Latest / Repcolite Home Improvement Show / Exploring Colonial Colors and the "Maker's Life" of Paul Revere

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Exploring Colonial Colors and the "Maker's Life" of Paul Revere · Repcolite Home Improvement Show

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to Home in Progress, brought to
0:04
Speaker 1: you by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore. I'm Dan Hansen,
0:07
Speaker 1: and this is the podcast where we talk about homes,
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Speaker 1: the people who shape them, and the projects that make
0:13
Speaker 1: them better. Eventually. You know, whether you're deep in a remodel,
0:17
Speaker 1: maybe you're halfway through a fix it job, or you know,
0:19
Speaker 1: who knows what, Maybe you're just looking for a little inspiration.
0:22
Speaker 1: Wherever you're at in the grand scheme of things, you're
0:25
Speaker 1: in the right place. And right off the bat, I apologize.
0:30
Speaker 1: I was out of coffee today and out of the
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Speaker 1: normal coffee that I make, and so I grabbed a
0:36
Speaker 1: bag of coffee that my son, my eldest son, had purchased,
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Speaker 1: and I made that up and I drank that down.
0:44
Speaker 1: And now my head is pounding, and I looked on
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Speaker 1: the bag to figure out what is going on. This
0:50
Speaker 1: is strange. There is so much energy coursing through my veins.
0:53
Speaker 1: It's like it's like I'm seeing the entire universe playing
0:57
Speaker 1: out in front of me, and I feel like I
1:00
Speaker 1: can interact with all parts of it. I feel all powerful,
1:03
Speaker 1: and that's not normal. I don't normally feel that when
1:06
Speaker 1: I drink coffee. So I looked to see what did
1:09
Speaker 1: I drink, and it's apparently coffee that has four, five, six.
1:14
Speaker 1: I can't remember seven times the amount of caffeine of
1:17
Speaker 1: a normal cup of coffee. So I know I already
1:21
Speaker 1: talk like a crazy person. I can only imagine what's
1:25
Speaker 1: in store for you. I am trying desperately to rain
1:29
Speaker 1: my horses in. You know, my horses are running, My
1:32
Speaker 1: horses are going crazy. I'm trying to rein them in
1:35
Speaker 1: and slow my mouth down. But I do apologize in
1:37
Speaker 1: advance if I am unable to control those wild beasts. Anyway,
1:43
Speaker 1: Home in Progress, that's what you're listening to. I talked
1:45
Speaker 1: about it last week. I'll mention it briefly again. I've
1:48
Speaker 1: changed the name of the show. It's going to be
1:50
Speaker 1: same old content as the Repolite Home improvement Show. So
1:54
Speaker 1: no improvements there, same old thing, just a different wrapper,
1:58
Speaker 1: a different package. All right, Home in Progress on the
2:01
Speaker 1: show this week. I want to do what I've done
2:03
Speaker 1: for the past few years, and I want to take
2:05
Speaker 1: a deep dive into Fourth of July related topics. You know,
2:08
Speaker 1: there are some home improvement takeaways in all of this,
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Speaker 1: but really these are just fun. I had a lot
2:14
Speaker 1: of fun with the topics today. Now I've got two
2:16
Speaker 1: of them picked and coming up in a little bit.
2:19
Speaker 1: We're going to get to one where I take a
2:21
Speaker 1: deep dive into Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere. Now, I
2:24
Speaker 1: don't know what you think you know about the man,
2:26
Speaker 1: the myth, the legend, Paul Revere, but I can pretty
2:30
Speaker 1: much promise you that I'm going to surprise you with
2:32
Speaker 1: at least a few things. It's a lot of fun
2:35
Speaker 1: that's coming up in a bit. But right now, if
2:37
Speaker 1: I asked you to picture a colonial era home, say
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Speaker 1: something from the seventeen hundreds, what do you see? What
2:42
Speaker 1: do you imagine? Plain white clapboard house, maybe black shutters,
2:46
Speaker 1: maybe a weathered red barn sitting somewhere nearby. What about
2:49
Speaker 1: the interiors? You know? Do you picture calm muted, conservative
2:53
Speaker 1: color schemes. Well that's the image that a lot of
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Speaker 1: us carry, but it's not the full story. Colonial America
2:59
Speaker 1: was more colorful than we usually give it credit for.
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Speaker 1: In fact, the colors people used were sometimes far bolder
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Speaker 1: and far more vivid than we'd expect. And it's not
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Speaker 1: just theory. In recent years, preservation experts from the Colonial
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Speaker 1: Williamsburg Foundation, which is the organization behind the Living History
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Speaker 1: site in Virginia. They've been using microscopes, they've been using
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Speaker 1: chemical analysis and all of those things to examine old
3:23
Speaker 1: paint layers, and what they found under the centuries of
3:27
Speaker 1: fading and layered paint is really surprising. They're finding bright blues,
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Speaker 1: deep greens, rich ochres, even emerald tones, and these findings
3:36
Speaker 1: are reshaping all of our assumptions about colonial interiors. You know,
3:41
Speaker 1: we've talked about this on the show before, probably I
3:44
Speaker 1: think it was a couple years ago, maybe three years
3:45
Speaker 1: ago or more. We talked about the bright chrome yellow
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Speaker 1: that Thomas Jefferson used to paint the dining room at Monticello.
3:52
Speaker 1: It was loud, it was bold, and it definitely wasn't
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Speaker 1: the Wedgewood blue color that previously we had thought he
3:59
Speaker 1: painted that room. It was really really interesting stuff, but
4:03
Speaker 1: that kind of vibrancy wasn't available to just anybody. You know,
4:07
Speaker 1: the colors that we see now in high end restorations
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Speaker 1: came from pigments that were either imported or really really
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Speaker 1: costly to produce. Prussian blue, for example, popular color amongst
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Speaker 1: the wealthy but it had to come from Europe verdigree.
4:21
Speaker 1: You know, a green was made by suspending copper over vinegar,
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Speaker 1: which was incredibly time consuming and expensive, you know, just
4:29
Speaker 1: a lengthy process to get to that color. Wealthier homeowners
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Speaker 1: they could afford those materials, and they could afford the
4:35
Speaker 1: labor and the time that it took to apply multiple
4:37
Speaker 1: coats on their walls. So they got the rich green parlors,
4:41
Speaker 1: the deep blue hallways, you know, the yellow dining rooms,
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Speaker 1: all of that. But if you were an average tradesman
4:47
Speaker 1: or farmer, you know, you're an average joe, you know,
4:50
Speaker 1: you just you're cutting the mustard. But that's about all
4:53
Speaker 1: you're cutting, you know, if that's you, your options were
4:56
Speaker 1: way more limited and a lot more local. You know,
4:59
Speaker 1: paint wasn't cheap, even the basics like linseed oil that
5:02
Speaker 1: came at a cost. So in many rural homes, especially
5:06
Speaker 1: early on, the walls were left unpainted, or if they
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Speaker 1: were coated, it was often with something really simple, you know,
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Speaker 1: homemade mixtures using whatever they had on hand. You know,
5:15
Speaker 1: iron oxide, for example, they got red from that. It's
5:19
Speaker 1: basically rust. They gathered rust and put it in linseed
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Speaker 1: oil and there you go, you've got red paint, yellow ochre,
5:26
Speaker 1: or raw umber. They used those materials for warm, earthy
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Speaker 1: yellows and browns. Carbon black came from charred wood, lime whitewash.
