Quick Renovations, Quicker Builds

I’ve been talking about getting a “fixer-upper” house for a while, mostly just as a project, but somewhat to see if my brother and I have what it takes to do the Real-Estate thing. So far, nothing, but we’re taking baby steps. We added some lattice-work behind my deck, so dogs couldn’t jump the fence, and we’re working on adding a wall and a door in the basement to separate the crawl space from the basement room. Angela is even planning on redecorating the kitchen; painting it and doing something with the floors. All fun projects which, all-told will take us a good three or four weekends if things go well. Let’s call it 100 “people-hours”.

I measure it that way, because I recently came across these two articles: The first, about building A Four Bedroom House in Three Hours, 44 Minutes & 59 Seconds by some Habitat for Humanity people. I was impressed, but looking at the details, the group did tons of up-front planning, and apparently lots of prefab work off site. An excellent accomplishment, no question, but was it cheating? How long did it REALLY take?

I probably wouldn’t have even thought about it except, serendipitously, I came across this article a couple of days later, about an Amish house that was rebuilt in 15 hours after a tornado destroyed it. That’s with practically NO planning, and no pre-fab (and, I suspect, a great shortage of power-tools and such). It’s not apples-to-apples, but I can’t help but feel that the nice people who set the world record were really outclassed in the end, by good old-fashioned skill. I don’t know what to do with this comparison, but I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned.

I am looking into installing a shed in my backyard. I was curious about shed pad cost, so I called up Site Preps and they gave me a great, affordable quote! I can’t to see my new shed.