Better Than Plumb

100% recycled content

Wed, 30 May 2007 19:27:26 GMT

“We create information.” That’s how my mentor, John Lively, once described Fine Homebuilding’s approach to magazine making. We find experienced builders who are good at what they do and are willing to share what they’ve learned. We help them document what they know -- in words, photos, and drawings -- and we turn their knowledge into information, making it accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. It’s a noble calling, especially as it helps people earn a living or put a roof over their heads. But lately we’ve been making some magazines in a slightly different way.

In the magazine business, SIP doesn’t stand for structural insulated panel; it stands for special-interest publication. A SIP is a one-of-a-kind magazine that’s available only on the newsstand (or direct from the publisher). You can’t subscribe to it. It’s not published every month. It’s typically focused on a single theme (outdoor projects, small homes, kitchens). And it’s typically made up of what we refer to as “repurposed content.” In other words, we take old articles (sometimes we rearrange the photos), put them between new covers, along with a few ads, and sell this collection on the newsstand as “The Best of Fine Homebuilding: Small Homes That Live Large,” or “The Best of Fine Homebuilding: Kitchen & Bath Planning Guide.” You get the idea. And of course, we do it to make money.

Repackaging old articles is nothing new for us. We’ve collected articles in book form for years, organized around topics such as framing, finish carpentry, and masonry. And the fact that the articles we publish have lasting value is something I’m extremely proud of. Think about it. Most magazines are ephemeral. Perhaps not so much as newspapers (tomorrow’s “fish wrapper”), but most magazines get thrown away. Over 90% of Fine Homebuilding’s readers save their old issues and refer back to them. Collections of the magazine are even sold on eBay. Now, it’s also true that my great aunt Tina used to save old issues of TV Guide, but then she also collected ceramic owls, so I think you have to put her in a different category from Fine Homebuilding readers.

Our first SIP, called “Projects Around the House,” was aimed at more of a DIY crowd than typically reads Fine Homebuilding. We’ve always covered basic topics in the magazine (“Choosing, Using and Maintaining Paintbrushes” and “Circular-Saw Basics”), but we don’t focus on them. So we thought a collection of basic articles might be useful to the people who want to work on their houses but are intimidated by the complicated stuff we run in Fine Homebuilding. That’s what we were hoping for, at least. My worst fear was that longtime readers of Fine Homebuilding would buy the thing not realizing they already had all those articles sitting on their shelves.

After we published “Projects Around the House,” I got a letter from a woman who said she loved it and asked it we had any more of them. In my mind, she’s a mom, and in-between her struggle to raise three kids, she somehow finds time to improve her home. Maybe she was empowered by the information from Fine Homebuilding and used her sweat equity to make a killing in real estate (see, not all of my daydreams involve unhappy readers). Imagination aside, she did force me to revise slightly my opinion of SIPs.

However, the recent surge of interest in all things “green” has turned around my thinking. Given our heightened concern for the environment, I’m now convinced that SIPs are a good thing. Not only that, but I’m sure we could sell a lot more of them. All we have to do is put a sticker on the cover that says “100% Recycled Content.”

Tell me about the rabbits, Chuck

Wed, 23 May 2007 19:01:04 GMT

Yesterday, I got an envelope in the mail that was addressed to “All the wonderful staff c/o The Taunton Press.” You might wonder how it ended up on my desk if that’s all it said. Well, the truth is it didn’t come to me first. Somebody opened the envelope and saw that it was from a builder, so they sent it to Fine Homebuilding. Inside was a handwritten note from a man named Paul Sager, who describes himself as a simple man who loves to work with his hands. He was writing to say thanks, that he loves our work and wants us to keep it up. He also enclosed a newspaper clipping from the South Bend Tribune with a photo of a house he had recently remodeled and the following quote:

“It had been empty nearly 30 years. I thought, ‘This is a crime.’ It needed to be loved. I contacted the county assessor. It had belonged to an elderly man who had died. When I finally got an answer at the son’s house, his wife said, ‘Oh, we’d love to sell it.’ We looked at it. Everything was straight. We took it in its ‘as-is’ condition. The bathrooms and kitchen had been gutted; there was no running water. The yard was all overgrown. We moved in with our suitcases and our tools. In the mornings, I’d go out in my pj’s and get water from the neighbor’s garden hose to make coffee…For us, it’s been a labor of love, with a dash of insanity.”

