3 month window to learn a self build skill, which?

[Declan52]

If this is going to be your first attempt at bricklaying then don't start of building a brick garage. Your bedding and perps will be all over the place and with facing bricks there is no hiding place. Build it in blocks. Much easier to work with. You can nail lengths of timber at the corners  to act as profiles so your bedding will be close enough.  You can be 25mm of the plumb with blocks sitting in and out and a plasterer can still get it looking good.

Same goes with skimming a few rooms. Unless you want to hang your coat on the finished wall just don't even go their. 

[curlewhouse]

Building inspector *and* my builder both said highly impressed with my garage so far! So there   Though it is block, not brick (will be covered with timber eventually anyway as being National Park it was timber outer or stone - timber being much cheaper of course). 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by curlewhouse

[Russell griffiths]

so Bit of a nosey question, what do you do for a living now and is it secure ?  

Feel free to tell me to bugger off. 

[jamiehamy]

7 hours ago, Declan52 said:

 

Same goes with skimming a few rooms. Unless you want to hang your coat on the finished wall just don't even go their. 

 

?

[Declan52]

8 hours ago, curlewhouse said:

Building inspector *and* my builder both said highly impressed with my garage so far! So there   Though it is block, not brick (will be covered with timber eventually anyway as being National Park it was timber outer or stone - timber being much cheaper of course). 

 

As I said blocks are far more forgiving than brick. With the weight of the block is pretty hard to bed up more than a few mm with good motar as the block just sinks but with bricks you can quickly make a real dick of it.

[Bitpipe]

I clad the exterior of the basement walls in EPS blocks - most went on un-cut but a few needed trimmed and foamed in. Was glad that my handiwork was quickly covered in correx and then backfilled never to be seen again

 

 

[Brickie]

3 months?

Id say you could be one of the finest scaffolders in the country in half that time :))

[ToughButterCup]

On 30/01/2018 at 12:17, epsilonGreedy said:

[...]

What would the forum cognoscenti suggest?

 

I am not wun 'o them, pal.

 

However, may I suggest you stick to the knitting - planning, planning, and planning. In detail. And then some more planning. When you've finished that (never) , network like mad.

For fun learn a bit of this that and the other, that's not the issue, mainly. It's knowing what to do when things go wrong. Say plastering is your chosen skill.

Once you've mastered the basic bits, how do you level out a difficult wall, recognise a wrong mix, know when you can push it with temperature and when not, know how much of this that or the other to order, know who supplies properly graded sand and who's taking the mickey, know where you can get cheap [...]

 

It's expertise by experience that really counts. And the research of which I am aware shows that usually that takes about 50,000 hours. Which is why you want a pilot to be both competent and experienced. A 20 year old pilot (civvy) ain't going to cut it -even though she's the best pilot anyone's seen - ever.

[epsilonGreedy]

2 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

However, may I suggest you stick to the knitting - planning, planning, and planning. In detail. And then some more planning.

 

Can I substitute baking fairy cakes instead of knitting because according to @Hecateh that would be beneficial for labour relations. I posh git like me saying saying "let them eat cake" will have a good outcome surely?

 

2 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

When you've finished that (never) , network like mad.

 

Do you mean network to find for example good trade people or who needs some foundation dig spoil and will cart it away free of charge?

[epsilonGreedy]

17 hours ago, Russell griffiths said:

so Bit of a nosey question, what do you do for a living now and is it secure ?  

Feel free to tell me to bugger off. 

 

I wiggle a mouse and sometimes profitably.

[ToughButterCup]

2 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

[...]

Do you mean network to find for example good trade people or who needs some foundation dig spoil and will cart it away free of charge?

 

The key issue for self-builders who are not themselves time-served trades people is networks: human networks

 

Of the -roughly- twenty trades people have been round our site, either working or blowing smoke into parts of my anatomy. Of those, 10 or so said they'd love to self build: and maybe two or three really meant it.

 

They were the most engaging people to talk to: I could feel the fizz in their demeanor, the closeness of their questions, the sheer energy bubbling out of them.

Everyone of them knew exactly who was going to do what on their build. In academic-speak, they had all socialised with one another often since school: their social technical networks were complete. And so when I struck a slightly discordant note [ say: we aren't having any hot water ducted anywhere in the building - why suffer the standing heat loss?] one or two of them stopped, and looked at me as if i was crazy - a tree hugger, or yogourt knitter. But they understood the  explanation of the strategy behind the statement. They weren't used to thinking on any other lines other than those into which they'd been so powerfully socialised for so long.

 

A nerd like me (as is the local view, I'm told) has great difficulty in breaking into those networks. They are very powerful indeed. And I think one of the outcomes of that recognition - for them - is often to attempt to over-charge.

 

(I hear the song in my head "Will you walk away from a fool and his money?")

The only way I have found of approaching such powerful people is by persistent politeness, and careful nurture.  They are as powerful as the local elites ( see the story of Rollo). In the words of one of my lecturers: beware of those who are low-enough in the pecking order to really matter. Treat them well.

 

That socialising on our part takes massive amounts of time, and if it doesn't, it takes massive amounts of money.

You already have the necessary self-build skill. Go talk to people. A Lot.

[Russell griffiths]

3 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I wiggle a mouse and sometimes profitably.

So my suggestion would be, 

wiggle your mouse a lot, wiggle it in the morning in the evening and wiggle it a bit more on Saturday. 

Buy your materials weeks before they are needed, make lots of tea tidy up and. 

Stay out of the builders way. 

Forget learning a trade

learn how to plan manage and deal with lads who may have a different background to yourself. 

