Why Old Houses are Better than New Houses

hi it's Brent hole I was giving a talk a few months ago about why old houses are better than new houses and the Q&A session a lady I was talking to a lady answering a question and I think and I said to her you know maintenance a good is a good thing in fact it should be celebrated I remember she kind of chuckle sure that I was joking because you know maintenance free is the answer right that's which we should all be attaining and striving for I struggled with that comment I left that talk when you know that whole maintenance thing was interesting a friend of mine paula cars auto sent me a a Freakonomics radio talk on in praise of maintenance i recommend listening to her it is an interesting talk because maintenance is of is a value change and the answer okay is not maintenance-free the answer is not the easy life because there's no such thing so the reality is that technology promises us and lies to us that if we get it our questions will be answered all that all the problems will be solved right the fact is there is no such thing as maintenance-free I mean our phone my phone you know has reloaded its system as has overcome the bugs in the system there's no such thing as maintenance-free right it's always updated it's always bringing in new systems and that technology I waste more time trying to chase after technology then it ever saves me in time-saving right so there's no such thing as maintenance-free I think we should be celebrating maintenance because maintenance and the skills of maintenance are really skills of craftsmanship realize that the opposite of them make the opposite of maintaining is discarding right the opposite of being able to restore something is discarding and throwing away maintenance okay and if you look at the difference between a great carpenter and a lousy carpenter the great carpenter knows how to fix things knows how to restore things for example okay we were just we've been restoring our building it's a 1922 National Biscuit Company Distribution Center case this is a 1922 warehouse solid masonry walls historic double hung Huynh right the easy thing for us to do would been able to put it just to tear these windows out and put something put a sheet of glass in right put something that required no maintenance okay the harder thing to do was to do what my guys did where we actually documented and catalogue all the parts and pieces carefully took them apart restored and rebuilt the windows rebuilt the frames rebuilt and changed out that things ever rotten and then put these back in literally in the hours it took you're talking 200 hours versus 20 hours right the quick answer okay the cheaper answer is to put in the sheet of glass but we don't encourage craftsmanship it certainly doesn't look good it looks like looks bad so I mean all the things that are great about this building when you drive up we had to maintain we had to restore and that is celebrating maintenance right that is taking the crafts and craftsmanship and the skills that we have and applying them to this building to make it better to make it last another hundred years right 1922 billion we're now 2017 nearly 100 years these windows lasted I want these windows that we put back in and we've restored the last of another hundred years and that doesn't happen without maintenance 90% of the windows that we are called out to restore simply need to be half the putty cut away from the movable up-and-down sash it's in order to get working again okay 90% of the maintenance required okay it's very simple to do once you understand how the windows work right so replacing the weights in the police cutting the caulk out of there that someone has cocked the window shut overtime that's 90 percent of the work if it's not I mean there are times where the where the sash is rotting or other things that need to be replaced but 90 percent the time it's fairly easy you know we look at a task like that go it's going to take so much work once you understand how to do that it's really not that hard [Music]

Channel: Build Show

Views: 13,633

Keywords: remodeling, historical home, brent hull, hull millwork, hullwmillwork hull home, fort worth construction, build show network, the build show

Id: C__9e4RWKIM

Length: 4min 18sec (258 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020