Working on a A/V install with my bro in law- He was drilling up from the basement into what he thought was a wall cavity to run some cables when the bit actually came up through the hardwood floor just short of the wall.
My worst was finding out 6 months down the road from completing a rewire job that I had accidently drilled through the washing machine drain line in the laundry room and water had been leaking undetected for that period…
Replies
well in the rewire ,did you run the wire thru the drain?or just made a hole.
i think if you tell me the wire went thru the drain,i won't even try and outdo ya,although i have some pretty specials moments myself. larry
if a man speaks in the forest,and there's not a woman to hear him,is he still wrong?
Forgetting to check a cap on the end of a 8' tall form.
Burst open with 6' of mud in the forms.
When I ran my first framing crew, I was 19. I know that probably sounds like my boss was dumb, but I had been working for his father for 4 years, and had a huge interest and enthusiasm for the work, and was a pretty quick study. I also wasn't given any complicated houses at first, ranches and raised ranches, so....not too tough even for a kid.
He went away for a 3 day mini vacation as we were about to start a 40x28 shotgun ranch. Got the lumber dropped, and went over the print. I swear he said to reverse it. Not an easy thing to screw up, since I had to conciously change everything around. Talked to my crew, tried to hustle and impress, and got the house up, roof framed and boarded in in 3 days. He comes back, walks in the house, "why is the cellar stair hole over there? Hey why is the front door....? WHAT DID YOU DO???"
1 day with the sawzall changing windows, doors, and closing up a stair hole and opening up a new one.........
Still laugh our arses off about that, on the rare occasions that we meet up for a beer. I still say he said to reverse it :).........
Bing
Edited 9/17/2008 10:32 pm ET by Bing187
One of the first jobs I ever helped on was the worst. I was 17 and I was helping my step father glue down a bar top in the Pigeon House bar in MD. There were round bar tables in there and we placed square cardboard over the tables and placed the laminate over the cardboard to be glued. I opened up a gallon of contact cement and placed it on the "corner" of the table. .6 seconds after I let go of the can it fell to the carpeted floor. The bar was opening in an hour. We got it cleaned up and the whole place stunk like glue. I think everyone was happy cause they were stoned on the fumes!
Constructing in metric...
every inch of the way.
Edited 9/17/2008 11:05 pm ET by holy hammer
Something similar - used a 5 gal. bucket of chocolate stain to weight a newly glued raw wood plank floor over slab. Accidently knocked bucket over - lid was not on tight. Oops.View Image “Good work costs much more than poor imitation or factory product” – Charles GreeneCaliforniaRemodelingContractor.com
I try to forget my mistakes, after leaning from them.
My first 3 projection screens got installed with the motor on the wrong side. Impressed everyone I could get all three up in one day until they hit the switch and the screen faced the way 18" away.
We had this one happen last week.
Custom ceiling from Toronto 8 week lead time. Cannot be field modified, The supers son took the field measurements 2 months ago and was sent out to install it. He measured from the light cove. The aluminum and fabric ceiling was to go over the top of the cove. If he would have at least looked at the plans.
This one cost the company $5K for the replacement ceiling and another 2 month lead time.
ML
Forgetting the top plate on a stick built wall (only single 2x4, not double). I ran out of 2x4s.
The extra 2x4s were dropped with the trusses and we got the trusses up before I saw the pile of 2x4s.
That is not the screw up.
The screw up was still not remembering why I had all the 2x4s left over and keeping going. The inspector caught me at the framing and roofing rough.
Fortunately he let me put an extra stud under every truss that didn't have one and let me go.
I think my dumbest mistake was I built and finished a deck to the wrong dimensions while the owner was out of town. He called me three weeks later when he got back and he was angry as hell. It was supposed to be twelve feet deep with a cantilever at ten feet but I ordered ten foot joists instead of twelves and did not think about it. It should have occurred to me when I had a too much decking left over. I had to tear it down and replace the joists, side railings, move the stair pad and move the new landscaping around the front.
A close second is,
I used to manage a couple of crappy apartment complexes and was trying to power auger a clogged drain line out and the auger line got stuck so I jerked it around a little with the auger running and it seemed to come free and the water went down. I ran the auger another 10 feet further down the line to make sure to clog got knocked down when I pulled the auger back out there was drywall dust on the line. Long story short I had broken the pipe at an elbow and then the auger had eaten through the ceiling of the next unit over and down and all the waste water had drained into the ceiling and apartment below, the spinning auger head had also torn up the carpet. oops...
A close second is,I used to manage a couple of crappy apartment complexes and was trying to power auger a clogged drain line out and the auger line got stuck so I jerked it around a little with the auger running and it seemed to come free and the water went down. I ran the auger another 10 feet further down the line to make sure to clog got knocked down when I pulled the auger back out there was drywall dust on the line. Long story short I had broken the pipe at an elbow and then the auger had eaten through the ceiling of the next unit over and down and all the waste water had drained into the ceiling and apartment below, the spinning auger head had also torn up the carpet. oops...
