All How-To Topics
Kevini
editor-at-large
Contributions
Book review: Crafting the Considerate House
David Gerstel literally wrote the book on how to run a successful construction company. It’s called Running a Successful Construction Company (Taunton, 1991), and it’s arguably the best...
Why I'm grateful for the EPA's new lead certification rule
Thoughts from our editor-at-large, who recently completed the EPA-mandated Renovation, Repair, and Painting training
Choosing a Hammer Over Harvard
In 1985, Andy Hoffman had a degree in chemical engineering and a job working for the EPA. So what did he do? He became a carpenter.
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Why Building Science Matters to Builders (and Drinking Birds)
As energy prices rise, and as we tighten and insulate our homes to greater levels in response, the potential for negative consequences--mold, rot, and indoor air pollution, including carbon monoxide poisoning from backdrafting--also rises.
A Powerhouse of a Barn
This 700 sq. ft. barn is Certified LEED Platinum, needs no furnace, and is equipped with LED lights that signal how much solar energy it is producing.
A Net-Zero-Energy Home for $180,000
This 1,152-sq.-ft. home in Turners Falls, Mass., produced 2-1/2 times more energy than it consumed in its first year of occupancy, earning the owners and builder a $10,000 prize.
Sustainable Energy Conference Comes to Boston
Over 150 exhibitors and plenty of workshops are keeping our editor-at-large busy, entertained, and enlightened.
2009 Passive House Conference
The Passive House movement has found a new foothold in the United States...and for good reason.
Kevin Ireton answers: Why would I quit the best job I ever had?
I can think of no final gesture as editor of Fine Homebuilding more appropriate than to thank all of you who have made my work here both possible and immensely pleasurable.
On stimulus handouts and bargain-seeking brides
Some builders argue with Marc Rosenbaum when he reports the results of a blower-door test. He tells them the air changes per hour at 50 pascals, and they roll their eyes and say...
Is the LEED program a fraud?
The LEED rating system is “a tragedy,” according to Henry Gifford, resulting in buildings that use more energy, not less, and “a fraud perpetrated on U.S. consumers trying their...
There's a Better way: A Big Table for a Portable Tablesaw
Fine Homebuilding's Kevin Ireton demonstrates a low-cost solution for making an outfeed table to use with your portable tablesaw.
The character of an old house
By the time I bought my old house, it had suffered much abuse and many indignities. The outside was covered with aluminum siding, the inside with wallboard. There was no plaster, no wide floorboards...
Can you put a runner on winders?
My dog keeps falling down the stairs. It makes an awful racket and takes a surprisingly long time. If there were a landing, it would probably stop him. But the winders act like a banked turn, and he...
Why politicize the magazine?
We’ve gotten a lot of feedback about Alex Wilson’s letter to President Obama in the latest issue, much of it negative. For example: “Not sure why you decided to politicize your...
Trade shows versus the real world
The first construction-industry trade show I ever attended was probably the National Hardware Show in Chicago, which would have been, to use my mother’s term, umpteen years ago. I had only...
A final roundup from IBS 2009
Yesterday I was in Las Vegas. Today I’m back home at my desk, looking out on a snowy landscape and unsure what day it is. If I never again hear the cloying ping of a slot machine, it'll...
Another day at the show
The folks at Rigid have introduced a couple of new tools that look interesting to me. One is a small cirular saw designed to cut fiber-cement siding that has a built-in dust collection...
Just call me Ken
Okay, so yesterday I'm in the press room trying to post my blog, but feeling like a genuine reporter. Next to me is a guy named Alan Heavens, a long time reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer...
Greenest siding on the planet, among other things
Yesterday started at 6:00 am with a 3-mile run on the Vegas Strip, and it ended around 1:00 am this morning when my computer froze up as I was trying to post this blog. I lost what I had written and...
Well, at least it's warm here
I woke up to 3 inches of fresh snow in Connecticut, which made the drive to the airport beautiful. It was the light, fluffy snow that outlined every tree. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the...
Live (or maybe half dead) from the International Builders' Show
I just noticed that the educational seminars are being sponsored this year by Countrywide Home Loans. Am I the only one who thinks that’s a little ironic?
Curious about my window seat?
My colleague Chuck Miller said that if you're going to build a window seat, make it big enough to sleep in.
What's my house worth?
