Did you read that book "Art and Fear" by any chance? It talks about how striving for perfection actually kills the creative process. I came across it a while back and it changed how I look at my own work. The idea is that those little mistakes and rough lines aren't failures, they're proof that a human made the thing. Once you stop trying to polish everything into nothing, the work actually starts to breathe.

My buddy Mike tried that with oak panels. Ended up scraping all 16 of his doors down and sanding them flat.

That twisted drop thing, how'd you even notice it was the base and not something else?