The Builder's Secret: Learning the Art of Living Through the Craft of Building

Rating:
Summary: This is a book I read the first 3 chapters and returned.
Review: After a career working with owner-builders, it was great to see a "why-to" book to supplement "how-to" books. The owner-builders I've worked with over the years were looking beyond just saving money. In many cases, they had plenty of money. What they lacked was the satisfaction of building something permanent with their own two hands. If you're thinking of jumping into a building project, you need a good "how-to" book to keep you out of trouble and a "why-to" book, like The Builder's Secret, to keep you encouraged.

Rating:
Summary: Useful tales from the cutting edge of shelter creation
Review: Americans reached a point, not so long ago, where most did nothing in the way of creating shelter for themselves. Housing became just another product to buy or sell or rent. But there remained a few for whom the atavistic urge to build was more attractive than a mere financial transaction. Now that few has swelled into a tidal wave of owner-builders of every size and shape who have poured such an ocean of cash into their projects that Home Depot has supplanted Sears among the Dow industrial pillars.

It's curious that with this massive shift and the thousands of how-to construction books on the market, that a Builder's Secret type book has never been done before--telling the stories of a few people who just went out and did it. And it's also curious how a fairly mundane subject can make for such an interesting book. How-did makes for better reading than how-to.

When I began my first building project a few years ago I intended to keep a journal of my progress. But of course there was not even time to get the project done on time, much less chronicle the whole thing. Builder's Secret is the closest thing I've seen to what I had in mind. It's not a journal, but a set of tales based on interviews with a varied group of owner-builders. Each is a vignette of material similar to that in Kidder's "House", with the important difference that all of these are about people who do the work, rather than paying someone to do it. It's all about work that is meaningful, that you can measure and admire at the end of the day, and live in at the end of the project. Ehrenhaft doesn't mention it, but I found myself thinking of the contrast between this sort of work and the clock-punching type. Even those who build houses for a living usually yearn to build for themselves, to do the work that has the reward embodied in the thing created rather than in a paycheck. And how many data base administrators dream of taking a few months off to structure their own database?

And it is the actual doing of the work that the people of Builder's Secret seem to crave, for some of them are wealthy enough to have hired it out; others, such as an architect in a major firm would be more efficient sticking to their specialty and letting experts do the hammering, but something drove them to do it themselves, something probably not dissimilar to what drove all of Ehrenhaft's subjects: a couple schoolteachers, a pro flutist, an ex cop, and a handful of hardworking counterculture types.

I think the reason this disparate set of people all embarked on building projects is akin to the reason women bear children the old way when Caesarian sections are more efficient, and why people still slave over a hot stove making dinner when they could more quickly and easily whip up a protein shake in a blender. It's fulfilling. It's what we've done since the advent of Homo Sapiens, and possibly since Homo Erectus, although erectus here would refer to back posture, not plumbed up studs.

Who among us is fulfilled by the modern real estate closing, a bloodless, soulless, insipid ceremony, where the high priests and acolytes engage in a paper-shuffling without parallel, passing and consecrating with signatures hundreds of boilerplate documents like so many unleavened wafers of bread. The first thing you put in your new house is a phonebook-sized wad of legal gibberish. How much more poignant the tradition spoken of in Builder's Secret, the nailing of a sapling to the peak of a new house.

If there is a defect in this book, it's the exclusion of any discussion of financial motivations. Mr. Ehrenhaft states on p.198 that "no one made a financial killing", yet Jennifer Lee, 155 pages earlier, tripled her investment in two and a half years. I don't know about the backwoods of Massachusetts where Ms. Lee's from, but 80% a year is a killing in my neighborhood. Sure, it's a good feeling to know the roof keeping the rain off your head was put up with your own two hands, but it's also a pretty good feeling to sell your principal residence and pay not a penny of capital gains tax. It's also nice to know, as you swing the hammer, that Social Security and Medicare taxes are not taking their royal fifth. Since this book is about the spiritual motivations and rewards of builders, it's worth noting that few things in this world are as dispiriting as socialism, and few as exhilarating as a great big payoff.

Rating:
Summary: A look into the owner-builder's mind
Review: George Ehrenhaft has opened a new door, one that leads into the mystical, highly personal realm of why remodelers, rehabilitators, and home builders create their personal domains with their own hands. This is touchy territory--one potential subject flatly told Ehrenhaft it was none of his damn business. Others made excuses. I'm glad the author persisted. The result is a balanced offering of widely diverse stories: teacher, housecleaner, teacher, architect, graphic artist, symphony flutist, policeman, artist, builder-writer.