Last week I read in the New York Times that nearly one in six homes is “worth less than the mortgage owed on it.” In this context, I’m sure that “worth” means...
Let there be light
My wife and I bought our house—a 200-year-old story-and-a-half Cape—in the summer of 1989. We moved in and immediately gutted the place. We slept upstairs under exposed rafters and...
Dear Mr. President...
By last Friday, my office looked like a tornado had struck. I had over 300 unread emails in my inbox. The latest round of budget cuts was due to the management team. The February/March issue of Fine...
The truth behind LEED inspections
My friend Jim Picton recently got the final LEED inspection on the first house he has built under this progressive and, in some quarters, controversial program. It was pretty boring. . .
Electrical hubris
After wiring 14 receptacles, I was feeling pretty cocky about how quickly I could do the job (never a good sign). . .
The value of delight
Like a lot of people these days, the editorial staff at Fine Homebuilding has been debating how best to survive these tough economic times.
The great home-office debate
When I turned my attention to designing the home office, I considered extending the balustrade to enclose the space, but I didn’t like the idea that the view...
Do we need a tagline?
So the other day, one of the editors suggested that maybe Fine Homebuilding needed a tagline. You know, a little phrase on the magazine’s cover that clarifies what it’s about and who it’s for.
A happy accident
Like so many topics in these politically divisive times, patriotism is a tricky thing. Personally, I don’t think it’s determined by whether you wear a flag pin on your lapel or whether you agree with all our government’s policies.
Tolerances
A skilled tradesman knows a thousand such things and has forgotten he knows them. They are so naturally a part of what he does that he takes them for granted.
The quality of our decisions
If you know anything about building stone walls, you know that stones with flat faces are much prized. Flat faces turned outward help to make a good-looking wall.
The wedding gift
When my friend Chris Green got married last summer, I gave him, as a wedding gift, one day of my labor. He is remodeling his small house to accommodate a now-expanded family, and I knew he could use some help.
My Oregon swimming pool
One of the things that editing a magazine has in common with renovating an old house is that the ability to get something done depends absolutely on your ability to ignore all the other things that also need to be done.
On message for our brand
I went to a brand sensibility meeting this week. It was hard for me. Generally, I’m the kind of guy who makes fun of such things, not attends them.
Happy landings, and the stairs are finished
Well, I finally finished my staircase, and I’m as pleased as the perfectionist, son-of-a-surgeon, editor of Fine Homebuilding is likely ever to be with his own work.
Dealing with mistakes
The latest thing I’ve learned about making mistakes, like firing a nail through your brand-new handrail, is that they make good fodder for a blog.
History and pitfalls of baluster spacing
The rest of the job went OK until I nailed in the last baluster. Because the newel post was in the way, I held the nail gun at a different angle. Whoops.
Escaping through back doors
Our art director, Bob Goodfellow, calls these solutions “back doors," the tricks of the trade that help you escape when you’re trapped by a problem. Bob knows a lot them. He used to be a boatbuilder, and then moved on to stairbuilding. His knowledge of woodworking is one of the major reasons that Fine Homebuilding is as good as it is.
What’s right with this picture?
The phone rang just as I was getting ready to leave work last night. The caller ID told me it was Mark, a guy I’d been avoiding for a week. Mark is a builder in Vermont, a longtime reader, and a former author for the magazine. He had previously left me a message saying how disappointed he was with the photo on Fine Homebuilding’s current cover.
Painting stairs is no fun
Last weekend, though, I spent two days with a paintbrush in hand, priming and first-coating as much as possible. I learned how tedious it is to paint risers, cutting in against varnished treads.
The Greenhorn Construction Company
A half-dozen of us from the employment agency were working at the condo project, doing odd jobs to finish up the construction. We shoveled and raked and threw debris in the Dumpster. Behind the condos were small storage sheds where I nailed on my first roof shingles. I remember one of my fellow workers watching me, then saying, “Slow down. We’re getting paid by the hour.” I was so naïve as to be shocked by the suggestion.
Going solar
As the price of oil rises, you don’t hear as many complaints about the high cost of solar power, but you still hear them: “Solar is too expensive. It doesn’t make sense. The payback period is too long.”
Recycling windows is a leap of faith
Saturday was the first day of summer, and I finally took down the storm windows in the living room and swapped them out for screens. The windows are casements with interior storms and screens, so it’s an easy-enough chore. I don’t have to drag out a ladder. I actually look forward to this semiannual ritual, this changing of the guard, because it makes me think about where those windows came from and how they got here.
