From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: fixer-upper advice
Date: 21 Jul 92 20:20:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: beaver.1992Jul21.202009.24696
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle

In article <1992Jul21.181414.19345@oswego.Oswego.EDU> ostroff@oswego.Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff) writes:
>I see your point, but have to differ a bit. Working in your "spare time"
>it seems to take forever to get a project finished (two years on and off
>gutting a kitchen and rebuilding everything from scratch for example).
>Still, I have a carpentry background and the needed skills.  If you
>*hate* doing this kind of thing, then do yourself a favor and forget it.
>If you don't mind spending lots of time and have the skills then you
>can save many thousands of dollars, get more of what you really want, 
>and have a nice sense of accomplishment when you're done.  As an added
>plus, you may actually learn something.  It's also a good excuse to buy
>all those tools you've been trying to justify for years :-)  But yep,
>it will take a lot longer than you think and you'll get pretty disgusted
>with things at some point.

I want to echo this. My wife and I are in the middle of remodelling
(how I hate that term) a 1916 house in Seattle. So far, we've redone
the previously converted attic (rip out drywall, install skylights,
insulate, drywall, paint, carpet, minor wiring modifications), built a
new set of stairs (winders, half open), ripped out a wall (tricky,
since due to the poor design work the attic conversion had involved,
the wall had changed from being a partition to being partially load
bearing), and extended an existing squared-edged oak floor by another
10'x4'. We've also been at work outside, ripping up concrete,
installing a garden and modifying gutter systems to use rain barrels.
Soon to come: floor refinishing, curtains, a solar greenhouse, fish
tanks, and *the kitchen*.

Yes, it gets very tiring sometimes, and yes, it generates a hell of a
lot of dust, and yes, we screw up sometimes and I hate imperfections,
and yes, it would be a lot easier to hire someone else. However, at
the end of the day, the satisfaction is simply overwhelming (sometimes
it even better than actually building a house from scratch). In
addition, we are saving an incredible amount of money *and* getting
things done just the way we like them, modulo our abilities. Since I
intend to go on doing this stuff forever, I see the whole exercise as
a learning experience - the one thing I would not do is to start on a
house that was the *one* I really wanted to look great. The house
we're working on is pleasant (and improving), but its an oppurtunity
for us to learn and to create a nicer space, not the house of a
lifetime. 

Also, if I hadn't grown up helping my parents in the UK do this kind
of thing (where most houses are "old"), working for my uncle (building
furniture, but mostly becoming suitably in awe of what a router and a
table saw can do), and building domes as a hobby, it would be much
harder to start from scratch now. If remodelling is a completely new
thing for you, try to find a friend who needs help first.

-- paul
-- 
		     Paul's housebuilding credo:
     Measure it with a micrometer, cut it with a chainsaw, fit it
			 with a sledgehammer