Desmond Tougas.

Background

Desmond is a fourth-generation Greensboro resident. His grandfather was the town's electrician from 1948 to 1986 (no business name, just "you call Lou"); his father was a carpenter and never went into the trade; Desmond went straight into a journeyman apprenticeship with a Lyndonville shop in 1996, took the Vermont master exam in 2008, and ran his own shop in Greensboro from 2009 to 2014. The cooperative absorbed his customers and his shop equipment in March 2014; he's been one of the five owners since.

He's quiet on jobs. He's the person on the crew most likely to find a problem nobody else found, on the way out the door, after the inspection. The Cabot Hill 2017 splice in the wood-stove cavity (see the field log) was Desmond's catch on the second day; the rest of us had been over the cavity twice.

What he does at the shop

• Heritage rewire lead. Every J-04 we book runs through him for the initial walk-through and the cavity-mapping plan. The plaster-preserving methods on the J-04 page are essentially Desmond's notes, formalized.
• Inspector relations. Desmond has been doing these jobs in the same county for 28 years and knows every VT DFS inspector by name and three of their dogs by name; he's the person we ask when there's a procedural question.
• Apprenticeship lead through 2025. He passed that responsibility to Joseph in November of last year; he still does the conduit-bending day every fall.
• 2017–2020 dispatch rotation, and the after-hours dispatch trainer for whoever takes it next.

The 1923 problem

If you've talked to Desmond about a knob-and-tube job, he's probably said the line we've put on the front of the J-04 page: "Knob-and-tube isn't unsafe because it's old. It's unsafe because it's been re-fed five times since 1923." It's his line. He didn't write it down; he says it on every walk-through. Marya wrote it down.

The longer version is that Desmond has a clinical respect for original 1920s craftsmanship and a clinical disrespect for everything done to that craftsmanship since. He has, on three separate jobs, photographed and saved an original 1923 ceramic knob from a wall opening, just to keep the artifact. Two of them are on a shelf in the shop; the third went to the customer, who framed it.

Outside the shop

Desmond does volunteer wiring for the Greensboro Historical Society at their barn-museum project, and he is a contributor to the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation's technical-bulletin series; the bulletin on knob-and-tube wiring in registered properties (issued 2022) has him in the contributors list. He raises bees and sells the honey at the Craftsbury Farmers' Market when the season is good.

Licensure

VT Master Electrician

EM-04421 · since 2008

VT Class S

since 2010

OSHA

30-hour Construction · current

Preservation Trades Network

Workshop alumni 2018, 2021