Ah, that I do! And that also helps explain our slow progress. I'm not convinced that anyone that has perfectionist tendencies should ever get involved with building. It never ceases to amaze me how I can spend so much time on something that construction people knock out in seconds. On the other hand, we also don't rely on the painter covering mistakes made by the drywall people, and them covering mistakes made by the framers. We do it right, no matter how many attempts it takes. :-)
Harold
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Get Robin to send you "our" level. It should be someone else's turn by now. Course, that could make things go slower I suppose.
michael
Just remember Harold that things maybe weren't as great as all that.
My house was built in the late 1800s, and yes it has rough-cut lumber in it, it's solid, but there's not a right angle in it and if you look close at the workmanship it's strictly so-so.
They made up for the fact that they put it up in a day, by using oversize parts. I truly believe that this was a 'knock it together' kind of dwelling.
Jim
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Vordos
Interesting, Jim. Makes one wonder if the construction trades have always been a so-so kind of thing. Strangely, my father worked as a carpenter until he lost his health and eventually succumbed, but my memories of him are such that he was always struggling for perfection. He did rough framing right down to fine finishing and cabinet type work and always kept quality uppermost in his mind.
If you want to see an example of someone trying to do a perfect job, a visit to our area would be rewarding. A good friend and neighbor, a retired EE from Boeing, is building a huge exposed beam house. He's been working on it as long as Susan and I have been struggling with our home. This guy is doing it all, starting with large Douglas Fir trees, which he saws with his own mill, permanently set up on his 36 acres. His view is priceless, a perfect one of Mt. St. Helens, which is about 30 miles distant. Wonderful workmanship, mostly with hand type tools, although many are powered, such as his planer, with which he fine tunes the beams. Most impressive.
Could it be that things haven't changed, that I'm the one that's screwed up?
Harold
Like in your instance, my neighbor, mentioned above, has an unusual rapport with the county housing department head. He often stops by to see the progress on the timber framed home.
Yes, I agree, code is minimum. Working beyond code is not a bad idea. The timber framed home mentioned has been engineered to survive a magnitude
8 earthquake. Far and away beyond any local requirements. Could be the EE will get the last laugh. Hard to say!Harold
Harold, I don't think that things have changed since Christ was a carpenter, literally. I think that there have been jobs that needed perfection and workmen who needed to do "perfect" work, and jobs and workmen who were "journeymen". Framing a house when the key factor is getting it done in three days - you'll get a house that's hopefully sound, reasonably square and plumb, but really needs to be covered with drywall - no exposed joints here! Your friend is building a million dollar house, if he had to pay people to do it - maybe multi-million dollar! Pride of workmanship for the other guys is getting the frame up in three days, meeting the deadline and maybe getting the bonus!
In car restoration these days there is a new breed of perfectionist - guys who spend thousands of hours duplicating the scrawled chalk marks, the overspray, the drippy seam-seal, the really rather poor assemblywork of mid-sixties cars - including not only the Chevvies and Fords, but the Ferraris and Maseratis, which were built like tractors!
Pride of workmanship isn't dead - I'm often very proud of my workmanship!
Cheers, Brian
How long do you think this man will take to finish his house, building it as you describe? Will the resale value be any higher than a similarly-sized knock-together? He obviously is doing it more as a hobby than as a necessity, and lives comfortably in another house for now. He has a retirement income. Whether he moves in tomorrow or next year doesn't matter to him. Most of us don't have these luxuries.
I built a house in 1978, post and beam inspired by reading lots of Mother Earth News articles. Took me a year, full time, and I still had to call in some contractor help at the end. I started the house enthusiastic but with no experience, and finished it experienced but totally burned out.
My conclusion - the only advantages contractors have is speed and knowledge about how to cover up their mistakes. Craftsmanship never entered into the picture.
The good news - my wife and I raised our kids in that house and still love it.
Mike Rainey
And it sure shows in my house! I think they were still getting the process down when it was going up....
Jim
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IMO, there *always* have been perfectionists and wood butchers. Take any old mansion, victorian or otherwise and walk into it with square, level, and tape, and if that doesn't convince you, start taking off some of the trim (some of which is the *only* thing holding the windows in place) and you will see all kinds of scrap nailed into place to provide supports, etc. Point is, if you waste time cutting a piece of lumber to EXACLY 78-1/4" (not 3/16, not 1/8, not 5/32) the fit may be precise; you may have wasted several pieces of wood trying to get it "perfect", but the house will still stand for an awful long time even if the measurement IS 78-5/32". Done a lot of homebuilding and remodeling in my days, and I've seen just about all of it - some a lot worse than others - but if the carpenter tries to do a reasonable job - you will end up with a reasonable house, done fairly fast and done fairly well. OTOH, I've seen "crooks" actually nail down a small piece of drywall on the roof and cover it up with shingles because they ran short of plywood. These are the guys that should not be in the business and the houses will show it after a very short period of time. Perfectionism is a good trait, but not always practical. It's good to try to attain it, but not ya gotta be realistic. Ken.
Again I have seen this in my own house. I had the original front porch replaced several years ago, because it was getting quite tatty.
Watching the original porch come apart was a *real* education, it was clear that while the assembly was quick and dirty, whoever built that knew his stuff.
4 vertical posts to hold up a beam that ran around the perimeter as a header, with hip rafters tied from the house to that beam.But the beam was a U-channel section made mostly from leftover scrap from building the house. There were entire sections where the bottom part of the "U" were simply omitted, with the side plates taking all the load. It was boxed in with trimwork to make it look nice-nice but in reality it was an amazing exercise in minimalist engineering.
The carpenter's comment was, that even though the roof had been going through, and the supports into the ground were rotting away, it was still pretty solid. He thought that if the roof were re-done and the front jacked up with new supports, it would have lasted a long time still.
Jim
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I had a cousin that was a builder and I remember him telling the story about the day the union business agent arrived screaming about my cousins rejection of five "journeyman" carpenters in one day.
My cousin explained that he didn't have time to redo work or baby-sit so the first thing he would do was ask the carpenter dispatched from the hall to explain some of the scales on the framing square. If they could not do this they were sent packing. This stopped the business agent in his tracks and he seemed to get a better selection from the subsequent dispatches.
My stepmother grew up in a family of builders. Her father's job interview consisted of having the applicant build a pair of proper (compound angled legs) sawhorses from the materials available on the job site. The result, and time it took, was a good test of the carpenter's skill.
Ned Simmons
The details are up
Glenn
The company I work for buys drills with 1/2 inch shanks to 1-1/2 inch diameter from various industrial suppliers. 7/8 inch is easily purchased and not terribly pricy. You would have to grind it to zero clearance but thats no big deal once you do it a couple of times.
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