BF2S Forums Home Ownership Thread

uziq wrote:

"all contractors hate their work" but i will also attempt to ridicule someone for paying someone else to renovate their home.

should i be feeling guilty at this point or what? seems like you have some things to work out with yourself over there, pal. some inner contradictions in your thinking. therapy helps.

I'll go out on a limb here.

You've never done much manual work, maybe none.
You've never interacted with manual workers.
You've never done any work you don't want to do.

pirana6 wrote:

got the keys today.
first thing we did was scrape some of the popcorn ceiling (in two separate rooms) to send to an asbestos test tomorrow.

it's also got a pellet heating stove, which is a bit unique.

Congratulations. Very happy for you. Married and with a house. Once you get the wife settled you might become the first of the last holdouts to have a kid.

uziq wrote:

sorry but i’m not going to feel guilty for getting on in life and utilising my talents and passions.

I understand I am a "DEI Hire" but I still really resent (white) blue collar workers acting like they are better than me. I definitely feel the resentment from some of the custodians and security. Not all of them though.

probably come up before, but well-manicured nails are a paradoxically useful part of trades filled with men supposedly allergic to such things. don't want to snap and tear that stuff. quite painful!

technique passed down to grandchildren by actual John Wayne buy-ins (at the height of some of the most problematic views of masculinity), who worked dirty-hands jobs, yet filed their nails. resistance to your nails looking like they haven't been chewed off is probably a recent phenomenon, with a cohort of men convinced that they need to look like demented cavemen to "not be gay" or something.

just the tip of the iceberg in what hygiene A Man is and is not allowed to engage in, anyway.

okay, fair enough. let's kiss and make up.

assembling furniture is a rite of passage for all millenials, though. your exaggerated stereotypical imagination needs a bit of a tweak. me and my peers are 'generation rent', which means being very familiar with putting up and tearing down (cheap) furniture, particularly of the scandi-flatpack variety. our generation's interior design aesthetic is pretty much 85% IKEA, after all. your average millennial has probably moved address 5+ times by the time they hit 30. they can assemble a bedframe, or put up a book or record shelf.

and why would anyone realistically need to extensively patch a wall themselves? i've applied small fixes to dented and dinged parts of drywall or plaster. again ... generation rent. anyone wanting to keep their continually threatened rental deposits knows how to make small fixes. who needs to know more than that? 90% of people don't know how to plaster their own walls. you pay someone else to do shit for you that requires more training or info than a 15 minute youtube video. that describes modern society in a services-based economy more than 'effete arts types'.

Last edited by uziq (2025-02-18 04:40:26)

yeah, you really don't know anything about homeownership in japan. the average property is <15 years old. it's far more common to tear down a property completely and to rebuild than to extensively and expensively renovate. they privilege the new over conservation. at no point am i worried about needing to do 'stuff at the extreme end of renovation', it makes very little sense here. i am more than comfortable putting up furniture and decorating to my heart's delight, thank you.

luckily japan isn't burdened with a dubious notion of 'masculine authenticity' in which playing around with asbestos and power tools proves your virility. i mean, how would a nation of can-do DIY'ers even work in a highly active earthquake zone, you twonk? i don't think your little weekend projects building a wheelchair-accessible patio is quite on the same order of things as 'extensive renovations' made to code for a 7+ quake. i am fine with paying experts for big work without considering it some weird personal failing.

maybe keep to your little dell of experience and quit assuming the world is as according to the noble _X's. the model of homeownership for tinkering keith and lee in ballarat is obviously not applicable to us here in the tropical jungles of south-east asia. have fun giving yourself silicosis though spraying another layer of pebbledash on the bungalow. bonzer!

