Upon entering the LaFayette, Georgia, home of Rusty and Charlotte Hicks, you immediately take note of a couple of things.
First is the beaming smile on Charlotte Hicks’ face. You’ll note an hour or two later that neither the grin nor the joy in her voice ever leaves.
The other thing you notice right away are the beautiful white oak columns framing the living room area. As if by some supernatural magnetic force, your hand immediately reaches out to touch them.
“Everybody does that,” Hicks says through that ever-present smile.
The same thing happens when you see the mantel over the fireplace and the cherry bar top separating the kitchen and the dining area. Whether you have an appreciation for the level of craftsmanship it took to perfectly fashion the dovetail connecting the cherry pieces that make up the top or not, you will find yourself unconsciously touching it, marveling at the smoothness.
It’s a similar story when you get out to the back porch, where another cherry bar top rests on carved legs from the same tree.
For David McKee, the craftsman responsible for the work, which also includes the columns holding up the front and back porches, hearing the tales of visitors admiring and touching his work gives him plenty of satisfaction. But the real payoff comes from Hicks herself.
“The best moment for me was the smile on her face,” he says. “In my eyes, yes, I did a good job, but knowing she is happy makes me the most proud.”
He also remembers watching her close her eyes when she first saw the dovetail on the bar top, which is finished with a live edge.
“She closed her eyes and just kept rubbing her hand over the dovetail,” McKee says.
“I think that was one of my favorite parts of the project. It’s this giant dovetail, and I tried to get it as seamless as possible.”
McKee’s mentor, Bill Carney, points out that “nobody does that – puts a dovetail on a countertop. But for her project, it was perfect.”
From every angle, this was no ordinary project. McKee, 37, is a third-year student at Chattanooga Woodworking Academy on Market Street who will graduate in December. Three years ago, he was working in the food-service industry uncertain of his long-term life goals.
The Hickses bought their 93-acre property bordering the Chattahoochee National Forest in 2010 and began clearing it themselves with the help of Rusty Hicks’ brother. They sold some of the timber for pulp and were hoping also to use some of it in their home.
They found some white oak and then came across a massive cherry tree. They cut and stacked it the best they could and went looking for someone to help design and turn the pieces into framing and furniture pieces.
“The point was to use these logs,” Charlotte Hicks says.
The search went nowhere until she read of the Woodworking Academy a year ago. She called Carney, the academy’s founder and instructor, who selected McKee as the student to tackle the project.
“He is a good artist and, he didn’t know it before he got here, a good woodcarver,” Carney says of McKee.
The students at CWA attend four years of school on a similar calendar to students in more traditional colleges. They have intense hands-on instruction in the classroom, starting with learning to sharpen their tools and then making a seemingly simple handyman’s wooden tool box. To further their instruction, Carney also sends them out to do a variety of jobs for private individuals such as the Hickses.
They’ve made or repaired furniture for people and rebuilt log cabins. They are paid essentially minimum wage for their labor, and the school asks for a donation from the patron. Pricing is on a case-by-case basis, Carney says.
“I’m trying to teach them how to buy groceries doing this,” he says. “The money is important, but the experience is the big thing.”
McKee, who’d had zero woodworking experience before enrolling, learned of the school through his father, a longtime woodworking hobbyist who stumbled upon the academy during one of his walkabouts. He sweetened the deal by offering to pay the tuition for his son.
“I’ve committed to things before and told him I wanted to think about it” before enrolling, McKee says. Once he did enroll, he took to the craft fairly quickly.
Carney, who has 50 years’ experience as a professional woodworker, didn’t quite realize just how big or challenging the project would be, as McKee was asked to approach it differently than most woodworkers would.
The Hickses wanted to celebrate the wood’s origin, and that meant keeping whatever “flaws” turned up.
“We work hard to eliminate the flaws,” Carney says. “She wanted them left in. Plus, the wood had twisted badly, and David spent hours working to get it flat just so he could run it through a planer. It was a big job.”
“I love the challenge,” McKee says.
Hicks loves the result.
“They called me several times to come and look at a piece of wood because it had a split or a knot,” she says. “That’s what I wanted. I wanted to know it came from here, and I love it.”
She’s so pleased, Hicks has decided she’s not done yet and has plans to have two benches made for her dining room table.
“It came out far beyond my wildest hopes,” she says.
McKee estimates he spent nearly 500 hours on the project over a semester and a half. He even took home the two cherry pieces that were eventually glued together for the outside countertop, and with his grandfather’s old hand planes spent 10 hours on each of the two pieces getting them smooth.
“I learned plenty about sharpening plane blades during this project,” he says.
He also has learned something about himself, Carney says.
“David is a wood hoarder.”
McKee laughs and says, “No wood is for the burn pile.”
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.