Featured Story: Don't Drink and Drywall

Photo from Mindy at Fixer Upper. Title courtesy of Erwin House.

Mindy and Teague from Fixer Upper decide to drink and drywall dress up for Halloween in honor of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that ended up creating lots of reactions among members of Houseblogs.net.

Long story short:

A reporter with a very specific story already in mind interviewed a number of housebloggers while seeking real life experiences to back up her idea. Failing to find a huge number of housebloggers who drink AND demo (or drywall or paint or anything involving power tools), she wrote a story that had a negative slant and quotes housebloggers who have never mixed drinking and home improvement. (To be fair, there were a couple of non-housebloggers quoted who had mixed drinking and DIY.) Although her quotes are very carefully put into a context that makes them technically true, the title and overall tone of the article gives the impression that there are scores of DIY'ers in the world running amok with a hammer in one hand and a Harvey Wallbanger in the other.

Needless to say, this didn't go over well in a home improvement community that takes DIY pretty seriously. You can read through a summary of blog entries with their reactions here.

Instead of stories of Tom Collins' and table saws, we like to offer you several stories of how many hands are making light work in home improvement these days. This is nothing new--neighbors have been helping neighbors in and around the home for generations. But, in light of how we constantly hear how people in Western society are becoming more isolated and removed from their communities (Bowling Alone, anyone?), it's refreshing to hear from the front lines that helping others is not an antiquated pastime.

Click below for a list of some of the best blog entries about 'many hands' make light work contributed by our member housebloggers.

And, if you are signed in to Houseblogs.net, you can bookmark entries to use later for inspiration or put a certain houseblogger on your favorites list so you can build a personalized Houseblogs.net blog feed!