Our tradesmen, where would we be without them

sas

I thought as a slight diversion that there may be a few interesting\funny stories about where our construction professionals knowledge shone through.

To get the ball rolling.......

I'm currently building a masonry house. I've no construction experience.

We have hollowcore floor upstairs. I was doing some advance prep work for the grouting of the slabs. One thing that sort of concerned me was that in a couple of places the slabs weren't meeting perfectly and I had images of the concrete spilling through to downstairs. So my idea was that I'd nail strips of plywood over the places I was concerned about to bridge the gaps.

Off I go to the hardware store for steel nails.

Back to site, set up my ladder and hold the plywood in place. I started trying to nail them on. All I seemed to be doing was chipping the surface of the hollowcore. Not for the life of me could I drive a nail into them.

So I packed up my few tools into the car and headed off home dejected that yet another seemingly basic task (i.e. drive nail into concrete) had proved beyond me.

Anyway, the carpenter is on site the next day so I explained what I wanted to do and handed him the box of nails.

"What are these for" he says.

I explained....

Rather amused he explained to me that trying to drive nails into mass concrete was by and large impossible. "All you were doing was chipping the surface I suppose" he says. I should underline that he was in no way condescending but the idea of me standing on a ladder trying to nail into concrete over my head and getting more frustrated by my lack of success was no doubt funny.

10 mins later after a small bit of drilling and a few compressed anchors all was complete.

Another lesson learned..

sydthebeat

feed a man fish, he'll eat for a day...

teach him to fish, he'll eat for life....

dan_d

There's such a thing as concrete nails, but they're equally frustrating!

Live and learn OP. And if I've learned one thing from being on a building site....never think you know everything. There's always someone who knows more!

morning delight

Good idea for a thread sas

I hung all the curtain rails in my sisters house only for them all to come loose and start falling down a few weeks later.

I got a tradesman in and he hung them again just using bigger screws! Needless to say 2 years later and they are all still in place.

These guys also seem to do in an hour what it takes me a whole day to do!

JuniorB

My favourite saying - if you want mass said ... get a Priest.

muffler

A few years back a guy asked me to have a look at the Aerobord insulation in the cavity walls of the house he was having built. It was up tight to the outer leaf of the wall and I asked him what sort of explanation/excuse the blocklayer give for this.

The blocklayer told him that everyone was fitting this insulation wrong as the whole idea was to keep the cold out so it was better placed at the outer leaf.

There could be cause to debate this "logic"

rayjdav

Was recently prepping an existing wall for plastering, ie hacking:(. It was so hard and taking so long I asked the plaster if it, half hacked wall, was good enough for him to scratch over and work on?

"Ahh, tis grand if you want? Sure you wont see it from my house".
Favourite saying I picked up on our build.

Also, spark will have "You might as well be looking at it as for it" on his tombstone..

sinnerboy

I have heard people complain about the likes of paying a tradsman €150-200 to do what turned out to be " a really simple job- sure he did it in no time " .

They forget that they paid for the experience of a man who had exactly the right tools and materials and know how to complete a lasting and durable job.

That if they had followed the logic of " i could have done myself " they would have wasted

1. time - a morning in B+Q
2. money - a drill bit they would not use again for how long ? Wrong size/type of fixings
3. time agian - would have taken a multiple of time over the task vs the skilled man

Only very very skillful people make the tasks they do seem easy .

Self builders - tatoo this to the insides of your eyelids

martinn123

sinnerboy wrote: »

I have heard people complain about the likes of paying a tradsman €150-200 to do what turned out to be " a really simple job- sure he did it in no time " .

They forget that they paid for the experience of a man who had exactly the right tools and materials and know how to complete a lasting and durable job.


That if they had followed the logic of " i could have done myself " they would have wasted

1. time - a morning in B+Q
2. money - a drill bit they would not use again for how long ? Wrong size/type of fixings
3. time agian - would have taken a multiple of time over the task vs the skilled man

Only very very skillful people make the tasks they do seem easy .

Self builders - tatoo this to the insides of your eyelids

agree with the above, however sometimes complaint will be that the tradesman wants the 150-200 in cash with no reciept.
lately I had a two man team recommended to me to fit windows. when the job was completed they insisted on payment in cash, I explained that I had to deduct 35%, as they had no C2 the response '' well we are not taking a cut in our wages''
haven't used that team since

teepee

As the heading would suggest , still living in caves :rolleyes: .

mfceiling

Love it!!

Get people telling you that "you must be making a fortune" when you have charged them a price for a job.

Go on to job - they see your cordless hammer drill - "i must get one of those, how much are they?" 700 euros.........jesus they're dear enough...did you get it in woodies or B+Q!!

I have about €5000 worth of tools in my van.....i use them regulary and so they need servicing, replacing, new batteries and chargers etc.

Add in all your associated costs - van, diesel, insurance etc - before a mortgage payment has been paid or a scrap of food has hit the table and suddenly the oul euro doesn't stretch as far as you think!!

I still enjoy the banter on the few jobs that are out there.....i'll leave you with this one....

