Like you all—near as I can tell from the various Facebook posts, emails, tradeshow visits, and people who actually talk to me—I’m drinking from a fire hose trying to keep up with everything and deliver you content you actually care about.
To that end, I’m bringing in some solid reviewers. Not that the reviewers weren’t solid before, just these are new and hopefully cool.
Some I know from my previous life in the content production and podcasting world, like Cliff Woodman, whom I met on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition—check out his trailer here—and other people I know through the algorithmic magic of social media, like review-a-holic and Bunkbed Master Nathan Rinne.
Some I inherited, as it were, like awesome guy and @AwesomeFramers Tim Uhler, whose output I think it will take me a year of typing to match. And some of you I have only just met, like Jeremy Kassel and his outstanding review of a 7 ¼-inch cordless circ saw here. And new voices will be coming on line as I can slow down the deluge of getting caught up.
And then there’s my voice. I’ve built stuff all over the country and under all kinds of crazy circumstances and it has put me in touch with a huge variety of builders and craftspeople and situations, so I hope that experience informs some of the things we cover here. (At some point in this conversation, I usually point out that I drove the wrong truck for 25 years, but that’s another segue.)
We’re probably not going to cover how many drywall screws an impact driver can sink in an LVL or how many cuts a circ saw makes. I don’t care about that level of detail—unless I’m running back to the charger every third deck board; then I care a lot. Sometimes what I want is a hole, not a drill, so if you’re kind of like that, I’ll try and keep the smoke and mirrors and hair-on-fire yammering of new tool intros to a dull roar and instead spend what I think is our time figuring out how they perform. On real jobsites. With real tradespeople.
Of the hundreds upon hundreds of things I’ve written in my life (I’m including grocery lists and materials take-offs here to sound more impressive than I really am), this is my first editor’s letter. I don’t even know if it is one, to be honest.
So, I’ll try and be in here on the website, out there on social, and on the job keeping my boots semi-dirty doing some of the work of building and improving homes.
Oh, and one more thing, if you can keep the toothpicks propping up your eyelids for a few more seconds: Thank you. Thank you for reading this. For being here. I’ll do my best to make it worth your valuable time.