OMG!!! Were the people home???
Ordered and installed the wrong color siding, cost me 1000 to get the homeowner to accept.
Yes, it was 7 in the evening. I had been just about to leave for the day when the tenant with the clog caught me in the office and told me of water all over his bathroom floor, I thought "this should be an easy fix" an hour later I was standing I the wrecked apartment with the female tenant crying her eyes out, she had been watching tv when heard a couple of hard thuds in her ceiling and then the snake with a 4" claw head crashed through ceiling into her dining area. oops...
LOL, the poor girl had probably been watching "Alien" on TV when that thing came invading her space!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Or "Tremors 6 - Attack of the Steel Snakes"
It took her awhile and half a months rent reduction to get her to shut up.
That one deserves an award!
And here I was thinking that building a deck too short was worse... whole thing had hidden fastners and it took me a week on my dime and $400 in lumber to fix. = $3500 out of pocket if you count my labor.The apartment ceiling, pipe, and carpet only cost the company around $1000 to fix.
you forgot the ichy quotient!>G<
You, sir, are correct.
I have worked on clogged plumbing enough that I sometimes forget the ichy part, for me it is just part of the job.-Day
Had a job where we had to clear bats out of a wall in a doctors office in an old 3 story building downtown. We took off the exterior siding just below the roof and the bats flew away. We cleaned out the smelly cavities in the wall and replaced the siding. The odor inside was still terrible. The doctors weren't able to use the back part of the building for months.
I hired Sure Vice Master (Name changed cause I'm still not over it and don't want to get sued) to fog the top floor to get rid of the smell. I asked three times if there was a chance that the fog could get downstairs and was assured three times that it couldn't as long as we taped off the door ways, which we did. Well the building was fogged and we closed off the upstairs and left.
20 minutes later I get a call from the doctor's nurse on the first floor yelling, there is gas seeping into the operating rooms. The first floor was an outpatient clinic. There also was a patient on the table having a procedure done. They were able to finish and transfer her to the hospital next door to wake up. I showed up and everyone was in the parking lot looking like I was the son of Hitler. I went in and opened every window in the place and as soon as I got to the last window it started raining buckets sideways. I ran back in and closed all the windows and spent the next two hours mopping up the whole building.
After a while when the adrenalin wore off I began to feel sick, real sick. I had breathed in all that fog. The Sure Vice Master people sent the MSD sheets and said that it wasn't all that toxic. Yeah riiiiiiight.
I went home and slept it off. The next day I thought I was going to be sued and the Doc said don't worry about it, it was just one of those things! To this day I have the greatest admiration and respect for him. He is truly one of the nicest guys who comes from the nicest family I have ever met.
Constructing in metric...
every inch of the way.
Besides dating an ex girlfriend at the same time as a current girlfriend...
How about trying to feed a 4" pice of maple through a crappy tablesaw. That thumbnail eventually grew back.
It was truely a "OH ####, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE, ok, I still have all my fingers" moment.
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
I don't feel it's healthy to keep your faults bottled up inside me.
"Besides dating an ex girlfriend at the same time as a current girlfriend..."LOL - Good thing the wife didn't find out, eh?;)My biggest mistake was getting addicted to BT
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
110046.10 in reply to 110046.1
It was truely a "OH ####, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE, ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE, ok, I still have all my fingers" moment.
My wife pointed out to me that if I say, "OH ####!!!!", then that means I've probably missed a parking spot, or my pen ran out of ink, but if I say "OUCH!!!", I've either just cut off my arm, or I have a gaping chest wound. The severity of the words and the severity of the injury are opposites...
Work was slow, so the boss sent me to the shop, told me to build shelves. Said use any old wood I could find. I was real proud of shelves I built at the end of the day - then his dad came in, who builds furniture and cabinets, and says where is that rare African teak wood I left in here? Guess what my cleats were made of? I think that was my last day at that job!
CaliforniaRemodelingContractor.com
worst screwup you ever commited
First wife.
Joe H
Me too. I should have committed her.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
LOL that was the laugh I needed
Broke a sprinkler head off during a demo. Amazing how much water comes out of those things, filled a garbage can in a matter of seconds. Luckily we were on the first floor and my partner new where the turn off valve was located.
Now, I always look for the valves when working in an occupied building. They are in the stair wells usually, for the firemens use.
Mike
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of god.
Failing to plug all the holes in the floor when using self-leveling soup on the second floor. Wondered why it took more than I calculated. Didn't realize the problem until the guy from downstairs came running up, saying there was grey water dripping out of the light fixture.
