Nathan Daves is one of those guys whom I find fascinating - he’s extremely creative.  We have a lot in common as we are both former educators in the Texas public school system.  Therefore, from the jump, we had a lot to talk about.  We both like West Texas, we both like to hunt, we like the country, and the we find fascination in growing things.  The list of commonalities we share is long considering that I’ve known him less than a month.

I first came across Nathan as I was searching Craig’s List for reclaimed lumber.  I’ve been building a house over the last several months and was looking for creative ways to give the house a little bit of “soul.”  Nathan had an ad on there that intrigued me so I set to find out more.

Simply, Nathan is a furniture maker.  He handcrafts pieces like tables and cabinets, and other pieces that we probably take for granted but each serve as an essential piece of our daily lives.  However, he is no ordinary furniture maker.  He builds each piece from lumber he harvests from old homes and barns that time and people have forgotten.  Nathan hasn’t forgotten, though.  He sees each old board as something that can be saved and rebuilt into pieces that are transformative in people’s lives.

Nathan Daves - photo by Russell A. Graves

On a Sunday afternoon just north of Maypeal, Texas, Nathan and I traipse through waist high ryegrass and volunteer oats to look at a couple of barns on an old farmstead that’s bound by milo fields.  Walking into the first barn, he places his hands on the wood and begins to read the grain as if it were a book.

“This wood here is old growth longleaf pine,” he says.  “It probably came from East Texas because products weren’t shipped all that far back when this stuff was built.”

The wood is patinaed by years of weather, bugs, livestock, and life and tells a story of human history in this speck on a Texas map.  A hundred or so yards away we reach the old farm house from which Nathan’s been plucking wood.  With a homemade pry bar, he pulls one-by shiplapped pine lumber from the walls.  The nails stubbornly creak and groan as they are pulled away from beefy two by four wall studs that are actually two inches by four inches in width and thickness - not the scaled down versions used in current construction.  For maybe eighty years, the wood pieces were joined by nails that stood up to the sometimes harsh Texas weather and the tribulations and joys that untold families experienced while living here.

Where most people see an old houses destined to be torn down and burned, Nathan sees art and redemption.

He’ll take the wood from the house and build something beautiful from it.  Perhaps that something includes the bar top that’s destined for my new house in the Texas Panhandle.  I run my hands across the wood and feel the aged grain and wonder what it will feel like one Nathan is finished.

As we talk I can’t help but think of the piece he’s building for me and how that one piece of furniture will become the centerpiece of my family’s life.  There will be untold homework assignments completed on top of it, we’ll eat and commune together around it.   My wife, kids, and I will undoubtedly share plenty of laughs and probably a few tears on a tabletop that was created by someone I met by serendipity.

Nathan Daves business is called Restoring Texas.  That may sound like an ambitious name but if you see the care and passion he puts into each piece he builds, you know that the name is apropos.

If you want to learn more about Restoring Texas, check out www.restoringtexas.com