Teammates Matter: Graham Driscoll
Few people get into the professional building industry on a straight and direct path.
Many carpenters and builders have a wide and varied resume with an equally compelling backstory. But typically, what you will see underlying the various jobs, locations and life choices is a genuine curiosity and creativity - a deep desire to see things (whether structures or systems) improved and enhanced.
Take, for instance, RIC Lead Carpenter Graham Driscoll. We dare anyone to play two truths and a lie with this guy. Dogsledding? He’s done it. Organic farming? He’s done it. Escape Room designs? He’s done it. He’s even been a professional mosaicist for a high-end custom mosaic company. But every step of his journey is firmly grounded in a passion for learning and growth, which happens to be one of RIC’s highest values.
Graham’s introduction to construction started early, helping his dad work on the renovation of a 1915 Dutch Colonial home outside of Philadelphia. After that he worked construction for a while with a cousin in Connecticut. Straight and direct, right? Not exactly. After his formative education, Graham headed west to Colorado College where he decided to study studio art and ancient world studies. These two interests merged in found object sculpture and eventually led his interests in the direction of recycled building materials and sustainable building methods.
Meanwhile, in Colorado and other places out west, Earthship homes were becoming popular, eco-friendly options for off-grid living. Graham spent his time there learning the process and principles of these structures which must be created using natural materials or reused materials and must use natural energy production. From there he spent time backpacking through Australia where he came upon a company creating and teaching people how to construct Strawbale homes from natural and found materials. “What’s interesting to see there is how they solved technical problems. For instance, how do you tie a straw wall into a mud wall or a brick wall? It all comes down to creative problem solving” he says.
Graham at the beginning and end of a strawbale house project in Delta, Colorado constructed for a former MLB pitcher.
Eventually Graham made his way back to the US where he helped his parents, who had recently moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, build a customized faceted Deltec kit home they designed in a course they took together. After working all the intersecting odd angles, locals dubbed him the “angle master”. Other unique work came his way while there including creating custom mosaics, working a CNC machine to create custom brick forms for an avant-garde residence in New York city, building greenhouses on an organic farm, and doing renovation on three hundred year old homes along the shore.
“It’s really interesting to work on and take apart these old homes and see how they did things. You start to think about how they did all of this without power tools, or even little stuff like - how did they make this nail?”
-Graham Driscoll, RIC Lead Carpenter
Life on the shore also brought him a wife and two kids, but he was still far from settling down as evidenced by the fact that he and his wife spent their honeymoon running a marathon through Iceland. “The scenery is amazing. The food . . . not so much.” Eventually his wife’s job led them to Richmond where he found work at a construction company doing smaller residential projects along with design and construction of escape rooms all around town. He enjoyed the puzzle behind that type of building - designing trap doors and custom locks, but he likened the work to set design where you build items that look good but aren’t necessarily made to last forever. He wanted something where his work was more permanent.
Graham had been following RIC for a number of years and was drawn to the modern style and commitment to craftsmanship, so when he saw that we were hiring, he applied right away. At the time, RIC owner, Matt Warner, wasn’t looking for someone to take on a leadership role, but he couldn’t pass up the experience, skill and passion he saw in Graham. So for the past year, Graham has led carpentry teams on a variety of projects, managing materials, coordinating schedules and labor needs and communicating clearly with our project managers. He also takes pride in being able to pass along some of the knowledge he’s gained from his own experiences.
“One thing I try to bring to the team with my experience is training the younger folks in best practices and efficiencies that I’ve learned from other people I’ve worked with. When you’re taking a project from beginning to end like we do, you have to nail it. You’re not a sub who can do a sloppy job, but it doesn’t matter because tomorrow you’re moving on to a different project for a different client. We try to use the best materials and the best practices to build homes that last a long time.”
We’re so glad to have this Renaissance man as a part of our team and can’t wait to see more of his problem solving and creativity at work for a long time to come.