Hello world!!
We started the Built-it! website as a way of letting people follow our journey into renovating a fixer-upper. As we are inexperienced people, we’ll be learning a lot from master craftsmen and we will be making a lot of mistakes. The idea is that you all can benefit from this site so your own DIY-project will be going smoothly.
Building wood
We’re Belgians and over here in our hectic country, people tend to build brick and/or concrete houses. Therefore the number of craftsmen and building companies that build with wood are not as common. The ones that are available and have the know-how are relatively more expensive. We do want a house with a wooden skeleton because there’s one main advantage. As total novices such as ourselves we find wood is much more forgiving and accessible. If we find a company that builds the pure stud walls, we can pretty much tackle everything from there on without the need for really specialised tools. We’re talking insulation, sheets of OSB, electricity and water, sheet-rock, big furniture pieces and so on.
With the classical brick construction we would need concrete drills to cut through floors and double sided circular saws to cut out slots for the wiring. The walls would need to be plastered (which I can not do myself) and the general placement of wiring and tubing is far more difficult. For a mere mortal it is much easier and cheaper to work with wood.
Let’s start this adventure!