Early in my career, thought I could do anything, did site layout for a 10,000 gal underground fuel tank. read the site survey wrong, put the tank on the neighbors property. Didn't realize it until the pumps were installed.
"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
"did site layout for a 10,000 gal underground fuel tank. read the site survey wrong, put the tank on the neighbors property"
It's hard to hide a hole big enough for a 10,000 gallon tank, huh?
Similar one: Drillling well for my current house, started driling it on neighbor's property until the well driller said "wonder what this old fence is here for?".
Not quite as bad: I cut the stringers for the stairs to the second story of my house, turned out great. Went downstairs to the basement, measured the rise and run, then cut all three stringers just like the ones upstairs. They kind of drop off about 2 feet above the floor now. (I did seriously build a platform to set them on and left them as is, didn't have any boards long enough at that time...still like that to this day) Wife likes it...ha
Funny one: I reran some copper piping for plumbing in an old house with very high pressure - should have put in a pressure reducer. Then I dropped a small board on a 1/4 turn faucet valve in the finished kitchen (yes, it opened WIDE open). The water shot up so hard that it hit the celing forcefully enough to splatter the far wall of the room...too a while to clean up, and I think I seriously lost the homeowner's confidence in my abilities. :)
Jamie
Edited 9/18/2008 10:42 pm ET by jamie
Edited 9/18/2008 10:43 pm ET by jamie
It's hard to hide a hole big enough for a 10,000 gallon tank, huh?
Small town in Arkansas, neighbor was a mousy gut who owned a granite hreadstone business. he was unsure and afraid to say anything until it was complete. then he was afraid that we would claim emminent domaion and seize the piece of land. We were afraid he would require us to pull the tank. So we cut a deal where the tank could stay until we left, then he took ownership. Ha ha. That was a steel tank in 1980 ... bet it's rusted out now."Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Reminds me of when I used to do blown celulose in existing houses.
Why won't this cavity fill up?
Pumped into the cheerleading daughter's closet the day before the big homecoming game! Mike
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of god.
I used to install air conditioners through the wall for a local appliance store, had been doing it for years, had alot of experience, one particular day I skipped a crucial step that I had always done and cut the outside hole completely to the right of the inside hole. I drilled one hole out to identify the corner. I drew the box on the siding the wrong way. I normally would drill one corner then another hole in the middle of the square directing me which way to draw the box. The customer fortunately was a cool old guy who let me patch the siding. Did I mention it was aluminum siding? It never looked right..............never did that again.
Craig
I have a BIL who was cutting out a window to make it for a larger one fo regress or wahtever...He went in and out and in and out around the house double checking to make sure his marks were right, put a line on the sheetrock, and plunged his sawsall to make the cut about a foot below the old sill.forgot that his wood stepladder was leaning against the wall outside.Never realized why the wall was cutting so hard until he went back out to pull the window and surround out.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
while rebuilding a large two story church i decided on a Friday afternoon i should burn off a too long steel beam tail that was projecting beyond the masonry wall.
naturally i did this an hour after the roofers finished installing the styrofoam protection board to to the membrane foundation waterproofing.
the styrofoam was attached with a solvent base construction adhesive.
the building was 120 feet long.
it only took about three red hot blobs dropping into the fumes in the hole before the flames shot up. i have to say we got pretty lucky and we only lost about 30 lineal feet of foam to the fire. the roofers came back on monday and fixed it.
but the black soot on the block stayed with us for months until the stucco went on.
our reason for the job in the first place ?
a fire of course.
carpenter in transition
Before I started working here this one happened. we were replacing all the ceiling tile after the MGM Grand in LV burned down. We had 5 semi trucks trailers full of tile on site and staged. they get about 60% done and the inspector stops by and asks to see the adhesive we were using. the super explained to him it was a new non- flammable glue since a good portion of the fire was attributed to the adhesive.Well the AHJ grabbed a piece of tile with glue on the back and his lighter. Needless to say it lit and all the tile was removed, along with all the tile was replaced.Was a an expensive lesson.ML
So why was there a hole in the teenage cheerleaders closet wall? ! ;-)
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Edited 9/26/2008 2:02 am ET by PatchogPhil
blown celulose in existing houses
Yeah, we had that once. House built in 1901, pumping blown insulation into the walls at the top, fell all the way through to the crawl space. None of the wall cavities had bottom plates! We had to stuff them with chunks of batt insulation to hold the blown. And then it would blow UP into the attic, too, and never quite fill up the wall cavity, big pile up in the attic.
Not a "worst screw up" but I couldn't resist...
Yes, you never quite knew what to expect. We used to "pop" some walls and that is where I got my first drywall finishing and texturing experience.
I imagine the equipment we used back then is pretty primative compared to what is used today. Mike
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of god.
