My name is Nicholi, and I'm a stay at home father / woodworker, I've been making furniture and doing wood and epoxy turnings on my lathe for a few years, every since covid started and my wife got pregnant. We found out she was pregnant the same week covid seriously locked down California, and at the time we were just visiting family in the state after becoming homeless in Idaho...
Long story short, I guess, we've struggled through it, had the expected ups n downs, we used our stimulus money to buy tools and what things we needed for the baby, finally got into a place of our own just about a year ago. And things were running smoothly after that...
My wife works minimum wage, and Ive been building my shop and trying to build my brand and find the market for my craft as we raise our son. It hasn't been easy, but we're not complaining, we've just been happy to have something for ourselves...
I guess that brings us to today and the reason for this gofundme... I've just gotten over covid a few days ago, we'll "over" enough to move after a week of intense body pain, and went out to my shop for the first time in awhile to replace the motor to my lathe and try to do a little work (the old one had gone out a week or so before covid hit me and I haven't been able to make anything for too long...)
I got my lathe running, sharpened my chisels on my bench grinder, and made a nothing trinket, just a little thing to feel accomplished and do a functions check on the new motor. Then I went inside, spent an hour with my wife before she went to work (graveyard shift) and started dinner with my son.
Ten minutes after she left for work my uncle, who lives next door, was bursting into my house telling me my shop was on fire... It was too late, it went up so fast, and within a handful of minutes there was nothing left...
By the time the fire dept arrived, the fire had burned through the power line leading to my house, as well as lit an entire probably 60ft mulberry tree on fire.
The house has been red tagged until the power is restored, meaning we're not allowed to go in other than to get a few of our things in the morning, after that it's basically sudo condemned by the city... So not only did we lose thousands of dollars of tools and products I've been pouring my everything into for years, but we can't go home for I don't know how long. I'm meeting with the Red Cross in the morning, they're going to help us with a hotel room for a couple days, and I'm with my son at my grandma house, my wife is still at work as I'm posting this...
If you're still reading this, I'm sorry it's so long, I know it's a lot, but Im horrible at asking for help and feel like if I am I should give the full picture. Best I can figure, I stray spark cuddled up in some sawdust when I sharpened my chisels, and I must have missed it because I'd pushed myself to try and work before fully recovering, it would have had to smolder for over an hour until the right draft hit it, and then tinderboxed the whole thing in minutes. I don't know... I could have missed something else, I'm usually overly on top of things, but not today I guess...
I don't know what to expect here, I don't know what to do, or how much money to ask for, or what, but I'm beat down hard, It still hurts to move, we didn't have any savings because we've poured every extra penny into trying to get this business off the ground. Im trying not to complain, or be anyone's burden, or let this break me, and I never ask for hand outs... But I guess here I am. The box said "tell your story" and I might have rambled a bit, but I've told it, sorry if grammar /formatting is off, I'm on a phone at 1am and still a lil shaky.
Thanks for reading this is you did, thank you in advance for any help you might see fit to give. I guess we see what happens from here...