New gutters for an old house
So last year when I took down the plastic gutters to have my house painted, I never put them back up. It was time for new gutters, and of course, I lusted after copper, which you see a lot of in this part of Connecticut.
Me and my big mouth
A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. We have those caller-ID phones, so I looked to see who was calling. It was the president of our company. She seldom calls me, and she never calls to chat. So naturally I assumed the call must be about something bad, and I considered not answering it. But of course, she knows where I work. I answered the phone...
Advertising complicates things, like my life
I’m having a bad week. It’s my own fault; I understand that. I let the little things, like emails, get to me.
I'm not the expert
Last week, I taught a class called “Editorial Roles Outside of the Office.” The idea was suggested by a colleague who had heard me talking on a local radio show. She wondered what that was like and what other kinds of things editors did besides making magazines.
Figuring it out as you go
When I built my addition, I set it two steps lower than the main house to keep its mass from overwhelming the original building. But I know from reading Fine Homebuilding all these years that short runs of stairs can be dangerous. People don’t see them easily and tend to trip. So I thought I’d be clever and install a little light in the wall over the steps. I went to the lighting store and ordered what’s called a “theater light.” Problem solved—until it was time to run baseboards and skirtboards along the wall.
On the road to new energy
Last week, I drove to upstate New York on business. I had reserved one of our company cars, a Chrysler Sebring, for the trip. But when I went to pick up the keys, I learned that we sold the Sebring and bought a Prius. Two of them, in fact.
How green is green enough? (Or, you can't please everybody, part II)
Perhaps if you had simply said that Fine Homebuilding isn't green enough, I could not have argued. I don't think any person, group, or company can defend the claim that they are green enough. None of us is. We've all got to do better.
You can't please everybody
“Dear Sirs. Despite being longtime subscribers, we are canceling our subscription to Fine Homebuilding. We are very disappointed in the direction your magazine is headed..."
Nailing down editorial integrity
Recently somebody stopped me in the hall and told me that one of our advertisers, Maze Nails, is celebrating its 160th year in business. That any company has been in business so long is remarkable, but that a building-products company, making something as prosaic as nails, should survive for 160 years is extraordinary.
This NESEA is no monster
For the first time in 20-plus years of living in Connecticut, I took a train to Boston. It cost $11 for parking, $63 for the actual fare, and another $2 for the MBTA Silver Line to my hotel. The trip took about five hours, counting my drive to New Haven, where I caught the train. I could have driven to Boston in three hours for about $15 worth of gas. I was inspired to complicate my trip because I was attending the 33rd annual conference of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, otherwise known as NESEA.
A little constructive criticism
We all need friends—and bosses—who will tell us the truth even if it’s not what we want to hear.
Can you be passive-aggresive with yourself?
As the months went by, and the late-February deadline approached, I considered and rejected other possible authors and topics until eventually, there simply wasn’t enough time left to find an author and then develop, write, and edit an essay with that person. Only one option remained. I would have to write the essay myself. And I wonder now (this is the passive-aggressive part) if that hadn’t been my goal all along.
Knee surgery and the Builder's Show don't mix
For some time now, I have been putting off calling an orthopedic surgeon about the pain in my right shoulder—even though four years ago I tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder and learned that if I had come in sooner, I might have been able to avoid the invasive surgery and its lengthy recovery period. But when my knee started to hurt, too, I finally gave in and called.
First occupants
Those of us who build and remodel houses are also the first to occupy them. You can’t help it. The guy rolling joists into place gets the first view from the deck. Later, sitting on sawhorses and upturned drywall buckets, he and his crew eat the first meals in the house. They play the first music (framers like rock and roll), spill the first blood, have the first arguments.
A little help from my friends
Being an editor at Fine Homebuilding has its pluses and minuses. Among the pluses is the fact is that you get to meet the best craftsmen in the country and visit the houses they build. The downside is that doing so can make your own home pale by comparison.
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New on Fine Homebuilding
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Recent comments
Re: For the English majors among us
Hey, Chuck, you just need to read the right poets. Check out these poems by a guy named Mark Turpin. They're from a book called Hammer. http://markturpin.net/poems.html
posted: 6:43 pm on May 1st