I put an add on FPF when the last storm knocked some shingles off my roof. I got 5 responses and several said they do general carpentry. I was pleasantly surprised

They've actually recovered a ton. Take a look at lumber prices for instance https://www.macrotrends.net/2637/lumber-prices-historical-chart-data

Below pre pandemic

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We are entering into a period of history where you either need to be able to do things yourself or be fabulously wealthy if you want to own a house or have things fixed. Problem is of course that building even a small house is a massive undertaking beyond the ability and time budget of most people. I built a Tiny House and, though I would probably be able to do it faster a second time, has taken me years to do by myself.

This Thursday and Friday it looks like we are getting 5-8 but that will probably be higher or lower

Vermont is unaffordable to most who live and work there. I couldn't find any apartments in Rutland when I wanted to move out of my grandmothers and when I did it was a shared apt and it would be like 800$ a month. At the time the only work I could find was at Hannafords and it was like 11.25 am hour and 18 hours a week.

Onyx ink in Burlington, they specialize in doing flowers. Wife gets hers done there they are legit.

It doesn’t so the answer is where do you want to live? Rutland’s cool but also kinda gross, but lots of awesome people but also some shitty ones. It’s what you make of it. I like it all my stuff is here and we have great water

I happen to be a carpenter so I'm in a somewhat unique situation, but I have found that I am able to build my own house for a fraction of the cost of buying something. I have had to do literally everything myself, which is a lot of work, but it has saved me tens of thousands. I am building my house on a slab that I poured with my friends in my town, and using rough sawn lumber and traditional methods to keep costs low and increase strength/durability of the house. Using trusted practices/materials like rough sawn boards, nails, tar paper, tin roofing, cheap insulation, rustic flooring, wood stove for heat; all these things will save you tons of money in the end and honestly create a very cozy home.

Building only becomes cost effective when there's any sort of scale. The time and monetary costs of obtaining the permits necessary to build one home, on top of land and materials, is going to be quite high. It makes more sense to simply allow developers to easily construct new homes of all types, add ADUs by right, repurpose abandoned buildings, etc.

It's not all readily available either. Lead times for some stuff is still 2 years.

Yup. Why would an entry carpenter work for $20 an hour when they can get that same amount somewhere else less dangerous and less wear on the body?

There is much more to materials than the wood.

Lumber has gotten back down to a reasonable price, but everything else is more expensive. Drywall, insulation, fixtures, flooring and paint are all 25-50% more than they were in 2019. That's at the regular prices. Worst of all, Lowe's has gotten a lot stingier with their clearance prices. I remodel houses for a living, and my overall material costs have gone up by well over 50%.

Hi builder here.

The idea that it can only be done in 2-5 years is ludicrous. Sure there's a queue but most projects are slow burns and many homeowners aren't ready to pull the trigger for whatever reason. If you've got the cash and the plans and the land and you're ready to go well have a foundation in the ground as soon as it thaws and depending on the size, you'd be in it within the year.

I know for a fact if you kept it small and simple you'd be out the door for less than 300k. Lumber isn't cheap but it's not the expensive stuff either. The expensive stuff is the windows and the cabinets and the countertops and the appliances and heating/cooling, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and all the other things that go into a new home. Plus you've got to pay someone ($60/hr) to put all those things together the right way. A simple uninsulated barn shouldn't cost much more than $125/ft².

Obviously if you're trying to save a buck you can look for deals & help from friends & family with the labor.

Moral of the story: it can be done. But at what cost or with what sacrifice?

There's a saying that somewhat applies here: There's three things everyone wants: cheap, fast, & good. You only get two.

Trying to see where this differs from other hospitals in the state…

You would be surprised how efficient it is to use the backup generator to fill batteries only when necessary. Takes less than an hour to top off a power wall from near empty and burns maybe 2 gallons of propane in the process. And it doesn't have to happen all that often.

https://ruggedridgeforest.com/. These guys are the best!

I’ve been quoted six figures plus by two contractors for a bathroom remodel that involves expanding both our current bathroom and an existing closet into a small office.

Those may have been go away we are busy quotes, but I can’t imagine building a home would be cheap.

I bought my current house ("in the Waterbury area") last year and sold my old house (closer to the NEK) this year (well, 2022). I would absolutely send postcards and even knock on doors and ask people if they'd consider selling.

I think the normal market is fucked. When we sold our old house, we had four bids over our asking price and we never put it on the market (it never hit the MLS). Instead, we had been getting it ready to sell for a year, so everyone in town knew we were selling, and people just started reaching out. By the time we were done fixing it up, we had offers already, so we skipped the whole realtor/MLS thing.

Same when we bought our current house. A friend/colleague of mine mentioned that she was moving and I asked if we could see her house before she listed it. We made an offer, she accepted, and it never hit the market either.

Lots of places are selling that are never showing up on Zillow/MLS and not even showing up on realtor's radars. If you don't participate in the "off-MLS" real estate scene, you're missing a significant portion of the stuff that's out there.

It's cool, we just actually had a decent conversation here, as opposed to the usual political shit storm every post turns into in a post 2015 world.

Materials are still high and not many home builders have workers. A friend looked into putting a 16'x20' addition on in late summer and lowest quote was $95k.

Septic costs a lot.

yeah but overall all older generations were shitting on the trades and non-white collar work for years, I'm 37 and through my entire life from childhood until probably a decade ago I was hearing everyone older than me constantly say how blue collar work was for losers. How if you wanted to get anywhere in life you had to goto college, that if you didn't, you'd be stuck being a plumber or laborer, or work fast food, people were shitting on garbage men even. It wasn't even just people, it was movies, tv shows, music, books, just about every bit of media from the last 50 years was mocking and deriding blue collar work.

It's only in the last decade that it's been turning around, but I still hear this mentality from people, usually the privileged rich douche types, but still sometimes from older people. But regardless, the damage is done, hardly anyone in my age or younger is getting into the trades because the stigma is already entrenched that it's deadend work even though right now it pays better than many white collar jobs.

Been a long day, sorry for the snark