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Speaker 1: It was simple, really cheap to make, widely used, but
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Speaker 1: it really required a lot of maintenance. It wasn't durable
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Speaker 1: at all. These colors that they had weren't selected for style,
5:45
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't finding just the right carbon black,
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Speaker 1: just the right iron red oxide. They were chosen because
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Speaker 1: they were there and somebody was saying, you got to
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Speaker 1: use something. Use that mud over there. It's going to
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Speaker 1: make a nice brown for you. So they're warm, they're practical,
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Speaker 1: they were, and in many cases the goal wasn't to
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Speaker 1: decorate something. It was to protect something. These coating sealed
6:06
Speaker 1: wood and help preserve structures from the weather. And the
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Speaker 1: fact that they added color was more or less incidental,
6:13
Speaker 1: you know, not a big part of the process. When
6:15
Speaker 1: it comes to process. Let's talk about making the paint
6:17
Speaker 1: a minute, just briefly. How did they do that? How
6:20
Speaker 1: did they get all of that stuff together? Well, they
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Speaker 1: did it right at home. There were no repcholites making
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Speaker 1: paint for them. No fandecks to choose from. If you
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Speaker 1: wanted to add color to your world, basically you had
6:32
Speaker 1: to go dig something up in the yard, grind the
6:34
Speaker 1: pigments yourself, and then you're stirring it into oil. I
6:37
Speaker 1: mentioned linseed oil earlier. You're stirring it into that, into milk,
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Speaker 1: into lime. It's a messy, labor intensive process, and as
6:45
Speaker 1: an aside, it was crazy unpredictable. You know, one batch
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Speaker 1: might go on smooth and dry evenly and be this
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Speaker 1: or that color. The next batch that you make using
6:55
Speaker 1: what you thought were the same ingredients might function differently,
6:58
Speaker 1: might have an entirely differ diferent color. You know, who knew,
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Speaker 1: you didn't know. It was a crapshoot. Still, for those
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Speaker 1: who could afford it, color was more than a coding.
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Speaker 1: It was a message. Right, So that bright white house
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Speaker 1: that we might picture it wasn't about simplicity. You know,
7:13
Speaker 1: we tend to sometimes think, oh, they went white because
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Speaker 1: they're you know, being modest or being simplistic or something
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Speaker 1: like that. You know, just streamlined. No, if you had
7:21
Speaker 1: a white house, especially an immaculate white house, it meant
7:24
Speaker 1: you had the means to reapply that whitewash regularly. Like
7:28
Speaker 1: I said, it didn't last. It wasn't a durable product,
7:30
Speaker 1: so it had to be reapplied regularly. If you could
7:33
Speaker 1: do that and keep the house looking good, you had
7:35
Speaker 1: some money. That was what that said. If you had
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Speaker 1: a rich yellow or a blue somewhere, that meant imported
7:40
Speaker 1: pigments had to come in. It meant skilled labor was involved. Again,
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Speaker 1: it meant you had money. In colonial America, color wasn't
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Speaker 1: just esthetic. It wasn't just about setting the mood or
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Speaker 1: the tone for a room that happened. That was part
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Speaker 1: of it, but it was also a way telling your
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Speaker 1: neighbors what kind of cash, what kind of resources you had,
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Speaker 1: acts to what you valued where you stood, you know,
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Speaker 1: in the economic scheme of things. But even the most
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Speaker 1: expensive eye popping colors didn't stay that way over time.
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Speaker 1: They changed verdigree, for example, it darkened when exposed to sunlight.
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Speaker 1: Prussian blue often faded towards gray or green. Linseed oil
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Speaker 1: yellowed as it aged. Go ahead and add decades of
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Speaker 1: weather and wear, and many of those original colors became
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Speaker 1: nearly unrecognizable. So part of the reason that we now
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Speaker 1: imagine colonial homes as drab or colorless is because we're
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Speaker 1: not seeing what was originally there. We're seeing what's left behind,
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Speaker 1: you know, after centuries of change, but not what was
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Speaker 1: originally there. And so when these restoration projects took off
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Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, many of them leaned into restraint,
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Speaker 1: soft white sage greens, grays, things like that. The choices
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Speaker 1: felt historic, but it turns out they weren't always accurate.
8:54
Speaker 1: Now that we've got better tools and a little scientific
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Speaker 1: detective work that we can do, we're beginning to set
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Speaker 1: the record straight. Paint analysis and pigment research from institutions
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Speaker 1: like Colonial Williamsburg we mentioned them earlier, they've helped us
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Speaker 1: reconstruct historically accurate palettes, sometimes down to the exact mix
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Speaker 1: of ingredients. Benjamin Moore even partnered with Colonial Williamsburg to
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Speaker 1: create a color collection based on these findings. Their Williamsburg
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Speaker 1: Palette includes soft creams, smoky greens, rich browns, saturated blues.
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Speaker 1: All colors pulled from original paint chips, from plaster fragments,
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Speaker 1: from wallpaper samples. They're not just guesses, they're evidence based
9:33
Speaker 1: recreations of what eighteenth century America really look like. And
9:37
Speaker 1: I love that That is so interesting to me because paint,
9:40
Speaker 1: you know, something we so often think about as a background,
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Speaker 1: is actually a bit of a time machine. It tells
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Speaker 1: us who we were, what we had, you know, and
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Speaker 1: what we thought mattered. It reminds us that even the
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Speaker 1: simplest design choice, what color to put on the walls,
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Speaker 1: it really at the grand scheme of things, that is
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Speaker 1: a pretty simple choice compared to all the other things
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Speaker 1: that go into decor and designing a home. Even that
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Speaker 1: simple choice, though, was loaded with meaning. So yeah, some
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Speaker 1: colonial colors, they were quite colorful. Some were even stunning,
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Speaker 1: you know, incredibly vivid other areas. Other homes were completely uncoded,
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Speaker 1: or if they were coded, they were coded with whatever
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Speaker 1: a family could make by hand. But each one of
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Speaker 1: those colors, everything that went on anywhere, tells a story.