Last edited by uziq (2025-02-19 04:37:13)

remind me why i should feel bad again, or lacking in some specific skill? i’m moving into a 4-year-old apartment that’s about 70 square metres. i think ill be okay without my forklift license bub.

in the UK, i could almost concede that you had a point, but ... ehh, not really. i just don't know anyone in my sort of cohort or sociological bracket who are doing extensive hands-on renovations of their homes. that just isn't the trajectory that most millennial graduates are on. maybe it was a few generations ago, but the housing market and pattern of life has changed pretty drastically. people want to live in cities for their 20s, which by default means living in a property managed by an estate agent with a long-distance, shadowy landlord. you are strongly discouraged from making any changes, even in some cases from putting up your own things on the wall. so that's not a go'er. people who move up and out from that first phase normally go to the outer zones, or a commuter town or garden city in hertfordshire or something. or (even better), to get a more affordable, new apartment in an up-and-coming second-tier city. there's none of this 'place in the burbs'/'place in the country' thing where you take on a huge renovation project. not in your 20s/30s, anyway. who has the capital or liquidity thesedays? i'd say about 2/3rds of my london cohort now own apartments or flats in shared freeholds (e.g. older victorian villa-type buildings) in manchester/bristol/birmingham/glasglow/etc.

there's probably a stratum of people my age in the UK who do buy up old homes and renovate them. that's the tradesperson skilled working/lower-middle class types who are 'getting on' by buying up cheap terraced stock in northern misery mills and converting them into HMOs (the new money-spinner in the UK; why have a modest 2 bedroom home originally intended for a milkman when you can have a 6 bedroom home stuffed full of individual occupants attending universities or brought there from nigeria on carer visas). that's definitely a phenomenon. but no university graduate is really doing that at my age. that's a 'jack, 32, from essex' thing. and ... they're invariably paying someone else to do the actual work.



maybe i will need those skills when i get to that stage in life where i'm gutting a formerly modest home in zone 2/3 of london and turning it into the all-so-fashionable open planned, crittall windowed, enlarged basement, garden decked, etc. family home. i'll certainly let you know when i come into the rest of that £1.5 million windfall because it's not on my agenda right now.

Last edited by uziq (2025-02-21 03:42:31)

yep, basically the same experience for every graduate in the UK too. very few actually own and have the funds for a major renovation project under the age of 40. and its a tiny minority who are looking to buy older property that will require extensive DIY. that's just not what the housing stock looks like in the desirable/graduate-employing areas. all those 'charming, with character, has potential, will benefit from some renovation' terraced properties in the suburbs of city x or university town y are now £1.25 million homes owned by peak-career boomers or investment vehicles.

we're essentially getting lectured on not being manly men with practical home renovation experience by the sole forum member that ... lives with his parents. talk about acquiring skills for being independent, huh?

most young people today are grinding way too hard just to pay for their rent in their 21st century rentier economies. they are not missing out on much by not learning how to install a new u-bend in a toilet or whatever. any serious fixes that can't be achieved by consulting youtube become a matter of 'call the estate agent, have them send around a workman and bill the landlord'.

Last edited by uziq (2025-02-21 08:27:14)

I am so beyond DIY anything. I won't even accept a house without a sewer and water connection. Some of the houses my girlfriend and I are looking at are septic tank and well. How do you even deal with well water? Something I will have to YouTube.

i think the point is that making fun of someone for not repairing their own shower or whatever isn't really much of a zinger. worth (re)mentioning, rentiers sometimes discourage occupants from DIY.

there's probably some value in doing your own stuff, but that depends on what you value i guess? honestly, belly-crawling under a house with the bugs to squint at pipes does not sound like my idea of a fun saturday morning, and certainly not if something like that is also your job. ugh. i'll pay the $150, thanks.

danger-splicing is probably fairly common among the walking DIY stereotypes who already 'know what they're doing,' (also called, 'knowing just enough to get you into trouble'). look at the whole blindly daisy-chaining surge protectors thing. doesn't inspire a lot of confidence seeing a rats nest of yellow cords leading in two dozen different directions from a single outlet. "that'll be fine to drive, i checked it myself." 15 minutes later, they're stalled out in a turn lane, "hey, can you come pick me up?" i'm also not interested in listening to a skinflint whining about their water costs when they've shied away from plumbing estimates well within their affordability range, and have had to use vice grips to completely shut off their faucets for the past 10 years.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2025-02-23 01:29:17)

a house shouldn't be a thing that's like a life-long investment requiring decades of onerous bills and stress to pay off. four walls and a roof on a tiny chunk of land should never be north of 5 figures in 2025. maybe things could've been better, but all the voting generations thought reagan was cool.