What do you do?

CONSTRUCTION/HOME REMODELING
Aria Williams and Moe Dominguez
Mayan Remodeling

History in this line of work:
We’ve been working together for almost six years. Before that, Moe did drywall for six years and commercial carpentry for eight or so. Now we are self-employed. We specialize in framing and drywall, though we do some other things and can recommend someone in most of the trades.

Health insurance benefits:
Health benefits are a luxury for the self-employed, one that we do not have.

Fringe benefits or perks:
The flexibility to come home in the middle of the day or leave early (which allows Moe to spend time with his daughter and lets us coach youth sports); being able to add value to our own house relatively cheaply (though that always gets pushed off because we are so busy); no dress code (the last time we went to a funeral Moe had to borrow a tie).

Education and employment background:
I have a BA from the U of M in philosophy. I started babysitting for money when I was nine years old and have been working ever since.

Drawbacks, hassles, or hazards of the job:
Flexibility doesn’t equal freedom. We commonly deal with some aspect of the business seven days a week. Clients call on evenings and weekends; six a.m. finds us gathering up the crew and heading to a job site; midnight might find us doing paperwork; and I might stumble to bed at two a.m. after emailing a bid. People think it must be so great to not have a “boss,” but every client or contractor is a boss, and managing a crew requires a lot of energy and paperwork. It can be quite a juggling act to keep everyone happy.

All physical work comes with some risk, but we take safety precautions and insist that our subcontractors do as well, so we have never had a serious accident on our jobsites. Well, except that guy who backed up to the heater to warm his nylon-clad bum …

Family:
Moe has an eleven-year-old daughter.

Housing:
We own a house in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Transportation:
Regrettably, our work requires us to own two vehicles and put a lot of miles on them. We use the smaller station wagon rather than the truck whenever we don’t need to haul a lot of workers or tools. Powderhorn Park is a great area to live in as far as biking for personal needs, as we are close to the farmer’s market and many shops.

What Aria wanted to be as a child:
I wanted to be a variety of things, from doctor to farmer to a Minnesota Twin (before I noticed that major-league baseball is all-male). I had no idea remodeling was even a career, but I did used to lie awake at night wondering what was behind that crumbling plaster, vowing to someday figure out how buildings were put together and why they didn’t fall down.

What else, if anything, she’d rather be doing:
I love what we do, but I would rather be able to spend more time playing with words or digging in the dirt.

Income or salary:
À la Bartleby, I would prefer not to say this. It should be noted that our income fluctuates quite a bit with the economy, gas prices, and the weather.