Uh Oh! Look What I Did

Warren

We were talking on the other thread about mistakes that we find from other trades. Got me to thinking about how I've made my share of mistakes too. When you've been doing this a long time and you are leading a crew, mistakes will happen. So come on guys fess up about the big ones.


I will get the ball rolling with my 2nd worst mistake.If we get at least 10 posts I will discuss my worst one.

Warren

About 20 years ago I was leading a framing crew and we were starting to frame walls on 2nd floor deck. As I started to layout the first wall the numbers were'nt adding up. Seems they were about 2 feet off. Yep, I missed the 2 ft cantilever on the whole front of the house! Boss wasn't too happy. We ended up doubling all the joists in the front using about 24 2x10x16's

loneframer

Monster house, laid all joists out to allow for plumbing fixtures, joists were TJI with 3.5" flanges on 12" centers. Got all the walls snapped on the floor when I realized the architect had changed the exterior walls to 2x6 without changing interior room dimensions, so all the toilet flanges that should have cleared the joists ended up encroaching on the joist flanges. Ended up shifting a few walls to get clearance, but ended up with one interior door with ripped casing against a wall. The trim guy did a nice job tying it in with an adjacent closet door, so it looked decent. The story goes on, but that was the initial problem. That archi. as a learned over some time was notorious for missing inches in critical locations.

KentWhitten

Worst BI I ever had. Guy ripped up apart on some questionable items, couldn't really complain. Dejected crew sitting in the garage eating lunch, the guy comes out, hands me 6 cards of corrections, says "don't feel bad, I could have written a lot more"

He looks up to the underside of the bonus room, looks at the glulam and says "uh guys.....it says top"

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If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place ~Lao Tzu

Custom Cabinetry - Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Kennebunkport, Yarmouth, Falmouth, Cumberland, Ogunquit, Maine

Salmon Falls Cabinetry

Aframe

On a 4 story brownstone we were replacing the rear window units (3 each floor) on the top 3 floors. Plugging away through the day, then as I have the sawzall halfway through the the next frame.
"OH CRAP, we're on the first floor. Fortunately we did not smash up the sash and only had to rebuild the exterior trim Int was oak paneled room.

Trim40

I went to vo-tech during high school for HVAC. My first job that summer was putting central air in some townhomes. When we went back to set the condensing unit I found someone had cut the line set just above the foundation. My boss says to just braze new lines to whats left. Well the sparks and heat went up into the hole for the line set and the paper on the insulation caught fire!

TempestV

We were replacing some doors, and had to mount the hinges and bore for the lock sets. We put the old door next to the new one to mark exact hinge locations, set the hinges, and carried the door in the house, at which point we realized that the door was backward from the original when we marked the hinge location, and would only fit upside down. The door was a little tight in the opening anyways, so we were able to cut a little off to hide the mismatched mortising, and some careful patching hid the screw holes, so it worked out, but it took a bit of extra work.

One of the worst mistakes I've ever seen, we were adding a second floor to a 40' long garage, and the plans called for joists on 12" centers, every other joist a doubler. One end of the joists ran into a beam and had to have hangers. We were almost done setting the joists when it was realized that the guy doing layout had inched himself on the first mark on the side with the hangers. We had to pull every hanger, move the joist over, and reset the hanger.

neolitic

When I was a pup, super insisted
I come in to work to get in a big
pad pour even though I had 102º
fever.
Long short, I misread the
column line started the pour 2' off.
Had to hook the Lorraine tower crane
up to pull the mats and column stubs.
$50k (1972 dollars) of #12-#16 rebar.
Next time I said I was sick he didn't
tell me to just tough it out.

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(Sorry....it seems there really are dumb questions)

kbsparky

30 years ago, I replaced 400 fluorescent strip fixtures, with the new emergency ballast/inverters in an apartment complex.

I set up an "assembly line" to drill, mount, wire, and install those ballasts ahead of time.