Many, many, many years ago I was doing a bathroom floor repair for a leaky tub and my feet (both) slipped off the joists.
Luckily, I caught myself on the joists or I would have landed on the living room couch right in front of the TV.
Good thing that no one was home at the time.... or it could have interupted their TV program.
Needless to say, the homeowners got the stain on their ceiling fixed FOC, along with a new ceiling texture.
We had a salesman measure an existing build that they were adding on to. they wanted the new trusses to match up with the old ones. So the salesman gave me exact dimensions for length and height. The length was easy enough - 70'. But I made them 10' 5 1/2" tall instead of 105 1/2" tall. The company I worked for ended up eating $8,00 worth of trusses and building them new ones. That was roughly 15 years ago, so that was a heck of a lot of money.
Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
That is so funny. Not only did you make the trusses the wrong height, in your story you said it cost $800 to fix. Dyslexic? or just fat fingers on the keyboard."Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
The last zero was IMPLIED - It was actually $8,000.(-:
You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. [John Wooden]
I'm a DIYer so my screwups aren't of the magnitude of most of your's (e.g. framing a house in mirror image of plans - love that one!). But, of course, I do screw up way more often so it probably works out even ;)
I had just received two gallon cans of Messmer's hardwood deck stain and set them down at the base of staircase. Same day I bought a new mattress for the kid's room. I unwrapped the mattress and dragged it up the stairs but lost my grip at the first landing. Thing slid down it crashed into the cans of stain. One can popped open and soaked the mattress and floor!
Had srub the floor in a hurry with pain thinner, toss the brand new mattress and reorder another gallon of Messmer's. Plus I swear we would have blown the roof off the house had we lit a match in there for 24 hours after the spill.
Flipping a house is minor compared to building a house on the wrong lot. That happened to a guy my wife worked with at Centex. It went all the way to closing before somebody figured it out.
Friend of mine works at a HVAC supply house.
The story goes like this.
A man gets a mortgage for a house. Two weeks later he's in the same bank looking for a construction loan.
Turns out he tore down the house he just liened in order to build a new one.
The banker almost killed him. He gave him one week to have a frame on the property or he'd call the note due.
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
Former BIL worked for a flooring company. Over the summer, they got a lot of gym/basketball court work from schools. To knock it out quickly, they formed separate crews that would demo, lay flooring, and one to finish (this was the BILs job).Well, a demo crew gets sent to Whippany, New Jersey, to demo a high school floor. The foreman, who never worked outside of the five boroughs of New York, sees an exit sign for Parsippany on the highway. Since he never heard of Whippany, he figured the directions meant Parsippany, so he takes the exit. Only this guy could use the wrong directions to find the wrong school with a janitor willing to let him in and rip up the floor. Two hours into demoing the floor, with about 400 feet cut up into nice sized panels, he phones back to the office to find out where the dumpster is.In the end, Whippany got their floor a few weeks late, Parsippany agreed to a repair job, but also got a full refinish, new lines/colored keys and the school logo on the jump circle. The job foreman was never again sent to Jersey while he worked there.
Years ago when I owned a cabinet shop with my brother, we got a job doing the kitchenettes for a small office building. The builder took me into one of the units, showed me what he wanted (it was just a 6 foot run of cabinets with a sink on one end) and said all 40 units were the same. I never saw the blueprints, and had never done commercial work before so I didn't realize that every other unit was the mirror image of the one next to it. Yep, on the day of installation we got to rebuild half of the cabinets!
John
Working on a friends house in WVa 1976.
Up in the attic, lost my balance and busted thru the ceiling.
Was suspended between floor and ceiling by 2 wires between legs and arm.
My friends Gramma yells at me "You coulda taken the stairs!"
Then she busted out laughing.
I was operating a large commercial shaper that used two knives that were held in place by tightening the collar on the spindle, one knife was for cutting and the other for balance.
In the middle of setting up the machine, I got a phone call and went to the office to answer it. When I got back, I saw that the knives were in place and ready to go. I turned on the machine, and both knives flew out, barely missing a co-worker 30 feet away.
Nothing funny about it, 42 years after it happend. And to this day, when I turn on my shaper, I hold a board in front of the knives as a shield, just in case.
Interruptions are wicked!I was cutting out stringers for a complicated flight of stairs - had a landing at base and winders at top, basically the owner wanted to "Make it safer and more comfortable, but do it in the same space..."So I was figuring it all out, but i was the main guy on job too, so every 15-20 minutes, I had to stop and figure something for anothe guy or a sub. or answer a phone....I was using 1" treads, so I kept thinking and reminding myself in the back of my mind, be sure that you take that inch off the bottom of th e stringers. I think I even wrote it on ascrap when I went to lunch.So I finished setting them and temp treads by end of the day and went home.Next morning, I go in and up the steps and something just 'feels' wrong.
