Things Only Professionals See

Scott Young

i am like most of you and cursed with too much knowledge when i go places i am constantly looking at things that most common people don't see. here are a few:

1/4 round used instead of shoe mold.

shoe mold installed incorrectly.

crown installed upside down.

casing used for chair rail and or base.

doors installed backward.

shingles installed without a starter strip on tabbed shingles leaving keyways open on the first run. (i got to fix that one for a friend when i noticed it and pointed it out.)

oh there are others, but what have you seen

TonyD

How about outside corners on drywall, without cornerbead, just a painted raw end.

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"...You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong..."
Abraham Lincoln

4319hendrie

Unfilled nail holes on trim work drives me nuts.

dumplin1078

You have got to be kidding.

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"I hate to tell you this, but you're a man. You're going to spend your life gettin' up one more time than you get knocked down." John Wayne

TonyD

Nope not at all. An 1 bedroom apartment upper i rented for about 2 years. 10-11 years ago $400 a month. Every day was an adventure.

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"...You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong..."
Abraham Lincoln

Brushslingers

Paint on doorknobs, crooked cut lines and crooked tile lines, electric plates with the cover screw not up and down, ya... i'm anal. My wife gets mad when I walk into someones home and start scracthing paint from the knobs. I mentioned once to a good friend of hers, not a bad job but all these cut lines are croooked as hell... turns out, SHE did it.

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Benn

AAPaint

Flashing and thin paint has to be the biggest one I notice. I swear everywhere I go I see one coat paint jobs that don't cover right and have no primer. Was at a Zaxby's the other day and noticed the poor job on the acid stained floor. There were saw cut squares, and each square you could see where they applied too much around the edges cutting them in, and never quite blended them right.

As far as everything else, I could probably make a list a mile long. Nail heads showing on trim, or nail that stick out an inch. Carpenters building things with stain quality wood and not sanding the fuzzies off the ends of the boards before nailing it together leaving ugly splinters sticking out at every joint.

Saw a shingled roof that buts directly up to the siding on one customer's townhome with no flashing or anything and has rotted out the whole wall. It's the neighbor's porch roof that was just re-done.

This list could be miles long if I sat and thought for a minute.

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-AAPaint

AA Quality Painting & Pressure Washing LLC
Jacksonville Painters
Jacksonville, FL.

Nick H

One thing I always notuce is when a HO has hung his own doors, sometimes a pretty good job, but they always put the hinges in the wrong place, usually equidistant from top and bottom. I have a real job not to piont it out .

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Dont give me problems, give me solutions.

YourWayPainting

I know what you mean. I am constantly seeing crooked cut-ins, non-covering rolling, and paint in places that it shouldn’t be. Not to mention the piss poor excuse for a prep job. I don’t mention it to the home owners though. You just never know ...

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A good paint job isn't cheap. A cheap paint job isn't good.

ron schenker

Radiator hose from a small block chevy rad custom bent to form a P-trap under a bathroom vanity. Yes the HO was a mechanic

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Don't worry, the baseboard will hide it!

AAPaint

The one I hate the most........carpenters with caulk guns! No offense wood guys, you can build some beautiful stuff with wood, but leave the caulking to us!! Caulk is the number one thing I would have to say that I see poorly done, and it's one of the easiest. Usually looks like someone used a bucket of caulk and slathered it on with all four fingers!

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-AAPaint

AA Quality Painting & Pressure Washing LLC
Jacksonville Painters
Jacksonville, FL.

mdshunk

A little paint and a little caulk, makes a carpenter what he's not.

Double-A

I try to limit my caulk application to two fingers. I need the other two for nose maintenance.

Having a home owner say, "I plumbed the bathroom myself" and entering the crawlspace to see that pressure fittings were used and sani-tees are laying on their backs... Argh.

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"My clients’ wishes are the center of my attention." -- David Guido, a contractor in Woodstock, N.Y.
New York Times, July 20, 2006

Teetorbilt

Painters that remove the cover plates and then hit the receptacles/switches anyway. Tile setters who assume that the slab is flat. Framing carpenters that save a few bucks by re-using the concrete forming lumber from the dumpster. Framers who can't get a wall plumb, straight or flat even when using metal studs. Painters who dust the walls with primer so that nothing will ever truly adhere to it (anybody know how to strip drywall?)

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Gordo

Awesome!

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Looks like some pros were here.

Bigbricklayer

I'm not a carpenter by any mean but there was a guy putting up trim in the house we are working on, so I went inside just to check the house out. In my looking arround i noticed his trim work.He put 34 nails in one piece of trim along the side of an interior door. I'm glad i'm not a painter.

Scott Young

i hate when i walk up to a house that someone has spent a bunch of money on to restore and the hack jackleg painted over peeling paint, and used caulk for window glazing.

theworx

Walking into a new $300,000.00 home (high end up here) and having the bad taping just jump out at you. Also makes for a bad paint job without nice sharp clean and straight corners (especially at the ceiling). Pisses me off because those shotty tapers make way more money than I do and I do a better job...

cmwacasey

poor attic ventilation in southern homes.do not know much about northen homes with the snow and all.

Dave-Raleigh

Drywall taping that telegraphs through popcorn ceilings
OSB/Plywood 4' edges telegraphing through roofing shingles
Roofing shingles layed in brick pattern rather than stair stepped
Wavy vinyl exterior walls because of sloppy framing amd/or vinyl installation
Crooked/loose electrical switches/receptacles
Dirt imbedded in spray painted baseboards
Wavy chair rail because walls are wavy
Door latch plates that don't match factory routed recesses
Wall paint touchup where you can see exactly where the touchup was done