What job do you guys look back on as the most challenging and why?? What did you learn from it??
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Shining shoes when I was 10. Trying to get that perfect shine. The shine only lasts till the first rain.
__________________________________________
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
As an electrician it would have to be rewiring a three story home with plaster lath walls and ceiling while the head of historic preservation breaths down your neck afraid that you will damage the "historically significant" house. They want all the bells and whistles, much more than the standard number of circuits, fire alarms and a complete sensor set in all spaces, security wiring and extra communications so they can operate the historic society out of the second floor.
All of this has to be completed without changing anything, cutting holes, making noise, or raising any dust. To make things even more complicated there is an ongoing power struggle going on between the two main women running the place. The head lady, after listening to options, agrees that putting receptacles in the flat 8" baseboards is the way to go. The next day we start work and have a half dozen of the holes cut when the second boss lady comes in and goes ballistic.
She insists that the receptacles must be cut into the plaster above the baseboards and that the baseboards will need to be replaced and that the sawdust we made has contaminated everything in the room. She insists that we will be charged thousands of dollars to replace the historic baseboard and have all the period furniture professionally cleaned by restorers. Some of these pieces will likely need to be shipped to Massachusetts for restoration. All this time we are apologizing, back pedaling, loading the trucks, cleaning up what little mess we made and backing out.
The next morning we get an angry call. It is the first boss lady. "Why have we stopped work?" If we don't show up immediately she is going to sue us and she has lunch with the wife of the district judge every second Tuesday. We protest that the second lady made dire threats. She says the second lady is not in charge and that we best do what she wants. Dropping a few jobs we drive to the house to be met at the door by the second boss who threatens to call the police if we don't leave immediately.
A settlement between the ladies holds for one day before breaking down over where the smoke detectors are to be place. Off site for three days and back for two before warfare breaks out again. Constant criticism, bickering and sniping. Stop work while a luncheon is held. No one bothered to tell us. Arguments over the colors and style of switch covers, what can be drilled, where panels are to be placed. At times the ladies may not agree even with what they have said themselves. Change of views just to be contrary. Getting an agreement on anything is like herding cats.
Last day and a half before completion the big boss lady, state wide straw boss, walks in and tells us what she wants how she wants it done, pulls the other two bosses aside and reads them the riot act. Suddenly we are heroes. Bitching stops and they even start cleaning up for us. They stumble over each other being agreeable and cooperative. They serve us lunch, have coffee and doughnuts laying out in the morning, move furniture and carpets out of our way. Shut down an office for an hour, we don't want to get in your way, so I could install receptacles.
The bill is paid with a certified check hand delivered the same day they got the bill. Also inside is a letter of commendation for the company complimenting the quality and professionalism of the work with a line stating that the historical society would welcome our adding them to our list of references. Also inside is a stack of five $50 bills for the five people who did the work.
Worse job with a happy ending. I will always remember that job. Old work is hard. Old work on a three story historic building is even harder. Having two customers in charge that can't agree and being caught in the middle is dern near impossible. $5 of my extra $50 went to replace the bottle of Tums on my truck.
Irony. This whole job started as installing a single receptacle in the office area to run a copy machine and grew. While your here could you just.... We were planning to.... If your going to all that trouble maybe you could improve this little problem we have with.....
Lessons learned: Deal with the real power. Insist on exact specifications of the entire job in writing before starting work. From small jobs major ordeals grow. Customers seldom have any idea of how difficult fishing wires blind can be. Yes, you can wire an entire house through 2by3" openings while absorbing verbal abuse. Life goes on.
Great story. DanT
That was great, especially the ending. Is that when you became 4LORN1?
My most challenging job is figuring out the female mind. Why? because I cant seem to come to any correct conclusion. Sometimes I think I have it figured out, but no, wrong answer. What have I learned? A lot, but still nothing.
Being a popcorn machine when I was eight. I lived in the projects on a main street in Queens NY. Right below my bedroom window was a major bus stop. I got this big ol' refrigerator box and drew a popcorn machine on it. I popped a huge bag of popcorn and got a buncha paper bags.Drew a spot that said 5 cents and made a slot.....cut an opening for the popcorn...I put the box out by the bus stop and got inside with my giant bag of popcorn and paper bags.When someone dropped a nickle in I'd put a few handfulls of popcorn in a bag and stuff it out the popcorn opening. All I can remember was sweating my #### off for hours and hearing people laughing their asses off. I made a lot of money that way. This is a true story.
Be a popcorn machine
Namaste'
Andy
"Attachment is the strongest block to realization"
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
That picture is entirely too cute for words.
I second 4Lorn's comment! What a great kid...
