I got a nice compliment this week from someone impressed with my expertise. Don’t know if it was warranted, but it sure felt great.

I don’t consider myself an expert on many things. Civil War history or Star Trek trivia, sure, but when it comes to woodworking I ain’t no expert. On the other hand I do woodworking daily, and have done so for decades, so I know a lot. But an expert? No.

At the local Big Box on Monday I was buying furring strips to install a tile ceiling in part of the basement. Also buying some was another guy who seemed a bit lost.

As I was loading furring strips up by the bundle, he was carefully picking out nice ones, and lamented to me how bent and splintery they were. I agreed, but admitted that that was generally the nature of furring strips and it’s not a big deal considering that you rarely see them in finished work anyway.

He immediately took this as a sign I knew a lot about them, and started asking questions. Turned out that what he really wanted was some decent 1x2 lumber for a small project, but had no idea there were different kinds. All he knew was that the furring strips kind of looked like what he wanted.

I walked him over to the dimensional lumber and showed him the regular pine 1x2s, as well as the clear and “premium” stuff and explained the difference, and also pointed out the same thing in the poplar and oak racks. He never did say what his project was, but it turned out that three 8’ lengths of clear 1x2 were perfect for what he wanted to do.

He thanked me and added that he wished more experts like me worked at these places, and headed to the checkout.

To my thinking, I’m not an expert. But in his eyes, I was.

And that made me feel pretty darn good all week long.