About This Site

This is a how-I-did-it site, as opposed to a how-to site.

I consider myself to be an average home-owner.  In 1996, when I was in my late twenties, I purchased my first house in a working class neighbourhood.  Once I realized the extremely high cost of hiring professionals, and inspired by PBS home improvement shows like This Old House and  Home Time, I soon recognized the value of doing things for myself.  As I gained confidence, I tackled bigger projects and  had reasonable success.  

In the spring of 2003, my wife and I bought our "forever" house, a one and a half story home with a large family room addition.  It is out of the city and on a nice sized piece of property (over half an acre).  And, as luck would have it, this house needs a lot of work which will keep me busy for years to come.  Within a month of moving in, I had three out of four bedrooms gutted.  The house is a money-pit at this point, but despite its problems, I can see its potential. 

I am far from an expert.  I am basically self-taught in most areas of home renovating.  I have learned through trial and error, and will be the first to admit that, for me, many projects have had a steep learning curve.  I believe in doing things right the first time, and will spend a lot of time pondering the best way to do something.  Using reliable sources on the internet, books, magazines, and what I have learned from numerous home improvement shows on television, I believe my workmanship is on par with many professionals, even if my speed lags far behind.

As I look around at what I have been able to accomplish, I feel a tremendous sense of pride.  After all, I never took any shop courses beyond the introduction in the eighth grade, and I never had reason to pick up so much as a hammer until I became a homeowner.  


The purpose of this website

Home improvement television programs have an unfair advantage.  Everything is condensed into half hour or one hour  shows, so we rarely see any mistakes or  head-scratching.  The people working on the shows are all experts in their fields who have already gone beyond the learning curve, and there is usually a large crew working on the project.  This purpose of this website is to show what an average person can accomplish in spare time on weekends, usually working alone, or sometimes with one helper.  After all, most weekend handymen work in this manner.

My attitude is that if I can do it, anyone can.  


Privacy Issues

Some people may claim that I am hiding when I choose to use a pseudonym.  However, my privacy is important to me and my family.  This is a personal website, not a business website.  Divulging my real-life identity would serve no real purpose and I would like to avoid having strangers calling my home phone number or sending mail to my home address.

Brief History

ThumbandHammer went online in the summer of 2000, hosted by Freeservers.  Within a few months, I moved the site to GeoCities where it was hosted for a couple of years.  In the fall of 2002, I decided to go "dot.com" and move the site to a "real" server.  However, with the chaos of moving into another house, and being up to my eyeballs in renovations before I could blink, the new Thumbandhammer.com website was not launched until the fall of 2003.

Dedications

This site is dedicated to a number of people:

Thank you.