The way to save the most money on your new home is to build it yourself. Anyone who has priced new houses or gotten bids for remodeling knows how expensive contractors are. If you build with conventional modern materials, houses tend to be quite complex and beyond the scope of DIYers, so most people end … Read more
The cost of energy keeps going up every year. This means the cost of producing and transporting goods keeps increasing. At some point there’s going to be a tipping point where modern building materials are not affordable. I don’t know when this will happen, but it could happen at any time since fossil fuels are … Read more
It’s not difficult to customize stock house plans to match your style preferences. To get ideas it’s helpful and fun browsing good websites for pleasing design details: trim, colors, interesting uses of natural materials, window treatments, roof details and so on. Here are some of my favorite design sites that feature the beauty of natural … Read more
What building materials do the rich typically use to build their homes? And likewise, what materials would you choose if you had nearly unlimited financial resources? Wood paneling or sheet rock? Granite and marble counters or plastic laminate? Wood, tile and stone floors or vinyl? Berber wool rugs or synthetic? Wood shakes, tile, slate and … Read more
What does it take to build truly sustainable houses – the kind people really want and can afford – and not some greenwashing hype? Most contractor-built houses are not affordable to the masses, so obviously something is amiss. And because buildings account for the largest share of energy use and cause devastating effects to our … Read more
This article launches my new blogging gig at Mother Earth News, the leading US publication on sustainable living. Recently, I had an epiphany in a building supply center while looking at the thousands of products used to construct modern buildings. Even though I’ve been in the building trades for over 35 years and made countless … Read more