Have to say, you don't see many video addicted munchkins today coming up with creative schemes like that one, til they get old enough to be computer hackers...
Besides raising kids...
I think my most challenging was stripping concrete forms off the inside wall of an enclosed drainage tunnel 200 ft long with a 4 ft high ceiling, wading through ankle deep raw sewage when I was 3 months pregnant and had morning sickness. The sadistic foreman put me in there with 2 other guys, as revenge for a comment I made to him when he was a journeyman and I was an apprentice.
You want to hear what the comment was, you say? OK, twisted my arm. He and I were working stripping edge panels between two bridges, about 30 ft off of the ground. He was always making suggestive comments to Rose the other lady carpenter and I, having trouble with his wife, looking to mess around, etc
Had a bright idea (not) and I said, "We could do anything we wanted to under here, and nobody could see us" he started breathing heavy, and I changed the subject. Now you know how mean women can be!
So 4 years later I land on a job where he's foreman, and you know what they say; "Payback is an unpleasant person of the female persuasion"
Jen 8):
Whatever works!
Edited 1/4/2003 10:35:10 PM ET by Jencar
Before any of youse guys take offense at that post, let me describe this guy...a skinny little rooster named Jim, (nephew of the most cantankerous foreman I've ever worked for), used to put his climbing spurs on just to walk around the site like some kind of cowboy. If he wanted your attention, he'd whistle and wiggle his finger at you, like "come here and explain why you did this"
How would you feel if a co-worker (male) called you over and said, "wife's out of town for the weekend, want to come over for a beer?" with a knowing wink...this was before days of s e x u a l harrassment cases.
Jen 8):
Whatever works!
Edited 1/5/2003 2:08:12 PM ET by Jencar
>> wife's out of town for the weekend, want to come over for a beer?
I think you should have gone. And taken a friend with you. Somebody about 6'8", 270, big sheath knife on his belt. If the guy even let you in the house, Tiny would sit there ignoring the conversation, tapping his toes. drumming his feet, grinding his teeth. Jumping up and walking around the room 2 or 3 times, then sitting back down and cleaning his fingernails with his big knife. About every 5 minutes he'd ask you "Is this the guy who was hitting on you?" You'd say, "No, no. This one is a perfect gentleman." "Well, it's a good thing, 'cause if I ever catch that other #######, I'm gonna tear his #### off." And then just sit there and drink the fool's beer as long as he could stand it.
Andy,
From the projects to Long Islands north shore. You made it big my man! Way 2 Go~!
P.S. I'm still lmao from before."Don't take life too seriously, you are not getting out of it alive"
Uncle Dunc, you are a true gentleman...
In the days of chivalry, that was one way for a lady to deal with a cad; now you can sue their pants off! (If they take their pants off!)
Jen ;)8
Whatever works!
You should have made the money slot a little bigger.
Most challenging job. I have a friend that made and sold metalworking tools nationwide. He got me interested in making a Shelby Cobra body forming buck. We rented a body from Texas, had it trailered up, made a reference measuring frame around it and we spent 5 weeks making the full size and a baby buck prototype, patterns, and jigs. That was the hardest for me.
Arthur,
That is WAY COOL!!!
I would put a drive train under THAT and drive it around!
TDo not try this at home!
I am a trained professional!
Great!
You ever see the human juke box, used to hang out in front of Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco? Guy in a fridge box with a coronet. You put in a buck, he pulls a string to open up the fron window he's cut out, awning style. You name a tune, he plays it, and the window closes. Never heard him say a word.
Hardest was getting through naval architecture school ... made my head hurt. Next hardest was designing sailboats that actually performed ... made my head hurt.
October 6, 1973; on the crash truck at "easy" at Watkins Glen; Francois Cevert, a friend we'd shared a drink with the day before, crashed in the chicane; after removing him from the car, spent a couple of hours with a dozen other marshalls picking up little pieces over a couple of hundred square feet to make sure we had him all; then I got to take the car down-town to a make-shift coroner's impound. Nearly broke my heart.
http://www.pilotesdelegende.com/cevert_nc.html
http://www.glenphotos.com/francoiscevert.html
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
I suppose that will be something you always live with, hope your memories of the good times crowds that trajic end. Concerning the original
question, crab fishing in Alaska was by far the most challenging. Suffice it to say that all the documentaries on the nature channels get it about right although its hard to really articulate the sheer endurance of it all, 20 hour days for months with gnarlyconditions, particularly snow crab which opens in january. Lost a few friends in th process, the biggest hit coming in janusry '96, switdhed boats three weeks before the first went down, no mayday, all hands lost. Knew some of those guys a lot of years, lot of kids left with out daddies. Storted framing abbout April '96, though this time of year I still get an itch. One of those things gets in your blood, sort of identify your self with it , kind of hard to let go, but hey, know how an old salt gives up the sea? Grabs an oar and starts walking in land, when some one asks why he's carrying a wooden shovel he knows he's gone far enough and settles in.