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Speaker 1: And now, thanks to science, we're starting to see these
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Speaker 1: stories a little more clearly. It's really interesting, definitely something
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Speaker 1: to dig into a little further, and by all means
10:32
Speaker 1: go back in time. I'll put a link in the
10:34
Speaker 1: show notes, but go back in time and find our
10:37
Speaker 1: discussion on Thomas Jefferson's Monicello. We dig into a little
10:41
Speaker 1: more of the science behind discovering that color. It's really
10:45
Speaker 1: really interesting. Go check that out. All right, that's enough
10:48
Speaker 1: of that. Now I want to talk about Paul Revere,
10:51
Speaker 1: the man, the myth, the legend. There is so much
10:54
Speaker 1: more going on with Paul Revere than you probably know,
10:57
Speaker 1: and we're going to get to that after this. You're
11:00
Speaker 1: listening to Home in Progress, real projects, real life, and
11:03
Speaker 1: a little bit of paint on your hands, in your eyes,
11:06
Speaker 1: in your hair, on your shirt everywhere. Home in Progress
11:10
Speaker 1: is sponsored by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore, offering expert advice,
11:14
Speaker 1: premium paint, and all the tools you need to keep
11:16
Speaker 1: your home moving forward. And we're back. You're listening to
11:20
Speaker 1: Home in Progress, sponsored by Repcolite Paints and Paints, Repcolite
11:25
Speaker 1: Paints and Benjamin Moore, and we're working our way through
11:28
Speaker 1: another Fourth of July extravaganza. I love the fourth of July.
11:33
Speaker 1: I get so giddy that my voice breaks. That's what
11:35
Speaker 1: happened earlier. It's not that I'm you know, still growing
11:38
Speaker 1: into a real boy. It's because I'm just that excited. Anyway.
11:42
Speaker 1: I love the fourth of July. I think because of
11:45
Speaker 1: its close connection to the American Revolution. You know, I'm
11:48
Speaker 1: not a big fireworks fan or all of those things.
11:51
Speaker 1: I like grilling hot dogs, I like having a day off.
11:54
Speaker 1: But I think the biggest reason I'm drawn to the
11:57
Speaker 1: Fourth of July is just, you know, the connection that
11:59
Speaker 1: it has to the American Revolution. Ever since I was
12:02
Speaker 1: a little kid, the little Danny always loved reading about
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Speaker 1: George Washington, Valley Forge, Ben Franklin and all of those people.
12:10
Speaker 1: It's an amazing period in our history. And there's just
12:13
Speaker 1: something about how all of these people, you know, we're
12:16
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time. It's amazing.
12:20
Speaker 1: And yes, I'm well aware that they were all flawed
12:22
Speaker 1: individuals in one way or another. You know, they weren't perfect.
12:25
Speaker 1: They made mistakes like the rest of us make. But
12:29
Speaker 1: still there's still something really interesting in the fact that
12:32
Speaker 1: they were all there at the right time, you know,
12:35
Speaker 1: all there together. I read something interesting the other day.
12:39
Speaker 1: The average written constitution around the world lasts about seventeen
12:43
Speaker 1: to nineteen years before it has to be replaced or
12:46
Speaker 1: significantly revised. By that standard, the US Constitution is practically ancient,
12:52
Speaker 1: since it's been in place since seventeen eighty nine, making
12:55
Speaker 1: it not only one of the oldest written national constitutions
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Speaker 1: still in use, but the most influential, you know, especially
13:02
Speaker 1: considering that it's governing such a large, diverse, and ever
13:06
Speaker 1: evolving country and has done so for over two centuries.
13:10
Speaker 1: Now realizing that the people needed to craft that document
13:14
Speaker 1: all happened to be in the same place around the
13:16
Speaker 1: same time, it's pretty amazing. It's a great, great human story.
13:20
Speaker 1: I love it. And right now I want to look
13:22
Speaker 1: at one of these characters, one of these characters from
13:24
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, not so much from drafting the Constitution,
13:28
Speaker 1: but just from the Revolutionary War period. I want to
13:31
Speaker 1: look at one of these guys, Paul Revere. Now, when
13:33
Speaker 1: you hear the name Paul Revere, I'm betting that you're
13:35
Speaker 1: thinking of a guy in a horse riding through the
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Speaker 1: Massachusetts countryside, hollering the British are come in, the British
13:42
Speaker 1: are come in. And then he's getting you know, shushed
13:45
Speaker 1: shy by ladies with their babies or old men who
13:49
Speaker 1: you know, just got up to go to the bathroom
13:51
Speaker 1: and they're trying to get back to sleep and they
13:53
Speaker 1: don't want to hear this stuff. But Paul Revere is
13:56
Speaker 1: just riding through. That's probably the image in your mind.
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Speaker 1: You know, that's one of those images that's burned into
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Speaker 1: our minds from an early age, and whether we know
14:03
Speaker 1: it or not, it's largely there because of Henry Wadsworth
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Speaker 1: Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride. Now that poem, it's not
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Speaker 1: an incredibly or at least it's not an entirely i
14:13
Speaker 1: should say, accurate, historically accurate poem or representation of the events,
14:18
Speaker 1: but still it painted quite a picture and it really
14:22
Speaker 1: embedded itself in the national psyche. So that's how we
14:25
Speaker 1: know Paul Revere. But Paul Revere's importance in the grand
14:29
Speaker 1: scheme of the country is way more than that one
14:32
Speaker 1: midnight ride. And I'm going to get to that. But
14:35
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning. And for Paul Revere, like
14:39
Speaker 1: most people, the beginning means we got to start with
14:42
Speaker 1: his birth. And right off the bat, the guy's interesting.
14:46
Speaker 1: You know, he's not going to be born just like
14:47
Speaker 1: everybody else because he's Paul Revere, dang it. And he's
14:51
Speaker 1: born in two different years, all right, same guy, singular person,
14:56
Speaker 1: born in two different years, not twins, same guy, different years.
15:00
Speaker 1: He's born in both seventeen thirty four and seventeen thirty five.
15:06
Speaker 1: Are you working that one out? Are you thinking it through?
15:08
Speaker 1: Do you think you have the answer? He was born
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Speaker 1: in those two years, eleven days apart, all right, So
15:14
Speaker 1: it's not midnight on December thirty one that he starts
15:18
Speaker 1: to be born and then happens to be born the
15:21
Speaker 1: rest of the way completes the deal on the new year,
15:25
Speaker 1: no eleven days apart. How in the world did that happen.
15:28
Speaker 1: It's a fun little trivia fact. You can break this
15:30
Speaker 1: out at your Fourth of July event and festivities later today.
