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I saw a thread over at techniques which reminded me of a builder whom I worked for in the summers back in the mid 70’s. He basically built small affordable homes for the first time buyer. I get a laugh everytime I think of this one incident. Upon arriving at a job with some materials the framers needed, the foreman aks me where the fluck the GC was..he goes on and on waving a magazine clipping in his hand. They were given a very basic floor plan cut out of a magazine to frame by!! I guess it’s been 25 years, and some of this goes on today.
Any other good stories out there?
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Last year my partner and I got the contract to frame a custom home for a rather reputable builder in my area. We show up at the job site and he hands us this plan the homeowner had done up on his home computer. Might not sound so bad, but I've never seen home design software produce such a terrible print. The dimension lines where so thick we couldn't discern if they were showing centre or edges of int. walls. This was a very minor problem in the end. His bathroom was drawn to allow a 4' tub, space between front of vanity and wall was about 24". 2'6 doors wouldn't come close to fitting in the angled walls he had drawn to enter his master bedroom. Absolutely NOTHING fit. Long story short, about 4 drafts and 3 sets of lines snapped on the floor later everyone was happy. House turned out OK, but the rooms are awfully small. Hope they don't ever plan on selling. Wish the city would be a little finickier before handing out building permits. Think the GC has a few regrets as well.
*I get honked off whenever people bring in those plan pages cut out of magazines, and want a bid on them. They never know what roof pitch they want, how much overhang, where the bearing walls are, or even the perimiter dimensions. We also have people who frame houses using those, or else hand drawn sketches on graph paper.
*Framed a basement under a backout crew that was using a photo album to frame interior details. Plant shelves, fireplaces, lighting soffits, drywall details, and the like. Talk about a cuss fest.jim
*I used one of those "home design software packages" to draw up the floor plans for the 24' x 40' chalet style cabin I am building in Alpine, AZ. Although the plans (and the software package) were fairly simple, they were accurate enough to build from. My contractor just took my floorplans (printed on 8.5 x 11 inch paper) to a print shop and had them blown up on 11 x 17 inch paper. After he added a few details to my computer drawings he had them approved by the Apache county building department! He even used the plans in one of his sales brochures. One of the benefits of building in a small rural community. I wonder if the same set of plans would fly with a building department in a big city like Phoenix?
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I saw a thread over at techniques which reminded me of a builder whom I worked for in the summers back in the mid 70's. He basically built small affordable homes for the first time buyer. I get a laugh everytime I think of this one incident. Upon arriving at a job with some materials the framers needed, the foreman aks me where the fluck the GC was..he goes on and on waving a magazine clipping in his hand. They were given a very basic floor plan cut out of a magazine to frame by!! I guess it's been 25 years, and some of this goes on today.
Any other good stories out there?