Why are we here?

[glenn-k]

I remember when I first heard of the internet it was described as a place where scientists and scholars around the world could share information and ideas, without the interference of politics, borders etc.

I remember when I was younger it was stated that at todays prices (then) many of our children would never be able to afford their own home.  I know I thought that was true for a while. :-/  I know I thought it was unfair.

An old boss of mine told me that if you kept moving-- renting other peoples houses - you would never accumulate anything -- Having your own place - whatever it is , is like money in the bank --- no,--- better than money in the bank.  If you can do it debt free or close, that is even better -- the ideal situation.  If not at least you may be able to keep it to a minimum if you can and will do most of it yourself.

My dear old dead uncle gave me the knowledge to be able to build my own shelter.  Yeah -- I worked my buns off for him for meals served by my grandmother (his sister) -- actually he was my dad's uncle.  A very ornery old fart who taught us that if he cussed us out --- a blue streak--- it was only proper for us to do the same back at him.  He liked nothing better than to walk over beside us and drop an SBD then wait to see what we did.  We had a blast rebuilding the old homestead.  It cost more than a new one, remodeling after the cows had been going in and out of it, but, what knowledge we gained! (occasionally other relative kids would show up) .

....anyway -- enough of the story.  I am here to return the favor to my old dead uncle, and to help the kids and people who have the get up and go and who will take the initiative to help themselves.  The idea that they don't know is not the problem.  If they will drink -- we will lead them to water.  In teaching others we will also increase our knowledge by learning from them.

If they will learn, we will use this resource - the internet , to help those who are willing to go the extra mile -- the ones willing to help themselves.  We will share and help them like we have been helped in the past and we will all be better for it.

My reward is in seeing others who are helped to beat their own little portion of the system.  Thanks for learning with me - thanks for teaching me.

Now that was corny.  

[desdawg]

A little corn is good for the soul. Proves we are still human.  :-/ You must be feeling a little philosophical this AM.
As for me I enjoy this forum. It seems like I have been building something or another for a long time. It keeps my hands and mind busy. I have been involved in construction and real estate since I departed the USMC in 1970. Today I have 59 properties and co-own 3 more. I have three mortgages. I am always looking for inexpensive ways to improve the real estate and my own living conditions. I don't get involved in every topic here but the ones that interest me keep me coming back. I am pretty much an "outside the box" kind of person and I get new ideas and new knowledge. So it is all good. I guess I will hang around.

[glenn-k]

I get goofy when I don't have enough sleep-- sometimes it gets passed off as philosophical.  :-?

It is a great privilege to have someone with your experience and knowledge share your views and ideas with us desdawg.  That's what makes this forum great.  Good people willing to help others in exchange for the possibility of learning something themselves.

It seems that there are so many things to experience in the world that even the most inexperienced will have something to add to the knowledge base. 8-)

[fritz]

I'll chime in .... I've been here on and off for a long time -- I visited even when I wasn't planning on building, but i enjoyed the reading and the exchange of ideas.  I keep coming back because it continues to offer new ideas and knowledge -- and the people are very friendly and civil.  Somehow, the trolls and the self impressed have not made it to the discussions.

Although opinions   are often shared --- a positive.

The sites like this ( and there are relatively few compared to the millions of sites on line) attract people who are willing to share.

What John has built and Glenn rides herd on is a great space.  The members and visitors are awesome.

[jraabe]

Absolutely!

Where would we be without the new folks coming on board and asking those interesting questions?

This forum and the internet in general have allowed us to research, teach and communicate information in a way your uncle or Ken Kern (my building uncle) never could have.

[youngins]

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

[CREATIVE1]

The internet equivalent of an old-fashioned barn raising.

[John_M]

I look at it like a group of people sitting around a campfire and just talking....one of our greatest pastimes!

One of the most welcoming sites I have ever visited.  What is nice is those that think they know more than anyone else only seem to peek their heads in and then leave!!

[peg_688]

 Glenn your right, that was corny

[jwv]

PEG, you old softy, now I'm all misty-eyed...Someone have a hanky.  :'(

Judy

[glenn-k]

PEG -- keep picking on me and I may have to tell them that you are actually a pretty decent guy - underneath that, all business, can do, ex-military facade.

I remember when you first arrived here and you had the same goals I did -- You just wanted to share the knowledge.  Beats losing it by taking it to the grave - sharing it while both feet are still on top of the ground--  

I tend to pick on the troublemakers a bit too much -- seems they feel unwelcome and go away  I deal with them like I deal with inspectors.  I'm nice to ones who are nice and I show the ones with an attitude what a real attitude is about in my own little passive- aggressive way as Sassy says. -- We don't need them.

