Fast or Fussy

There’s a group of guys in my canyon neighborhood who designed and built their own houses, and helped in the construction of each other’s houses.  I’ve heard many canyon building stories from before I first met these guys.  Since moving here I’ve watched them build, done a little construction with them myself, and spent many happy hours in their quirky hand built houses.  Here are some thoughts about different styles of building…..

The guys (it’s all guys) in our neighborhood who have built their own houses describe their building style in one of two ways: they are either fast or fussy.

Ric and Bob are fast.  They measure once, cut with a quick blast of the power saw, get the walls up in time for dinner. 

Ron and Owen are fussy.  They measure twice, cut with caution and sometimes with a hand saw so as not to bother the neighbors.  Some parts of their houses they have fussed about so much that they’ve never been finished.

All these guys love to get together and tell stories about working on each other’s houses.   “Remember when we all went over to Bob’s and helped him finish his deck?”  “One day they just showed up and before I knew it the new shower was in and working.”  The fast builders are usually the stars of these stories.

Fast seems to be preferable to fussy, because it’s, well, fast.  You get the roof up before it rains, the framing filled in before winter, the wiring done so you can set up the TV that night.

In our culture we want things to come fast, not slow.  Immediate gratification, same day delivery.   There’s a hugely popular series of movies called “Fast and Furious.”   We like most things, including movies heroes, to be fast and furious, not slow and gentle.

But it was not a putdown by the fast ones that some of the builders in our neighborhood are called “fussy.”  No, it was the fussy ones themselves who came up with this label.  Owen and Ron are sort of proud to be fussy.  To them it means they are deliberate, thoughtful, and yes, a little indecisive sometimes, but in a sympathetic way.  (Should the bookshelf go here, or there?  How about over there?)  They care a bit more about detail, and final appearance.

Owen is the only one of the group who actually made a living as a builder.  And since he was a self-described fussy builder, he charged by the job, not the hour;  “I’m too slow to charge for the time it takes me.”  But the final job was always very good.

Ric learned how to build fast as a young laborer rewarded for speed.  Later he became a songwriter and a poet and actually made a living as a traveling troubadour of sorts, in schools and churches and conferences.  On breaks from the road, he would build onto his house.  (These guys are always adding on, it’s never done.)  He did it fast because he had to get back on the road.

But he also built fast because he had learned building while putting on plays.  He would say, “I don’t really build for the ages, I build sets.”  Some of the walls in his house were a little thin and wobbly.  His son in law, who is a contractor, a real builder, says he would sneak over to Ric’s house when he was gone and rewire the plugs, to make sure they were safe, because they had been done so fast.

That’s a problem with fast. Is it safe?  Will it last?   I’m all for getting things done, but I prefer done well, especially if I’m living there.  There may need to be some fussing, fussing over some details, to make it last. 

I looked up fussy in the dictionary.  It’s usually a negative term.  Consider these definitions:

1. Easily upset; given to bouts of ill temper: a fussy baby.

2. Paying great or excessive attention to personal tastes and appearances; fastidious: He was always fussy about clothes. 

3. Calling for or requiring great attention to sometimes trivial details: a fussy actuarial problem. 

4. Full of superfluous details: "It can indeed be fussy, filling with ornament what should be empty space."

But I don’t see fussy as always negative.  I can be a little fussy about the “right” way to do things.  And I am married to one of our canyon’s fussy builders, so I have made my peace with attention to detail and the sometimes incomplete projects. 

And while Ron can be a fussy builder (in a very sympathetic and adorable way,) he is not, as in the definitions above, especially fastidious or easily upset.  And the house I live in is not fussy at all.  No superfluous details, or trivial features. 

Perhaps he and Owen should call themselves “careful,” “deliberate,” “builders for the ages.”  But they like the term fussy.  It’s sort of a loving way of not taking yourself too seriously.

In the same way Ric is sort of self-deprecating when he says he builds sets, not houses.  His really is a fine house.  He and his wife raised four kids there.  These guys are pretty humble, none of them brag much about their houses, how amazing it is that they actually designed and built their own houses.  There aren’t a lot of people who can do that. 

Some of these guys I have been writing about have died, but their very cool houses are still there, tributes to these builders who were as unique and quirky as the houses they built.  Whether fast or fussy, they’re still standing.

Copyright © 2106 Deborah Streeter