FRAME ON, BABY
Trying to get the wife to pick out a paint color for the kitchen..What a ordeal it was..The horror, the horror.I learned patience and peace of probable suicide to ease the pain.....:)
Well you know how indecisive we can be...we didn't want just white in the kitchen, after I put the greenboard in on the sink wall, liked the green so much just got paint to match that color!
Jen
Whatever works!
So Ron, What colour is the bottom of your tabletop anyways?.
Excellence is its own reward!
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
--Marcus Aurelius
(that 21 deleted was me trying to get this up)
What I learned from my hardest ever was that jackhammers cause arathritis! I knew that I had to dig them out and scan them when I saw the title of this thread!
These photos are all taken from about the same angle. Two on left are before and after inside. Two on right are before and after outside. I pretty well carved out a whole house in under the original one over three years but this gym was the hardest and the first of those projects. It took five months.
Excellence is its own reward!
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
--Marcus Aurelius
Piffin,
That's a nice looking remodel. Did it happen to be built on rock?
Fonzie
Half rock
When you look at the finished exterior shot, the wall with the french doors in it had the ledge about six or seven feet down in the ground. The back wall of the room where the jackhjammer sits or where you see the mirrored wall in the finished interior needed about five feet of ledge cut down. Then it steps up behind that wall for a raised boiler room so that I only had to cut about two feet off.
When the house was built in 1896 the far uphill side (28' from the downhill side)sat only two feet above ledge but the downhill side had footers in mud. The house is about two hundred feet from the Atlantic ocean. Over the years, the downhill side had slipped towards the water and settled in a little.
If you look at the finished exterior shot to the roof where the pergola ties in near the valley, that corner of the house was five inches lower than the highest comparable elevation. We got back 4.5" of it by jacking.
When I went self employed again in '91, I reroofed this house all alone, every nail in all 66 squares of cedar. Then the remodeling started inside and I have since completely rebuilt the whole house, one project at a time, every one brought in before deadline of Memorial Day, when the owners return to take possesion and enjoy the summer season..
Excellence is its own reward!
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
--Marcus Aurelius
Investigating aircraft accidents.
18 hour days, 7 days a week. Fighting off those with vested interests in the findings of the final report, which I had too write. Telling those with political connections to screw off when they tried to tighten the screws on me.
A sometimes morbid, but always fascinating puzzle too solve.
We had another job where we built the second story roof first (over a flat roofed kitchen and an adjacent hip roofed dining room. We propped it up with angled braces (overkilled), put plastic on the braces then got inside the bubble and tore off the two roofs and did two second story bedrooms. It was challenging at first.
Fonzie- That job sounded worthy of some pics.Character? I never had any problem with character. Why, people've been telling me I was one every since I was a kid.
rez,
Had to get wife to help me with scanner and downsize TWICE:
Note the dilema: no way to protect new kitchen (under flat roof) and dining room (under hip roof) from rain damage we could think of other than roof first. We located the top plate first with transit and braced/referenced from it. It did rain. No damage. We put plastic on those braces and already had the roof flashed & tarpapered. Nice working conditions. I was sure glad to see that plywood going on the new 2nd floor walls, though.
Fonzie
Wow, that was a slick operation.Character? I never had any problem with character. Why, people've been telling me I was one every since I was a kid.
Fonzie
I kinda like it as it is..maybe just stain it.
Be framed
Namaste'
Andy"Attachment is the strongest block to realization"http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Andy,
Was that a VSR? (vinyl siding remark) ha ha ha
Remember when comet Shoemaker Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter back in 1994? We took our instrument to Australia in NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory to observe the impacts. The KAO is a C-141 with a 0.9m telescope inside...we fly at 41,000 and oberserve through a hole that opens in the side of the plane (pressurized bulkhead...worry not). High altitude gets above water vapor...infrared doesn't go through water vapor.
Anyways, a graduate student dropped our intrument in the lab from about 4' high...crashing to the floor and smashing all our electronics! A week later we were running again. The she blew up our detector...the only one on Earth, literally, that worked as well as it did! So we quickly asked Boeing to put together a new one for us and they did. They arrived to us the day we left for our fieldtrip! Tested them, picked what looked to be the best, and installed the device!