15:34
Speaker 1: Here's the deal. Paul was originally born on December twenty one,
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Speaker 1: seventeen thirty four. All right fully, born there he is
15:41
Speaker 1: boom Paul Revere in the world December twenty one, seventeen
15:45
Speaker 1: thirty four, according to the old Julian calendar that was
15:50
Speaker 1: being used in the British colonies at the time. But
15:53
Speaker 1: when Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in September of seventeen
15:57
Speaker 1: fifty two, the calendar shifted four by eleven days, and
16:01
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Paul's official date of birth went
16:03
Speaker 1: from December twenty one, seventeen thirty four to January one,
16:08
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty five. All right, so we have a man
16:12
Speaker 1: with two birthdays. But that's just the tip of the
16:14
Speaker 1: iceberg when it comes to Paul Revere. So he was
16:17
Speaker 1: born on January one, seventeen thirty five. We'll use that
16:20
Speaker 1: date to Apollos Revere. His original name was Revoir rivoaju
16:27
Speaker 1: ha ha. It was French. He was born to we
16:29
Speaker 1: Apollos Rivoi and his wife Deborah. Now Pollos had moved
16:34
Speaker 1: to Boston from France in seventeen sixteen, and around seventeen
16:38
Speaker 1: twenty two he changed that name to Revere, probably because
16:42
Speaker 1: his wife Debe's family. You know, they were native Bostonians.
16:46
Speaker 1: I bet they couldn't pronounce Revoi, and they probably said
16:50
Speaker 1: it with some ridiculous, fake French accent like you hear
16:53
Speaker 1: in the cartoons. Revoa. I bet that's what they said.
16:57
Speaker 1: He was sick and tired of listening to it, and
16:59
Speaker 1: so he said, look, changing the name, it's not gonna
17:02
Speaker 1: be Revoir anymore. It's just going to be Revere. So
17:06
Speaker 1: you guys can say that, say Revere. Anyway, Apollos changed
17:10
Speaker 1: his last name to Revere. That is not important to
17:12
Speaker 1: this part of the story. But I was really hung
17:14
Speaker 1: up on that, so I wanted to drill into that
17:18
Speaker 1: in a lot more detail than was necessary. He changed
17:21
Speaker 1: his name to Revere, married Deborah, and then set up
17:25
Speaker 1: a silver shop on Boston's North End. And it was
17:28
Speaker 1: there in that silversmith shop that young Paul, a wee lad,
17:33
Speaker 1: you know, just a wee whipper snapper. He began learning
17:36
Speaker 1: the silversmithing craft, working side by side with his pappy,
17:40
Speaker 1: and by his teens, Paul was assisting with all kinds
17:43
Speaker 1: of things, tasks like polishing finished pieces. He was shaping
17:47
Speaker 1: simple forms. He was handling basic soldering work. You know.
17:51
Speaker 1: He likely spent hours and hours and hours melting scrapsilver,
17:55
Speaker 1: hammering out sheets, and learning how to engrave decorative patterns
17:58
Speaker 1: into tankards and pots. He was even producing small engraved
18:02
Speaker 1: items on his own, you know, things like name plates, rings,
18:06
Speaker 1: perhaps custom buttons or charms. He was repairing belt buckles,
18:09
Speaker 1: you know, the little buckles on their shoes even, you know,
18:13
Speaker 1: because remember they had buckles on their shoes back then.
18:15
Speaker 1: We've even got historical records, including Revere's own account books,
18:19
Speaker 1: preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Showing that he took
18:23
Speaker 1: on tons of small jobs as a teenager, probably so
18:27
Speaker 1: he had money for taking girls out on dates or
18:29
Speaker 1: maybe getting you know, the latest music or whatever he
18:33
Speaker 1: was into at that time. Anyway, when his father died
18:36
Speaker 1: in seventeen fifty four, nineteen year old Paul his birthday
18:40
Speaker 1: has just been switched, by the way, so he's still
18:42
Speaker 1: dealing with the fact that he's no longer a December
18:45
Speaker 1: twenty one baby, but now he's a January one baby.
18:48
Speaker 1: I'm sure that really played in his psyche, Probably not
18:52
Speaker 1: as important as when his father passed away. But when
18:55
Speaker 1: his dad dies, nineteen year old Paul takes over the
18:58
Speaker 1: family business. A few years later, he marries Sarah Orn
19:01
Speaker 1: and they began raising a family. Now as a quick aside,
19:05
Speaker 1: Paul had eight children with Sarah, and she died giving
19:08
Speaker 1: birth to their eighth child, and the eighth child also
19:12
Speaker 1: passed away. After that, after a while passed, he married
19:15
Speaker 1: Rachel Walker, his second wife, and proceeded to have eight
19:19
Speaker 1: more kids. So, yeah, fifteen kids. Paul was busy. He
19:26
Speaker 1: had a lot going on. Now when we look at
19:29
Speaker 1: the pieces, let's get back to the important stuff. Let's
19:31
Speaker 1: look at the stuff that he's making. So when we
19:34
Speaker 1: look at the pieces, you know, the silver that he's
19:36
Speaker 1: producing in this period, the cream pitchers, the tankards, the
19:40
Speaker 1: sugar bowls, you know, all of those things. Probably cool
19:43
Speaker 1: little salt shakers, little salt and pepper shakers sets. I'm
19:47
Speaker 1: sure he was doing all of that stuff. He probably
19:49
Speaker 1: made the cream pictures that look like a cow that
19:51
Speaker 1: you grab the tail and you pour it and the
19:53
Speaker 1: milk comes out of its mouth, which doesn't make any
19:56
Speaker 1: sense at all, right, anatomically, that's not where the milk
20:00
Speaker 1: should come from. But anyway, I don't know that Paul
20:03
Speaker 1: made those. Don't take me to the bank on that.
20:05
Speaker 1: But when we look at the stuff that we know
20:07
Speaker 1: he did make, the cream pitchers, the tankards, the sugar bowls,
20:10
Speaker 1: we see that his skills are developing, right, We see
20:13
Speaker 1: that they're they're coming along. But he's still coloring inside
20:16
Speaker 1: the lines. You know, he's not really breaking new ground.
20:18
Speaker 1: He's duplicating what's popular, and he's doing the things the
20:21
Speaker 1: same way that his dad did him. But in seventeen
20:24
Speaker 1: sixty eight that starts to change. And we're going to
20:27
Speaker 1: explain what happens that brings that change about, Right, after
20:31
Speaker 1: this stick around Home in Progress is brought to you
20:34
Speaker 1: by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore Top Toier Paint expert advice.
20:39
Speaker 1: Your next project is way easier than you think it's
20:41
Speaker 1: going to be. So what is this big change that
20:44
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? How do we see it evidenced? Well,
20:47
Speaker 1: we see it evidenced in an item that he creates,
20:50
Speaker 1: probably one of the most famous pieces that he creates,
20:52
Speaker 1: the Liberty Bowl. Now, by this point in his career,
20:55
Speaker 1: he's been running his own shop for about fourteen years
20:58
Speaker 1: or so, so it's confidence is growing, his skill is deepening.
21:02
Speaker 1: But it's not just Paul Revere who's changing. That's important.
21:06
Speaker 1: You know, as we look at his whole life, it's
21:08
Speaker 1: not just him who's experiencing these changes. The whole colony
21:12
Speaker 1: is changing. All of the colonies are changing, you know.
