spinoza2

" You built a 144-sf shed for $50,000? That's $347.22 per square foot! Looks very cool, wish it were mine, but sorry . . . I'm not impressed."

Costs, of course, always depend on budget and what one is willing to spend. A small cottage can be built for $10,000, if you are willing to go with the cheapest of Home Depot materials.

Obviously, from the photographs, this cottage is built with beautiful woods and quality fixtures. The stone chimney alone took a sizable chunk of the budget. If one has the money, then it would be silly to use cheap materials just to say you could do it on a budget.

The point of this article, I think, is precisely that one can think in terms of craftsmanship-like quality without cathedral ceilings, sunken bathtubs, crown moldings, and chandeliers.

I've had good luck with my cordless tools, maybe because I've stuck with the higher end stuff and I do take care of them. I recently let my 9-year old NiCd Makita go, for the original $120 or so I certainly got my money's worth. My Li-ion Makitas are still like new after some four years of heavy use.

I recently got one of the new 20-volt Dewalt sets, the hammer driver is awesome. It's lighter, more powerful, and has BMW-like build quality.

I think the proliferation of cordless tools is a good thing, it's driving innovation and differentiation in the marketplace. You do have to do your research, though (thank goodness for the Internet!), and stick with the reliable brands. I've had good luck with Makita and Dewalt, and my Festool stuff should last me the rest of my life.

An interesting article, I'd guess you'd call it the 'Psychology of perceived energy usage by Americans". Most of the homes in New England were built when oil was like, 20 cents a gallon, so few of the walls of these homes have any insulation at all and windows are single-pane. If you had asked back then if homes were 'energy efficient', most would have indicated yes, which really meant "It's cheap to heat my house".

Times and perceptions have changed, with oil hovering around $4 a gallon. But today, even in Massachusetts, where there are financial incentives for getting insulation blown into residential walls, few people take advantage of such an insulation retrofit because of the effort involved.

In the end, it's all a question of money: how expensive must oil become before residents are definitely convinced their homes are energy inefficient and become motivated enough to do something about it? $6 a gallon, $8 a gallon?

Larry got in touch with me almost exactly a year ago, asking for advice on how to get his new book published (I'm a Boston-area research librarian who happens to like building homes). He said FHB loved it, but with a working title of "My Story as Told By Houses", they weren't quite sure what to do with it, since it didn't fit any sort of "How to" category.

I wrote back to him, reminding him of Sarah's unconventional but popular home design books. I encouraged him to be persistent with Taunton, since he was a walking treasure-trove of American post-war homebuilding history. I let him know that if anyone should publish it, it should be Taunton.

I'm really glad that Taunton found a way to fit it into their publishing catalog, it's a true living testament Larry's rich life, and to an important part of American history.

"I wonder how people would react if there was an article advising people to just get some college student to roof your house so he can add the job to his portfolio."

The problem is a basic, professionally designed Website goes for at least $2000 these days, and I don't know many independent builders who understand that such an outlay would be a strategic advantage for them.

I decided to test the idea by radically bringing the up-front costs down to around $500 for a basic Website, and at this price the interest was much greater. The site gets their 'foot in the door' with Google indexing, so people searching for a local builder can quickly find them. It works well and my clients have been very satisfied with the result.

You can see an example at: http://www.mlduval.com/_/Welcome.html

The strategy one uses would of course depend on where one lives. How I designed my house here in coastal Massachusetts is very different than if I lived, say, in Flagstaff, Arizona. Here north of Boston I went for a contemporary version of a 'shotgun' house, with a double front door providing an open through-breeze to the back sliding door some 40 feet away. Only a couple hundred feet from the ocean, we can take advantage of the pleasant summer breezes, thus avoiding the need for air conditioning. The same open concept helps in the winter, with a centrally located wood-pellet stove providing the primary heat for our 1200 sq. foot home. The 'simple' concept guided the entire construction, with my focusing on insulation rather than complex--and costly--systems. The result is we're able to heat the house for around $800 a year, not bad for New England.

