The mornings are beginning to cool off a bit. I have moved from sitting on the couch on the back porch to standing on the kitchen porch to finish my last few sips of coffee. I come out here just to take a look at the world.

From the top step, leaning against the post, I can see the sunlight streaming through the woodland that surrounds the house. My front yard looks more like dirt than grass. The unrelenting heat and the lack of rain has not been kind to my pitiful lawn. The dried up leaves of early fall are scattered across the driveway, and they’re piled up in the crevice at the base of my truck’s windshield.

Up the hill a ways, in the clearing to the right of the driveway, stands the building I call my shop.

There’s been a little excitement here recently. You may have heard. My shop is being featured in the November issue of Wood Magazine. I know I should be excited, and for the most part I am. It’s an honor to have been selected for the article. But I also find myself shaking my head in disbelief that something like this would ever happen.

It was at Marion’s insistence that I submitted a few photos to the magazine in the first place. It was a long shot, and we both knew it. Each issue of the magazine has a shop feature inside. At the bottom corner of the feature article is a little blurb saying, “Show us your shop. Send a few pictures and maybe we’ll showcase your shop in a future issue.”

“Why not?” Marion says.

She’s actually the one who subscribes to the magazine. She loves the “how to” articles. She’s always looking for ideas for some project she wants to build. And for the last several years we’ve been flipping through the pages admiring some of the cool shops they feature.

“Nobody wants to see my shop,” I protest.

A lot of the shops they feature are over-the-top shops. Fully decked out with the best and biggest tools. The cabinets are made of maple and walnut with dove-tailed joinery and brass hardware. The drawers and doors in some guys’ shops look better than the ones in my kitchen. They feature jigs with digital readouts, complete dust collection systems, and peg boards better organized than the retail shelves at the home store.

Some of them are so nice that I wonder if they ever use them.

I finally gave in. It was last September. Marion helped me sweep up most of the mess. My dust collection system is a broom, a scoop, and a couple of 30G trash cans. We tidied up the place. Hid a few things in the corners. Then took a handful of pictures to send off to the shop editor of the magazine.

I have thought about this shop a lot over the last twenty-five years. Every time I bumped my head on a floor joist in my storage area under the house; every time I had to lug a sheet of plywood out into the backyard just to turn it around and get it on my table saw facing the right direction; every time I had to cut a good board in half just so it would fit on my storage shelf; I thought about how nice it would be to have a full-sized shop.

Keep in mind that I am not a professional. I am not a master of any part of woodworking. Sometimes I just tinker at it. Sometimes I manage to make a fairly decent piece of furniture. But it’s a hobby that I love to work at. I love making things for my grandkids.

The prospect of retirement is what gave me the motivation to build an actual shop for myself. Like with most things I do, if I was gonna do it, I wanted to do it right. I wanted space. I wanted rustic. I wanted simple. I wanted functional and durable.

2021, the year I built the pole building, turned out to be a year of turmoil for me. A lot of personal adjustments in my life. So many that the shop stood as an empty building for a couple of years. I used it. I moved a few tools into the space. But it remained an empty shell.

When Marion came along, she was the one who helped me reignite the dream. For a solid year she worked with me every chance she got. We put up insulation. We paneled the walls with rough sawn pine. My son helped us build the two rooms in the back. We ran electrical circuits. We bought tools at estate sales. We added benches. And little by little, an empty metal pole barn turned into a real woodshop.

“You’ve got a lot to be proud of,” Marion says to me. “They’d be silly not to put your shop in the magazine.”

A couple of months went by, and not a word. Three and four months. Nothing. Six months had passed since I sent in the photos of the shop.

“If they were gonna do something,” I told her, “I would have heard from them by now.”

It was fun. It was a good idea. But they get hundreds of entries every month. I’ve seen the shops they feature, and mine is not like one of those.

Then on March 30th, almost seven months after I sent my pictures, I got an email from Randy, the contributing editor of the shop section of Wood Magazine. “I have selected your shop to feature in a future issue.”

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. We must have read and re-read that email a dozen times. It couldn’t be real.

Randy gave me a lot of homework to do. I had to answer a boat load of questions. He wanted so much detail about how the shop was built, why I built it, and what kind of projects I’ve completed in the past few months.

From the few pictures I submitted he commented, “Looks like most of your benches are made from construction grade materials.”

I couldn’t tell if he was aghast or just looking for information.

“Yes sir. I tried to keep things simple and sturdy.”

It was a little intimidating to be going back and forth with the editor of a professional woodworking magazine. My shop is usually full of sawdust and spiderwebs. Last week I walked inside to the stench of a mouse (I assume) which had decided to expire somewhere inside the back wall of my shop. Not exactly the kind of place for a feature article.

Last week, I got a copy of the November issue in the mail. Marion made me stand still for a few pics. Peeling back the envelope. Pointing at the pages like a kid. She keeps telling everybody that I’m almost famous.

Bless her heart.

I confess. This is certainly one to remember. I might even make a frame for the article and hang it in the shop.

If you come to visit, it’ll be the one covered up in sawdust.