21:14
Speaker 1: Public sentiment is shifting, people are growing restless, tensions with
21:18
Speaker 1: the British are heating up, and Paul Revere himself is
21:21
Speaker 1: becoming more and more committed to the revolutionary cause. Now
21:25
Speaker 1: out of that moment comes the Liberty Bowl. Now, first glance,
21:28
Speaker 1: it's just a punch bowl, you know, eleven inches across,
21:31
Speaker 1: raised from a single sheet of silver. It's hand engraved.
21:34
Speaker 1: But it's way more than just that. It's also a
21:36
Speaker 1: political statement. Now, the engravings on the ball they honor
21:39
Speaker 1: the ninety two members of the Massachusetts Assembly who had
21:42
Speaker 1: defied the crown. So it's clearly political in that regard.
21:45
Speaker 1: But there's way more cool stuff to the story. See,
21:48
Speaker 1: it was designed not just to sit on a shelf
21:50
Speaker 1: like a fancy you know, like a fancy participation trophy.
21:54
Speaker 1: It was commissioned and designed to be passed around at
21:57
Speaker 1: gatherings of the Sons of Liberty, you know those guys
22:00
Speaker 1: right Boston tea party guys, the Sons of Liberty. It's
22:03
Speaker 1: passed around at their gatherings, filled with punch, and then
22:07
Speaker 1: it's emptied and acts of noisy public defiance. You know,
22:10
Speaker 1: I can picture it, Sam Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry,
22:14
Speaker 1: you know that give me liberty or give me death guy,
22:17
Speaker 1: all of them gathered in some back room, you know, hollering,
22:20
Speaker 1: passing the bowl, plotting their next move. Now, for us today,
22:23
Speaker 1: a punch bowl probably brings to mind, you know, grandma's house.
22:27
Speaker 1: You know, fancy parties at grandma's house, church, potlucks, things
22:31
Speaker 1: like that. But in the seventeen sixties and the seventeen seventies,
22:34
Speaker 1: punch was political, and it was a communal drink, usually alcoholic,
22:39
Speaker 1: and it was served at taverns and private meetings, places
22:42
Speaker 1: where people would meet to talk, argue, organize things like that.
22:45
Speaker 1: And as the revolution is gaining steam, those gatherings, of
22:49
Speaker 1: course became hotbeds of resistance. So when the sons of
22:52
Speaker 1: Liberty pass around a punch bowl like Paul Revere's Liberty Bowl,
22:56
Speaker 1: it wasn't just for refreshment. They weren't looking for a
22:59
Speaker 1: little dabbsh sure herbit on a hot day. It was
23:01
Speaker 1: a ritual, you know, sherbet in punch. It was a
23:04
Speaker 1: common recipe that we have for making punch when I
23:07
Speaker 1: was a kid. They weren't looking for sherbet. They were
23:11
Speaker 1: experiencing a moment of unity. You know, you weren't just
23:14
Speaker 1: sipping a drink here, you were toasting the rebellion. You
23:16
Speaker 1: were thumbing your nose at the crown. You know, take that,
23:19
Speaker 1: your majesty, How do you feel about it? Now? We're
23:22
Speaker 1: drinking from the Liberty Bowl. Here you were raising a
23:24
Speaker 1: glass in protests. So, yeah, it was a punch bowl,
23:27
Speaker 1: But it was also a symbol, you know, a shared
23:29
Speaker 1: act of resistance. And in that way, Paul River's Liberty
23:32
Speaker 1: Bowl was more than just a beautiful piece of silver.
23:34
Speaker 1: It was a tool of the revolution. And the message
23:37
Speaker 1: didn't stop with the engraving and the symbolic act of
23:40
Speaker 1: drinking the punch. Even the design of the Liberty Bowl
23:44
Speaker 1: itself was rebellious. It was clean, neoclassical. It was stripped of,
23:49
Speaker 1: you know, the over the top flourishes that defined the
23:51
Speaker 1: British aristocracy. It was elegant, but it was restrained. It
23:56
Speaker 1: was practical, not pretentious. You know. That wasn't an act accident.
24:00
Speaker 1: It was a deliberate break from the well better than
24:03
Speaker 1: you esthetic of the Crown. Everything about the Liberty Bowl,
24:07
Speaker 1: from how it looked to how it was used, sent
24:08
Speaker 1: a message. It was a showcase of skill and craftsmanship, sure,
24:12
Speaker 1: but it was also the work of an artist who
24:14
Speaker 1: had something to say, which was a big shift from
24:17
Speaker 1: the work that he was previously producing. And on top
24:20
Speaker 1: of all of that, Paul Revere wasn't done adding new
24:22
Speaker 1: skills to his repertoire. That same year, seventeen sixty eight,
24:26
Speaker 1: he adds dentist to his growing resume dentist. On top
24:30
Speaker 1: of everything else, he's got time to become a dentist.
24:33
Speaker 1: He published an ad in the Boston Gazette thinking past
24:37
Speaker 1: clients and going on to announce that he's available to
24:40
Speaker 1: craft artificial teeth. You know, thanks for buying your paint
24:43
Speaker 1: from us. We just started doing dental work. That's the equivalent.
24:47
Speaker 1: You know, if Repcolite would run that ad, that's what
24:49
Speaker 1: Paul's doing. Thanks for letting me make your silver. Have
24:52
Speaker 1: you ever thought about having me make your teeth? Well,
24:55
Speaker 1: that's the ad that goes out now. He's not making
24:58
Speaker 1: full dentures like we would think of today, but he's
25:00
Speaker 1: making partials, and he's making him from ivory, animal tusk, metal,
25:05
Speaker 1: things like that. You know, he saw a need, realized
25:07
Speaker 1: that he had the tools and the skills, and then
25:10
Speaker 1: he stepped into the gap. Some might even say the
25:13
Speaker 1: gap between people's teeth. He stepped right into that gap.
25:17
Speaker 1: That is so dumb, but he did. That's literally what
25:20
Speaker 1: he did. And because of that, because he stepped into
25:23
Speaker 1: the gap in various people's teeth, he stepped into the
25:27
Speaker 1: gap with a replacement partial. Because he did that, Paul
25:31
Speaker 1: Revere became a big part of history and yet another way,
25:34
Speaker 1: another unexpected way. And I bet you don't know this,
25:36
Speaker 1: most of you won't know this. After the Battle of
25:38
Speaker 1: Bunker Hill in seventeen seventy five, doctor Joseph Warren, a
25:42
Speaker 1: fellow patriot, he was killed in that battle and he
25:44
Speaker 1: was buried in a mass grave. Months later, Paul Revere
25:48
Speaker 1: helps identify his body because he's able to recognize a
25:52
Speaker 1: dental prosthesis that he had personally made for the good doctor.
25:56
Speaker 1: That moment, that moment of recognition is widely regarded as
26:00
Speaker 1: the first known use of forensic dentistry in America, and
26:04
Speaker 1: it goes back to Paul Revere. So take that to
26:07
Speaker 1: your next little family event and whip that little fact out.
