Who Am I to Give DIY and Home Improvement Help?

DIY who am I - "Those were the days"

DIY who am I - Still carrying a pencil behind my ear

Well, in a nutshell, I have been doing DIY, home improvement, renovation, extensions and building houses since I was 16 years old. I am now 65 years old.   So yes, I think I could provide a bit of help for newcomers to the game.  (That is if I can remember anything!     Hang on....... I've lost my mouse. :-)

My name is Bill Bradley and I live in Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory of Australia.

I was born and raised in Northern England and emigrated to Australia as a "ten quid tourist" when I was twenty three.

I served my time (5 years) as a bound apprentice to a small building company, that did one off houses and had it's own joinery shop. I duly received my "City and Guilds of London Institutes" certificates in the trade of Carpentry and Joinery. I picked up a couple of other building construction qualifications after I was out of my apprenticeship. 

In England when I came out of my time, I worked as a journeyman carpenter for a timber engineering company, (large laminated roof trusses) and on concrete formwork.
A spell sub-contract roofing gave me spare cash for my trip to Australia.
Timber frame cottage work (houses) in NSW, high rise in Brisbane, houses again in Darwin where I got married and settled down.
By then I had to stop working for experience and start working for money. With a couple of partners we built our first house in 1968. Contract price $9,000. (It's still there, and worth half a million now :-)

My wife and I formed our own building company in 1974 and were members of the NT Master Builder's Association - Territory Construction Association for 20 years. In the early 80's (the recession we had to have) after years of doing government contracts for concrete work and civil work, we went back to house building, renovations and extensions.

I bought one of the first Mac computers, and by 1982 I had my first CAD drawing approved for construction.
I have probably averaged about three drawings a year since then, Most of them have been design and build, mainly houses and house extensions, with a couple of unit blocks (apartments) along the way.

As you can see most of my experience has been in the top end of Australia, we survived Cyclone Tracy in '74 and were involved in the huge rebuilding effort and the incredible changes in engineering standards and construction methods.

Obviously some of the examples I give here may not be quite how you do it in your neck of the woods, but I hope you will be able to get some value out of my  ramblings.  

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How I Built This Site

You may be wondering how an old guy like me who has built plenty houses, but knew nothing about web site building has got this thing up and running.  Well I'll tell you.  I use Site Build It.  They take care of all the technical stuff, and that leaves me to get on with what I like best.  Talking about building and DIY and roofs, etc.  

If you have read a few of my pages already, I hope that you have got the feeling that I am a real person who enjoys talking about his subject.  When I first did a private little website, I got absolutely no hits.  I asked myself what's the point of putting it all down if nobody knows I'm here.  

That's when I decided to get help and signed up for  Site Build It.  I have never regretted it.  The absolute thrill of all the little milestones passed.  The first few visitors, being picked up by all the major search engines, encouraging emails etc.

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Unless stated otherwise, everything on this site is my own work.  The photographs, the text and the drawings.

It is free for ordinary people to copy and use.  If anyone would like to use some of my content on their own website, go for it, but do me the courtesy of citing me as the original author.  or better still, give me a link.

The copyright notice is to tell people that if they steal my content and pass it off as their own work, or use it on a commercial site without contacting me first, I see that as being wrong and I will take steps to stop them !