The key to lifelong learning is, as Larry so rightly notes, humility. I would also include courage to the mix. Building a double-helix stairs for the first time, on your own, begins with the awareness that you have little idea what you're doing (i.e., humility). Having the courage to tackle the project with that awareness is the next step. The two in tandem, along with keeping a sharp-edged ability to learn, is the recipe for possible success. I say 'possible' because risk is always involved in such an undertaking; without it learning isn't possible.

I used an Energy Star metal roof for the New England house I built (Century Drain), and though we've had a ton of snow this winter, it's really been a non-issue. As soon as enough of it accumulates, the snow slides off the roof from its own weight. Now I understand why metal roofs are becoming increasingly popular in states like New Hampshire and Maine.

Aside from it being inexpensive and can be installed by cheap labor, I have a hard time understanding why asphalt shingle roofs are so popular in this country: they have a relatively short lifespan, they are prone to leakage, they are hot in summer, and require regular maintenance.

This really needs to be developed into a full-length book on the history of the building boom in California, one that ties together the social history with the development of revolution in housebuilding. Only someone with your hands-on experience would have the knowledge of putting this together, a university-trained historian wouldn't have this kind of intimate knowledge. I should know, I'm a university-trained historian who happens to have built my own house!

But I loved the post, we need a lot more of this. If you can talk Taunton Press into backing a history of this kind, I'd be more than willing to assist with the project, it would make a terrific book.

I think that is what is meant by the crossover from woodworking to homebuilding. You can build a quick and dirty cabinet in a couple of hours... or you can take a couple of weeks. It all depends on what level of detail and build-quality you want. For someone who can afford it, I can easily see the advantages (and beauty) of such a Festool-built deck. Will it be a functionally better deck than otherwise? In some ways yes--using the Domino System will definitely insure much tighter tolerances and precise joining. Is it worth the extra cost and effort? That depends on the homeowner and where I live there are definitely homeowners who would appreciate this.

I have an interesting perspective on this: last year a builder put up a modular next to me on one side of my property, another put up a "stick-built" custom, and I built my own house (I did everything myself, including some of the excavation). I was able to get a good handle on the pros and cons of each of these methods. From the neighbors it would seem that my house won hands-down in terms of aesthetics, character, and "likability". Since I was doing everything, I could create a unique structure unlike any other in the neighborhood. I'm not a pro builder, but I was able to use the best materials in a way that would not have been done by trades people. But from my own perspective I could see that the factory-built modular is the best house in terms of build-quality and solidness. I was able to go over regularly and watch their progress, and the tolerances they were able to get in the factory, along with the super-insulation they used, were top-notch. The stick-built house was the least successful of the three: this is New England, and that house was exposed to a lot of cold, wind, and rain while it was being built.

I needed to replace my table saw recently and the TS55 tracksaw system intrigued me. I work mostly solo, so using a tablesaw for plywood, etc, is a constant challenge. Like everyone else, the price of the Festool products requires one to do some serious research and deliberation, but with sites like this as a guide I went out and bought the TS55 last week. I've used it for a couple of days now and all I can say is I'm really, really ticked off that I didn't buy this thing a long time ago, it would have saved me a lot of grief, hassle, and bad cuts. Though I had never used a plunge- or tracksaw before, It only took a few cuts to recognize there was real substance behind Festool's high prices, that you were getting some serious value for your money. I take care of my tools, and when I imagine myself looking at my TS55 ten years from now after 1000s of cuts, and thinking whether the $500 was worth the money, the answer will be pretty obvious.

From the comments so far it looks like the author Rob Yagid hit on a hotly debated topic, with lots of pros and lots of cons. Here in Massachusetts synthetic decking is notably more expensive than PT, which is why I went with PT this summer for my front and rear decks. For me aesthetics also played a *big* role in the decision, there's no getting around the fact that a wood deck has a very different look from a synthetic deck. It really depends on the house whether a synthetic deck works or not in an aesthetic sense, which may be a bigger factor here in New England than elsewhere in the country. The original structure of our house is over a 100 years old (the entire neighborhood goes back to the 19th century and earlier), so here we have to make appropriate aesthetics a priority. I'm open to being convinced, but I just don't see how most synthetic decks would work here in this neighborhood (which goes back to the 17th century). If treated and cared for properly I just don't see there being much of a problem with wood, and I agree that the environmental question is still an open one.