26:11
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to work at it to get to
26:12
Speaker 1: the point where that isn't just coming out of the
26:14
Speaker 1: blue at people, But you can do it, and it's
26:17
Speaker 1: a good one. It's a good little tidbit that you
26:19
Speaker 1: can take with you. So, yeah, Paul Revere, he's an
26:21
Speaker 1: accomplished silversmith. He's a dabbling dentist, but that's not all.
26:25
Speaker 1: He also becomes one of the most prolific engravers of
26:28
Speaker 1: his era. He produces certificates, illustrations, political cartoons, book plates,
26:33
Speaker 1: all of them meticulously etched into copper plates. His most
26:36
Speaker 1: famous work of this type of work is the engraving
26:40
Speaker 1: of the Boston massacre, and that was dramatic and emotionally charged.
26:45
Speaker 1: You know, the piece that he made, incredibly emotionally charged.
26:48
Speaker 1: It wasn't entirely accurate, you know, historically, it wasn't meant
26:51
Speaker 1: to be. It was propaganda, and it worked. It really
26:55
Speaker 1: stirred up the anger. It helped unify the colonies against
26:58
Speaker 1: the British occupation. So Paul Revere, he's all of the
27:01
Speaker 1: things that I talked about, the craftsman, the dentist, you know,
27:04
Speaker 1: the engraver, the illustrator, all of these things. But primarily
27:08
Speaker 1: he's he's a patriot, deeply, deeply involved in the revolutionary movement.
27:13
Speaker 1: And that's going to bring us to the events that
27:15
Speaker 1: most of us remember, the midnight ride, you know, the
27:18
Speaker 1: midnight ride of Paul Revere. Now, on the night of
27:21
Speaker 1: April eighteen seventy five, Paul Revere receives word that the
27:24
Speaker 1: British troops are on the move. They're likely heading to
27:27
Speaker 1: arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington. They're going
27:30
Speaker 1: to seize weapons that are stored in Concord. Well, Paul
27:34
Speaker 1: springs into action. Now. First he's arranged for two lanterns
27:37
Speaker 1: to be hung in the steeple of the old North
27:39
Speaker 1: Church and that's a signal, as we all know, for
27:42
Speaker 1: patriots across the river in Charleston, and it's letting them know, hey,
27:46
Speaker 1: the British are coming by sea. Then he's rowed across
27:50
Speaker 1: the Charles River and he mounts a borrowed horse. I
27:53
Speaker 1: got a feeling that what happened is they rode him
27:55
Speaker 1: across the river, and they put him on a little
27:57
Speaker 1: bit of a little bit of a hill or something,
28:00
Speaker 1: and then they pulled a horse just beneath him, because
28:03
Speaker 1: that's always how it is in the movies with cowboys.
28:06
Speaker 1: And then he jumped from that little cliff or that
28:08
Speaker 1: little hill and landed firmly on the seat or the
28:12
Speaker 1: seat the saddle, the saddle of the horse, and took
28:16
Speaker 1: off across the countryside. So he's riding around through Massachusetts
28:21
Speaker 1: and he's warning everybody, the militia leaders and everything. He's
28:23
Speaker 1: rousing the local population. Now, he didn't yell sadly the
28:27
Speaker 1: British are coming. I guess how did we know? We
28:30
Speaker 1: don't know for sure. I would like to believe that
28:33
Speaker 1: he yelled the British are coming, but apparently we don't
28:37
Speaker 1: have that definitively. In fact, it seems like we could
28:40
Speaker 1: probably imply that he might not have yelled that at all.
28:43
Speaker 1: But he did knock on doors, he did raise the alarm,
28:46
Speaker 1: and he triggered a communication chain that mobilized the militia.
28:50
Speaker 1: And he wasn't riding alone. Paul Revere was part of
28:52
Speaker 1: a well organized intelligence network, you know, a relay system
28:56
Speaker 1: of riders and informants. William Dawes took a different route,
29:00
Speaker 1: others joined along the way, and yeah, Paul Revere was
29:02
Speaker 1: eventually detained by a British patrol and he didn't even
29:05
Speaker 1: make it all the way to Concord. But by the
29:07
Speaker 1: time that happened, the warning had already been spread. You know,
29:10
Speaker 1: it was fast, it was efficient, did a good job,
29:13
Speaker 1: it worked, and thanks to those efforts, the colonial militias
29:16
Speaker 1: were ready and the next morning, the battles of Lexington
29:19
Speaker 1: and Concord marked the official start of the American Revolution.
29:22
Speaker 1: Now after Lexington and Concord, as the war is intensifying.
29:26
Speaker 1: Paul Revere steps into a completely new role wartime manufacturing.
29:30
Speaker 1: The Massachusetts Provincial Congress tasks him with inspecting a newly
29:34
Speaker 1: created gunpowder mill in Canton. And there's a problem with this.
29:37
Speaker 1: You know, Paul Revere has no background in chemistry or
29:40
Speaker 1: explosives or anything like that. But instead of passing the
29:43
Speaker 1: job off, he travels to a working mill in Philadelphia.
29:47
Speaker 1: He observes the process there, takes copious notes noe pad
29:51
Speaker 1: after noe pad he's filling out, and then he returns
29:54
Speaker 1: to help oversee and improve the Massachusetts production. Now, that
29:58
Speaker 1: same year, he took on a government contract to cast cannons.
30:01
Speaker 1: You know, another thing he had absolutely no prior experience doing. Surprise, surprise,
30:06
Speaker 1: The first cannons that he made failed. They were losers.
30:09
Speaker 1: They were lemons, you know, absolute lemons. They cracked, they
30:13
Speaker 1: were unusable. Send these cannons back to Paul Revere. These
30:17
Speaker 1: are no good. But he didn't walk away dejected and
30:20
Speaker 1: horrified that he'd made cruddy cannons. He studied, He adjusted
30:24
Speaker 1: his techniques, he refined his methods until the cannons that
30:27
Speaker 1: he was producing passed inspection and actually saw service. Now,
30:31
Speaker 1: As the war progressed, he served as a major in
30:34
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Militia and then later was promoted to lieutenant
30:37
Speaker 1: colonel of a newly formed artillery regiment. Now he wasn't
30:41
Speaker 1: a trained soldier, but he was creative, he was determined.
30:45
Speaker 1: He was capable of organizing and leading others, and for
30:47
Speaker 1: the most part, as he did all of that, things
30:51
Speaker 1: went well. But there's a big butt coming up. Not
30:55
Speaker 1: everything went smoothly, and seventeen seventy nine was a really
31:00
Speaker 1: year for Paul. In fact, probably one of Paul's worst years.
31:03
Speaker 1: If he had a diary, it probably said, dear Diary,
31:06
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy nine stunk. What happened? We're going to get
31:10
Speaker 1: to that story right after this. This is home in progress,
31:14
Speaker 1: where the to do list is long, and that's all right.
