IDAHO FALLS -- Recognition is not the reason Tim Metcalf comes to his storage room.
Potential earnings do not compel him to work 10- and 12-hour shifts in this lonely place, 20 times a month.Metcalf loves music . . . enjoys creating something that makes him happy.
"I've always had a great fascination for the sonic splendor of the pipe organ," said Metcalf, a 42-year-old Idaho Falls man who works as a medic for the Blackfoot Fire Department. "I think we should pursue those things that bring us joy and bring beauty."
Metcalf is doing that by combining two large pipe organs into one massive instrument.
But this storage room, which sits on the second floor of a building he owns, is an unlikely place for such aspirations.
Above a three-car garage, it's sparsely furnished and smells strongly of varnish. An antique dresser, worthless because of its new finish, sits in a corner. Against the wall are lawn chairs for resting and planning and watching the Saturn Avenue traffic when the work gets to be too much.
In the middle of the room, atop a reinforced floor, sit two 50-year-old pipe organs, polished now, new in appearance.
One is a reminder of another time.
Metcalf was 14 when he first played it. It was in Marysville Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ashton. That was 28 years ago.
When the church sold the building to the city in 1995, it gave Metcalf the organ. Metcalf's grandmother played it in the church. His aunt and uncle took care of the building, which meant looking after the organ.
Metcalf has spent the past five years working on this organ, which he has named for his aunt and uncle, Ruth and Jim Reynolds. With the help of some friends, he lugged all 219 of its pipes up a steep flight of stairs and through the storage room's glass doors.
The other organ he bought in Utah. It doesn't have the same sentimental value, but it is three times as big.
Now he is marrying the two: the old and the new.
When he's finished, Metcalf's organ will weigh around 5,000 pounds, thus the reinforced floor, and be worth an estimated $200,000.
But that's not why he's doing it. Metcalf isn't going to sell the organ to the highest bidder. He just wants to bask in its sounds.
"I have no desire to do anything but play it and enjoy it," Metcalf said. "I'm just building it for me. If an interested person should want to hear it, I would show them, but I'm not planning on turning this into a recital hall."
Metcalf's organ, which won't be completely finished for another five years, has 876 pipes. A normal pipe organ is about half as big.
Metcalf's organ certainly won't be the biggest in eastern Idaho. That honor belongs to an organ Ricks College acquired in 1985. That organ possesses 6,500 pipes, making it a 65-rank pipe organ, which means it produces 65 different sets of sounds, said Ricks Music Professor Darwin Wolford.
When completed, Metcalf's will be a 12-rank pipe organ, impressive for one man working alone.
Wolford said a project the size of Metcalf's would take an organ company around a year to complete.
Metcalf, who figures his organ will take about 10 years to finish, doesn't claim to be in a hurry. This isn't his full-time, wage-paying job. When Metcalf needs a part, he has to order it from a company in Pennsylvania.
Metcalf has spent a considerable amount of money on this project. He wouldn't say how much, instead choosing to use the word "sufficient."