Most interviewees began their projects overenthused and underinformed. Lacking knowledge, skills, and tools, they were impelled by financial necessity, curiosity, fantasy, a hunger for a transcendent adventure. Men with wives struggling to understand; women dealing with macho members of the building trades. Personal relationships gone awry. Disaster and achievement. Despair and elation.

The author found sentiment, resilience, intuition, testing of limits, reverence for nature, "a conspiracy of forces," and "'being filled with a thrilling and joyous sense of Shelter--with a capital S.'"

Like writers who must write, owner-builders must build. Pity those who never feel the natural high of living in their own created shelter. Pity yourself? Or step into the lives of these nine and live the transcendent moments with them.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting stories well told
Review: Stories of people who often labored alone in remote locations. Similar to Tracy Kiddder's "House" in that it investigates the adult lives of its subjects. As in that book, some building knowledge is passed along, although this is not a how-to book. Its succcess is due mainly to the author's ability to present these characters in a sympathetic way, holding us with his story telling ability and entertaining us with his wry observations.

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful essay
Review: The title THE BUILDER'S SECRET is not a secret at all, just ask any owner builder. This book is a thoughtful treatise on the pleasure of creating something and watching your ideas take on a three dimension shape. To get the maximum pleasure, you must become physically involved in the actual construction. Most people never have had this opportunity. To sit back in your own creation, at night in front of the fireplace, with a cold wind outside is an unforgettable experience. George Ehrenhaft has captured the essence of such an experience in his book, narrating his experiences and fleshing it out with extensive interviews with others who have done the same. It is a thoughtful piece of research, well done. You will be inspired! Paul G. McHenry, Architect

Rating:
Summary: Heartening and inspirational.
Review: This book just made me feel good. It was recommended to me by the author himself, via e-mail. And I thank you for that, Mr. Ehrenhaft. (I didn't know how else to reach you!) But I thoroughly enjoyed every builder's tale. This book inspired me on several levels. It made me realize there is more to life than just doing your job and picking up a paycheck... that there is tremendous value and satisfaction in creating your own dwelling. I used to paint houses and do a little carpentry (on a much smaller scale) and this made me realize that's something that's missing from my life lately -- the simple pleasure of doing this kind of work... of creating something you can stand back and admire at the end of the day. This book made me want to build myself a house someday. It may be twenty years before I do, but I will! I have recommended this to many friends and do so again to whoever reads this review. It's a heart-warming look at a bunch of decent, ordinary people who have done something very special in building their own homes.

Rating:
Summary: Heartening and inspirational.
Review: This book just made me feel good. It was recommended to me by the author himself, via e-mail. And I thank you for that, Mr. Ehrenhaft. (I didn't know how else to reach you!) But I thoroughly enjoyed every builder's tale. This book inspired me on several levels. It made me realize there is more to life than just doing your job and picking up a paycheck... that there is tremendous value and satisfaction in creating your own dwelling. I used to paint houses and do a little carpentry (on a much smaller scale) and this made me realize that's something that's missing from my life lately -- the simple pleasure of doing this kind of work... of creating something you can stand back and admire at the end of the day. This book made me want to build myself a house someday. It may be twenty years before I do, but I will! I have recommended this to many friends and do so again to whoever reads this review. It's a heart-warming look at a bunch of decent, ordinary people who have done something very special in building their own homes.

Rating:
Summary: This @%$#& house.
Review: This is not a how-to-build or remodel book--instead its a why-to-build book; a collection of stories about nine different weekend-builders who decided to take the plunge and improve their own homes. You will see yourself in this book--prepare to laugh and cry, maybe at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: A Warm and Rewarding Read
Review: What would it be like to build your own home from the ground up? The author offers nine wildly different scenarios ranging from the near-religious to the nearly homicidal. Perseverence pays off for some ("He spent three weekends on his knees scraping black paint off the living room floor with a belt sander until beautiful honey-colored pine appeared.") Others prefer to lunge impulsively at their building project ("I couldn't tell whether the spot I'd chosen was solid bedrock or just loose boulders, and I didn't ask anyone.")

The author has a tendency to romanticize brute labor but he does it with wit and style. Lovely (uncredited) illustations throughout. -