Might be one reason why we all slow down the older we get
Sorry to hear your plight though, Jim.
Had an oh crap moment today after double checking floor trusses for square before laying the yellow tongue.It turns out that when taking the diagonal measurement on the ground floor set out either my maths was out or a measuring error took place and it turns out the ground floor is 50 mm out of square throwing the upper story 75mm out. Spent the afternoon swearing a lot while removing all the floor trusses. Tomorrow cut all dynabolts, refix in the right spot and re plumb and straighten walls before reinstalling floor trusses. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to take on a job where the price is marginal as you can tend to rush things and that's when errors occur.
Anyway onwards and upwards and hopefully after tomorrow we'll be back to where we were this morning only square😡
Might be one reason why we all slow down the older we get
Sorry to hear your plight though, Jim.
You will have to start using the fingers on your other hand.
Remember the old statement if you have never made a mistake you haven't done anything.
That sucks. I just had roof plumbers here doing steel roof. They cut a flashing angle the wrong way around and had to scrap it. Even the trades that do it everyday slip up here and there. Of course, they just got on and fixed it as you are. Hope it doesn't take you too long.
Everyone makes mistakes, it's how you deal with it that's important !
... and not making the same one again (too many times).![]()
Boy, that's quite a biggie and will be a right pain in the @#$% to fix. I wish I could say I've never made a booboo of that size, but I'd be lying...But as Bros said if you do nothing, you make no mistakes...
And.....your point is.....what exactly?
it's hard to know what to do sometimes.
Do you take "that" job or not?
We mostly need the money and turning down jobs is not often an option
We all stuff up and some jobs go up the spout for other reasons beyond our control.
I did a paving job a few years back, allowed my usual "unforseen extra" dollars as there were excavations involved.
(There's always stormwater where you think it's not, bloody plumbers, just run it in a straight line!)
it was a small unit/townhouse cortyard which had been turfed and they wanted it all paved, which made more sense.
Got digger in, ripped the turf and topsoil out, only to find the whole yard had been built up with about 600mm of deco.
And it was the crappy kind, with lots of muddy clay stuff in it.
And it was wet.
Impossible to compact.
Like walking on a waterbed
So it all had to come out and be replaced with roadbase, compacted in layers.
When the job was finally done I think I had made about $8/hour with all the extra machinery work and materials
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Accident free since yesterday
Years ago I was replacing a ceiling in a kitchen after a pipe burst in the upstairs bathroom. The owner was
a sculptor and he had just finished a sandstone piece of a phoenix rising from the ashes for a client.
The damn thing was standing near the back door and I knocked it over carrying in a sheet of plasterboard
and broke the head off. The profit margin on that job was pretty slim after I paid for it.
I stuck the head back on with liquid nails and kept it ever since hoping he would become famous
and I could make a profit on it eventually but he seems to have disappeared in to obscurity
Finally progress
Gee, I wonder how you got distracted and made a mistake.![]()
You may as well enjoy the view Jim it sounds like you have already paid for part of it![]()
Got to make the most of it when the weathers like this, it has been wet cold and very miserable for most of this build.
One of my best stuff ups was...
Reno/addition job in Melville. Putting cornice around the ceiling in the new kitchen. At some point the grano was out about 50mm, so I had a step in the wall just next to a corner. I had successfully covered this with tiles at 45 degrees between the overheads and the benchtop. The point of all of that was that at the wall/ceiling intersection the water pipe was just under the white set. I'm holding the cornice up, wife just pinning 25mm nails under it to hold while it sets and yep, hits the pipe.
Recent to this I had made friends with a newly arrived frenchman, and while I'm standing there with water coming at me, there's a knock at the front door. "Come in" the wife and I said in unison.
Gerard walks in, looks at me with water streaming over my head with a finger on the hole and laughs and says "Je ne suis pas un plombier" (I'm not a plumber!)
And.....your point is.....what exactly?
Was doing a paling fence and went to trim the top off with my circ saw.
Chopped the cord.
Dang.
Rang a mate who lived near where the job was and asked if I could borrow his.
No worries, went and got it and managed to cut the cord on that one as well!!!
Taped mine up, finished the job, went home and changed the cord on both.
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Accident free since yesterday
I've got a drill with a shorter cord now too.
just forgot - too much use of the cordless I reckon.
I use half a meter of this on the cord on my grinders. Does not stop a circular saw but will save the cord from a brush from the grinder.
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Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
Seneca
I put a long cord on mine![]()
Accident free since yesterday
I find most mistakes are made when the price margin is very tight and you tend to rush or try to work to a tight timetable. Sometimes late in the afternoon a small mistake will be "it's good enough" and then on reflection the next day you spend a little longer to finish the job and do something you will be proud of and just suffer the consequences of even making less money than anticipated.
Last month I had a an old style glass pool fence made from 1150mm glass that was supposed to have a 50mm gap underneath to bring it up to 1200mm. They just wanted it compliant to enable the sale to go through. Lifted all the panels 50mm but had to notch out the post caps to let the glass sit proud. I used a Dremel and the last cap of the day was a bit tight so I tapped it with a small timber stick and the whole piece of glass shattered.
That was a month ago and since then the glass company has lost the order, stuffed the size up and today they said it's gone....somebody else must of taken it, so back to square one.
Put you beer down on the post cap and the glass shatters.
It completely shocked me on how easy it can happen. Maybe it's some sort of sound wave thingy or shock wave.
I've thrown a panel of 1200mm X 1500mm X 12mm into a skip and belting it as hard as I could with a sledge hammer and couldn't break it. Other times I've been carrying a panel and just bumped the corner and it's shattered and gone off like a bomb.
Tough call when it explodes into the pool and you have to tell the customer to empty the pool.
Interesting video...thanks..
Could be worse
You could have been bragging about how your website would be able to handle millions of people logging on, and threatening them with fines if they didn't, only to end up with a website nobody could use.
(it's still down BTW)
Accident free since yesterday
. Finally done, frame inspected today. It's going to be a nice house but I'm not particularly enjoying this build.
Yep pretty miserable today