This is the DIY history of the house that won’t get finished. Chapter links at bottom of the page.
Stories of the daily challenges of DIY home maintenance are in DIY projects.
The beginnings
There was a time when Judy and I had strong backs and strong dreams of homeownership. We really wanted to make as much house as we could with a minimum of borrowed money. Not sure why. Perhaps because strong backs may be related to weak minds.
But we have succeeded. We have taught ourselves and performed pretty much every home building task, built foundations and walls, framed doors and windows, wired, plumbed, HVACed, hung and finished drywall, and shingled.
The end result isn’t necessarily perfect. In fact, from certain angles, note the after pic, it may look a little awkward. But it is ours, completely.
Many, perhaps all, homeowners modify their dwellings. But most, because of money concerns or because they are sensible people, usually do no more than one major change per house.
We, being of perhaps unsounder minds, and because when you do most of the work yourself, money becomes less of an obstacle, seem to have lived forever in a house that is in constant remodel.
It was a shack
When we bought This House, it was little more than a four-room square shack. The front door was in the east wall of the room on the northeast corner of the square. In 1982, we moved the front door to the south wall (As seen in the “shack” picture) where it opened directly into our newly drywalled living room in the southeast corner of the house.
Our second major project included enclosing the open space between the house and detached garage. We eagerly moved the front door to the east wall of this new space where we now had a real entryway.
In 1990 in a fit of expansion, we tore down the garage we had attached and replaced it with a slightly larger, much fancier, living room. This project, for reasons that completely escape me these years later, involved moving the east wall out about a foot and a half, necessitating yet another front door move.
At that point, the front door has ceased moving. For now. Now I’m trying to document what I’m calling the Final Phase addition, constructing a second floor and trying to finish every bit of the house before we are completely out of do-it-yourself energy.
Reading on: