The Owner Built Home & Homestead
(Page 4 of 23)
7. USE MINIMUM BUT QUALITY GRADE HAND
TOOLS. If the house design is kept simple, and the
work program well organized, an expensive outlay in
specialized construction equipment can be saved. The
building industry has been mechanized to absurd dimensions.
And even with more and better power tools, labor costs
rise. Or at times where labor savings occur, the difference
is taken up in the depreciation and maintenance of the
equipment which saved the time in the first place. Whatever
way you look at it, a certain amount of work must go into
building a home. If a prospective home owner is unprepared
to accept the challenge of building his own home—and
falls into the power tool trap—then he must be
prepared to spend greater sums for a product which could
very well prove inferior.
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Now that I have presented the ideal program for
the owner-built home, I should retrace my steps and face
the sheer realities of the situation. Obviously, not all
people can locate their home site out of building code
jurisdiction. Nor can many people expect to finance their
home from their weekly pay check. Very few people have the
native ability to design an inexpensive and attractive
home—one that truly fits their needs and site
conditions. Even more rare is the person who can carry
through all phases of building construction, or who even
has the necessary free time to devote to a house building
effort. And how many people do you know who could take the
raw material resources and process them into building
materials for wall, roof, and floor? One has only to
observe current owner-built home flops to appreciate the
fact that we are dealing with a disturbingly complex
problem—a problem that demands a comprehensive
solution.
It is unquestionably our drive toward specialization
(stemming from a basic failure on the part of our whole
educational system) which is primarily responsible for
modern man's inability to provide directly for his own
shelter needs. Despite this drift, I sincerely believe that
the owner-built home can be an economic as well as esthetic
success. It has been so for centuries, for
thousands of families—if not millions—and
continues to be so today. Furthermore, the process of
building one's home can become one of the most meaningful
and satisfying experiences in one's life—as indeed it
should. Owing to the physical limitations of the
owner-builder, and those impositions fostered by society in
the form of restrictions and general mis-education, one can
expect only to approach the completely
self-tailored home. On one or more scores compromises are
in order, but to the extent that the owner retains full
control over his design and his work, he is successfully
participating in creative building.
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