Wednesday, March 09, 2005
The Death of DIY
Back in the mid-1980s, I began building my own home. Literally, that is ... with hammer in one hand and the building standards handbook in the other. The reasons I did this were fairly complex, but two in particular are important.
1. My wife and I had come to the conviction that God was telling us to go ahead and build without getting a mortgage, and rely on him to provide the resources. We only had $5000 in the bank at the time, so when we told our architect he blanched a little, but then admitted he had started much the same way himself.
2. I come from a long line of artisans and craftsmen. And our family philosophy was always, “you can do whatever you think you can do.”
You might think the fact I had no training whatsoever in carpentry, and knew nothing about building, might be something of a hindrance. But I had seen my dad – and many of his friends - do this sort of thing, and could see no reason why any reasonably intelligent kiwi bloke could not do the same.
Now...I didn’t completely rush in where even fools would fear to tread. I knew that if I did not get the foundations right, there was no chance the rest of the building would go right, and I didn’t want it falling down around my ears in the teeth of a Canty norwester. So I found a builder who was prepared to work on a pay-by-the-hour basis and who let me act as his builders mate, and together we put down the foundations and then the framing up to the rafters level. By that time, the $5000 was well and truly used up, and I had to tell the builder I could not afford to pay him any more.
After that, for the greater part I was on my own. Well, actually not on my own. A lot of friends and family pitched in, making it quite a community effort. Just 10 months after we started, we shifted in to the new house, albeit uncompleted.
You might wonder where I’m getting to with this story. Well, firstly, it’s not that unusual. Thousands of kiwi blokes and blokettes have done exactly the same sort of thing ever since people first came to this land. Countless friends of mine have put in new kitchens, added on rooms, built garages, and so on. Kiwis have been do-it-yourselfers from the year dot. Even if you can’t buy no. 8 wire any more, the number 8 wire mentality remains.
But in a couple of weeks time, the first death bell is going to sound on all this. The new building regulations which come into effect at the beginning of April are a huge nail in the coffin of the kiwi home builder. The regulations are going to be phased in over four years, but the upshot will be that the days of building your own home will be over. A council employee I spoke to yesterday said we’ll be confined to things like relining a room or putting in a sun deck. Anything major will have to be done by a licensed building practitioner, which of course also means that the costs are going to shoot up. Not only will that person add his labour and fees, but he’s due to be faced with big increases in insurance premiums, and that will certainly be passed on to you and me.
All this has come about, not because my home building efforts were shoddy and below standard. In fact, my house passed every city council building inspection, and it doesn’t so much as waver in the Canty nor-wester.
It’s actually come about because of the sub-standard work of professional builders who caused the leaky building scandal a couple of years back. Houses were rotting all over the place because the builders didn’t know how to properly install the new surface claddings that were coming on the market. So the government over-reacted and brought down a raft of new regulations that are catching everybody in the same net. Even though there’s never been any suggestion that home handymen are a problem.
It’s typical of the safety first mentality that is killing us in so many directions. Swimming pool fencing and filtering, playground regulations, OSH regulations, rules that want you to have a caterers licence for a pot luck lunch...on it goes.
My great grand-dad was a blacksmith who built one of the first houses in the middle of what was then called the 40 mile bush. Today it’s in the little town of Woodville. He was a god-fearing Scotsman, and by all accounts a very blunt talker. I can well imagine what he would have said to any government employee who came around telling him he couldn’t do that there. Not that he would have cared. He was too busy building a nation.
Back in the mid-1980s, I began building my own home. Literally, that is ... with hammer in one hand and the building standards handbook in the other. The reasons I did this were fairly complex, but two in particular are important.
1. My wife and I had come to the conviction that God was telling us to go ahead and build without getting a mortgage, and rely on him to provide the resources. We only had $5000 in the bank at the time, so when we told our architect he blanched a little, but then admitted he had started much the same way himself.
2. I come from a long line of artisans and craftsmen. And our family philosophy was always, “you can do whatever you think you can do.”
You might think the fact I had no training whatsoever in carpentry, and knew nothing about building, might be something of a hindrance. But I had seen my dad – and many of his friends - do this sort of thing, and could see no reason why any reasonably intelligent kiwi bloke could not do the same.
Now...I didn’t completely rush in where even fools would fear to tread. I knew that if I did not get the foundations right, there was no chance the rest of the building would go right, and I didn’t want it falling down around my ears in the teeth of a Canty norwester. So I found a builder who was prepared to work on a pay-by-the-hour basis and who let me act as his builders mate, and together we put down the foundations and then the framing up to the rafters level. By that time, the $5000 was well and truly used up, and I had to tell the builder I could not afford to pay him any more.
After that, for the greater part I was on my own. Well, actually not on my own. A lot of friends and family pitched in, making it quite a community effort. Just 10 months after we started, we shifted in to the new house, albeit uncompleted.
You might wonder where I’m getting to with this story. Well, firstly, it’s not that unusual. Thousands of kiwi blokes and blokettes have done exactly the same sort of thing ever since people first came to this land. Countless friends of mine have put in new kitchens, added on rooms, built garages, and so on. Kiwis have been do-it-yourselfers from the year dot. Even if you can’t buy no. 8 wire any more, the number 8 wire mentality remains.
But in a couple of weeks time, the first death bell is going to sound on all this. The new building regulations which come into effect at the beginning of April are a huge nail in the coffin of the kiwi home builder. The regulations are going to be phased in over four years, but the upshot will be that the days of building your own home will be over. A council employee I spoke to yesterday said we’ll be confined to things like relining a room or putting in a sun deck. Anything major will have to be done by a licensed building practitioner, which of course also means that the costs are going to shoot up. Not only will that person add his labour and fees, but he’s due to be faced with big increases in insurance premiums, and that will certainly be passed on to you and me.
All this has come about, not because my home building efforts were shoddy and below standard. In fact, my house passed every city council building inspection, and it doesn’t so much as waver in the Canty nor-wester.
It’s actually come about because of the sub-standard work of professional builders who caused the leaky building scandal a couple of years back. Houses were rotting all over the place because the builders didn’t know how to properly install the new surface claddings that were coming on the market. So the government over-reacted and brought down a raft of new regulations that are catching everybody in the same net. Even though there’s never been any suggestion that home handymen are a problem.
It’s typical of the safety first mentality that is killing us in so many directions. Swimming pool fencing and filtering, playground regulations, OSH regulations, rules that want you to have a caterers licence for a pot luck lunch...on it goes.
My great grand-dad was a blacksmith who built one of the first houses in the middle of what was then called the 40 mile bush. Today it’s in the little town of Woodville. He was a god-fearing Scotsman, and by all accounts a very blunt talker. I can well imagine what he would have said to any government employee who came around telling him he couldn’t do that there. Not that he would have cared. He was too busy building a nation.