Somehow, with all the distractions, I had cut that inch off twice.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
"Next morning, I go in and up the steps and something just 'feels' wrong. Somehow, with all the distractions, I had cut that inch off twice."
What? you mean I'm not the only one who's done this?
;-)
Actually, I think my worst screw-up didn't even occur on a jobsite. I was working for a while at a golf course as pro-shop manager/food service manager/all around maintainance and jack of all trades dude. We used to do big steak and potatoes "cook-outs" for various golf outings. Once during a particularly large one of these, I decided to fire up the two propane grills since the huge charcoal grill we normally used wasn't nearly big enough to handle the load by it's self. I had positioned those two grills backed up against the exterior glass wall of the clubhouse just across from the charcoal grill so that i could mind everything at once. One of the golfers, a friend of mine was standing there chatting with me when his eyes suddenly got wide and he said "Mark, I think you might want to move those grills away from that window..."
Sure enough, the glass wall panel (Aproximately 6'wide by 12' tall) had heated up to about a buhzillion degrees and there were two cracks running through it. I was just certain that it was seconds away from exploding into a thousand life threatening razor sharp projectiles onto myself and all the steaks. not to mention the proshop on the other side... Fortunately it didn't!
That moment was pretty much the worst "sick in the pit of your stomach " incident of my entire life.
" If I were a carpenter"
Edited 9/29/2008 12:33 pm ET by Mark
Actually I'm wrong. The worst screw up I ever commited was moving to Tampa and buying a house right at the top of the real estate bubble, mere months before the whole bottom fell out.
" If I were a carpenter"
Next morning, I go in and up the steps and something just 'feels' wrong. Somehow, with all the distractions, I had cut that inch off twice.
Yes but what an opportunity for some creative BS and new "base plate" or whatever.
I was working on a union job in Goshen NY, doing concrete forms for a big industrial floor. The foreman asked me to make a short set of rough stairs for the client's office trailer which had just arrived and was being set up on blocks.
I went out and measured the height from the floor to the ground, then calculated the stringers. After I dug up some decent looking lumber I laid out the stringers, then cut them. Next I cut the treads, then carried all the pieces out to the trailer site.
Lo and behold, the trailer was now about six inches higher at the doorway.
Aaaargh!
Quick recoveries are important at these times so I sez to myself, "how about a wooden landing for those stairs"? Yes!
A couple of 2X4 sleepers on the flat, then three or four 2X4 joists and finally a 2X4 deck. Cut, carried and nailed up in about fifteen minutes. The stringers rested on the landing nicely, the treads almost perfectly level.
Just as I was picking up my tools a shiny Lincoln Towncar pulled up. A couple of nicely tailored suits appeared from within and made the short walk over to the trailer.
Pausing on the landing to scape some mud from the soles of his polished shoes on the edge of my deck the company man said, "Nice job. Very thoughtfully designed."
"Happy to be of service", I replied with a smile, laughing at the whims of fate.
Edited 10/1/2008 6:48 pm by Hudson Valley Carpenter
First, let me admit that I am simply a DYI homeowner that wishes he was in the home building game. It was several years ago on a New Years Day when I thought I should take down the Christmas tree. I had to crawl under the tree to disconnect the electrical cord from the lights. While doing that, I managed to knock over the tree onto the brick fireplace hearth. About 80% of the glass ornaments shattered all over the floor, the tree, and me. Off to the shower while my gracious wife cleaned up the mess.
After I returned from the shower and finished removing the Christmas tree, I decided to install a diamond shaped antenna in the attic made of twin lead. I was hoping that this antenna would allow me to receive an FM station that was more than 70 miles away. The idea was to string the twin lead in a diamond shape in the attic attaching it to the ceiling rafters. Of course the points of the diamond were tight under the roof rafters so it was face down into the blown in cellulose insulation while trying to nail the wire points into place.
Even at that younger age, I was stiff after standing up. After the third point, as I was standing up, my younger son popped up into the attic on the pull down stairs. He simple said, "Cool." I turned around, told him to be careful where he stepped, and stepped back onto the ceiling of his older brother's bedroom. I guess it was lucky for me that I fell cleanly through the ceiling and landed on the water bed. But, about six inches of attic cellulose insulation followed me into the bedroom.
My wife sent me to the showers again and wisely just closed the door to the bedroom. When I came from the shower, she insisted that I lay down in the bed and watch football. She brought me a glass of ice water to drink while I watched the game. I leaned back, put my elbows out as I put my hands behind my head and my elbow knocked the glass of water off the bedstand onto her latest water color painting.
The paints smeared and flowed onto the carpet. She came to clean up the mess the best she could and threatened to tie me down to the bed. Throughout all of this she never lost her temper or yelled at me. I pray that God will make me a man worthy of the woman he has given to me.
