By Jack DeGange

It happens all the time these days: The ringing telephone interrupts Don Merchant in mid-sentence.

On the line is a Trumbull-Nelson carpenter at a project site. He needs a piece of material cut to a very precise dimension—10 feet long but only two inches wide and three-eighths of an inch thick.

“It’s a piece we can easily cut from stock lumber,” said Merchant, the manager of T-N’s millwork shop. “It’s a 30-minute job, probably less, for us. It would take the carpenter longer just to travel to a lumberyard. Besides, we deliver.”

Or, consider the call one day from a homeowner who wanted to have a couple of restored chairs and a table painted. It was an easy job for Bill Bernier’s paint shop at T-N that’s been upgraded with improved lighting and a sophisticated air handling system. Plus, it’s strategically located adjacent to the millwork shop to permit a more efficient flow of pieces built by Ron Fenton and Mitch Ross, the old hands among T-N’s team of five cabinet makers.

Those chairs and table were just the beginning. “Before we were finished, the customer brought us 33 pieces to finish in matching colors,” said Merchant.

Another customer wanted four cabinets made for a mother-in-law apartment. They had to match existing Crown Point units but the Claremont cabinet manufacturer that works regularly with T-N couldn’t meet the customer’s tight delivery requirement.

“We want our customers to know we still do custom, high quality work. They can still use their own architect or designer but we want them to come to Trumbull-Nelson to get the job done.”
– Don Merchant

“In fact, it was a relatively small job,” said Merchant. “We could match the units and meet the schedule.”
For years, Trumbull-Nelson has been recognized as one of the region’s leading general contractors. But, in recent times, the company’s expertise in serving retail customers had been overshadowed by its reputation for serving larger, commercial clients as a project manager.

Now it’s back to thinking small as well as big at T-N. And the millwork and paint shops are where it’s happening.
“Today a customer is more educated and sophisticated,” said Merchant, who joined T-N early in 2003. “They get ideas from television and walking through Home Depot. They see new concepts and have so many choices. It’s very different from the days when a carpenter would hand you a catalog with a limited range of options.

“We want our customers to know we still do custom, high quality work. They can still use their own architect or designer but we want them to come to Trumbull-Nelson to get the job done.”

With nearly 40 years of design and contracting experience, Merchant knows what he’s talking about. He spent 18 years in design drafting and quality control with General Electric in Burlington, then another 18 years as a building contractor in Williamstown, Vt. He was recognized for building approved energy-rated homes. Before joining T-N to manage the millwork operation he was an instructor at the Barre Vocational Technical Center where he directed a team of 28 students who renovated an old gymnasium into a music/band room that was expected to take two years and cost $233,000. Merchant’s students did it in one year-for $86,000.

“At Trumbull-Nelson we’re a Team,” said Merchant. “My job is to be the coordinator. I work with Fred (Ploeger, T-N’s purchasing manager), Bill (Bernier, the paint expert) and the men in the millwork shop.

“I came from a manufacturing background (at GE) where we spent a lot of time thinking about material flow and efficiency. We’ve made design changes in our shops that allow us to fit small jobs in with big jobs.

“‘No job too small’ is a good expression,” Merchant continued. “We can build pieces and match finishes for restoration projects. Or, a do-it-yourself customer can bring us some boards for planing. We’ll fit them in.

“If someone needs 400-500 feet of molding, they may be better off working with a specialty operation. But if it’s a smaller quantity, like a few feet of molding to match an existing installation, we can usually turn it out for less than the specialty shop’s setup charge.”

Good advice is also part of T-N’s service. “I like to help people plan. We’ll suggest the best materials—not just lumber but granite, soapstone or other solid surface counter top materials,” said Merchant. “We can buy it, mill it and finish it. And, we’ll handle the hardware, too.

“And, I’ll also watch the five-day weather forecast and help people understand the effects of weather on wood. It may be better to wait a few days to plane those boards—when it’s time for installation.”

These aren’t million dollar projects but they meet the specialized needs of countless retail customers. It’s about service and fitting work into the daily schedule of finish carpentry and painting.

If the devil is in the details, Merchant is the devil’s advocate. He thinks big—and small. Consider: Standard cabinets are usually 12 inches deep but, as Merchant points out, many gourmet dishes are bigger than that standard depth. “People want cabinets that fit their special needs and we’re set up to produce them,” he said, just as easily as the millwork shop built the cabinetry for recent major projects at the new Richard Black Community Center and St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover.

Measure twice, cut once is the carpenter’s credo. “I’ll go to a job site to review work but I’ll also have the finish carpenter visit the site, take his own field measurements, and study for problems,” said Merchant. “I look for everything, they study the specifics. I want to be sure we all understand the project.

“Recently, we had a home entertainment center project that needed modification for a new television set. We decided to rebuild it with screws, not glue. If the new TV breaks, the cabinet is an easy fix.”

Serving clients, large and small, is the objective for T-N’s millwork and painting operations. “My job is to keep our workers busy and get things done,” said Merchant. “It’s a team effort and coordination is the key to keeping everyone happy.”

These days no one is happier than Don Merchant who, after nearly four decades of designing and building things, said, “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”