“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with tools.”
Jean de La Fontaine
They say you should never go into business with your friends.
And they’re right—unless your friend is Chris.
Chris and I ran a company together for twenty years.
We built it from nothing, sold it, worked there a few more years after the sale, and somehow—after all that—we’re still working together. Which either says a lot about friendship… or about our lack of other viable employment options.
From the start, we were a mismatched pair that somehow fit.
I was the optimist. Chris was the realist.
If I said, “This could be amazing,” he’d say, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
And somewhere between those two sentences, we usually found the truth.
Now, Chris is grumpy. Always has been.
Not the miserable kind—more the muttering, “why is everyone so chipper at 8 a.m.” kind.
He’s sentimental in a way that sneaks up on you—like he’ll build you something before he ever tells you he cares.
Which brings me to the desks.
We were finally moving into a bigger office, and I had this grand vision: matching desks, modern design, maybe a few plants that would die within the month.
So we spent a whole day looking.
Store after store, flipping through catalogs, testing out desks that were apparently designed for people who never intended to use them.
At some point, we ended up in a diner, both exhausted, staring at laminated menus and half-drunk coffees.
Chris was quiet for a minute, then said, “What if I just build them?”
I laughed—because, of course, he wasn’t serious.
Except he was.
And so it began.
That night, he started sketching plans in his notebook.
By the weekend, his garage had turned into a workshop.
He bought lumber. Borrowed tools. Turned on some music and started building.
He used doors as the desktops—flat, solid, beautiful. One of our teammates came over to help, and they spent the next few weeks sanding, staining, and trying not to glue their fingers together.
When he finally rolled up to the office with a truck full of desks, they still smelled like cedar and stubbornness.
And they were perfect.
Not “designer perfect.”
Better than that.
You could tell they were made by hand—each one slightly unique, like they had their own personalities. You could run your hand across the surface and feel the care.
They weren’t built to impress anyone.
They were built so we’d have something real.
Something that belonged to us.
That’s the thing about Chris. He didn’t build those desks to save money.
He didn’t build them because he’s frugal.
He built them because he wanted our office to feel like ours.
Like a place we made.
He didn’t say, “I love this team.”
He built them furniture.
We used those desks for years.
They saw every season of the business—every rebrand, every long night, every bad cup of coffee. And when we finally closed the office, someone bought them.
That’s how good they were.
I still think about those desks sometimes—not because they were beautiful, though they were—but because they represented everything about the way Chris works.
Quiet. Steady. Intentional.
He’ll grumble the whole time, but underneath it all, there’s this deep, steady care that holds everything together.
He’ll tell you he built them because it was practical.
And I’ll nod, because that’s how we work—he calls it practicality, I call it love.
So yeah, they were just desks.
But also not just desks.
They were proof that sometimes the things you build—especially with someone who drives you crazy—can outlast the business, the years, and the noise.
