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Hello. I well remember the awfully simple request that began the whole business.

Darling, could you have a look at the dining room door?

It's it's sticking.

Well until then I'd never been asked to display any home building skills but this

sounded like an easy way to show some proficiency I mean quite clearly the door

was sticking because it was too close to the floor so the solution was obvious file away a millimeter was did not seem privy to my logic because no matter how much wood I filed away it's still stuck.

Batly hung.

Badly hung, said a neighbor who found me sitting among a pyramid of wood chippings.

You need to take up the door and realign the hinges. And from then on, it was

downhill. The screws wouldn't come out of the hinges unless the door was held up, and so I had to raise it with one hand

while holding the screwdriver in the other hand, and then I had to raise it with one hand while holding the screw-driver in the other hand

and then I found I couldn't manage the weight and I had to let the door fall into the hallway where

it shattered a whole section of the newly installed Teak effect flooring. Is that you finished? She shouted from the kitchen.

Well it was an experience that prompted just one emotion as I read a new research paper

about people who decide to deal with the current housing

crisis by building their own house. The emotion sheer unqualified admiration, I

mean a whole house for God's sake. Well that E-S-R-C paper is called

the Social in Self-Build and its author is Mickler Benson who is senior lecturer

in sociology at Goldsmiths University of London and Michael now joins me.

You point out that it's relatively unusual, I didn't know this in this country to build our own

...