My family owns multiple cabins, mostly built by family members with the occasional framing and finishing work by friends of the family and/or a local contractor. The one my father owns was framed and roofed by contractors, but the closing, finishing, deck and float construction, and 30 years of repairs and renovations were done by himself and us kids. It sits on a steep hill, so putting a 60x20ft deck on 15ft stilts was no little effort for him with only the help of a bunch of actual children.
The major caveat: prior to my generation, the entire family was involved at some level in construction; from owning and operating to general labour.
It's _not_ a simple task, and the level of skill and intelligence required is something I think is often misunderstood or wholly overlooked by my peers in the tech industry. There's a kind of snobbish belief expressed by _some_ that because they can grok a complex software system they should be able to build a house; but that's a bit like believing that because you are able to write you should be able to easily be a sculptor. There may be shared core concepts, like the story being told and the ideas being conveyed, but the skills and knowledge involved and shared are few.
Agreed. My father is a carpenter and I helped him build our family cabin when I was a pre-teen. We did mostly all of the building except putting up the trusses and finishing the roof. My dad was smart enough to farm out that work.
Now I write software and I work with a lot of people who dream of going off in the woods and building a cabin, as though it's the same as building software. I have to remind them that "there is no undo". "Measure twice, cut once" is a phrase for a reason. You can't refactor your cabin half way through building. Surprisingly many of them never even considered these things, let alone the tricks or techniques needed to do a good job.
I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece together an entire cabin by yourself.
>I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece together an entire cabin by yourself.
Agree completely. I have a project car and have a particular buddy who's a great mechanic. His understanding of the various systems on a wide range of cars is quite deep, and he was incredibly helpful when I got stuck with things. If it was just the physical effort, i would've been finished with the project years before I did, but the mental challenge of figuring out how one system worked and how that system needed to properly integrate with all the other system was far beyond what I thought it was.
As a counterpoint, my buddy didn't get why I might be tired at the end of a long day of work. He didn't seem to get the connection that the high level of mental effort that software development could be physically tiring as well.
There's a lot that white collar workers and blue collar workers can learn from each other, but you don't have to build a whole cabin or a project car or a whole application in order to see what things are like when the shoe is on the other foot.
What I find curious is that this viewpoint, while widely shared in trades, is not a universally shared value in tech. Many in our industry will prefer to write something themselves, or rewrite an existing project, rather than farm that work out to an expert or adapt to what they already have.
Particularly in my segment, video games: it's all well and good to write a game engine for fun, but _so many_ indie studios spend enormous amounts of their time, effort and cash on developing new engines afresh.
I can only imagine what the housing industry would be like if sub-contracting weren't as popular as it is.
> I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally.
It is hard to look at something and realize that even though you can you shouldn't. I'm a programmer, I can write the engine. Several years later I have an engine. We have many new languages all the time for similar reasons, someone thinks they can write one (generally better) and forgets about all the effort it really takes and maybe they should do something else.
On the flipside, a lot of software rework can be closer to the decision of whether to brush your own teeth, flush your own toilet, or make your own fried egg. It takes wisdom, experience, and a presumption about many other unspecified factors to determine whether these are really better to outsource or solve in-house...
Do it for fun but don't fool yourself into believing you can do it better unless you want the game engine to be your product. Of course there are some special mechanics that require a novel engine but those are usually quite rare.
I built a desk and was amazed at how quickly a simple piece of wood on metal legs became. What kind of wood? There are a billion types. Ended up with baltic birch from a specialty lumberyard. What size? A little bigger than old desk; not too hard. Ok, which piece of wood do I get at the lumberyard? It comes in standard sizes. Oh, I'd have to buy two huge sheets, so I would have a ton left over. Let me adjust the dimensions again so that I'll only need one sheet. They can cut it there, but it's a rough cut with tear out on the edges. I need to recut it at home with a circular saw. Now which circ saw do I buy? What blade do I need to make it a fine cut? How do I do this in a studio apartment? Then sanding the wood and finishing it (I can't have too much VOC because I have cats and myself in a small apartment), each of those stages requiring research and many small steps, with other tools to buy (orbital sander, multiple pads, dust mask etc.). It took way longer than expected, the tools cost a lot, but I ended up saving maybe a few hundred bucks from buying a similar desk considering only the cost of materials.
How did you do all that in a studio Appartement? In particular how did you deal with the dust and space requirements while this is a work on progress and you also have to love, cook, sleep there?
1. I have a lofted bed which frees up like 100 sq ft. This is vital for storage/other space.
2. I sanded outside on my small balcony and wipe the dust with a rag. Cutting the wood was tricky. I put the cats in the bathroom, wore a mask and did it while running my HEPA filter at full speed. Then I vacuumed any dust on the floor with the Roomba. I cut the wood by placing it on a couple sheets of foam insulation, with the blade depth set so that it would not contact the floor.
