Ole Thorstensen has been a carpenter for 25 years. A master craftsman, in fact. He is busy working on a minor job — ‘replacing a few windows, putting down decking and doing a number of other odds and ends’ — when he gets invited to bid for a loft conversion in a 19th-century apartment block in Oslo.
‘The Petersens have mentioned their desire for quality while avoiding unforeseen expense.’ No shit. The conversion will include a bedroom, bathroom and an office mezzanine and has all to be insulated, plumbed, wired, plastered, painted, floored and fitted out with furniture before a staircase can connect it to the floor below.
This is 1,000,000 kroner project (about £120,000) — ‘600-700 man hours needed in carpentry alone’ — and the job will represent approximately half of Thorstensen’s annual income. ‘If I get the bid wrong it is my wages that disappear.’
He only actually gets the job — the contracts signed and so forth — on page 88. And there’s a slight discomfort when the clients reveal they have an in-law with a link to the supply trade. But then — SPOILER ALERT — the loft gets renovated.
Thorstensen talks us through the process week by week, from the time-intensive bidding to the final coats of paint. His prep, both intellectual and 3D, is extremely thorough, and in a ‘dusty’ (not ‘dirty’) and uneven environment, with rough materials, he works with laser precision. (The cover blurb — ‘as solid as the craft that he describes’ — is perhaps a little more compelling in Norwegian.)
The work comes off without a hitch. Thorstensen knows his limitations and those of his co-workers. (Sharing some heavy lifting, he notes, is one way really to get to know a person.)
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