Slashdot Mirror
Successful Moonlighting For Geeks?
Lawksamussy writes "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up. I have a great job in software development that pays the bills, but I'm looking to earn some extra cash in my spare time. Whatever I end up doing has to be reasonably lucrative (or at least have the potential to be so), not require any specific time commitment, and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room. I'm also keen that it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up, so the most obvious things like bidding for programming projects on Rentacoder.com, or fixing up neighbors' PCs, aren't really on. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek, otherwise my low boredom threshold will doom it to failure before I even start! So, I wonder if any of my fellow Slashdotters run little part-time ventures that they find more of an inspiration than a chore... and if they are willing to share what they do and perhaps even how much money they make doing it?"
They all seem to be selling the get rich quick without spending any time and from any where you want using the Internet plans.
The secret however is not to buy them, its to sell them.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I have to second this. Hire out the big jobs -- anything foundation-related/structural especially -- but otherwise learn to do it yourself. Yes, it will take longer but there is really a sense of accomplishment at the end. Presumably you bought the house because it either really appealed to you; you saw it as a great investment or whatever. If you feel strongly enough about it, you'll learn to do the job right. FWIW - I've owned seven -- and lived in five -- houses so far. Most have been fixer-uppers and I've enjoyed making each of them better than before. WARNING -- it can get addictive.
As a former reno-carpenter, I'd have to suggest doing it yourself too. You're not going to make enough money moonlighting to pay for the kind of work that needs doing in anything like equal hours.
That said... I don't know you, & thus how well you'll learn what needs to be done. You could take to this like a duck to water and have an excellent balance for your keyboard day job. And you could have a relationship-breaking disaster.
And this just gives me chills: "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down".
You have no idea how big the hole is you're looking at. A moderately old house that seems pretty good to the amateur can be an enormous money pit. Gear up your humour and character, because you've bought yourself a gelatinous cube. (And I /do/ love the old houses. There's been a lot of hard lessons on the way to being the sort of guy who'll tell you to just knock it down and start over. But it's your adventure -- just realize it is an adventure, and it's going to be for the next several years. Good luck.)
Yeah, that about sums it up.
I kept hearing my dad's voice in my head while reading this:
"That's why it's called 'work', son."
I'll be flamed for this, but: I think it's better to just do it yourself.
I've owned two houses, both of them ancient. The first, which was small, appeared to be done; new flooring throughout, new paint inside, good siding outside, all new plumbing, new exterior doors, some new windows, mostly new wiring... Everything looked good. So we bought it and moved in.
The drain for the kitchen sink ran uphill. The water heater (complete with recent inspection sticker) was plumbed backward. There was no attempt at plumbing venting. The office had 3-prong outlets, which lead to 2-conductor wire. The living room also had 3-prong outlets, which did appear to be actually grounded, but which were miswired somewhere, such that 60-cycle hum would emanate from the stereo -unless- the clothes drier was running, which I still haven't figured out. The new vinyl windows in the kitchen were overstuffed with insulation, such that the frame bowed to such an extent that it was nearly impossible to fully close and latch the things.
This was all done, supposedly, by professionals.
The second house is a bit different. About the same price, about the same age, the same quality of neighborhood, much larger (used to be a triplex), and totally trashed inside. Scary wiring, bad plumbing (every single pipe leaked, every single one), no heat upstairs, tired floor coverings, lousy exterior doors, etc. So we bought it, and began work. Once we had a functional bathroom and shower, we moved in.
It's been an adventure, but at least I have an opportunity to do everything right the first time, instead of finding and fixing a million things that were done wrong. Including, of course, wiring, basement stairs, plumbing, flooring, kitchen cabinets, plaster where needed, drywall where practical...
Plumbing is easy. I ripped out all of the old copper, galvanized, and black iron drain pipe, since it was all shit. Running new pressure lines is bloody easy these days thanks to the virtue of snap-on PEX fittings and manifolds with individual outlets for each room or fixture -- it's pretty hard to fuck up a line to a sink if it only has two connections. The drain lines are also pretty easy to figure out (shit goes downhill). Venting is harder to get right, but still not bad.
Electrical wiring is easy. Drill up from below, or down from above, into the stud cavity. Pull the romex in. Black wire to the little side of the outlet, white to the big, and copper to the ground screw. Give the fridge and the sump pump their own circuits, so that something else in the house failing short and blowing a breaker doesn't result in a freezer full of spoiled food or a flood. Permanent lighting gets its own circuits, so that tripping a breaker doesn't result in darkness. Don't daisy-chain too many outlets, don't send too many wires into a single junction box, and always use a GFCI wherever there might ever be water, always ground metal boxes... So on, so forth. It's easy to overbuild with lots of independent circuits, and so one might as well do so.
Even cutting in a 36" (up from 30") front door was easy.
And real, honest-to-God 3/4"-thick solid oak flooring is both cheap to buy and easy (even fun) to install and finish, and truly wonderful when done.
I've run ductwork professionally in the past, which is about the most braindead task in the world even with correct size reductions and consideration for laminar flow, and will probably tackle installing a high-efficiency gas furnace upstairs in the next month or two (before it gets really cold out).
There's no way I'd have been able to hire someone else to do all of this work. And, given the quality of the "improvements" at the last last house, there's still no way I'd have hired any of it done even if I could afford to.
Now, I didn't go about any of this lightly. I spent a long time studying plumbing before I even considered doing it myself, but it's not at all rocket science. I also spent some time brushing up on the NEC bef
Kid-proof tablet..