His creative release
In 1903, Thomas Lee designed the first Adirondack chair while on vacation in Westport, N.Y. He made it from a single plank of wood, using only 10 cuts. The design has since become a favorite of carpenters, who use the wide planks as a canvas for artistic expression. Today, thousands of variations on the original design can be seen across America.

In 2003, Lehtovirta's wife asked him to replace a broken deck chair. Needing a creative release, he decided to build one. Using the broken chair as a guide, he made his first Adirondack chair on a shaky folding table in his garage.

While cutting the long curves of the chair's back and arms, something sparked in Lehtovirta. Something pure. Something he'd been ignoring for years.

"It was like this artistic storm in my head," he says.

He kept a sketchbook on the passenger seat of his car, and on business trips, he filled it with ideas. He envisioned sandals, surfboards, dolphins and parrots carved into the backboards.

When his body was in sales meetings, his mind was back in the garage with the settling sawdust. He looked at the tables and chairs in boardrooms, leaning back in his seat to peek underneath. "How did they make this?"

One day a neighbor came by and asked where Lehtovirta bought the chairs that were sitting outside. Lehtovirta said he'd built them. The neighbor offered to buy them.

For $75 a chair, Lehtovirta became a professional carpenter.

He put pictures on his laptop and used them to sell a lot of chairs. For two years he built chairs on the weekends, but he couldn't keep up with the pace of doing both jobs. He considered quitting his job and making chairs full time.

"I would go to my office Monday morning and I would be beat," Lehtovirta says. "I had this artistic side saying 'You have to make this chair,' but I was like, 'When am I going to find time?'"

He saved the money he made selling chairs, and in 2005, he had enough to live for a year. But he also had a wife, a mortgage and a newborn son, Finn.

At work he had health insurance. Retirement benefits. Security.

At home, he had no health insurance, no retirement, and no certainty about what was ahead.

Lehtovirta made the decision he felt was right. It was the same decision he would have made as a college student, skiing in the Alps and looking over the edge at an unknown path.

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