Customer Reviews

Sheetrock & Shellac: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Art and Science of Home Improvement

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been a DIYer for 25 years and found nearly every page of Owen's book engaging. Too, I learned a tremendous amount, a bonus I frankly wasn't expecting. Owen is a gifted writer who understands the poetry of things, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves home improvement or who wants to understand how the structures we live in work.

While The Walls Around Us: The Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works is a better book (sequels are so hard) Sheetrock is another funny, idiosyncratic approach to home-owning, designing a house, and getting a bulldozer stuck in the mud. Owen, like me and many people, has more interest than experience in working on his house and his random walk through how things are made is entertaining. Sheetrock lacks the zing of his initial jump from NYC apartment to small town historic home, but I'll look forward to installment three of his home-learning saga.

Geesh, by the time I was midway through this I was ready to renovate my bathroom on my own until I came to my senses. Still, this is an engaging, informative, and witty book full of exquisite writing. I loved it.

I read an excerpt from Owen's book in a magazine and was intrigued enough to check it out. The history of construction materials is truly fascinating and Owen gives solid, common-sense advice for repairing, replacing and building. A bit slow going in the beginning, I was hooked by the promise of explanations on the ins and outs of plumbing and woodworking. Owen didn't disappoint and the section on Shellac was exceptional.

My only complaint is that this book is more a journal of the construction and renovation of Owen's houses than it is a consideration of owning and/or building a house. Although it's implied in some places, Owen skims over green practices and the environmental impact of the current housing boom. But while his choices in construction materials ensure both houses will be around for the long run (indeed one already has been) and Owen openly acknowledges the extravagance of owning two homes, the materialist approach leaves me uneasy.

Anyone who has read Stewart Brand's "How Buildings Learn" will find that this book fills in the gaps left by the former with step-by-step explanations of building. If you haven't read Brand's book, go there first. Brand lays the foundation for understanding your relationship with your house and Owen will tell you how to build it.

I was given this book as a gift and when I read the front and back covers, I thought: this is the book for me - this is my story. I began DIY home improving six years ago and was a novice when I started. Over the years, I have learned a tremendous amount and now I can do most anything. I was excited about reading Owen's tale as it seemed to closely parallel mine. However, as I read, I became very disappointed. Instead of, "As his skill grows, so does his confidence," I would say, "As his bank account grows, so does his ability to hire more contractors."

The back cover suggests the writing is witty and "hilarious." I chuckled once. That does not equal hilarious in my estimation, but that's just me.

Where are the details about learning? About using tools (not just buying them)? About how to overcome all the difficulties with home improvement of an old house? Anyone who has ever worked on an old house knows it is usually an adventure with all sorts of stories to be told.

The back cover uses the examples of progressing from replacing a broken light switch to wiring an entire room, and from making bookcases to building an office. Certainly sounds substantial. But let's see ... the story of wiring an entire room is taken care of in a single sentence (p. 45) and mentions adding two circuits. So, where is the discussion of adding those circuits to the main service panel? That's not exactly trivial for a budding DIYer. And the office building story is described in slightly more than two pages (pp. 43-45). I guess the author didn't want to waste space so that he could instead wax on about concrete for sixteen thrilling pages. And the big teaser, that the author makes the leap from renovation to building a new house from the ground up (a dream of my own), is completely disingenuous. It turns out to be just another exercise in the author hiring others to build a "vacation" house for him - six miles away. What's wrong with this picture?

And as far as the theme of "what the space we live in says about us," the author fails to deliver on that with any substance as well.

If you are someone who says, "We remodeled our kitchen," but in translation, you had your kitchen remodeled (by someone else), then this book might be for you. If you are someone who actually did the remodeling of your kitchen, then your reaction to this book might be like mine - frustration.

This is an unusual book for the do-it-yourself-er who is perhaps a little bit interested in the competing technologies embodied in the modern home, their origins, and their trade-offs. Owen, a frank materialist, is sublimely taken with things, especially things that go wrong with homes. Obsessed with the beauty of wood, while gamely observing its heaves with changes in humidity, tales of his struggles approach the transcendent. His bouts of fighting the ravages of water and mildew, approach the heroics seen in New Orleans. He is a real scholar of war.

I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much. Perhaps it is because I hate the mundane chores of maintaining a house, and that the vicarious thrills I can get from reading about his struggles is as old as the Odyssey. Sort of like watching a cop reality show on TV.

The book actually has a lot of interesting stuff in it. I particularly enjoyed learning about the invention of these things and a little sometimes about the actual inventor. Linoleum in 1863 by Frederick Walton, the invention of Portland cement by Joseph Aspdin in 1824, and the stick house in 1832, etc. demonstrate that much of what we encounter in houses today actually had its roots in the industrial revolution. Owen tells these stories well, but his first hand encounters with them and his personal observations make it all come alive. The story of shellac, emphasized in the title, is a rare find.

The book, sadly, has few illustrations, and no index.

This book might actually motivate one to take a little more time and energy to do the stuff that has to be done. Gotta get those gutters cleaned out right now!

I just finished reading and enjoyed tremendously. I felt his introspections were right on.
My husband & I have been building and remodeling a house for over twenty years. We've enjoyed ourselves and raised seven great kids.
My father told me before he died that he use to worry we would never get the house finished, but that he came to see that the planing & the doing were what made life worthwhile.
This book should be published as an audiobook.
LM

Bob Hope once said of New York City, "It's a great town, but I think I'll come back when they're finished building it." Likewise, one's home is NEVER completed. Owen demonstrates that every home is subject to gradual decay, entropy and need for repairs. Some consider this an expensive frustration. Others like Owen view it as an intelectual challenge. I'm not sure I needed to know quite so much about this history of sheetrock, but overall this is an engaging and aborbing book. Owen never mentions much about the small detail of cost, with which most of us mortals wrestle in trying to stave off the ravages of decay and home deterioration.

I have to admit that I've had a crush on Norm Abrams since I first saw him on an episode of "This Old House" years ago. My heart a-flutter, tuning in to his show, "The New Yankee Workshop," was a guilty pleasure. It wasn't too much of a surprise to my husband, therefore, to see that my summer reading included "Sheetrock & Shellac." I told him it was because I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about if I ever got the chance to meet my home improvement idol. This book did not disappoint. David Owen does a fine job of explaining some of the brass tacks of do-it-yourself projects familiar to any owner of an older home. He digresses a bit in the area of plumbing, but his approach, self-deprecating and often laugh-out-loud funny, was inspiring. Have I taken a sledgehammer to a wall yet? No, but now I think I could.

Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in home improvement. I might suggest buying a used copy or hitting up your local library instead of buying it new, though, as this is more of an informative memoir than a reference book.