 

Learn what is actually acceptable, you need to be able to tell the difference between a lad laying blocks in a trench that may look a bit rough to the untrained eye, compared to a diy chancer who has been on a 4 week night course. 

 

Do you have any new build near you ? 

Go and have a look around talk to the owners and ask if they are happy with who they used. 

If you build to just above building regs you will achieve it for your budget

 

build it live in it, sell it, build another to a better standard 

you can’t start at the top, take it steady with a realistic outlook and you will do it. 

No boiling water taps, pop up extractor fans, or wall mounted toilets. 

 

There are  plenty of people on here having a few dramas, but there are thousands who would give their right arm for the chance to build their own home. 

 

Hurry up and get started. 

[Declan52]

You spot on with that Ian. Every tradesman that came on my site had been known to me for a long time through either working on sites or from playing Gaelic. All had been wired of months before I even turned a sod that their skills would be needed and each where more than happy to offer mates rates.

The only guy I didn't know was my plumber as I was going down the rhi route for my pellet boiler and all of the plumbers I know had absolutely no knowledge of that type of installation. 

[Russell griffiths]

4 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

4 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

6 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

Do you mean network to find for example good trade people or who needs some foundation dig spoil and will cart it away free of charge?

 

The chances of this would be like finding a unicorn ? 

 

however what  you will find is a friendly farmer with an out of the way corner who will except your soil in exchange for a handful of bangers and mash. 

As long as it’s a smaller pile of bangers than you were going to give the muck away company then everyone’s a winner. 

Remember muckaway company, not skips, you are doing this big style professional not diy. 

Look at how the locals do it. 

Network as Ian said, it’s not what you know but who. 

Regarding materials, buy like a developer

if you need 20 packs of bricks find out how many on a whole truck load direct, it may be 24 packs but cheaper than the 20 straight from the builders merchant. 

 

When you go in the builders merchant walk with a swagger as though you were brought up in one, lean on the counter and say morning guv, need to talk to the gaffer about a large order, 

do not wear tan loafers or say ok yar. 

Please exchange wording acording to your location 

[ToughButterCup]

And here , exactly in line with what @Russell griffiths has just written is  a simple story - hopefully it'll bring a smile to your face

[ToughButterCup]

58 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

[...]

or from playing Gaelic.

[...]

 

I'd forgotten that @Declan52 

Smash someone's face in on a sports field and you become mates for life. I still follow the bloke who broke my nose the first (of many) time(s) on FB. And I still don't talk to him

[TerryE]

I did a bit of project management in the IT world - enough to know the principles of good practice. We picked our major subs very carefully: a reputable TF company with good track record for the TF + slab, ditto for the windows and a good local outside ground works and stone skin. We also used some of his recommended tradesmen for trades such the electrician and plasterers.  We used a local architect technician to help prepare the Planning Application, but other than that, I did all of the planning submission, the architecture and PM. Jan did a lot of the procurement online.  I made damn sure that all of the interfaces between the subs were monitored and controlled, but in the first phase of the build we did as most have said: kept the site tidy, kept the troops happy, kept a fair watch on the quality of the work, but without getting in the tradesmen's way.

 

If any tradesman has quoted a price then he or she has built in some contingency, if things run smoothly and they don't go past that contingency then the good ones will do a good job.

 

What we also did was do pretty much all of the other internal 1st and second fix (less electrics, boarding out and plastering) ourselves.  By this stage the house was secure and weather tight.This took a lot of our time and elapsed time, but we got exactly what we wanted to the quality we wanted and saved a stosh of money.  

[Declan52]

2 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

I'd forgotten that @Declan52 

Smash someone's face in on a sports field and you become mates for life. I still follow the bloke who broke my nose the first (of many) time(s) on FB. And I still don't talk to him

Yep that's how it works. Shake hands at the start then beat lumps out of each other then shake hands at the end.

[Brickie]

Sounds a bit like how I got my ‘Scrabble Limp.’

[Jeremy Harris]

I've tackled a lot of the work on our build, and spent one year's summer holidays learning to lay bricks for some outside garden walls, under the tuition of a proper brickie back in the 1960's.  Since then I've built a few brick and block structures, none have been pretty.  I know the basics pretty well, and have laid a few thousand bricks and blocks over the years on small jobs, but even if I was given 3 months intensive tuition I doubt that I would be up to an acceptable standard to build something like a garage wall, let alone a house.  It seems to me that there are some skills that you can only really learn by doing them for a pretty long time, and some skills that you can't ever learn, no matter how much time and effort you put in.

 

 

[Alexphd1]

Some places you can make a saving that's worth the effort some not but i do not see a brickie as one of the savings. We employed two brickies for three days work to put up the garage. My father and I laboured for them (kept the block piled at there hand and helped them anywhere we could ie moving the trestles etc, our priority was keep them laying bricks) and at the end of the day cleaned up after them. We agreed on a day rate that all they done was turn up with there hand tools, we provided everything else. We also got to use there trade account with a large steel supplier, we almost saved the 3 days labour cost on steel, and yes i shopped around for steel prices! 

 

Bigger saving is research and understand exactly what you want. Heat pump heating systems is somewhere with time you can pick up cheap maternal and if you understand the system any decent plumber can plumb it up. Drainage pipes are also a lot cheaper online but no good if you need material day before the digger and driver turns up. You have a big advantage with secure storage. Online nail gun nails a lot cheaper than local esp boxes with removed out of date gas if you have a battery nailer! 

 

Also note get set up with the rite credit card, we have earned a few long haul 1st class flights with our build!

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Alexphd1