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We quit our jobs to build a cabin

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Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#371

Post by hodgesrm »

kyleblarson wrote: post #161
hodgesrm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know where you are in the Methow but my parents lived there for many years near Winthrop. The neighbor at their first place was building a do-it-yourself cabin with massive logs. He was killed in an accident when one of them rolled over him. There's bad outcomes and then really bad.

The house we had built was in Mazama but we live between Winthrop and Mazama now. A couple of years before we bought our property a man in the community was killed when the snowload collapsed the roof of the rickety shop he was working in at his home.

Best of luck up there. I "found" the Methow on a bicycle trip from Seattle round the Cascade Loop out 2, over to the Okanogan, and back to Seattle on 20. I rode up the stretch of 20 to Mazama near mid-summer's day. It was cool, and horses were gamboling through green meadows on either side of the road. There was still snow on Gardner and the peaks along the Cascade Crest in the distance. Bikes are kind of slow, so there was time to drink the scenery in fully.

The Methow is a hard place to visit because you'll need to leave again.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#372

Post by hnick »

anticristi wrote: post #366
legitster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I engage in a DIY project, there is a 90% chance that my only accomplishment is gaining respect for professionals. Which is not to say it's a wasteful endeavor. Also, shoutout to the Methow! The North Cascades is such a beautiful area in general.

Ditto. Lately I opt for a cheaper way of gaining respect: watching YouTube videos. Once you realise that something takes 30 minutes despite all video editing, you suddenly don't mind paying $1000 for a professionally done job.

I like this approach a lot too, mostly because I hate paying an expert without first knowing enough to know that I'm not getting scammed.

And on the plus side, I've found out how easy it is to fix taps and replace door handles and all the simple stuff!

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#373

Post by imtringued »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #40
kyleblarson wrote: post #11

I purchased land in the North Cascades area (Methow Valley, about 3 hours Northeast of Index where these guys built) in 2007 with the intention of building a weekend home myself. I prepped the property myself and ran the main power. It was a junk show and I quickly learned that the best approach was to continue writing software and pay pros to do the job. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made. My wife a…

I find the opposite. If you want something done right you have to do it yourself. I try to only pay for labor when it's low/medium skill labor paired with a capital investment I don't want to make (e.g. getting new tires on my car and an alignment) or when I'm paying for a member of a professional club for their reputation and club membership (e.g. a lawyer or realtor)

I'd like to see you draw. The capital investment is almost zero. You just need a pencil and some paper. You can get both for $2. Meanwhile you can just go on fiver and hire someone to draw something for you for around $30 (number pulled out of thin air) at a level of quality that would take you hundreds of hours of training.

High skill labor usually involves lots of expensive one time costs. I don't see how there is an opportunity to save money.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#374

Post by imtringued »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #65
the-pigeon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a solid structure is a high skill job! Not as complex as building an application but definitely comparable. I think some people fail to understand how hard it is to be a good contractor. Just like software engineering it requires a lot of education and a lot of experience. You won't get it right your first few tries no matter how smart you are. Just like no software developer ever got things right when they…

Building one structure is a series of low skill tasks. Building many structures (or any given sub-specialty, e.g. plumbing) on a predetermined schedule and budget and making money doing it without charging so much money that you get undercut out of business is what requires skill. For N=1 you rarely have to be a pro to do it right.

For N=1 failure can be catastrophic.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#375

Post by imtringued »

berdon wrote: post #257
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrical and plumbing are relatively easy compared to anything that requires accurate measuring and cutting. The latter can really kill a project if you can't get it right consistently, preferably first time. That's where the skill comes in - not just the physical labour, but the experience needed to make allowances for material tolerances and other possible gotchas. Professionals (should) have that knack, amateurs…

Is that from experience? Generally all contractors say "the next guys will take care of that". For example, when framing you don't really care if the studs are really straight or if the walls are square. The "next guy" will take care of that. True enough, when I was drywalling I had the builder come back to take care of some bowed studs that should never have been used. I've also volunteered at Habitat for Humanity a…

Maybe I am just bad at it but I can't get anything done DIY to fit properly. It's always off by like 1-2mm which means holes don't align, there's a gap in the baseboard, etc. I have to throw the entire part away and then pay someone to do it properly.