It was several weeks before I got up the courage to clean up the bedroom and repair the hole in the ceiling.
That's just too funny.
I'll tell ya, Christmas trees are deadly. We once had a "Sunken " living room with a cathedral cieling..maybe 18' total. My other half said she wanted a "tree to the cieling" and by god I was gonna do it.
I went out on our land and found a perfect specimen..all of at least 24' and full...drug it home with the tractor. I got the butt to the french doors and realized it would be a tight squeeze, and she was at work and her teenage son was at school. I walked around to the other door and went inside and scoped out my plan..I took a chain to the butt and going thru the living room, went out the front door to the driveway, and hooked up to the tractor.
I gently let the clutch out, watched how far I was SLOWWLY going and when I thought I had the thickest part of the tree in past the door..got off and went inside to check.
Sure enough it was inside...as was the frame and broken doors, and some jack studs, and some sheetrock..
Never did that again.
BTW, she GOT the tree she wanted ( and a new door unit) and at take down time, I sawed it up, in the room.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
Last Christmas a guy asked me: "What happens if you put a 700# load in the middle of a floor truss?"To make a long story short - He had done something along the lines of what you did. He used a tractor and loader to get a HUGE live Christmas tree in his double front doors. He slid the whole tree and root ball out into the middle of his two story foyer and set it up. THEN he started wondering if the floor trusses would hold it up or not. .Of course - I designed the trusses myself, so of COURSE they help up.(-:
Q: What's a turkey's favorite song?
A: "White Christmas"
LOL, Ya know how you can be reading along here and not always notice who wrote each post?So I'm reading your tale and thinking, "That almost sounds like something Sphere might have done once upon a time..."THEN I notice your signature and that it is indeed you.
;)
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
My reputation has always preceded me.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj_oEx4-Mc4
The world of people goes up and
down and people go up and down with
their world; warriors have no business
following the ups and downs of their
fellow men.
Good one!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Putting together a semi-worked small block chevy for a friend's truck, it's a stock block, late heads, different cam, etc, etc., maybe one of 100 or so I've built. Should be a no brainer for me, right?
Anyhow, conversion headgaskets are available to mate different combinations(some vary in oil passage and water jacket shapes/positions among other things). Well I get this whole motor done and in, oil and filter, 1.5 gals of coolant, and start it up. Sounds perfect! Custom FI system runs/idles like a dream, good oil pressure, no noises, time to top off the coolant as it warms up. Add a gallon. Add another. Hmm..."Sure is thirsty!"(still a running joke between us)
Shut it down, pull oil dipstick...Viola! crankcase is full of coolant!
Turns out I grabbed the wrong head gaskets, and didn't notice the offset cooling passage.
Edited 9/20/2008 2:01 am ET by deadman1
We had bought a fixer-upper that was totally trashed and had to be cleaned out of EVERYTHING before we could begin work. We had a large drop box on site, the kind where the back end opens up and you can wheelbarrow stuff in. I knew we were going to be right to the top with all the debris, so I wanted to compact the load as much as possible. We had some old toilets, and they are full of air, so I was breaking them up -- by throwing large broken pieces of toilet at the toilet that wasn't quite broken up.
Well, you know how porcelain breaks, it gets these razor sharp edges on it -- I flung a piece into the dumpster at this toilet, and it rotates around on the way out of my hand and puts a 2" slice into the skin of the base of my index finger. Not real deep, but the skin is open and I look at it (hardly even felt it,really) and go S**T! what have I done? I grabbed it so it wouldn't bleed more, and then looked again and dang it all, that's a REAL CUT. So I got my neighbor to drive me to the ER for some stiches, and the scar will always remind me of how DUMB that was.
Next time I'll be sure to cover the toilet with some scrap carpet and beat it with a 3 lb hammer.Actually, I think we wound up spending a year on that fixer, and got out of it for what we had into it just for materials. Didn't really make anything for the year of weekends we put into it.
I had been working for a well known film-score composer for several years restoring his 1910 Arts & Crafts estate. After all that time, he started using me to do just about everything around the place. In the main there had been a whole bevy of artisans & artists doing murals, leafing, & faux finishes in one of the rooms that had a lot of plaster relief. The room had just been done and cost him....oh tens of thousands I'm guessing. A mountain of dough.
Ok...I'm pulling all the HW radiators out of the rooms, carting them to the woods, sandblasting all the paint off them & spraying them with a bronze radiator paint, and putting them back. It took most of the summer to do. I had just finished, it was around this time of year, time for the heat to come on. I started filling the system and walking from room to room (the place had 15 bedrooms alone!), bleeding each radiator with my little valve key. I was very patient. Every room on the 2nd floor was filled & I was was done for the day, so I checked all the radiators and went home.
