and matching bedside tables and a sofa table all from a paper and pencil design on a piece of white paper.

All designs begin with a space and all designs are made by man for man. No animal has the capacity to design and that makes us uniquely different. The reason designs begin with space is that space governs the size of what we build. In ever-increasing detail a design shapes and moulds the perception of what we build, so my work begins by determining the exact overall size of what I must make. Design is a goal defining an objective. The design helps me to establish sizes and the time a piece will take to make it and by this I can set my goal.