After completing 300 of `em I discovered that I had wired them all wrong I had to go back to each and every one to switch 2 pairs of wires to correct the wiring.

Took me a couple of weeks on my own time to fix that mess.

At least the final 100 fixtures were done correctly the first time.

sparehair

I'm surprised you didn't end up in the concrete!

Constructive1

We were doing a 6 unit condo conversion above a ground level art gallery and needed a 7" diameter hole cored through a brick wall. We had told every sub to be paranoid about anything leaking down to the gallery including the core drilling sub who had worked on my projects for 10 years with no issues.

We left to check on another job site.

Gallery owner discovered red slurry had run down the wall, across the tops of 7-8 paintings leaning against that wall.

Core drilling sub's insurance ended up paying out $35,000.

knucklehead

My most recent was a set of stairs with a landing in the center of the run. I had a helper working with me , got the landing built, marked the jacks out for him to cut. It was a reversed plan. I told him to put the stairs on the wrong side. Nobody noticed for a few days.

Mellison

I grouted a small lobby after installing natural slate. Unfortunately I didn't think to seal the stone first. Alot of acid and of elbow grease were used before I got the tiles clean. I still work in the building and think about that F-up every time I walk I enter.

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"Enjoy Every Sandwich" Warren Zevon

BattleRidge

I was framing this super easy 1600 sq ft ranch and wanted to just slam it out, one guy laying out one guy cutting and I was crowning and throwing it together. Well 4 days later we were putting the windows in and the 4 x 8 picture windows sill was and inch and a half low and 6 ft wide. So we had to rippit all apart and build a new header and reframe it. Not that bigga deal but most other things were puttting stuff on the wrong side of the line but catching it later and stuff.

Gold Tie

Im still trying to think of my worst one, but I am reminded of one!

A couple years ago a GC took off on vacation while leaving a crew of worthless drunks to frame a two story townhome. He returned from his nice, stress relieving trip to find a not so nice single story apartment..... Oh, and the best part was, the floor joist were about 30 yards away from the slab!!!!

This news spread like wildfire and yes I jumped on the bandwagon to do a drive-by laughing!!!!

Between this and seeing a guy drive a skytrak through a house, that was a pretty entertaining year!!

nEighter

LMAO!!!!!!!!!:laughi ng:

Nolving

After re piping the upstairs master tub and re installing dry wall in the first floor sealing from where we accessed the pipes, my helper for got to tighten up the overflow seal on the tub. So the tenant filled the tub and when she was enjoying her hot bath, the overflow leaked straight down into our freshly laid drywall and knockdown texture. I first fired his attention less ass, and then I tightened the overflow and repainted the sealing. It did not leak enough to damage or warp anything but I could see the seams where some water permeated. Boy was I pissed. It could have been worse.

atnas

When young and dumb, I was tasked with relocating a pocket hole door. I went to work with a fury using a sawzall. Well of course you guessed it, about half way through the cut I had that sinking feeling that something was not right..., yes I cut throught the door, and the framing members. Ahhh those were the days.

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If you don't have time to do it right the first time..., when will you have time to do it again?
Klaus Finish Carpentry

Five Star

when i started out in this business, iworked on a framing crew,we finished around lunch time and the sheathers came to start sheeting the house, we decide to have lunch in the garage.as we were eating we noticed a little spanish guy would run up the stairs and all you heard was BAM BABAM BAM and run back down.after about ten trips we decided to see what was up,turns out they were using a metric tape measure and every time they cut a sheat and it didnt fit the guy would run upstairs and start moving studs .,

when we informed our boss he went back to the last 5 houses that we framed and they were all the same thing.

heres where it gets good, buy moving the studs the spanish guy gave us plenty of over time because when the plumber and hvac started to rough they did not have clear bays to the 2nd floor so we ate up alot of o/t

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TempestV

it seems like it would be easier to re-cut the sheet. So one guy was calling Centimeters, and the other guy was hearing inches, or the other way around, and they didn't realize their problem for 5 houses?