After cutting, I moved the HEPA filter around my apartment a bit until the air quality sensor went from red (bad air) to blue (good air), and opened the windows. I know this isn't perfect, but I haven't had any coughing fits thus far.
3. I used an oil based finish (OSMO) that is low VOC, pet, food, and human (children) safe. It's not gloopy or wet once applied, just slightly damp. Cats jumped on it a bunch before it had fully cured without any apparent ill effects, on the cats or the desk.
Definitely an "if will, there's a way" kind of endeavor. The desk is perfect for me though. Just the right size, height, and appearance. Trying to build a stool with the scrap wood leftover, but the wood is quite hard to cut with a jigsaw and pretty heavy.
I'd suggest buying a cheap wet/dry vacuum. They take up quite a bit of space for an apartment, but anytime you create a mess they can clean it up without issues (previously I had a battery powered stick vacuum and it would regularly get clogged up with sawdust and lose power). It's paid for itself easily, as I've had two small water leaks that if I wouldn't have cleaned up properly in time (I only have so many cloths) would have damaged furniture.
After building 7 more tables they might actually ROI on the circ saw and orbital sander and consumable supplies. Then they just have to start working down the capital costs of the table saw, router, miter saw, and clamps.
I was one of those people. In high school I inwardly scoffed at people working in "construction," without really any understanding of what it involved. More recently I've taken a huge interest in it; last fall I built a 20'x30' deck with 7' stilts on one end [0]. It was probably the most challenging project I've done in my life, and the most rewarding.
And this is peanuts in the construction industry, this kind of stuff is built every day all over the world. Nowadays when I walk around I'm constantly in awe of everything that people have constructed. I can't even fathom constructing a skyscraper in NYC.
I would say though that people with an engineering mindset should be able to find some success in building things. You just have the respect the process and the skills and accumulated knowledge involved, it's gonna take a few years and a bunch of projects and mistakes before you get a sense of what you're doing.
This is one of the best and most insightful comments I've seen anywhere. As someone who has crossed a few domains with overlap in my life (so some limited knowledge of how ignorant I am in all of them) this would be a top candidate for most valuable life lessons, intellectual humility.
I agree with you that some of this comes from snobbery and ignorance, but I think it's also motivated by a naive form of human curiosity. There's a line in East of Eden about one of the main characters (Samuel Hamilton) that talks about how he abhorred the sprawl of knowledge and increasing specialization of the human race. That trend has of course led to an immense improvement in the quality of life of our species, but I think it is a really disconcerting and slightly sad feeling as a curious person to realize there are huge realms of knowledge and skill that I will never live long enough to explore and enjoy.
I do think I could build a house. First one might not be great, but like software or any skill iteration matters. The patience to spend years learning to build something and doing it badly several times is probably the factor that prevents people from just building a house for themselves. It takes years to grok a complex software system, this is not transferable to grokking a house. It takes similar years to grok a modern home for sure.
Iterating on software is nearly free. Iterating on home construction is not. Permits, materials, the cost of land, etc etc.
That's one reason you see more planning, training, apprenticeships, and established guidance in construction than in software. Iteration isn't a great technique.
You don’t build a house first. You muddle through building a chicken coop from crappy plans from the Internet. Then you build a run on the coop and figure out how slightly more orthodox framing is done.
After a bear gets into your bird feeder, you build an enclosure for the outside trash cans and the chicken feed. It takes well under half the time and you cut the rafters right the first time. All the while, you marvel at how little overlap there is between furniture making (your day job), and carpentry.
Then you start thinking about more fully featured structures. Hypothetically speaking.
Can confirm. I’m just about done on my combined chicken run and coop myself. I’ve learnt a tonne. First time I’ve built anything structural from scratch.
Last year we purchased a property that needed a lot of work to make it liveable. It took 2 months and all my energy but I got pretty good at everything from replacing rotten flooring to doing my own plumbing. It’s amazing how many tricks you need to learn to become efficient though. That and the tools. Without a good base set of tools you’re a bit trapped (and you’ll always wish you had more). One thing that surprised me was that anytime I had tradespeople there they had nothing to offer on other trades. The sparks (electricians) would say “oh I don’t know anything about plumbing” for example. I’d have thought you’d just pick it up along the way, but apparently not.
The major caveat: prior to my generation, the entire family was involved at some level in construction; from owning and operating to general labour.
It's _not_ a simple task, and the level of skill and intelligence required is something I think is often misunderstood or wholly overlooked by my peers in the tech industry. There's a kind of snobbish belief expressed by _some_ that because they can grok a complex software system they should be able to build a house; but that's a bit like believing that because you are able to write you should be able to easily be a sculptor. There may be shared core concepts, like the story being told and the ideas being conveyed, but the skills and knowledge involved and shared are few.