...and Judy -- our straw bale teacher.  Quit sniffling, Judy.  It'll be alright.

[glenn-k]

I look at it like a group of people sitting around a campfire and just talking....one of our greatest pastimes!

One of the most welcoming sites I have ever visited.  What is nice is those that think they know more than anyone else only seem to peek their heads in and then leave!!

That is enjoyable John_M.  My brother used to rig fishing lines around the camp at night -- hook them to a bush on the other side of the camp and pull them rustling the bushes, then tell the girls there was a bear or something over there.  I really don't know how we could apply this piece of knowledge here, but it seemed funny then.

[peg_688]

Hell I still bleed haze gray , ya ya , all that gussy stuff. Some times it can be ah Trying in ways , but then look at ole PK's place , and a few others , ya it's all good 8-)  mostly  

Heck I'm tearin up here   :'(

[glenn-k]

I guess this would be time for Jimmy Cason and Chris (Youngins) to instigate one of their group hugs.

[JRR]

Judy -- our straw bale teacher.  

My wife was a teacher ... and had some tough students.  But teaching straw bales.  Now there's a challenge!

(How's that for "corn"?)

[Jimmy_Cason]

I guess this would be time for Jimmy Cason and Chris (Youngins) to instigate one of their group hugs.

Sorry everyone..... but Glenn asked for it!

Due to the yuck factor,
This was modified to a link instead of instantly showing the picture. J.C.

https://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c371/casonjimmy/group-hug.jpg

[peg_688]

 The inhumanity Jimmy   :'( Where's  the vomit smiley??  

[glenn-k]

......uhmmmm, Jimmy.  That's nasty.  I think I see our governor in there.  (Arnold)

 Closest to vomit I could find, PEG.

JRR - I can see I'll have to watch what I say around here now. :-/

[paul_s]

henery david thoreau put it this way in walden

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might have an almond or caraway seed in it -- though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugar -- and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely -- that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder -- out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin -- the architecture of the grave -- and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure be must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my ornaments ready, I will wear them.

[glenn-k]

I've only skipped around in Walden, but it is always a good and thought provoking read.

What he says is true -- the most interesting places we se are the ones built by the inhabitant to be functional.  

Tract homes hold very little interest as after the first 10 or 20 boredom sets in.  They are not created with their occupants personal needs and interests in mind, but are rather a - one size fits all solution.  Great for members of the team, but not for the person with tha ability to think and do for themselves.

Here's to all of us creating our own fitting individual places that become an extension of our personalities, as we are in every nail, board, door, shelf and room.

I'll be in the bathroom. :-/

[jraabe]

Another great thing about building for yourself is adjusting the house to your site and climate patterns. Thinking about the approach, the sun path, how light falls on the spaces you most use, views near & far, etc. - thoughtfully planned for these things can make even a simple house feel very personal and integrated into the enviroment.

Tips for building a country home: http://www.countryplans.com/landkit/tips.htm

[fourx]

I read Thoreau as a kid, and the concept of invidualism and independence he presents has been a lifelong influence.
What Glenn describes at the start of the thread is the incredible buzz one gets from teaching, from seeing the spark of understanding light up a students eyes and from opening up horizons that would be closed forever otherwise...sure, you get the urge to kick an arse or two, and you find some students are just not interested in learning anything, but the majority make it the best job in the world.

[Jimmy_Cason]

I'm here at CountryPlans because there is no way I could afford to buy a home like the one I am building.

Any questions I've had about how to build got several answers.
This allowed me to make the best choice based on my specific situation.  

Also, my wife and I didn't want to make payments until we were in our 70's.
I've spent around $35,000 from the time I first started.
The tax office just last week appraised my value at $98,000.  

Okay, Everyone hold hands around the campfire and sing Kum-Ba-Ya!

[fourx]

I thought Arnie and his fellow condoms full of walnuts in the pic posted earlier were doing that already-you can't see him, of course, because he's kneeling.
Very religious guy, I hear.

It's not easy building your own place, is it, Jimmy C.- but not having a mortgage hanging around your neck is worth it. And, as John says, there are distinct advantages in siting the structure to suit the ground you are working on.

[glenn-k]

Jimmy's house, Daddymem's house, PK's, Chatycady, many many others documented here all make being here worthwhile.

Help -- Some need a little - some need a lot, some don't need any and their examples teach the rest of us.  

Documenting it here gathers it into one place where we cn bring family and friends to show it, and learn from it too.



Jimmy, I think you better drag that picture back out again.  I'm feeling just a little sentimental right now. :-?