Home Refurbers Site Review (www.homerefurbers.com)

One of my friends just told me about a new DIY site that’s just kicking off called Home Refurbers (HR).  Since anything surrounding home improvement on the web intrigues me, I had to go over and check it out. 

The plan for Home Refurbers is to become an online community of home improvers who share videos, pictures, and stories about their homes (sounds familiar, huh?).  Unlike HouseBlogs.net that syndicates independent house blogs (like this one), Home Refurbers is a self-contained site providing everything the average home improver needs to get started sharing on the web.  Think Facebook or MySpace and you’ve got the idea. 

So what did I think?

First impression: it’s really nice.  The layout and format are adapted from two similar sites the company also runs:  The first is LumberJocks, a place for woodworkers to discuss their projects, post videos, pictures, and stories of their work, and the second is GardenTenders, a similar place for those with a green thumb.  The folks behind these sites have put a lot of thought into how people interact with each other on the web.  All of the sites are easy to navigate and use, and pretty powerful.  Here’s my review of some of the pros and cons I found on HR:

The Positives:

1. Everything on this site is intuitive, from posting a discussions and pictures, to uploading videos.  Even the most novice user will find it easy to navigate. 
2. Sign up is simple and painless.  It took me 2 minutes to get set up.  I even uploaded a buddy icon for my account!
3. The site is jam-packed with features that are very great for home improvement bloggers.  You can set up projects to share, post questions in the forums, blogabout your own homeowner experiences, and comment on everyone else’s.
4. You’re likely to get a question answered.  If you post a how-to question to your own blog, odds that one of your readers will have the answer is slim.  As House Refurbishers grows, the community there will be more likely to get you an answer that works.
5. The site is not advertising heavy.  There are a few well-placed ads throughout the site, but overall, the ads won’t bother you too much.  And hey, they have to stay in business some how.

The Negatives:

It was hard to come up with negatives for this site.  In fact, I think most users wouldn’t even care about these negatives.  But, to be fair, I thought I should post the ones that I could see as drawbacks for some users.

1. No external blogging capability.  For those who don’t already have blogs and want a simple place to get started, Home Refurbers is a great choice.  For the rest of us, HouseBlogs.net offers the RSS syndication we all know and love.
2. No import for other blog types.  There’s no RSS import feature to move over posts.  Many of us have hundreds of posts written on our personal blogs.  Moving would just be too painful.  WordPress offered us the ability to move posts from Blogger; an essential component of the move.
3. Very limited look and feel customization:  For many of us, our blog design is an extension of who we are.  For instance, I recently ran across Bungalow23, a beautiful WordPress blog.  Bungalow23’s design makes the blog fun to read.  It would be sad to see that go away.
4. No Ownership.This is important to some of us house bloggers who really like owning our own domains and content.  If HR goes away, so does all of your content with it!  (Of course, this same argument could be made against Google’s Blogspot, but the limitations are different).  And, you can’t sell products or ads on HR’s site.  They get to do that instead.

Summary:

Home Refurbers is an excellent choice for folks who want to get started in the home improvement / housebloggers community.  For those who don’t really care about the negatives I listed above, the site has a lot to offer.  Just remember: if you do go to HR, there’s a whole lot of us out here who aren’t a part of that site.  You should still visit us too!

What do you think?  Will you sign up with Home Refurbers?  Take a look at their site and post a comment here with your impressions.