31:17
Speaker 1: We're not crabbing at you. We're not gonna yell at you.
31:20
Speaker 1: That's how it is. It's how ours is too. It's
31:22
Speaker 1: probably supported by repcoll like Paints and Benjamin Moore, because
31:25
Speaker 1: home projects are easier when you've got people you can trust.
31:30
Speaker 1: All right, So seventeen seventy nine, what in the world
31:32
Speaker 1: made this year so bad for Paul? Revere. Well, to
31:35
Speaker 1: get to that, we've got to look at the Panobscot expedition.
31:39
Speaker 1: The Panobscot expedition, I am sure, I'm not saying that smoothly.
31:44
Speaker 1: It's not an easy word to say. Pe n O
31:47
Speaker 1: b Scot, Panobscot during that expedition, which was a military
31:53
Speaker 1: campaign that was designed to be quick, you know, decisive,
31:56
Speaker 1: and of course victorious. Not many campaigns military camp pains
32:00
Speaker 1: are designed to be failures. This one was designed to
32:03
Speaker 1: be victorious. And they were going to drive the British
32:06
Speaker 1: out of eastern Maine, reclaim the territory, and secure the coast.
32:10
Speaker 1: You know, a great, big, grand vision here. On paper,
32:13
Speaker 1: it looked like it was brilliant. You know, it was
32:15
Speaker 1: going to work. American land forces, including Paul Revere and
32:19
Speaker 1: his artillery regiment, were going to coordinate with a fleet
32:22
Speaker 1: of naval ships, and together they were going to corner
32:25
Speaker 1: the British and force a surrender. But that is not
32:28
Speaker 1: how it played out at all. Poor leadership, miscommunication hesitation
32:33
Speaker 1: among the commanders turned the campaign into a literal catastrophe.
32:37
Speaker 1: The land troops, including Revere and his artillery, clashed repeatedly
32:41
Speaker 1: with their superiors and while they were stalled on land,
32:44
Speaker 1: the American fleet set vulnerable in Panopskat Bay. Now, eventually
32:48
Speaker 1: the British reinforcements arrived, and in the chaos of that,
32:51
Speaker 1: the entire American fleet, which was over forty ships, was destroyed.
32:56
Speaker 1: Many were scuttled or burned by their own crews to
32:59
Speaker 1: prevent capture. That was the worst naval disaster in American
33:03
Speaker 1: history until Pearl Harbor. Now, in the aftermath of all
33:07
Speaker 1: of that, Paul Revere was accused of disobedience, he was
33:09
Speaker 1: accused of cowardice, and those charges ended up leading to
33:12
Speaker 1: a military court martial. The trial itself dragged on for
33:16
Speaker 1: three years something like that, and during that time, Paul
33:19
Speaker 1: Revere was effectively sidelined. You know, his name is tarnished,
33:23
Speaker 1: his careers at an absolute standstill. But finally, when the
33:26
Speaker 1: court convenes in seventeen eighty two, he's acquitted on all counts.
33:30
Speaker 1: The tribunal found no basis, absolutely no basis for the accusations.
33:34
Speaker 1: Turns out much of the blame rested on the higher
33:36
Speaker 1: ranking officers. Sure, Paul Revere had made mistakes, we all
33:39
Speaker 1: made mistakes. It was a crazy time, but they weren't
33:42
Speaker 1: criminal mistakes. So his name is cleared and he comes
33:46
Speaker 1: out of that ordeal determined that he's going to rebuild
33:48
Speaker 1: his life and his reputation, and that's exactly what he
33:51
Speaker 1: ends up doing. So at the age of sixty five,
33:53
Speaker 1: the war's over, He's sixty five years old. Many people,
33:57
Speaker 1: you know, they would slow down at this point. Some
33:59
Speaker 1: of us slow down win before that, But at sixty five,
34:02
Speaker 1: Paul Revere jumps into industrial manufacturing. That was a bold move.
34:06
Speaker 1: You know, he was trying to bring rolled copper technology,
34:09
Speaker 1: which was then, you know, mostly a European innovation. He
34:12
Speaker 1: was trying to bring that into American hands. Now why copper, Well,
34:16
Speaker 1: he did it because copper sheets were critical to naval
34:18
Speaker 1: shipbuilding and as you remember, we lost a lot of
34:21
Speaker 1: ships in the Panopskat expedition. So Paul Revere is doing
34:25
Speaker 1: what he can to replenish the American fleet, and this
34:28
Speaker 1: sheathing ends up being used on the wooden hulls of
34:31
Speaker 1: ships like the USS Constitution, which, thanks in part to
34:34
Speaker 1: this copper, is still afloat today. Now what's interesting is
34:38
Speaker 1: in this endeavor, like in so many things that he undertook,
34:41
Speaker 1: he didn't know what he was doing. In the beginning,
34:43
Speaker 1: he visited European style mills, he studied machinery, He hired experts,
34:48
Speaker 1: He experimented, sometimes with success, often with failure. He had
34:52
Speaker 1: the troubleshoot every aspect of the process, the temperature of
34:55
Speaker 1: the alloy ratios, the rolling techniques. It was a constant
34:59
Speaker 1: grind of learning and then revising and then rebuilding. But
35:02
Speaker 1: he didn't give up. You know, That's the thing that's
35:05
Speaker 1: really cool about all of this. He didn't give up.
35:07
Speaker 1: He kept pushing, he kept refining, and eventually he got
35:10
Speaker 1: it right. And his copper sheets were used, like I said,
35:13
Speaker 1: on the wholes of ships, but also on the roofs
35:15
Speaker 1: of public buildings and in countless industrial applications. The business
35:20
Speaker 1: that he started at this point in his life, you
35:22
Speaker 1: know what would become the Revere Copper and Brass Company,
35:25
Speaker 1: helped lay the groundwork for American manufacturing. Yeah. I mean,
35:29
Speaker 1: it's just absolutely crazy, all the things that guy did.
35:32
Speaker 1: You know, in the end, Paul Revere wasn't just that
35:34
Speaker 1: guy on a horse shouting warnings in the night. He
35:37
Speaker 1: was a silversmith, He was a printer, a dentist, a dentist,
35:40
Speaker 1: remember the dentist He was a political organizer, a military officer,
35:44
Speaker 1: a cannon maker, he worked with gunpowder. He was a
35:48
Speaker 1: copper baron, you know, in every sense of the word.
35:50
Speaker 1: He was a pioneer of American industry. Now he died
35:53
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen at the age of eighty three. He'd
35:56
Speaker 1: spent his entire life doing what makers do best. And
36:00
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to that term in a little bit here.
