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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

I kept trying to pick a thing in that article to call out as a warning here but the hits. Just. Kept. Coming.

Instead I will just recommend two things to anyone dreaming of buying a house. Start watching This Old House, [especially] the back catalog. Almost everything that can go wrong on a house has gone wrong there. And remember this while watching it:

Intelligent people learn from their own mistakes, while wise people learn from the mistakes of others.

The “cat litter” crack about bentonite clay: bentonite is nearly the only way people discuss for building an artificial pond if you don’t want to use a synthetic liner. But you don’t get a pond by sealing half of the hole you dug (and it takes a lot of clay). The water just runs out somewhere else. Or in this case, in.

Edit: Old TOH > New TOH

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Also a warning to people watching "This Old House":

The seasoned, professional, competent tradespeople you see on every episode are a nonexistent myth in most areas of the country. Many of the projects they accomplish with relative ease are not practical to the more junior tradespeople you will be able to find, and they will be fantastically expensive if you find the veterans you see on the show.

I think the trick is that just like in most jobs, the people need to not work in isolation and have a support network.

We had major water damage a few years back in our brand new house, and we hired a reputable local small contractor to fix it. Most of the work was done by his sons, who were in their late 20's to early 30's, but he was on site to discuss the work done beforehand, and numerous times during the work to direct. You can bet if any of them had a problem or question, they would work with each other and their father to come to a good solution combining their experience. They did very high quality work.

I would rather have a worker of below average experience with an expert to manage and provide direction to them than an average level worker in field that doesn't rely disproportionately on skill of an individual.

I think you're saying, "But they're not a good example of the things that can go right," and I'd have to agree. As a cautionary tale memories of that show delayed me buying my first house by almost five years. And I should have vetoed some things my partner was okay with that bit us even though I knew better.

I recall thinking for instance how unrealistic it was how often they knew a guy who knew a guy who could get them a nice reclaimed piece to greatly reduce the money:quality ratio for a bathroom, a staircase, a fireplace or a gable. From a standpoint of normalizing recycling and reclamation, thumbs way up. But nobody is that lucky when the cameras are off. I'm sure extra favors were returned off-camera (in addition to the brief infomercial)

TOH is one of the better shows in this respect. While they don't flaunt the costs of renovations, which often exceed a half million dollars, they do make a serious effort to show the experience and professionalism that the tradesman have. The hosts are always interviewing tradesman to ask what, why, and how they are doing something, and offering questions that you should ask any potential contractor.

With most other renovation shows, the tradesman are just magic fairies that don't do much more than assist the host, who it seems is single-handedly doing the work.

> Start watching This Old House,

I feel like I must be missing something about this show, because any time in my entire life that I have watched it, it seems to be just small spots of them using some expensive tool to fix some obscure problem.

It never felt deep or cohesive to me. Just random walk throughs of houses that I assume have to be owned by wealthy people to afford all the work being done.

I recently learned that I actually really enjoy The Woodwrights Shop, so maybe it's a similar thing of me just not being old enough to appreciate what they're doing?

There is going to be some of that as part of what they do is demonstrating new technologies and techniques for old problems.

The scale of the renovations has definitely grown exponentially over the years, so it might be worth revisiting some of the earlier seasons where their projects were more modest. I remember some of them struggling more with budget then the more recent projects seem to.

I don't know what they've been dealing with the last few years, but it used to be practically a cliche that they'd discover the foundation was cracked or the corner of the house was solid wood rot, and the estimate for the renovation would increase by 50% overnight.

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