Building a home is truly an organic process. By “building” I am not speaking of paying some one or some company to put up a house for you, I am speaking of constructing a house, a home from the ground up to the rafters and beyond with your own two hands.

Being an organic process, house building is by extension, if not definition, messy. It’s messy in terms in terms of the mud and materials, the dust and the destruction so necessary a part of construction. It is messy because of the muck that comes from creating a home out of a dizzying whirl of creative, financial, and family dynamics. It’s messy because to truly build one’s own home piece by piece means getting one’s hands dirty.

Thomas Glynn’s book “Hammer. Nail. Wood: The Compulsion to Build“ is not really it about the “nuts and bolts” of the building process, there is very little how-to knowledge imparted here. Glynn focuses instead on the nuts of a different sort required to build one’s own home. What doesn’t scare you about Glynn’s unusual book just might serve to inspire you.