This issue’s Tale comes from Gregory Brown at Wilder, Vt.-based Brown’s Floormasters:
This issue’s Tale comes from Gregory Brown at Wilder, Vt.-based Brown’s Floormasters:
“I was born with a scraper in my hand, so I don’t remember the first job that I worked on, but I do distinctly remember the first major job that I took from quote to completion myself. It was 1992 and I was in college at UVM. The project was Collis Hall at Dartmouth College; there was around 20,000 square feet of strip oak that needed to be installed and a bunch of refinishing on the existing part of the building. I had a full set of plans that I had to run a quote off of, and I had them spread over a common room table in my dorm at UVM. My neighbor was watching me do the takeoff, and I explained to her what we had to do on the plans. Her reaction was, “You can make a living doing that?!” Anyway, I did get the job, and with the help of my father and uncles, brought it to completion. I did get the girl, too—I ended up marrying the cute blonde who was my neighbor at UVM in 1997! Two kids and nearly 25 years later, we are still married.