[loneframer]

Thought it would be entertaining to share some of the finer moments of construction. Please share your stories of pleasure and pain on the jobsite. I know I could fill several pages of jobsite injuries, accidents, pranks and so on. Let's hear 'em.:thumbsup:

 

[loneframer]

I was framing a second story deck. 8' out, 24'wide. I had a stack of 16' 2x8s on the horses, with enough room to stack my 2x12s for the built up carrier beam. Picked up a 24' 2x12, walked it over and tossed it across the horses. I didn't realize that I had a framing square on the 2x8s, with the tail hanging off the far side. The 2x12 dropped on the end of the square and flipped it up edgewise, striking me just above the left eye.

All I remember is a sharp pain and a flash of lightning followed by stormclouds rolling in. Next thing I remember is opening my eyes, flat on my back, face covered in blood, thinking I had been struck by lightning on a sunny day.:laughing: Now I know why God gave us eyebrows.:w00t:

After I shook it off, I drove to a convenience store with a shredded white T-shirt tied around my head, with blood all over my face and dripped onto my shirt. The clerk asked if I needed her to call the ambulance. "Nah, but a cup full of ice would be greatly appreciated.":laughing: Grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to work. I figured it was going to hurt whether I was working or sulking.:thumbsup: Now, you wanna hear the catspaw story?:whistling

 

[loneframer]

Not nearly as good a story, but worth telling.:blink:

I was a year into my first job in new construction. The builder decided to give me a shot running a framing crew for him.:no: After all the second floor walls were up, braced and plated, I realized I had a closet wall on the wrong side of the line. Jumped up on a 6' ladder and started pulling 12D hot dips out of the double plate. One nail was especially difficult coming out, so I started hanging on the catspaw, adding weight little by little. Just as I got full weight on the paw, both feet off the ladder rung, the nail head pops off, causing the butt end of the paw to doink me dead center of the forehead at an incredible rate of speed.:laughing: That light show was more of a psychodelic trip thing more than a bolt of lightning and storm clouds.:wacko: Still, I found myself flat on my back again.:thumbsup:

 

[rselectric1]

Not mine, but a company I worked for and have long since left.....

Demo crew sent to take out a kitchen. They knock on the door and a kid answers and they are let in. They proceed to tear the entire kitchen out, stage the debris in the garage, and leave for the day.

Later in the day, a panicked and angry HO calls the shop.

Oops! Wrong address!

They got a new custom kitchen out of it so all ended well.

I thought it sounded fake until I actually went on a service call on the real house where it happened.

 

[Tinstaafl]

I just replaced 11 door slabs in a house with a new roof.

The house is on the corner of Derbyshire and Lancaster.
Directly across the street is 900 Lancaster.
This house is 900 Derbyshire.

Free roof.

 

[JumboJack]

I was nailing some freeze blocks,standing on a ladder.Leaning a little to my left.Dropped my nail gun.Stupidly I stuck my left foot out to try and break the fall of the gun.
Leaning left already and taking my left foot off the ladder caused the ladder to fall to the right.Fast.
Some how I managed to reach up and grab a rafter tail.I thought to myself "Whew that was close"

I was wearing those "framer" light weight gloves.And proceeded to slowly slide down the rafter tail and landed on the ladder.
That sucked...

 

[dkillianjr]

Knock on wood I have been very very lucky with injuries on the job! So nothing to exciting:laughing:


This was years ago when I was pretty young. I was working with my dad on a saturday trying to fonish up some stuff in a two story addition. We had a ladder leaned up into a window opening with the feet on the deck below. Well it started ice raining outside, I never even thought about it. I climbed out the opening to get on the ladder and whoosh I rode the ladder down, right into a glass patio table. The ice got under the ladder feet. I don't know how my dad got down to me, we hadden't punched through the old wall yet. He shimmied down some long boards we had leaning in the window. I was knocked out from my head hitting the deck and a broken finger. All I remember my dad saying when I woke up, was don't tell your mother:laughing:




Also a long while ago one of my first solo jobs my dad gave me his old black and decker 9" miter saw to use on a job. The gaurd was so scratched I couldn't see a thing! So I took it off. Next thing I know my finger is cut down the center and peeling like a banana:laughing: I didn't have a first aid kit in the truck. So I was panicing rumaging through the ho's garage for some paper towels and duct tape:laughing:



