Every Sunday on the way to church, we pass a construction site in Dallas, east of the expressway, on which a vast new apartment complex has been rising with impressive speed. Our area of town has been coming roaring back, and formerly vacant lots, with abandoned or ratty properties are now being turned into housing. Fine, good, happy day.
But here's the thing. We've seen several of these complexes, most of them smaller than this recent one, go up over the past three years, and we find it hard to believe people will pay good money for them. We've seen the bones: they look pretty fragile. Julie and I observed this past Sunday that this new complex looks like it's being assembled by IKEA. Thing is, this is not cheap housing. Judging from the part of town it's in, and the fancy-shmancy signs announcing its imminent completion, this particular complex is going to sell or rent these condos to upscale people. If you've seen them go up as we and every other commuter along this route has, though, you wouldn't invest in them because you know they aren't being built to last.
Here's a question, though: what is being built to last these days? I very much doubt that this complex in question is the least bit different from any other complex, or house, going up around here. Is it at all possible to hire building crews who can put together a house or residential building that is anything other than semi-flimsy crap?
The house I live in was built in 1914 as working-class, or at least lower middle class, housing. It is about as solid as a wood house gets. You drive a nail into the wall anywhere, and you're going to hit a board. This is not a sheetrock-over-studs house. It certainly has its problems, this old house, but it was built to last. It's remarkable to consider that what we live in is what working people lived in a century ago. The level of ordinary craftsmanship back then appears to have been far superior to what we make do with today, despite our wealth and technological advancement. If one wanted to build a bungalow like this today -- I mean a bungalow like this, with the sturdy bones, not just one that looks like it -- would that even be possible? I know it would be difficult to afford; I'm asking if it would be possible at all?
Passing by the craptastic apartment complex on Sunday, and reflecting on the decline in craftsmanship, I told Julie that place and this situation reminds me of something Michael Pollan said in "In Defense of Food." He said that two generations ago, the only place people who didn't live on or near a farm could get food was at the supermarket. No matter how much you might have wanted to eat better, no matter how much you were willing to spend on a healthier diet, you had no choice but to get your food via the industrial food system. The entire system was constructed around mass production. People involved in food production more or less forgot the old ways of craftsmanship, because there was no market for it.
But over the past few decades, that has been reversed, and is being reversed, through education, entrepreneurship and changing mores. And the more people who start to demand better food, the more affordable it will become for folks.
I wonder, though: is it reasonable to hope for a similar change in the world of residential housing? That is, can we hope for a level of care and craftsmanship, and an expectation of quality, to return to homebuilding? Or is the economic scale of the homebuilding enterprise too daunting? I mean, it's one thing to pay a premium price for artisanal butter, pasture-raised beef or microbrewed beer, but it's quite another to do so for a craftsman-built house.
Who is teaching old-style carpentry and craftsmanship to younger generations? Tell me, I want to know and write about them.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Wife and I have done remodeling in old homes and new ones. Older homes are usually harder because of the lack of 90 degree angles. Most older homes are poorly insulated and a lot of older electrical systems are scary (our oldest house dated to about 1820). I have always thought that the crappy homes that were built in 1920 have already been knocked down or fell down. The one thing thats harder to find now is just the really good wood.
You can still get high quality work if you can pay for it. OR, you can use illegals and get the equivalent of labor costs in the past. We just had a library done in arts and crafts style (cherry) and the guys were very competent. You can get all the mouldings and chair rails done that give your house that touch of class if you are willing to pay. They arent all that hard to do yourself and you save a bundle. Plus you get to buy power tools.
Homebuilding today goes much faster (or can) since most builders have teams (or subs) for each special area. In my area its usually teams of Amish that do the framing and those guys are awesome. New tech (like the drywalling bazooka or whatever that thing is called) saves lots of time. I hated drywall work and would have killed for something like that.
Steve
Jeez, I could write a book on this topic.
Point one. The wood that Rod is so enamored with in his house is there not because they were craftsman. It's there because it was the cheapest material available at the time. If you remove the covering if it's cloth or it it's upscale and lath and plaster you will find the wood wasn't installed in what we'd call a workmanlike manner these days. The quality of installation wasn't important because it was going to be covered.