10:00 pm I get a frantic call from the HO, that there is water everywhere in the newly finished "Egyptian Room" with all the gold leaf, & faux finishes. I had left the bleeder valve on in the room above. He was absolutely furious, and told me by all means DO NOT come, and that he would see me in the morning.
He totally lost his temper the next day, and rightfully so. I stood there and quitely took it. I said the best thing to do was to air everything and wait to see.. It took 2 days to dry, and not a THING was ruined! A little spackle on the ceiling and touch up was all.
He kept me on....but only as his carpenter. I worked another 3 years or so for him 'till we moved away.
On a site development project I said I wanted some topsoil left. "Yea - those 3 piles should be good". I guestimated them at about 1000 yards total. Turned out to be closer to 3000 yards. Had to pay to have it hauled away. That's a lot of dump truck loads... Actually I still have about 20 loads left... Moral of story? Always measure before opening one's mouth.
Here's what I also know though... the more responsibility the bigger the mistakes. I've seen some mistakes 10x what I described above...
Piles of dirt and "I've seen some mistakes 10x what I described above..." reminds me of a job I had back in college. Summer job working for the Dept of Transportation in NJ, watching contractors build freeways so they don't bury trees and stuff while nobody is looking. I was just a summer intern, and was escorted by a regular employee for a while. We went to one site where they were digging out some wet soil, and my job was to count dump trucks as they left the site. OK, fine. Why? Because the contractor bid "Wet-ex" (wet material excavation) at a penny a yard, because they didn't think there was any. Wrong!! There was LOTS. They told me not to talk to any of the workers on the site, the contractor was pretty steamed. Imagine getting paid to count trucks all day....
When I worked for a local large general contractor I was running a small non-permitted TI/repair job in an occuopied hospital. I built bombproof dust walls and taped the plastic to adjacent walls and floors , walk off mats, garden sprayer misters and shop vacs for the sawsalls to help keep dust down. Basically did every thing right and then some for dust containment before starting the demo. Then I bagged the smoke alarms with latex surgical gloves so I didn't set them off from the dust. When I was placing the glove on the last smokie it went off and set off a general alarm for the whole 4 story hospital and they absolutely FREAKED OUT and started evacuating the entire hospital until the 6 firetrucks showed up about 5 minutes later and started running hoses from the hydrants outside on ths street. It was amazing how many people they got out of there in that 5 minutes and they were pissed as hell. The fire department shut off the alarm and of course had to see where it was set off from and so we got buste. Had to get the permit and all that hassle.
Another story:
I had a kid working for me one time. He was a quick study too so I figured he could handle doing a little floor prep. I pointed out to him a couple of 25 lb bags of Fixall in the jobshack and gave him a trowel and showed him what needed to be done and off I go abck to my desk. About a half hour later he comes back to my office with a wheelbarrow full of hard as rock Fixall that went bang in the wheelbarrow. Had to toss the wheelbarrow and we still laugh about it.
BjR
I was inside the building, would have loved to been on the roof and seen it all go down. Mike
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of god.
Signing up for Breaktime, then asking to get into the Tavern.
Three story house in upscale Palo Alto, CA with owners living in while we remodel third floor bedrooms. We lined the stairs with drop cloths and strips of particle board to avoid dents, etc. from day one on the job. We were on site about two months and near finished when I decided to carried a 5 gallon bucket of white paint(actually a light, almost white, yellow)up the stairs. I made it to the second floor with full bucket on my shoulder, holding it with my right hand on the top edge and my left at the bottom edge to steady it. I started up the final flight of stairs to the top floor bedrooms. Stepping up on the first riser of the third flight, the top of the bucket hit the top of the stair opening causing it to shift backwards. I couldn't physically hold it so to save my back I had to let go, it tip over backward and the entire five gallons of paint busted open onto the floor of the second story hallway. Paint was about 1/2 and inch thick and running down the hall over the edge of the floor gap and down the stairwell to the floors below. Took me and one other guy about three hours of wasted time to get most of it up and out to the trash but the damage done took us considerably longer to finally get back to near original condition.
Ok, spilled paint story #2
Working on a crew doing cosmetic renovation on supermarkets. Bright colors. We had two different shades of yellow, bright and deep, 3 gallons of each. Pull up to the front door at 10:00 at night (working when the store was closed) and slide open the side door. 3 gallons of paint fall out that were stiing in the well by the door, tops fly off, there's 3 gallons of yellow paint on the asphalt.
Get out the 10" drywall knife and scoop most of it up, wash down the rest. They mix together, but we figure we can use it for base coat.
As it turned out, since yellow is the most transparent paint, the mixed paint didn't work for a base coat for EITHER color, wound up putting another coat of each on to look right.
