After graduating from UNH, I worked on a couple of vegetable farms and a u-pick fruit farm and did some landscaping. What I really wanted to do, though, was build solar greenhouses. I called a local company that retrofitted them onto existing homes. The owner was excited about my enthusiasm. Remember, this was the early 80s, solar was not an everyday word yet, and not many women were carpenters.

In our initial phone call, he asked if I had any carpentry experience, or if I at least knew the terminology. Although I’d wanted to be an architect my whole life, I didn’t have the knowledge he needed. He suggested I work in a cabinet shop for six months to a year to learn carpentry basics. He recommended a shop to me, where I got a job right away. I was excited to get started on this new path!

I built cabinet doors for several months. I played with pine, oak, cherry, maple and birch studying their grains and the differences in how they looked and felt, how each acted with a saw and a sander, and how each responded to stain and varnish. It was quite an education, and I loved it!

I spent a lot of my day sanding those beautiful raw woods. The orbital sander was my pal. I came home covered in and throughout with sawdust every night. It was exhausting, physical work, and the conditions were far from ideal, but I never lost sight of my plan to build solar greenhouses.

After six months of radial arm saws, table saws, circular saws and joiners, the lesson I learned was that I didn’t like power tools. The orbital sander remained my friend, but the rest were bigger and scarier than me.?

There went my carpentry career!

When I left the cabinet shop, I took my newly acquired knowledge of building, terminology and woods along with the few hand tools I had to buy. Little did I know the following year would bring me my first energy efficient remodel.

Tags: building, carpentry, Renewable Energy, solar, Solar energy, solar greenhouse

• Solar Home (Introduction)
• Solar Greenhouse – Detached or Attached?
• Solar Thermal – Hot Water for Domestic Use
• Passive Solar Post & Beam Home
• How Solar is Greening the Bottom Line

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Alternate Energy, Solar Home Series, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.