Point two. The old homes that are still in place today share a couple of things. Primarily they were the creme de creme of the day. These aren't examples of average homes but homes built to the highest standards of the time. And probably even more importantly, they've been remodeled many times and orginal flaws have been removed or covered up.
I just remodeled a bathroom in my wife's grandmas place in Louisiana last summer. Once I got past the wallboards it was an absolute nightmare of shoddy work when I got to the framing and plumbing. I'm pulling old oak wallboards from an old farmhouse in Oklahoma as I get time. It has the wood Rod talks about on the interior walls. They're oak. Again, terrible work there and with the framing because it was all built to be covered up.
Two things about back in the day home construction. It was just like home construction of today in that it was made with the cheapest materials available. That hasn't changed. The same with the labor. The really big difference is since most of that labor was local and considered skilled it was respected.
I work construction. In fact I'm considered one of those craftsmen everyone talks about. http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=152754
http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=94150 http://www.hobartwelders.com/weldtalk/showthread.php?t=29447 http://www.harveylacey.com
There are invariably two questions asked of me when I'm on a job. One is about my training a replacement force or am I going to allow my knowledge and skills die with me. The other is how I learned where I learned my skills. I doubt if my skills will be required when I'm gone and I learned them like most of the craftsmen have learned theirs today, trial and error along with deconstructing existing work when we find it.
Construction is not unlike the newspaper business Rod. The same two things are killing both businesses as we know them. The primary source of failure is the end user. They wouldn't know good work if it put a tongue in their ear. The second thing destroying the trades is disrespect for the workers. They don't believe they want to work hard and do good work.
I heard James Kunstler once comment during a speech he gave, that carpenters have all this wonderful tools and gadgets, that would wow an old time carpenter, and yet they can't seem to make joints that fit together without leaving a 8th inch gap. Modern houses are more "put together", like a kit. Everything comes in standard size sheets, 4x8, 4x4, etc. It's basically just cutting boards and sheets. I am a furniture maker, and have been hired to move doors from one side of a bathroom vanity, to the other side, and the drawers visa versa. Lowes did not sell them reversed, and the manufacturer would not reverse them. Kitchen cabinets come already built to fit, and are just screwed into place. Part of the problem is modern carpenters really don't get to be craftsman. Most things are already sized for them when it gets to the job site. House building like everything else, has been "industrialized". And like everything else that got industrialized, it lost a lot in the process. Older houses were literally built like a big piece of furniture. Cabinets, and everything else were built on site. It really did take skill and craftsmanship to build a house. Other than things like plumbing, electricity, they really are built better. Modern windows are more efficent, but not nearly as lovely. Just look at 19 century 6 over 6, multipaned windows. We still don't make windows as lovely as those on a colonial, or Fedral era house. I just can't see people 200 years from now, admiring much about modern housing. If it doesn't fall apart before then.
My first house was an outwardly crappy-looking row house in a second-rate Eastern city, built in the 1920s. On the inside, it had 11 foot ceilings with beautiful moldings, extremely solid construction, and a beautiful slate fireplace that was painted to look like marble (with gold accents). Some of the plaster had fallen and the paint had faded in parts, so we searched around for skilled craftspeople to repair them. It was fascinating to see the "plaster rake" the plaster fixer created (the original craft involved tossing hunks of plaster up on the ceiling and then "raking" across them with a patterned board). And also to see the great care with which the faux marble was repaired. The work had originally been done by skilled Italian craftsmen. This was obviously always a working class neighborhood. And yet even then, the quality of work was amazing.
A similar thought related to how well your 1914 bungalow was built: back in the day, there was real architectural thought deployed on some small houses, in addition to on large houses. A walk down the few blocks of Bryan Parkway takes you past a lot of houses that are 1500 - 2000 square feet, I'm guessing, many of which are genuinely interesting and successful architecturally. I wish that were true today -- even most of the big houses are awkward and unoriginal.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.