Moxie Measure: Tyler Ely and his wife, Susan, fled the suburbs when their youngest child left for college. "We fell in love with an old rowhouse," he says. Though they wanted to strip the paint off the house's stone facade, the cost of hiring a pro for the job proved too steep for their budget. So Tyler fashioned a 30-foot tall scaffolding system from stock lumber and did the job himself. "The neighborhood snickered about the crazy guy who built his own scaffolding," he says. But the structure held up just fine, and those who once laughed now laud his restoration efforts.
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