Hi Kip1, that's perfect, that's exactly the kind of thing I had in
mind. The whole spirit of "barn-raising" brought into the drywall age.
I've done my share of drywall and though initial efforts were, uh, less
than perfect, I did get the hang of it, and my most recent job looks
pretty good. Now I have a full set of mudding tools to loan and
experience to share, ditto for sweating copper (I can handle a broken
pipe just fine now - it isnt brain surgery if you proceed carefully).
There's something deeply satisfying and practical about
self-sufficiency, and also knowing when its time to call in the pros.
On the other hand, Banty, yeah, I've had some friends over to help
paint trim and they made a mess of it. So maybe there's an element of
finding like-minded, frankly talented people, and building the "reno
co-op" out of them.

As for the trailer, over four years or so I made 20-30 trips for things
like mulch for the garden (free at the local dump), drywall sheets,
plywood for replacement sub-flooring, bales of insulation, demo stuff
to the dump, fuel wood from the national forest, etc etc. It paid for
itself quite quickly.

Other ideas out there?