It all worked great in the end...Worked about 20 hour days for about 5 weeks...No joke. All sorts of pressure on us for this project to work...the plane, which usually has about 10 people aboard, 3 pilots, 4 scientist, and 3 telescope operators...we had about 30 people! Various reporters, politicians...it was a zoo.
Most challenging time so far...and of course also one of the most rewarding.
The graduate student now has her PhD and hopefully stays away from instruments! LOL
She's a prime member of the "Hall of Shame".
Brings back memories.
I once built a roof first for a two story addition to a four story house. I supported to the ground at angles like yours and then wrapped it with a fabric that reminded me of the stuff Fritos bags are made of [ain't it noisy in the wind, but you can't tear it for anything] to tent in for the winter. Did the concrete and everyting from inside. It was April before we took the tenting out..
Excellence is its own reward!
Piffin,
I liked it too. I have used that plastic you mentioned, noisy.
Do you frequently make your own trusses?
maybe three or four times, I guess. Twice that I remember well enough to say so..
Excellence is its own reward!
LIFE!!!!!!( Yes, I have post holiday stress disorder) Next week will be better!
Brudoggie
I once cleaned up and repaired the roof on a 20story office building owned by IBM after a helicopter crashed and burned on the roof. Most of the hilecopter was reduced to ashes the tail section, motor,blades, and several other pieces were identifable. I was told by the building manger that anything that even looked like ti might be from the helicopter had to be saved for possiable inspection later,so five of my crew members and I started shoveling everything possiable into indrustrial strengh can liners took five guys 16 straight hours to just remove the debris.Spent the next three double shift days installing a large patch over that area while also dealing with the NTSB, not disruputing operations in the building(the elevators are the only way up or down)and assorted building inspectors,engineers, at the same time at start of the fifth day it was raining and had about five bags of debris left on the roof so I thought why not just leave them until the weekend and finnish up then when I approached the building manager about it he told me that # 2 of IBM was due in And diidn't care what the cost was going to be he then looked at his own maintance staff and told them every light bulb in the building would operational as the big shot might check
doc,
I see those things happening and know somebody does the job but it's easy to take it for granted. No, I can't imagine the problems/stress of that.
Most challenging job that never happened...
Part of a three man crew, sent to replace a furnace in a home in Jonesboro, Indiana.
Should have been a half day job at most.
Got there and found the basement flooded. There were boards and boxes and such set up as bridges to get across the flooding. The bottom quarter of the existing furnace was flooded as well.
We told them that they would have to get the basement cleaned out and dry before we would install the furnace. They said, but don't you have to clean up the mess as part of the installation ?
When we said that was their responsibility, they really got abusive about it. But we left as calmly as we could. Got back to the office, told the owner, and he personaly called them and tore them a new one.
And now, the rest of the story...
The flooding was sewage. Raw sewage. Floaters from wall to wall. Thick, stinky sewage. At least two feet deep. (The appliances had been placed on pedestals in the first place, in case of flood. But obviously not high enough.
Seemed one of the toilet drains had broken completely off, and these idiots just kept using it, even after they knew of the problem.
The daughter told one of the crew that the plumber refused to come out and fix it either, until they cleaned up the mess. She said her parents were hoping that we would clean it up, then the plumber would come back. He told her to tell her parents to simply hire someone specificaly to do the cleanup.
Quittin' Time
I guess I'll wait 'till later to eat now!
;).
Excellence is its own reward!
>>The flooding was sewage. Raw sewage
Luka,
A guy that pumped out septic tanks told me the sense of smell is the first to tire. You quickly don't know how bad it (and you) stink.
Fonzie
Similar thing happened here in town. Raw sewage from D-12s but no flood waters. End result. City tore the house down.Character? I never had any problem with character. Why, people've been telling me I was one every since I was a kid.
Seemed one of the toilet drains had broken completely off, and these idiots just kept using it, even after they knew of the problem.
At a couple of gallons a flush how long was it sitting there broken before they decided hey we have a problem and need to get it fixed?
I doubt it was just the water from a toilet flowing into the basement, rather all waste water upstream of that toilet line.
I had a similar problem in the first house I owned. Main trap under the slab clogged and all waste water backed up for days at least in the pipes. I was on vacation at the time and there was a tenant in the upstairs apartment. 2 adults, 2 kids. When I returned, we found about 6" of standing sewage water. It came up thru the laundry sink. Worse part was having to open the main trap to unclog it. That immediately raised the water level another couple inches, until i was able to clear the clog.
I installed a check valve on the laundry tub, only to have the problem repeat itself 2 years later while again away on vacation. The check valve finally blew from the backed up pressure. Sold the house shortly after the second time.