My biggest screwup
Framing a 6 unit condo with the rear wall 42 " offset from the wall wall below. We put all the rear walls on the wrong side of the line. We framed all the interior walls to those lines, and braced. My face was kind of red when the crane set the first truss and we were 5 1/2" too short.
Sawzalls and catspaw earned their keep that day.
That was 24 years ago, and til this day, I always snap two lines for all my walls.
Greg In Connecticut
I don't know how I did this but this morning I pulled in the driveway and left the car running.
I got out, went into the house, got a cup of coffee, walked back outside and the car was not where I had left it.
Apparently I had left the car in gear and it was resting against the garage door which had been pushed in about a foot
Here is a similar story that happened at a commercial jobsite a few years ago.
Our newly hired laborer pulls up to the building, leaves the truck running and jumps out and in to the portajohn.
He accidently left the truck in reverse and the truck takes slow long curve across the yard to the jobsite trailer where there is a meeting going on with the visiting owner from back East.
The truck knocks the trailer off its blocks and everyone runs out convinced they are in a major eartquake.
When the trailer is tilted, the power and phone lines are lowered just enough for the ariving lumber truck to catch and snap, killing power to the whole job.
It was the poor laborer's last day. Mike
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, big wheel turn by the grace of god.
Close call... we were building three 32 unit guest buildings - we come in one morning to find a charred hole in the floor and a melted 5 gallon paint bucket next to it - the painters had left a bag of oily rags on the floor, which ignited, burning the floor and melting though the nearby bucket, allowing the latex paint to flow out and put out the fire. I'm not making this up.
We had to replace a window that cracked from the heat, and some subfloor, and we never breathed a word to the client, who was justifiably paranoid about fires, as they had lost several buildings in one fire a few years before.
But you got another job, right away, right ?;o)
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I thought of this one when I read about the garage door...
When I was about 20, I bought my first plow truck. 1970 f-250. Was an absolute pig, rotted out and bondoed over, but the price was right, it had a really strong 390/ 3 speed, and I was gonna make a fortune plowing that winter....
Plowing for the first time, we had a good storm, and there was probly a good 12-14" of fresh snow that morning. Started out plowing mom's driveway from the street to the house, dirt afair that had several decent sized rocks sticking out. Banging, stopping, revving, popping clutch, getting more and more aggravated. Needless to say, I hadn't learned some of the nuances of plowing, like feathering the plow up a little, easing into the piles, etc.......
Finished that drive, started on the one that ran from the street to her detached garage, w/ barn attached. At that point it was probly a year old, one of the first things I built on my own outside of work. Pushing towards the garage doors, sort of heading straight at them , and then turning to push parralel to front of building. Got about 16 ft from the garage door, plow catches something, stops the truck cold. I give it a little gas, go nowhere. So, I rev the crup out of it and pop the clutch, look up to see the garage door collapse into the garage, splitting the jambs...what the h34ll?
Forgot the half dozen staging planks I'd put in front of the door, now buried in the snow.............Tore the tracks and all right off one side of the wall.......
That was probably my first lesson in not losing my temper at inanimate objects, especially when I'd be the one fixing the damage....
Bing
Our newly hired laborer pulls up to the building, leaves the truck running and jumps out and in to the portajohn.He accidently left the truck in reverse and the truck takes slow long curve across the yard to the jobsite trailer where there is a meeting going on with the visiting owner from back East. The truck knocks the trailer off its blocks and everyone runs out convinced they are in a major eartquake. When the trailer is tilted, the power and phone lines are lowered just enough for the ariving lumber truck to catch and snap, killing power to the whole job.
HA HA HA ! That is priceless. Like the insurance story of the guy who got whacked by the bucket of bricks 4 times, it just keeps going and going and going
Brick story
Edited 10/3/2008 9:00 pm ET by geoffhazel
i betcha a new garage door will sell your house,try it!
what thats callled is a huya event. head up your a z z
i run into a girl about 5 years ago,was talking to the cop,said i had my head where the sun don't shine,he said i'll just write on the ticket"huya" the insurance company won't know what it means,we both laughed.larry
i have one of those moments about evry 12 hours.if a man speaks in the forest,and there's not a woman to hear him,is he still wrong?
Larry if I had a video of what happened I could send it in to America's Funniest VideosI'm laughing today but I wasn't laughing yesterday when I walked out my front door and saw my car against the caved in garage doorwonder where I can get a good garage door for $30 to $40(better living through Handymanliness -- formerly Mr. Fix It ;^0)
30bucks will buy you a nice blue tarp,maybe even a gray one for extra class.
i'm really not recommending this but your homeowners would pay. but if you have another claimyour canceled. if a man speaks in the forest,and there's not a woman to hear him,is he still wrong?