Unless a 3d printer or CNC machine is responsible for the accuracy you better count me out.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#376

Post by imtringued »

treis wrote: post #165
bfostbfostbfost wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For renovations I try to do as much work as possible, eg tile removal/replacement, backer board removal/replacement....let the plumber come in to a clean and prepped worksite for a valve sweat....he’s in and out ASAP, I’ve saved budget from just throwing money at a GP contractor to do everything, and I get to do the non-expert stuff myself. But I think that the schmo vs pro divide is real when you get to electrical,…

>But I think that the schmo vs pro divide is real when you get to electrical, plumbing etc. HE’S the pro, and I’m the Schmo. IMHO, this is backwards. Electrical work is twisting wires and screwing them down. Plumbing is gluing or clamping stuff together (unless you're sweating copper). The actual mechanics of doing it takes little skill and pros aren't going to be that much better/faster than you. The real difference…

When I hired a plumber the things he did were basically impossible for me. He didn't sweat copper. The first thing he did was heat up the old pipe so that he could screw it out and replace it and by old pipe I mean the plumbing inside the wall, the pipe you'd screw your angle valve onto. I'm not going to play around with fire and screw things up for good. This was actually a freebie and wasn't strictly necessary. Second he connected the toilet which was moved by around 15cm to the right and he used crimped copper, selected parts out of a box with every possible piece you could need and it aligned perfectly. If I had to do that then it would take me multiple attempts and thrown out parts involving multiple trips to the store. I'd also be stuck with tools I'd never need again. Instead the plumber finished the work in around an hour.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#377

Post by imtringued »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #303
kossTKR wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. If i am going to continue in this business it's going to be "very freelance", "very on my own terms" whatever that means. I am in my thirties, and a career shift seems more and more inevitable. I seem to have swallowed several blackpills about various industrial complexes and see no bright future of the internet/tech in general, rather the opposite. What's your age and what is you plan? I am acti…

I'm 36, and I have less of a plan than a daydream of financial suicide at this point. I just want to finish fixing up my house, sell it, and live in a van or something with my dog, some bikes, and maybe some low power computing kit for rainy days (maybe build that desktop operating environment that doesn't suck that I've dreamed of building for years now). I have no plan for making money, and I doubt I have enough st…

I've had one specific dream for 4 years and although I did nothing to get closer to it I've never forgotten it. I used to do some lazy things that fooled me into believing I have made progress. Instead I decided to just get the necessary skills now. I've spent 2 years "reading up" on electronics. I've learned more in the past two weeks than in those two years.

Of course just having the right skills isn't the same as achieving the dream. I still have to put in "the work" after I paid the entry fee.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#378

Post by berdon »

imtringued wrote: post #375
berdon wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that from experience? Generally all contractors say "the next guys will take care of that". For example, when framing you don't really care if the studs are really straight or if the walls are square. The "next guy" will take care of that. True enough, when I was drywalling I had the builder come back to take care of some bowed studs that should never have been used. I've also volunteered at Habitat for Humanity a…

Maybe I am just bad at it but I can't get anything done DIY to fit properly. It's always off by like 1-2mm which means holes don't align, there's a gap in the baseboard, etc. I have to throw the entire part away and then pay someone to do it properly. Unless a 3d printer or CNC machine is responsible for the accuracy you better count me out.

Ah, I did pay someone to do the millwork and trim work. You need a very accurate miter saw and a lot of experience to make perfect niters. I’m getting there but I still get off by a 1/16tb” to a 1/32nd” often.

The finish work is the final last guy. The guy that did our trim would randomly yell out swear words every 20 minutes. His life is hard. And he was expensive.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#379

Post by imtringued »

bluGill wrote: post #270
dleslie wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My dad was smart enough to farm out that work. 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 ga…

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.

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#380

Post by imtringued »

huntilio wrote: post #196
dleslie wrote: post #105

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…

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,…

That's not sad. What's sad is when that specialization becomes worthless and you can't afford to specialize again.
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