Presumably this is covered in the book, but for those Dopers who don’t have the book…?
(I tried Googling, but nothing came up apart from an Amazon review of the book)
The first rule of the Brotherhood of the Right Way is there’s no Brotherhood of the Right Way.
The Brotherhood of the Right Way is a theme that runs throughout the book. It consists of all the people whose devotion to getting things done right (in my case, getting my old house fixed up properly) exceeds any possible economic justification. The brotherhood isn’t a formal organization, but its members readily recognize one another; discovering how extensive the brotherhood is was one of the great joys of working on the house. I’m hoping the notion will resonate with readers of the book - we’ll see.
Interesting. I wondered about that too, but after your explanation, I have to ask: Are/were you influenced by the “Make It Right” theme that Mike Holmes presents? That was the title of one of his books too; see here. Anyway, an interesting concept–thanks for the answer.
I hadn’t heard of Mike Holmes till just now, but now that I’ve read about him I have to say he sounds like a member of the brotherhood. That’s the thing - there honest to God is a brotherhood; it’s not just some goofy conceit I invented.
Catch an episode of “Holmes on Homes” if you can (the website says it’s on TLC in the US). Oh, yeah. Mike does things right. And he’s often not shy in expressing his feelings on the topic of contractors who do it wrong.
This is very interesting. It sounds a lot like my husband. He loves the Holmes on Holmes show too. We are slowly renovating our house (not so old though, only 1955) and he is spending a lot of time re-doing what the previous owner did so that it is done correctly.
You are right that you can tell the ones who are in the Brotherhood. I have never heard it called that before but I know exactly what you are talking about.
Oh boy, blushes. We’re members of the Brotherhood, and didn’t even realize it (we’re both engineers, so it goes with the territory). We GCed our whole-house remodel and have been utter pains in the butt with every contractor we’ve hired since. On the good side, a lot of them are members of the Brotherhood as well.
The motto of the Brotherhood of the Right Way is that there is no Brotherhood of the right way.? I thought that was the motto of the Situationists.
Been there. I suspect our guys didn’t make too much money when all was said and done, but they loved working on the house.
We love Mike, too. The only problem Jim has with him is his neglect of safety standards. As a residential contractor goes, he’s not bad, but he is not playing by the safety rulebook all the time like he’s supposed to.
It turns out Jim and I are also members of the brotherhood - if I’m going to bother doing a home repair, I’m not going to half-ass it. That’s why we won’t buy a modern house, either - way too much half-assing goes into the construction of them (half-assed? more like quarter- or eighth-assed most of the time). We’re fixing up to flip and make a profit, so we don’t always use the most expensive solution, but all of our repairs are solid. The house will be in much better shape when we leave it than when we bought it.
There’s a disclaimer on the show down here (which I don’t recall seeing on Canadian TV) about how some of the safety guards have been removed and that sorta thing, for the purposes of TV.
My dad’s a member of this brotherhood. Carpenter for 30+ years, now doing finishing work and fine work in his ‘dotage’. He and Mom have rehabbed (counts) 4 houses, quite often undoing shoddy and/or unsafe work.
I’m talking about things like guys working over their heads with their safety glasses on their ball caps, people working down in a deep trench without proper confined space protocols, that kind of thing. It’s entirely possible they just take a shot of the guys pulling down stuff from overhead without their glasses on for the show, but it looks a whole lot more like Mike and crew have the usual residential contractor disregard for safety rules. A guy can get a lot of shit in his eyeball in the time it takes to do a shot for tv, and everyone on that set is covered under Worker Compensation rules, which aren’t suspended for a tv shoot, as far as I know. I can just see Mike and co. explaining to Ontario’s WCB board that the guy who died in the trench cave-in was just doing a shot, and it doesn’t count.
Sorry, Ginger - don’t want you to think I’m aiming my anger at you. Just at all the construction people in Canada who are keeping the injury and death stats nice and high.
So, having put a faucet in my back bathroom that cost more than the toilet and all the plumbing inside and adds precisely nothing to the overall value of the house but looks absolutely gorgeous in there, goes with everything and made my wife very, very happy, can I now apply for this Brotherhood?
Does it help knowing that I wrapped a wet cloth around the bottom of the pipes before I sweated them, kept a fire extinguisher and an observer handy, used a full wall cleat for the counter (which was also attached to the wall and the cabinet, which was also attached to the wall) and both liquid nails and the brackets provided for the 4’ x 5’ mirror on the wall (ok the brackets were really used for decoration, the liquid nails would have held just fine)?
You don’t apply. At a certain point you know you belong. But from where I sit it sounds like you have the instinct.
You won’t find this anywhere but in Ed’s book. Essentially it describes the small cadre of people who do a job the correct way, without shortcuts and without compromise. It includes people who pay attention to detail and people that understand the intricacies of their work (which is a rare animal when you are talking about contractors).
For those of you who consider yourselves members of the BotRW, what do you make of the guys on This Old House- hacks? exemplary professionals? As something of a self-taught renovator I’ve always tried to emulate their methods because it seems that they don’t cut corners and operate pretty safely, but I’m curious what others think.