What I’m doing
The intention of this blog is to chronicle my journey as I try to make a big life change.
I’m a designer. For the last 5 or so years I’ve been working primarily as a web designer. I design and build websites. I say build, but I mean code. Building is taking something with your hands and shaping it, bending it, joining it, breaking it, and assembling it in new and better ways. Coding is sitting on my ass in front of the computer trying to fix the same typo I just made for the hundredth time.
I’m not knocking design or coding. I love them both. I get tremendous pleasure out of seeing good design and I immensely enjoy coding something that I designed from scratch. But I have always been trapped inside this little virtual world where everything I create is on computer screen and where the most exercise I get getting up to go to the bathroom.
But now, I’m going to try to make a change. For a long time I’ve thought of things I could do other than this and now an amazing opportunity has come up and I’m going to take a huge risk and give it a shot. My friend R, an IT/Tech guy and I are going to try to get into the business of buying, renovating, and reselling apartments in Israel.
The kicker is that we are not going to hire out the renovations to a contractor. We intend to try to do the work ourselves.
It may sound a bit crazy, but we’re both very handy guys and he has some serious experience knocking shit down and putting it back together again. Me, I’ve always been into DIY and home improvement. My Dad had a time-life home improvement book from the 70’s that I must have read a thousand times when I was a kid. I fix stuff around the house, I’ve painted, I’ve installed and wired electrical fixtures. I’ve fixed plumbing problems, put together about $2000 worth of Ikea furniture for our new rental, and had the best time doing it. I’m the kind of guy that you show me how to do something once and I can do it.
R and I figure that the money we save on not hiring out to a contractor more only adds to our profit margin and, more than that, gives us the chance to do what we’ve always dreamed of doing. Working with our hands on something that can make money.
I intend to try to keep this blog updated with what we’re doing every step of the way. Wish us luck.