The Constant Carpenter

The wind can howl away, it's the sun on Brian Decker's mind.

"Comfort, here with the sun - when it's out, it's just like a stove."

Snow blows past the huge windows of the clapboard covered old merchant store out across the water and towards Ship Cove's barren islands.

Inside is a grandson of the store's former owner, merchant James Decker.

His complete attention is on the grains and angles of oak or birch or whatever wood he can get his hands on.

"The finish makes or breaks a project."

He lives alone in a classic merchant home - spotless, with hardwood china cabinets and end tables. They're Mr. Decker's work. He's one of the coast's quiet and uncertified carpenters.

"Word of mouth keeps me busy, don't bother advertising."

His spare dollars he spends largely on wood and tools for his personal projects.

He needed a table for his phone and answering machine in the hallway - so he altered a design he'd seen in the Grenfell House in St. Anthony while taking a heritage carpentry course through the College of the North Atlantic.

The legs and quartering he made by lathe - sunbursts on the front are the result of hours of painstaking labor with a penknife. In the dining room where he, his parents, grandparents and four brothers and sisters used to eat their meals, he's added an oak china cabinet. Then in the living room there's an old organ he completely stripped and refurbished, even replacing the bellows - it's become a resting place for photos of all his relatives and their families who followed the road out of Ship Cove.

"I went to Edmonton for two months, not for me."

So Mr. Decker lives quietly between his glistening home and workshop.

He can watch as tourists come to visit the Ship Cove mini-village he built on a rock outcrop near his workshop. His murals are in the Miot photography exhibit at the Ship Cove Community Centre.

"I do alright," he says. "There's always something to keep me busy."