In the shorthand that has evolved between Chuck Miller and me after working together for 20 years, a letter like this one is called a “rabbit.” It’s a reference to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, a story about two migrant workers in the 1930s, Lenny and George, drifting from job to job among the cattle ranches of central California. Whenever Lenny wanted to be cheered up, he would implore his friend George to tell him about the rabbits. And George would describe in careful detail the house they would one day buy when they got the “jack together,” with a couple of acres, a cow, some pigs, a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch. For Lenny, the rabbits came to represent the dream that he and George were working toward. They were the reason for all their hard work, the reason to go on.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have the best job in the world. I work with great people, making a magazine that I’m proud of and that’s much appreciated by its readers. I get to work with the best builders in the country, and I even get to visit the houses they build and can snoop in the closets. But some days I get discouraged.

The deadlines are relentless. (After I’d been working here for six months, my boss at the time called me into his office and said, “Kevin, it’s not like boot camp, you know. It’s not over in 13 weeks.”) This place, for whatever reasons, also seems to attract mildly insecure perfectionists (I might be projecting now), and many of us work under the assumption that nothing we do will ever be good enough. (My staff will argue that only I work under that assumption and that it would never occur to them if I didn’t walk into their offices and announce as much in a loud voice.) Also, it’s an editor’s job to improve things, and doing so requires you to focus on what’s wrong. Do that for 20 years, and occasionally, you lose your perspective. When that happens, I drift into Chuck’s office and ask him to tell me about the rabbits.

Postscript:

Paul Sager’s letter was the first thing I saw when I got to my office yesterday -- that’s how my day started. Here’s how my day ended. I opened the following email:

“As a subscriber to FHB for 15 years, and for nearly as long to FWW, I am very disappointed that Taunton has chosen to charge for an online membership in addition to the magazine subscription. In fact, my experience with your company is that it has become progressively more hard-nosed about charges, billing, etc. over time. I find this a disturbing trend and doubt that I am alone. I think that Taunton Press would do well to reconsider some of its existing policies that border on gouging the customer. I can tell you as a consultant that if I started to charge my customers for electronic copies of documents which they have paid for in hard copy, there would be a quick rush out the door to my competitors who are less mercenary. Perhaps you should be a little more respectful of long-term customers and a little less concerned about the proverbial bottom line.”

Well, actually my day didn’t end there. I sat down to write a response, which I try to do for all such correspondence. I got about halfway through, mindful that this guy has been helping to pay my salary for 15 years, then decided I might have an easier time responding in the morning. So I shut down my computer, grabbed my briefcase, and just before heading out to my truck, I drifted into Chuck’s office.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if ...

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:54:36 GMT

Larry Haun knows I’ve got a stressful job -- that I worry about people and about the magazine -- so he checks up on me from time to time. He sent an email the other day and asked how I was doing. I wrote back that I was fine and that I’d thought about him recently when I found myself using a block plane to fine-tune a 2x4 while framing some new walls at my house.

Having started in the trade over 50 years ago, framing tract houses in southern California, Larry is the most efficient carpenter I know. At age 76, he still sets and drives 16d sinkers with two licks. He crosscuts 2x4s without drawing a line to follow, and cuts more squarely by eye than I can with a line. I knew he would never use a block plane on a framing job. (In my defense, I live in a 200-year-old house where nothing is plumb, level, or square.)

Larry wrote back that he had once seen a man get down on his knees and use a hand brush to sweep away any dust that had accumulated on the bottom plate before installing insulation. “I was pretty impressed by that as you can imagine,” Larry wrote. (Did I mention that Larry is also very polite?). Then he said he had never seen anyone fine-tune a stud with a block plane, but was inclined to put that in the same category as sweeping out stud cavities before insulating.

The whole exchange got me to thinking about the fastidious (some would say anal-retentive) nature of Fine Homebuilding readers. We can’t hold a candle to readers of Fine Woodworking, of course, but in the more pragmatic world of home construction, we tend to stand out. So, with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I offer the following list and invite you to add to it.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if…you’ve ever used a block plane while framing.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if…you’ve ever swept out a stud cavity before insulating it.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if…you cut drywall so carefully that it never fits on the first try.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if…employees at Home Depot ask you where to find things.

You might be a Fine Homebuilding reader if…you’ve ever spent your vacation working on your house.

P.S.: Please don’t think I’m suggesting that Larry Haun, because he’s not overly fussy, is therefore not a true Fine Homebuilding reader. Not at all. For those of us who build because we love to, there are two goals (especially if you’re a professional, but even if you’re an amateur who doesn’t want to keep washing dishes in the bathtub): to do quality work and to do it quickly. Larry does both. He knows the most efficient way to perform any task and is fussy only when he needs to be. Larry is the Zen master of Fine Homebuilding readers.