36:02
Speaker 1: What makers do best, that's what Paul Revere did, solving problems,
36:05
Speaker 1: learning new things, and trying again and again and again
36:08
Speaker 1: after failure, and then in the end building something that
36:11
Speaker 1: will last. And when you look at it that way,
36:13
Speaker 1: Paul Revere's story isn't just a piece, you know, a
36:16
Speaker 1: little tiny piece of American history. It's kind of like
36:19
Speaker 1: a blueprint, you know, it's a plan. It's proof that
36:22
Speaker 1: you don't need to be perfect or prepared before you
36:25
Speaker 1: begin something. You just need to start. You need to
36:28
Speaker 1: jump in. And that mindset, that approach to life, nowadays
36:32
Speaker 1: we would call it the maker's mentality. And it's not
36:35
Speaker 1: just about building cabinets or fixing furniture, you know, that's
36:38
Speaker 1: not just what a maker is. It's about the way
36:40
Speaker 1: you approach life. You know, it's about being curious, being
36:43
Speaker 1: willing to learn. It's being willing to mess up. You know,
36:46
Speaker 1: it's not needing to be perfect before you start something.
36:49
Speaker 1: It's saying I don't know how to do this. In fact,
36:52
Speaker 1: I might not even have a clue. But I can
36:55
Speaker 1: figure it out, or at least maybe I can figure out.
36:57
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to figure it out. That's what
37:00
Speaker 1: A revered it over and over and over again. That's
37:03
Speaker 1: why I spent this entire episode talking about him. Most
37:06
Speaker 1: of the episode talking about him. He didn't always know
37:08
Speaker 1: what he was doing. He wasn't trained as a dentist,
37:12
Speaker 1: which is exactly the dentist we all want, right, you know,
37:16
Speaker 1: in some instances, yeah, you just we want we want
37:20
Speaker 1: the degree. You know, so in some instances this isn't perfect.
37:24
Speaker 1: Back then just jump in. You know, it's a free
37:26
Speaker 1: for all. You don't mind touching people's mouths, the inside
37:29
Speaker 1: of it. Maybe dentistry is for you. Try No, that's
37:33
Speaker 1: not what we want. We want the degree in dentistry
37:35
Speaker 1: and medical science. You know, if you're going to cut
37:38
Speaker 1: me open and remove some innards, I'd like you to
37:42
Speaker 1: at least have a degree on your wall that means something.
37:45
Speaker 1: But in a lot of other situations, you know, I'm
37:47
Speaker 1: talking around the home and stuff like that, it's okay
37:50
Speaker 1: to not know exactly what you're doing, but just to
37:54
Speaker 1: jump in anyway and learn along the way. Now, you've
37:56
Speaker 1: got to be smart. You jump in in situations where
38:00
Speaker 1: you're not going to pose a threat to your family
38:03
Speaker 1: or to the safety of your home or the longevity
38:05
Speaker 1: of your home. I'm not saying figure out breaks. You
38:08
Speaker 1: know how to put brakes in your car on the fly,
38:11
Speaker 1: you know, that's not part of the maker's mentality. You
38:14
Speaker 1: work with smaller things and build up to that. You
38:16
Speaker 1: change your windshield wipers, you change the battery in the car.
38:20
Speaker 1: You do all of that, and then you build up
38:22
Speaker 1: eventually over time, as you're learning your skills and you're developing,
38:26
Speaker 1: you're gaining confidence, you're gaining insight, and eventually you tackle
38:30
Speaker 1: the bigger things. You know, when it comes to painting,
38:32
Speaker 1: you don't start, you know, the very first time you
38:34
Speaker 1: open a can of paint. You don't paint the exterior
38:36
Speaker 1: of your home. You start with smaller things. Build the confidence,
38:40
Speaker 1: build the skills. The maker's mentality is a first step,
38:45
Speaker 1: a necessary first step to all of that, and it's
38:47
Speaker 1: the step that says, I don't know it now, but
38:49
Speaker 1: I'm willing to jump in and try. I'm willing to learn,
38:52
Speaker 1: and I'm willing to deal with some failure. I'm not
38:54
Speaker 1: going to be perfect, but I'm going to still plow through.
38:57
Speaker 1: I'm going to persevere, and I'm going to get there.
39:00
Speaker 1: Set works everywhere. It works in a workshop, it works
39:03
Speaker 1: in a kitchen, works at a desk job, it works
39:05
Speaker 1: in parenting. It's not about being an expert, like I said,
39:08
Speaker 1: it's about being willing to try. And when you live
39:10
Speaker 1: like that, when you lean into that maker's mindset, you
39:13
Speaker 1: really start to realize that the world isn't something that
39:15
Speaker 1: just happens to you. You know, your home isn't just
39:18
Speaker 1: something that happens to you, and you've got to just
39:21
Speaker 1: deal with it as best you can by calling in
39:23
Speaker 1: experts and waiting un till they can get there. When
39:25
Speaker 1: you've got a maker's mindset, you gain agency. You know
39:28
Speaker 1: you can shape things, you control things, you can fix things.
39:32
Speaker 1: You're not waiting for somebody else. Necessarily, you're willing to
39:35
Speaker 1: jump in and try. You can be Let's say it
39:37
Speaker 1: this way, you can be a mini, little DIY version
39:41
Speaker 1: of Paul Revere. That's the whole point of all of this,
39:44
Speaker 1: you know, And it's fun because it's fourth of July.
39:46
Speaker 1: It's fun to talk about Paul Revere and this era
39:50
Speaker 1: in general, but also to squeeze a little bit of
39:53
Speaker 1: DIY goodness out of it and maybe apply it to
39:55
Speaker 1: our lives. So get out there and give it a shot,
39:58
Speaker 1: give it a try. And if your project does involve paint,
40:02
Speaker 1: you know, if that's part of what you're working on,
40:04
Speaker 1: we're here to help. So just swing out to any Repcollite,
40:07
Speaker 1: tell us what you're working on. We'll get you moving
40:09
Speaker 1: in the right direction. Thank you so much for listening
40:11
Speaker 1: to Home in Progress. I hope today's story, you know,
40:14
Speaker 1: it gave you a new perspective on Paul Revere. Maybe
40:17
Speaker 1: it sparked a little inspiration for your next project. If
40:20
Speaker 1: you do want to hear more stories like this, more
40:22
Speaker 1: content like this where history and home improvement collide and
40:26
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things, that's what we do on
40:28
Speaker 1: the show. If you want to hear that, be sure
40:30
Speaker 1: to follow the show and leave us a review. That
40:33
Speaker 1: really helps new listeners find us and it lets us
40:35
Speaker 1: keep making great content for you. You can find Home
40:38
Speaker 1: in Progress wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're
40:40
Speaker 1: enjoying the show, share it with a friend who might
40:42
Speaker 1: love it too. Have a safe and happy Fourth of
40:44
Speaker 1: July weekend, enjoy your time with your family, and remember
40:47
Speaker 1: whatever project you've got next on your list, Repcolite is
40:50
Speaker 1: here to help you make it easier. I'm Dan Hanson.
40:53
Speaker 1: See you next time.