Dublin airport 1999..........engineer checking quality of work.
He asks the plasterer to throw his eye down a wall.
What's wrong with it he says.
Sure you can see full well there is a very bad bit of plastering about half way down that wall
Plasterer "don't worry about that, it's only a speed wobble"!!!!!!!!!!:eek:

soldsold

An electrician was telling me he was asked to install/ replace an electric shower and cubicle by a lady and as he is generally handy he didn't have a problem doing the whole job. So he asked her over the phone to measure the shower tray so he knew what size to look for. Her answer...

one meter and two inches wide.

Its easy to laugh at others though, I was just finished installing OSB boards on the ceiling in my extension and I saw some loose 16ft lengths of 4x2's sitting above the ceiling joists, so I decided I might as well reclaim them rather than leaving them there. They wouldnt fit down the access hole I had left in the OSB so I cut them in two and fed them down. Suddenly I got a brain wave and sheepishly rang the roofer and asked "there were some 4x2's left in the attic, I assume you need them to be left up there to nail them to the rafters for support?

sinnerboy

An electrician friend was asked to install an additional kitchen over-worktop power point . The householder made a DIY effort but "it did not work" . The neatly installed power point was tested - no power from it . When my friend removed the face plate .........





...... no cable ........

sas

sinnerboy wrote: »

An electrician friend was asked to install an additional kitchen over-worktop power point . The householder made a DIY effort but "it did not work" . The neatly installed power point was tested - no power from it . When my friend removed the face plate .........

...... no cable ........

Best laugh I've had this week. Brilliant.

Kashkai

To answer this thread's title question, where would I be without my tradesmen who built my house, well let's see-

I would have done a better job than the so called sparks, plumber, plasterer, brickies, carpenter. I'm a very competent DIY'er and I've spent the past 3 years repairing their mistakes. The law of averages states that there must be competent tradesmen out there, I've just not met any to date.

For every good pro, there's at least one eejit masquerading as someone who thinks they know what they're doing.

1not24get

Prosperous Dave wrote: »

To answer this thread's title question, where would I be without my tradesmen who built my house, well let's see-

I would have done a better job than the so called sparks, plumber, plasterer, brickies, carpenter. I'm a very competent DIY'er and I've spent the past 3 years repairing their mistakes. The law of averages states that there must be competent tradesmen out there, I've just not met any to date.

For every good pro, there's at least one eejit masquerading as someone who thinks they know what they're doing.

Have to agee with you there....half way through building a house. As a layman I trusted the first tradesman to do the job right...problems everywhere. Since then, for the most part, I have spent time asking around about tradesmen before I would even ask them to price the job...ie I have paid a bit more for 'good guys'....still have problems....'if you want it done right, do it your self!!!

Kashkai

Some of my "funny tradesmen" stories:

Pull the plug out of the socket and the faceplate comes with it.

Turn on the cold tap and get warm water due to cold and hot pipes touching

Turn on a light switch and nothing happens as the wires have come loose-never tightened in the first place.

Look at the lovely bumps in walls and ceilings from the master plasterer - lumps of plaster not skimmed properly

Try to lay wooden floors on surfaces that have bumps and hollows

Take off all the doors and shave them down so they'll open and close without having to shoulder charge them.

Some pros will laugh at incompetent DIY'ers who make a mess of something but I value my DIY skills over the "pros" I've dealt with anyday.

Out Of Order

I have a great one that I'm told actually happened a few years ago.

Young lad gets a job with Clancys, the foreman tells him to take the dumper down to the yard and fill it with diesel.

About half an hour passes and there's no sign of him coming back so the foreman asks "wheres the young lad gone with the dumper?"
They went down and found him LITERALLY filling the dumper with diesel:eek::pac:

Coyote

1not24get wrote: »

Have to agee with you there....half way through building a house. As a layman I trusted the first tradesman to do the job right...problems everywhere. Since then, for the most part, I have spent time asking around about tradesmen before I would even ask them to price the job...ie I have paid a bit more for 'good guys'....still have problems....'if you want it done right, do it your self!!!

the problem anyone hiring a tradesman over the last few years most (not all) of the good ones worked for one/two main contractors who would give them all the work they needed. with a lot less hassle ie: full drawing of what was wanted they put in a price for the job any extras = QS works out how much for the extra should cost and they get paid on time and fast.
they can't mess with a main contractor and expect to get an other job off them, anything wrong they have to come back and fix it for free. so good tradesmen were busy without the hassle of working for people who don't even know what they want half the time and get pissed when the price keeps going up as they make more and more additions/changes.
the other problem is people a lot of the time pick the cheapest price, which a number of time is the guy who is not making enough on the job to make it worth putting the time in to do it right.

PaleRider

Sinnerboy, have to say great logic. If lay people really understood what you just said there would be less problems in construction. First class trademen are really worth their money. Keep it up

Bitten & Hisses

JuniorB wrote: »

My favourite saying - if you want mass said ... get a Priest.

Or as I always say, you wouldn't get a plumber to wire your house, so why get an engineer to design your house? (excluding structural sign-off, naturally)

mfceiling

Working over in the west at the minute and nearly fell of the seat laughing today......

One of the boys left for new york when he was 18 to seek his fame and fortune.
On his first day of work he went with the boys into a diner for the breakfast sambo.
"can i get ham and cheese on a roll please"
"sure you can honey.........mayo?"
"no galway actually":D

Where do we get them??;)