Secondhand and solid*

We spend my husband’s 58^th birthday on our oldest and her partner’s property, doing what we can to help them as they build the shed that will be their home for a few years while they save enough to start work on their house.

They do things the old-fashioned way: with lots of hard yakka. Anything that they can get second-hand, they do. The outside walls of the shed are built of corrugated iron, but it’s recycled corry that is every colour of the rainbow. (A few years ago, a photographer Sharon Jones had an exhibition that consisted solely of photos of ageing ripple iron. It was a revelation. So much of it was barely recongisable and looked more like lichen or the bark of gum trees.)

Every window in their shed has been rescued from salvage yards. The main posts supporting the deep front verandah are not pre-loved, but they were self-milled from the bush.

It’s a labour-intensive way to build, and one of the reasons for doing it is economic – they can’t afford to buy new material or to pay tradies to do all but the most complicated work, like installing the electricals. But even if they had all the money in the world, my guess is they would still be doing things this way – slowly acquiring materials on e-bay, working over weekends and holidays to create what will be their home.

It’s not for everybody, and I’m glad it’s not me. I don’t have the patience, or the physical strength and skills. But it does take me back to renovating our own house, 15 years ago. Completely different ours: an old weatherboard in the burbs, but like them, we did everything we could ourselves. It was so hard, it took so long, but once it was done, we had a sense of kinship to the place I suspect would have been missing if we had simply paid money to get it done.

At some point in our lives, we all need to see a job happening from the ground up, because it makes us more attentive, aware, grateful and glad. Once you’ve seen the unbelievable amount of work that goes into building a house, you will never be thoughtless about shelter again. Okay, so professionals might have built your home, but you will know a little of what goes into the erection of every beam, the sanding of every floor, the smoothing down of every join in the plasterboard, the exactitude required to make a frame for every window. You won’t forget that every tap we turn on, unthinking, requires piping and installing; every switch we blithely flick has wires running secretly through the frames behind the plaster and the paint.

Kids who think milk comes out of cartons and meat out of plastic packets are the most extreme example of the phenomenon – in previous ages only experienced by the very rich – that means modern city dwellers can be so removed from reality they have no idea where things come from or what goes into the making of everything from a litre of milk to a jumper to a cake to a shed.

I sit in the sun, bending the edge of a piece of corrugated iron over with pliers, so that it can be the right angle to be nailed on the edge of the roof. It takes a long time. Tess and Will’s dads are jackhammering a trench to pour the concrete footings for a stand where their main water tank will sit. Will is nailing corry on the wall of the shed. Tess is washing the concrete floor so we can put another coat of sealant on. By evening we will all be weary and in need of both a good feed and a good wash under the shower tree near their camp.

As I say, I couldn’t do this week after week, not any more, maybe not ever. But at day’s end, Al and I have the satisfaction, rare for pen pushers, of seeing a physical result for our work. And I’ve been reminded how much work goes into anything worthwhile. Anything that lasts.

* Thank you to Ian Stapleton for this title, which is the title of one of his books, 'Secondhand and solid'.