The longest diy build I now of

[OldBill]

And someone else had to redo the fingers

[terry]

Wish whoever it is all success; and, since there was no indication he's building a hovel, freedom from officialdom as well.

Nice to see in such a heavily regulated environment? that individual effort and enterprise can still operate!

In this part of Canada, we are now at the stage where many of our municipalities require one to get a 'Residency Permit'! Don't know much about it; but guess it tries to ensure that before anyone moves in to a new or fully renovated structure it is 'Fit for habitation'!

Shacks or cabins (sometimes called 'Summer homes') however don't seem to be subject to such regulation. These can range from multi bedroom homes with all amenities including a swimming pool etc. to a 'Tilt'. with perhaps rough wooden bunks and an old wood stove. Literally something thrown together with sticks and branches, tar paper and whatever is at hand; generally in unregulated areas. Occasionally old rail cars etc have Bean modified for such use. There is/was one old caboose (Guard's van) very prettily modified and located with an ocean view of the Atlantic a few kilometres (that's 0.62 miles per kilometre!) from here. :-)

At another end of the scale we have the slum landlords who don't care (or can't afford the damage to their properties) and raucous tenants who break things; whereas do it yourselfers make steady progress towards ensuring better conditions (and increased value) for their families.

Having built two homes over last 50+ years, moved in, finished them around us and brought up our family we have been very fortunate. In the 1960s definitely recall wife several months pregnant hauling up buckets from our well as I deepened it during that first hot dry summer and/or finishing insulation and vapour barrier together with no plasterboard yet on the walls with a snowstorm raging outside. Might as well; couldn't go anywhere in that weather. We had constructed our heating system so it did not require the then very unreliable electricity to operate. Also the bread delivery driver, stranded because of another storm, who, many years later helped finish off a bedroom until it abated.

Guess our generation comes from that immediate postwar era we valued anything that was an improvement over the conditions that had gone before? Also great fun and sense of achievement.

Anyway; it's now approaching Fall (Autumn) got to go and remount that front door and install new weather trim on bottom of garage door! No problem these days in this all-electric home!

[Mary Fisher]

Up to the 70s railway carriages were converted to use as holiday homes here, I thought they were wonderful and would still like to have one. I'd live in one permanently.

Mary