One more, This was a little more recent. I was installing a custom glass shelf with steel supports. I dropped my drill bit on the floor, went to stand up and split my head open on the steel. I didn't have any paper towels so I walked into the ho's kitchen to get some paper towels real quick. I was holding my hands over the wound to try and contain it. :laughing:

Now I carry a complete first aid kit in the truck:laughing:


Dave

 

[dkillianjr]

I'll share a good prank I have done to HO's many times. If I am doing a bathroom and installing a fiberglass tub or shower. Take your pencil and draw a crack that connects two screws in the flange at the corner. I have gotten so many people over the years from subs to homeowners. The prank isn't for every ho though:laughing:




Dave

 

[JumboJack]

I'll share a good prank I have done to HO's many times. If I am doing a bathroom and installing a fiberglass tub or shower. Take your pencil and draw a crack that connects two screws in the flange at the corner. I have gotten so many people over the years from subs to homeowners. The prank isn't for every ho though:laughing:




Dave

I was working at home a few years ago..Real good rapport withe he HO's.They took me to my first NASCAR race....Anyhoo,the lady of the house was terrified of "critters" because they lived in the hills and had all kinds of things in the neighborhood.
I had a realistic plastic rat that I left in strategic places around the house...:jester:

 

[CharlesD]

I've had so many falls and tumbles I couldn't take time to wrire about all of them.
But, the one that put me under physically was on a job one morning after it had snowed about 8 inches. There was a small road leading down to the job site and I found it and parked near the job trailer. Went in, got my orders for the day and headed back to my van to get the tools I needed.
The operator got on the back hoe and started it. Superintendent yells at him what are you doing? Operator said he was going to clean us off a trail in the snow. Superintended said we can't waste fuel like that and we'd have to walk in the snow.
Me and two guys were walking together when my right foot went into a hole about two foot deep, All my weight went down on the other kneee. It busted my knee pretty bad and crushed a couple vertabra in my back and cracked my hip joint. I ended up having knee surgery and back surgery and after being off one year they made me take total disability.
The Super was just being a butthole. I'm still upset with him.

Good news though, after my BD in June, I can go back to work full time if I want too. I'm going to start doing something then.

 

[loneframer]

This one has been abused on our sites.

Take a black Sharpie and put several coats on the nosepiece of someones sun/safety glasses. Looks like they took an a$$ whooping when they take them off.:laughing: One of the project managers on a job got this treatment, shortly before he had to go to settlement on a home.:whistling

Try this one on your wife. Strap a rubberband around the sprayer nozzle on the kitchen sink and aim it carefully. You'll surely get a phone call just after she starts dinner.:clap:

 

[CharlesD]

I had a kid working for me who had the habit of laying his hammer on the top rung of a step letter if he was using one.
I climbed over him for doing that. Explaining to him it was dangerous because the hammer could fall off the ladder and hit someone in the head.
He went back up and retrived his hammer. I climbed on the letter to straighten out what he'd done, Realized I needed to adjust the ladder so like a dummy laid my hammer down on the top rung, just the way I'd chewed someone else out for doing it.
I remember moving the ladder but don't remember anything after that until I woke up laying on the ground with blood all over my head and the kid white as a sheet. My 20 oz. hammer had fallen off and the claws had hit me right in the middle of my scalp and left two pretty good sized holes in the skin that was bleading like a stuck hog.
I lived and had to apologized to the kid I bawled out.

 

[JumboJack]

I had a kid working for me who had the habit of laying his hammer on the top rung of a step letter if he was using one.
I climbed over him for doing that. Explaining to him it was dangerous because the hammer could fall off the ladder and hit someone in the head.
He went back up and retrived his hammer. I climbed on the letter to straighten out what he'd done, Realized I needed to adjust the ladder so like a dummy laid my hammer down on the top rung, just the way I'd chewed someone else out for doing it.
I remember moving the ladder but don't remember anything after that until I woke up laying on the ground with blood all over my head and the kid white as a sheet. My 20 oz. hammer had fallen off and the claws had hit me right in the middle of my scalp and left two pretty good sized holes in the skin that was bleading like a stuck hog.
I lived and had to apologized to the kid I bawled out.

Do as I say,not as I do......:laughing::laughing::laughing:

 

[AtlanticWBConst]

Years back, we were performing a remodeling project on a home. The husband was the CFO of an international sports company (that I won't name). We had done a lot of lucrative work at their corporate offices, thus the connection. I mention this, to lay the background, that it was a project, that we had a larger vested interest in, than your everyday remodel.

