Connecting the Dots and Becoming an Owner

Before I got into the trades, my life looked very different.  I never took a shop class, never had an interest in building, didn't have antsy hands looking to fix a broken lawnmower or install a new ceiling fan.  While I was a theatre major in college, I hated my shop class where we had to log hours building scenery.  Logging hours in the costume shop, maintaining costumes was similarly boring, though closer to heart.  

Traditional building infrastructure wasn't completely vacant in my life, though - having a mother that needed a new house project conquest seemingly every year.  This wasn't sophisticated preservation, and preceded the time of Instagram DIY - she gravitated towards old homes and made mostly cosmetic improvements like refinishing the floors, painting/wallpapering, etc.  My dad lived in an old red house with board and batten siding and original 2/2 windows by the railroad tracks in Leggett, TX.  There was a Texas Historic Landmark plaque by the front door that was always in my periphery as I read books on the porch swing.  

Growing up I never really developed an interest in actually working on these homes, however I intensely catalogued their details and the way they felt - the way the front yard felt, the way the street felt.  Years later, these places still occupied my mind - before I even knew what trades work or preservation was.  The 5am moonlight pooling over the gambrel roof in Claremore, OK as my mom and I arrived with coffee to work on the house - the shape of the living room with the bay windows - adjacent to the fireplace mantel.  My attic bedroom in El Dorado, AR with the second landing that cocooned into a dormer window where I watched pine tree branches snap in the ice storm.  The old apartments from the 40s with the courtyard design and metal fire escape where I tended to my poison ivy in front of the window A/C unit.  My dad taking me to old abandoned houses, our quiet trespassing, the feeling that I was entertaining something sacred.

In college I had a house cleaning business.  This was very satisfying work for me - especially the first clean - and if the home hadn't been cleaned in twelve years.  That type of challenge made sense to me and flowed naturally.  Cleaning houses is very physically demanding and requires a mental flow state - catching all the details, knowing how deep to go, curating a final product.  It exposed me to being in customers' homes (usually referrals), basic print advertising, estimating, voicemails, and then actually showing up.  My mom had decided to open a tea room in historic downtown Fayetteville, TX and I immediately pounced on it - developing the concept, the menu, the recipes for her.  (We permanently closed after a few months if you were wondering.  Turns out market research matters).

It wasn't till visiting family in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 2008 that I first had a sense of the preservation trades.  I visited an old folk school in Brasstown, NC and wandered off into the woods where I came across an old abandoned one room cabin.  Looking through the putty glazed windows at the old iron bed and dusty quilt inside stirred up a lot of feelings within me.  My memory is spotty, but I know that on that trip in some feverish Google searching landing on trades training and learning that there are people that work on historic homes and buildings - a trades career path distinctly different from the renovation sector.

I spent my last semester of college simultaneously devoted to writing a play for our new play festival while also stealing time away to the architecture school library pouring over the 20-30 books they had on historic preservation.  It was the type of immersion you have with a new romance - and between landing on the tradeschool I wanted to attend to graduating and then interning with preservation carpenters in MA, I felt i was almost in a two year manic state of euphoria.

Living a couple hours outside of Houston, I had started Old Window Revival in 2017 after becoming jaded by the preservation culture in Texas (or the lack thereof) despite wanting to live in Texas.  In 2019, I made a big leap and moved to Houston while only having one project scheduled here - a 1930s Tudor Revival in the museum district with 40+ windows.  Opening OWR in Houston made sense, as I already heard murmurs of the only one-man window restoration outfit in the Heights that serviced a very small zip code or two.  There were two other companies as well that offered window restoration as a service but seemed on their way out.  

I didn't hire my first employee until 2020.  Having been so programmed to my one-man-band ethos, I knew absolutely nothing about being an employer or the implications - and I hadn't even spent much time envisioning what OWR could be as a full company.  All I knew at the time was that there was a demand I couldn't keep up with.  

Like many tradespeople, I was in the field not as an aspiring entrepreneur but as someone devoted to a trade.  However, with preservation trades being such a niche field, we are also naturally pushed into creating our own work opportunities.  And then we are also naturally pushed into staffing because we are so few and far between.  It wasn't until hiring someone in late 2020 that it clicked for me the joys of being an employer - it pushed my identity and also made me remember the aspects of myself that were already naturally in tune with this very different aspect of business ownership.  

Now in 2025, I actually have found the trade of business ownership a trade I'm equally (if not more) devoted to.  The experience of being an employer/manager/leader has stretched me personally more than anything in my life - constantly bringing new self awareness/areas I need to work on - while also recognizing/accepting inherent gifts.  

In high school I decided I wanted to be a theatre director and signed up for an independent study mentorship program where I was a mentee to two local directors.  I directed a production of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ - a Pulitzer prize winning play from the late 80s.  All I knew is that I was infatuated with the feel of the play and wanted to share that love.  I cast three actors and had to lead them towards this same vision - and a veteran director who had been my mentor said that it was one of the best nights in the theatre he had ever had.  Years later I still remember the work of the actors and the magic that they mysteriously happened upon - the thrill of seeing them inhabit so fully and share in the same heart.

I think that trades work is indistinguishable from trades camaraderie.  It is meant to be shared - a group of people that just get it.  As an owner, I am exercised into refining environments - not controlling the environment, but helping to create and situate it.  And it's deeply rewarding to see others thrive and share in that same spark.