From about middle school on, I’ve had an interest in design and building and have spent most of my adult life working in construction. I’ve always found pleasure in creating something from nothing and have especially enjoyed designing and building homes. My career began shortly after my parents bought their first home in Ellicott, Colorado which had been vacant for a number of years and needed a bunch of work. Our budget was meager and my dad was never afraid to tackle any project so we did all of the necessary work ourselves. First order of business was to replace the well pump, re-plumb the house and rework the electrical service just to make the place habitable. We also did some painting and replaced a bunch of rotted wood but that was about all the initial budget would allow. A few years later, we were able to do more cosmetic and functional improvements by remodeling the kitchen and bathroom. I enjoyed working with my dad and learning from him and also enjoyed the opportunity to make the place nicer and dreamed of the opportunity to someday build my own home.

I went to university and studied architecture, engineering, and construction management and began a professional career as an estimator and project manager for commercial projects. While that career provided good income, I really wanted to design and build homes – especially the big fancy custom homes like those on display in the annual parade of homes.

Finally, the opportunity came. I acquired a nice building site and began the process of designing and building my first custom home. I spent countless hours designing the place and selecting materials. That part of the process was so much fun that it didn’t matter how long it took our how much time I invested because I loved what I was doing. I was so excited the day that I broke ground but that excitement turned to drudgery as I proceeded – not because I disliked the actual work of building but because I approached it like one of my commercial projects – ie. it became my goal to finish it as fast as possible and as cheap as possible while striving for perfection in quality since that was how we did it in the commercial world. I finished the house in about 5 months doing much of the work myself while still working full time on commercial projects. Personally, I wanted to approach the project more slowly but I didn’t allow myself to do so because I had a construction loan with monthly payments and additional time resulted in higher costs and more interest which was not part of my budget so the process was driven by constraints.

In the past 25 years I’ve designed and built 3 more custom homes, remodeled many others and have built several hundred commercial properties and I approached all of them the same way. I always enjoyed the work before groundbreaking when the only cost involved was my time but I rarely enjoyed the building process as I’ve always felt pressured to complete the project as quickly as possible. In addition to my self-driven schedules, I’ve always strived for perfection but, occasionally there were unforeseen obstacles that made the process more challenging and, like any human doing any process, I occasionally made mistakes. Instead of altering the design or desired quality to avoid an obstacle, I’d work to remove the obstacle at any cost without bending an inch on the schedule and, if I made a mistake, I’d immediately tear apart what I’d just put together and re-do it until it was perfect – also without bending an inch on the schedule. While these practices were expected, appreciated, and sometimes even rewarded in the commercial construction world, they created feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, worry, and stress for me – all of which stripped the fun out of the process. Sadly, as a manager of the process, I expected nothing less than perfection from every single person on my construction teams and I’m guessing that many of them felt the same anxiety that I did. While I can’t go back and change the way I did things and while most people (customers) will always have those expectations, I can choose to do things differently in the future.

Part of the reason I took this trip was that I was “burned out” in my career and I’d been thinking that time away and exposure to other possibilities might lead to new energy and new direction but, after nearly a year away, most every “new direction” I think of still involves some sort of building. One thing that I wanted to do while traveling was to do some volunteer work for an organization that was devoted to a good cause and, not surprisingly, I chose an opportunity that involved construction!

I’ve landed at Din Dang Natural Building and Living Center in Pak Song, Thailand. http://dindang.jimdo.com Din Dang means “red clay” in Thai and, basically, the small village is constructed primarily of red clay, bamboo, and other natural and recycled building components. In addition to constructing just about everything from free materials, the tools we use are archaic at best. There really aren’t any “plans”. The plan for each building is pretty much created during the building process. When there are obstacles in the way, we alter the plan or build around the obstacle. When we don’t have what we think we need to complete our task, we find “something” that will do. We even recycle sand! Sand is a rare commodity in the Thai jungle. If the current in the river isn’t too strong, some sand can be captured from the river but during my visit at the end of the rainy season, the river is high and the current is rapid so we scraped the sand/clay mix off a a building and re-mixed it to create a new wall finish mix. The idea of calling a supplier and requesting a truck to bring a truckload of fresh clean sand is unheard of. I’ve been at Din Dang for only a week now and I must say that I’ve worked harder than I’ve ever worked before in my life but something is different – I’m having fun!

For the first couple of days, I was a bit frustrated and challenged. I think I mentioned that I’m a perfectionist and the process here seemed less than perfect but, after only a few days, I’m learning to see the beauty of the imperfection. Each structure at Din Dang is unique and beautiful and fully functional but, more importantly, I’m learning to appreciate a different building process – a process that embraces modification and encourages artistic influence and creative thinking. The work is hard but extremely rewarding and, quite frankly, my time spent here seems more like play than work. Best of all, there is no stress or unmet expectations!

I came here looking to contribute to a good cause and learn a bit about building with natural and recycled materials. While I’m definitely experiencing both of those things, greater values are resulting from my time here. I’m learning a bunch about life, kindness, patience, adaptability, and acceptance. Most importantly, I’m re-discovering how much fun it can be to build things!