The husband and wife (no kids), had to leave on a business trip, and left us the keys. They gave us instructions to make sure that the 2 cats, did not get out (They had a person coming by to feed and check on the cats daily).

Well, at the end of a Friday, my business partner was working there, with some other workers, he did his walk around check before locking up the house. He found only 1 cat, so he looked, and looked. He got the workers looking too. They finally found cat # 2, so they put it into the house, locked it up, and left.

When the home owners came back from their trip, they found multiple areas of the house shredded/clawed-up, especially around the windows.....and couldn't understand, how some wild cat had gotten into the house.
....They did eventually find the "missing" cat, and we fixed the damages from the "other" cat.

.....So, much for trying to make a good impression on the CFO.

It all worked out. The couple were fine. They were/are very, very nice people, and very understanding.
We are still friends to this day, and are still doing work at the Corporate offices = phew

What a stupid situation that was.

 

[rjconstructs]

I was pulling on an airhose once, the coupling was hanging up on something. I didn't want to walk the 50' to loosen it so I pulled harder and harder. The coupling unhooked which would have been no big deal
except for the pull I had on it The end came straight for my head and the rest was in slow motion. It hit me dead center of my forehead. My knees buckled a bit, fortunately I didn't go down. It did leave me dazed for a minute.

 

[SC sawdaddy]

We had just built the outside wall for open foyer on the second story. Getting ready to slide it out from the landing and nail it in place. I was on one end, "Andy" on the other. We stood it up and were waiting on the other guys to get on the front exterior wall to catch it as we eased it across the 2x8 temps in the foyer.
Somebody said hand me the level, I guess Andy thought I had the wall and let go of his end to fetch the level. Wall tipped over and fell down through the foyer dragging me with it.
No broken bones but I sure let him know to ask "Have you got it?" before letting go.

 

[SC sawdaddy]

Another time...
It was cold. Subdivision was new and out in the country. I was the cut man and had a small fire close to the saw horses that I threw the scraps in.
During the breaks everybody gathered around to get warm. One guy picks up an empty (?) Pasload gas cartridge and tossed it into the fire. that caused everybody to scramble away from the fire and caused him to get a group ass chewing. Partly because of the safety issue but mostly because that little stunt had forced everybody away from the heat.

We stood there a few minuets discussing whether or not it would explode. Didn't have to wonder long. It blew burning 2x4 scraps all over the yard. Sounded like a shotgun blast.
Funny thing was the boxing guys on the house next door. Up on a scaffold with their backs to us and never saw the explosion coming.
They were pissed. I think they might have shat a little too.

 

[BamBamm5144]

When I was first starting to get in the trades, I was working for my uncle. Due to my age and being the new kid with no experience my responsibilities were to keep the ground clean and help anyone with whatever they needed. A week or so after a new guy started he yelled down for me to grab him another roll of felt. I brought it up the ladder, gave it to him and made my way back down.

As I am dragging a tarp around to the front I see him fall off the side of the roof and land in the bushes below. The big idiot walked right off the roof backwards while rolling out the felt. I learned a good lesson that day. You are never safe, even when you are on the ground doing the least dangerous part.

 

[Framer53]

OK a framing story for all!

Built a 30' wall on the second floor. Lifted it and had it temp braced.
Our new laborer came up and leaned about 60 2x4's against it. It went all the way down to the ground.

I was building another wall, stood up to stretch my back, and the wall I had just built wasn't there!

We did pull it back into place and nail it down.

When we had the second floor walls built and braced, the boss who was reading the plans that week, realized we had forgot a bump out on the plans.

I wonder why that was the last house we framed for this builder!

 

[mickey69125]

I was doing trim work using a Porter Cable finish nailer. For some reason it kept jamming on me. Spent an hour trying to figure it out, and decided if I was going to get anything done that day I'd just have to live with it until I had more time. When it jammed I'd have to unhook the hose and hit the nose piece of the gun with the palm of my hand to get it working again. You guessed it, about the tenth time I forgot to unhook the hose. Heard the gun go off and thought "boy was I lucky, it didn't shoot" then I turned my hand over and there was the nail. It had went clear through and only the head of it was under the skin. Pulled it out and then it started bleeding. Didn't really hurt and it missed all the tendons and bones. Went and got a tetanus shot and was back to work the next morning. Bought a new Hitachi finish nailer that day.