building experience
Few things have been more educational for me than actually having to build with my bare hands (and with the help of the family’s over the years gradually more impressive selection of power tools) the stuff I’ve designed. As an architect designing your own home you often have an abundance of ideas, a lot of them demanding quite a high level of skills and accuracy in the building process. But also you don’t necessarily have the resources to hire the workers that could make your design dream come true. So then you just have to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
I really can’t say I’ve become a furniture carpenter from this experience. But I’ve learned how to work a drill, and how to design furniture that has space for the drill to screw it together. And that IKEA furniture makes a great starting point for further hacking. I now know that steps easily drops when you try to puzzle together a staircase. I’ve learnt that building a bath tub is actually doable (just make sure you REALLY know what you’re doing, water can be a tricky ingredience). I know that tiling a bathroom with tiny small mosaic tiles on walls, floors and furniture is hard work (I was also told this before I started by people who knew better, it didn’t stop me from doing it - twice), it’s not necessarily a good idea, and that there will always be a corner somewhere in that bathroom that should be covered by a plant or bottle of bath oil. Looks good though.
I’ve learnt to hate spackle (don’t spackle an attic ceiling of a zillion square meters on your own, your tears will water down the spackle bucket) and to love good quality tools (and don’t save on tools guys, buying a really precise saw AFTER you’ve completed a room full of bookshelves will only make you miserable when you realize what you’ve been missing). That “handy” should be on your qualifications list when looking for a life partner (luckily it was on mine). And that good carpenters, masons, plumbers et al are essential, and when you get to the stage in your life when you can afford quality workers you should start using them. I will, too.
All photos below here are by Nils Petter Dale. And see more of this apartment here, by the way.
