That is a question we hear now and again.  The answer is... well the specific answer changes from day to day, and project to project.   Kim and I have different styles of communication, different styles of information processing, different ways of breaking a project/design down into the various stages in order for us both to love the design and get excited about making it.   

Kim has an eye for coming up creative, unique and wonderful designs that are inspired from novels, videos, and especially the early morning walk with Porsha.  I get excited about figuring out how to make it...my only requirement is that I have to love the design too.  

This is the point in our process where we learn the most about our differences.  Some days are quite challenging, most of them are really great.  Since, neither of us like to compromise, we've learned to let the strengths of the other person lead in that step of our process. One of Kim's gifts is knowing whether the design will look good and have a certain appeal that our customers are looking for.   I don't know why she's so good at it, or what the specific things are that she looks for, but I do know that I can trust her on it. What gift do I bring to the team?  I have a gift for seeing how to make the design in our shop.  I have always been building things... whether it be forts that I could sleep in from the lumber pile beside the house I grew up in or doing all of the detailed drawings for our current house, and building it.  I live for the details.  How each piece fits together, how well each piece fits together, how does it look after its fitted together, how can I be efficient at each of these steps, is there harmony in the proportion of the design? Kim loves to talk about the design, likes to visualize it, likes physically see what each of the ideas/concepts could look like.  I, on the other hand work from sketches, drawings, photos etc.   We drastically differ in the language we use to describe what a design looks like to each other.  We don't say to each other "You aren't explaining it in my 'language'", it typically goes the route of "It sounds pretty good, can you help me better understand ______".  Where we then mention the part either of us is struggling with understanding. For us, working together and spending what appears to be every waking hour/minute/second with each other is great.  Its a choice that I am glad that we've made in our careers and the path in our life.  Will something change in the future?  You can count on it, and I look forward to talking with Kim about it.  


Keeping it fresh in the wood racks