A Library Built By Our Own
Chris Pickering of Blue Ledge Carpentry
"Family means a lot, and the family name means a lot. I wanted this project so badly because of that."
The first warm days of April are notoriously dangerous for a born craftsman. In the spring of 2003, Chris Pickering found himself trapped in a call center in Belfast, Maine, staring out a window at a brilliant coastal sun. For six months, he had tried on the corporate world, sitting at a desk and answering phones for a credit card company. Wary of his background, the managers had asked him bluntly during his interview: “Chris, what makes you different from anyone else who comes from the trades? Are you just going to leave like the rest of them?”
He had said he wouldn’t. And in his heart, he truly believed he could stick it out. But as the winter ice slowly melted off Penobscot Bay, the call of the trades proved too fierce to ignore. He chose the dust and the open air of the coast, walking out the door and back to the work he was born to do.
Two decades later, that same instinct placed him on a muddy, rain-slicked job site in the heart of Brooklin, Maine. This time, he wasn't just framing a house or throwing down a foundation. He was quietly continuing his family’s legacy.
The Baker of Beans and the Skating Rink
When Chris won the bid to build the major expansion of the Friend Memorial Public Library, it wasn't just a milestone for his business, Blue Ledge Carpentry. It was a centuries-old genealogical circle closing tight.
While preparing for the project, Chris began tracing his lineage through his mother, whose maiden name was Friend. He followed the branches back through his grandfather, Basil Friend, and straight into the late 1700s to Benjamin Friend—the original pioneer settler of the area and the namesake of the Benjamin River. Digging deeper, Chris hit upon a piece of local lore that explained exactly how the library came to be.
In the early 1900s, three Friend brothers made a fortune selling canned baked beans. At the time, the piece of land where the library now stands was occupied by a rowdy roller-skating rink. The congregation at the church next door was less than thrilled with the constant racket. Recognizing that the skating rink wasn't serving the community's higher angels, the wealthy bean-baking brothers stepped in with a classic Maine solution: they bought the land, tore the rink down, and put up a public library.
"To say that it was important to have this job would be an understatement," Chris says quietly, looking over the timber framing. "Family means a lot, and the family name means a lot. I wanted this project so badly because of that."
Deep Roots on the Reach
Today, that ancestral connection isn't just history to Chris; it is a vital part of his family's landscape. While Chris’s home base is just up the road in Orland where his business is headquartered, the original Friend property in West Brooklin remains the anchor of his family's heritage. In his spare time, he has been painstakingly renovating an old family home nestled right on the mouth of the Benjamin River—the very waters named after his original pioneer ancestor. Passed down from his grandparents, Basil Sr. and Frances, to his mother, the property is now in his own hands.
Benjamin River, pictured from Sedgwick Maine
The Friend Family Lineage
1630s: Friend Family settles in Massachusetts
└── Late 1700s: Benjamin Friend arrives in Maine (Namesake of the Benjamin River)
└── Early 1900s: The Friend Brothers fund the original Library
└── Present Day: Chris Pickering (Grandson of Basil Friend) builds the expansion
Though he may not live in the town full-time today, his family’s history firmly binds him to Brooklin's modern community. His children grew up right here, attending the Brooklin Elementary School just up the road, where his wife also once served as a beloved teacher. It creates a beautifully poetic timeline for the Pickering family: while Chris works with his hands to preserve the historic heart of the town at the library, his family has already left its own lasting mark on the generation of Brooklin citizens now growing up to use it.
The Math of the Trades
Chris’s introduction to building started long before he had a business license—or even a driver's license. When he was ten years old, his father, a state trooper, moved the family back to Surry. There, Chris spent his afternoons helping his parents physically build their family home from the ground up. By eleven, he was working alongside a local mason, mixing mortar and tending the line as the brick fireplace was raised.
By fourteen, he was moonlighting on foundation crews, stripping heavy formwork from poured concrete. It was during those grueling summer days that he found his spark. After a long week, the crew was invited out to the boss's lakefront camp on East Grand Lake. Looking around at the water and the cozy cabin, a teenage Chris did what he calls "the math of the trades": Having your own business equals a lakefront home.
"This doesn't sound so bad," he thought.
At fifteen, he went to work for a local builder named Jon Woodard. It was an era before cell phones or constant oversight. Jon would drop Chris off at a job site early in the morning with a set of instructions and a pile of lumber.
"You were just expected to complete the project," Chris recalls with a chuckle. "Somebody would come back and get you when it was over. If you got done early, you just sat on a toolbox and waited."
That early independence forged a craftsman who didn't need his hand held. When he finally launched Blue Ledge Carpentry in 2003, he was young and "scared to death," but his wife encouraged him to take the leap. He kept his young business alive during the rough early years by mastering the unglamorous, necessary work. When the Great Recession devastated the construction industry between 2008 and 2010, Chris kept a five-man crew fed by taking on rotten sills and small-scale repairs at cost. He built a reputation for fairness, learning a fundamental truth about working in a tight-knit coastal community: advertising means absolutely nothing. Word of mouth is everything.
The Local Avengers
That radical commitment to locality is exactly why Robert Baird, the head of the library’s capital campaign, knew Chris was the right man for the job. Robert himself lives right down the road from the project in a striking house with a mansard roof—a home that, in another twist of local fate, Chris’s grandmother Frances used to care for when its original owner was in her final years.
To execute architect Matt Elliott’s design—a spacious expansion that seamlessly mimics the charm of the original historic building—Chris refused to look beyond the town lines for labor. He assembled a crew of trusted local masters: Jacob Gasper from Deer Isle to pour the concrete; the team at Blue Hill Cabinetry to handle the intricate finish millwork; and the legendary Mike Asbury crew for the site work.
Watching the local guys work is, for Chris, a master class in itself. "What Randy, who operates an excavator for M.E. Astbury & Sons, does with that excavator—it’s just an extension of his own arm," Chris says. "I’m very loyal to these local guys. They always step up, they’re always there, and it means everything to them to work in the area where they live. You know you’re going to get everyone’s 100 percent that way."
Stitched into the Studs
For Chris, the ultimate goal of the expansion is to build something warm, welcoming, and built to last for the next century. He is the kind of father who drives past old job sites with his kids, pointing out a beautiful window casing and saying, "Your dad built that."
With the library, he wants the whole town to share in that ownership—including the local kids walking the same school halls his own children once did. Working with Robert, Chris has devised ways to physically stitch Brooklin’s youth into the building's hidden spaces. Before the drywall goes up and the insulation is packed tight, the students from Brooklin Elementary will be invited into the framing to sign their names across the raw spruce studs. Later, when funding is secured for landscape architect Todd Richardson’s walkway paths, those same children will press their handprints into the wet concrete entryway.
"It’s like taking an old historical building apart and finding a note hidden in the trim," Chris says, recalling a recent renovation on East Blue Hill Road where he uncovered a builder's signature from 1834. "It’s neat to see that stuff. One hundred years from now, kids from the school are going to walk into this library, and they'll see a little history where Blue Ledge Carpentry and everybody else was involved."
Until then, the work continues in the fresh coastal air. The skating rink is long gone, the bean-baking brothers are a matter of history, but the library remains—built by local hands, anchored by heritage, and designed to stand as a quiet, sunny sanctuary for everyone.