Alright, let’s talk about this “ben brutti” idea. It’s something I kind of stumbled into, really. Not some fancy design philosophy, more like a way of getting things done when you’re tired of all the fluff.
My First Real Go at “Ben Brutti”
I remember I needed some shelving in the garage. Badly. Stuff was just piling up, you know? My first thought, the usual me, was to plan it all out. Get the perfect wood, measure everything ten times, make sure every angle was spot on. I even started looking up fancy joinery techniques I’d never actually use.
But then, reality hit. I had like, half a weekend, a bunch of leftover wood from other projects – some of it warped, some of it stained – and honestly, my patience was running thin just thinking about the “proper” way. So, I just said, “screw it.” This was going to be a “ben brutti” special. That’s what I started calling it in my head – “good ugly.”
The Process, or Lack Thereof:
- I dragged out all the scrap wood. Didn’t care if the pieces matched in color or even exact thickness.
- I sketched a rough idea on a piece of cardboard. Super rough. More like a blob that vaguely resembled shelves.
- Started cutting. Did I measure twice? Ha! Lucky if I measured once properly. Some cuts were a bit off. Shrugged.
- Assembling it was… an adventure. Lots of “persuasion” with a mallet. Used whatever screws I had lying around. Some too long, some a bit short. It was a mess.
- At one point, one of the uprights was so crooked I thought the whole thing would just collapse if a mouse farted near it.
My neighbor peered over the fence at one point, gave me this look, you know? The “what on earth is that monstrosity?” look. I just grinned. It was looking truly, spectacularly “brutti.”
But here’s the thing. I kept going. I reinforced a wobbly bit here, added an extra screw there. By the end of the day, it was standing. It wasn’t pretty. Not by a long shot. The shelves weren’t perfectly level, some edges were rough. But I loaded it up with paint cans, old tools, boxes of junk. And it held. It was strong. It did the job. And it’s still there, years later, holding strong. Ugly, but incredibly useful.
Why This Even Resonates With Me
This whole “ben brutti” thing, it makes me think about my first proper job after college. I was working for this small company, super eager to impress. We had this big project, a new software feature, and I was put in charge of a small part of it. I wanted it to be perfect. Architecturally beautiful, every line of code elegant, all best practices followed to the letter.
I spent weeks refining it. Weeks. Polishing, rewriting, trying to foresee every possible edge case. My boss would ask for updates, and I’d say, “Almost there, just making it robust!” Meanwhile, the rest of the team, they were shipping stuff that was, frankly, a bit clunky. It worked, mostly, but it wasn’t “elegant.” I kind of looked down on it, secretly.
Then the deadline hit. My “perfect” piece of code was still not quite “perfect” enough in my head. It was complex. So complex that when we tried to integrate it, it caused a cascade of issues. It was too rigid. Too clever for its own good, and too late. The stuff the other guys built, the “good enough” stuff? It was out there, customers were using it, and they were iterating on it, making it better day by day.
My manager, a decent guy, pulled me aside. He wasn’t angry, just… tired. He said something like, “Look, we build things for people to use, not for museums. Sometimes, done is better than perfect, especially if perfect never arrives.” That hit me hard. I’d been so focused on the “ben” part, striving for this ideal “good,” that I’d completely missed the point. The project didn’t need a masterpiece; it needed a working solution.
So yeah, that garage shelf? It’s not just a shelf. It’s a reminder. Sometimes you just gotta get your hands dirty, embrace the “brutti,” and make something that works. There’s a different kind of “ben” in that, a different kind of good. The good of done. The good of useful. And honestly, I’ve learned to love that a lot more.
