Build Your Own

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On a sunny Sunday afternoon, Warren W. Webb, president of The Computation Co. of San Diego, Calif., is wearing a leather tool belt and poking his finger in a form of wet concrete. Webb's firm makes electronic test equipment for the U.S. Navy and sophisticated instruments for ophthalmologists. But this weekend he is in Berkeley, Calif., learning the fine points of form-making, placing, and finishing concrete.

Webb is one of 10 students in a concrete workshop offered by the Owner Builder Center, a nonprofit educational corporation that teaches the do-it-yourself skills that enable people to do major home repairs, remodel, add rooms, and even build their own houses. Webb plans to build a house over the next 18 months.

"It's a good hobby," Webb says of the crafts that he's learning. "I'll be doing it for fun, primarily. But the economics involved just add to the fun." Webb calculates that he can build a much larger house if he does most of the work himself. The experience of a couple who took courses at the Owner Builder Center appears to confirm Webb's calculation: They constructed a one-story, 2,400-square-foot house for $60,000 -- perhaps half what the job would have cost if it had been done by contractors.

Most of OBC's students, says Blair Abee, the center's vice-president and chief financial officer, aren't planning to build their own houses. They just want to be able to do home repairs, finish an attic or a basement, or do some alterations. The high costs of home building and the tight money market have increased the popularity of the courses, he says. "When the bottom fell out of the housing market," Abee adds, "this became one of the few alternatives."

Last fall, OBC's courses included room additions, cabinetmaking, kitchen design, solar hot water, plumbing and electrical work, foundations and framing, and exterior skins and decks. Costs range from $65 for four two-hour sessions to $125 for six three-hour sessions. The center also holds a summer training school with two- and three-week programs that cover every step of house building; students work on an actual construction project. The cost for the three-week session, including room and board, is $980, or $1,660 per couple.

Training of the sort provided by OBC is also available at many lumberyards and home supply stores around the country. And OBC's own teaching techniques and organizational plans have been made available to other groups that provide similar courses. There are homebuilding courses at centers in Minneapolis., Phoenix; Anchorage; Seattle; Warren, Vt.; Cambridge, Mass.; Pontiac, Mich.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Boulder, Colo.; and Hanford, San Luis Obispo, and Laguna Beach, Calif. For more information, call OBC at (800) 547-5995, ext. 250, or (415) 848-5950.