What I've gleaned off this site

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I’m on eastern time 😆

This reminds me- I saw a company yesterday- 1 Hour Heating and Cooling was the name. I was like, oh that is smart, what are yall gonna do when it’s daylights savings time ya Einsteins!?
I saw a guy pulling an enclosed utility trailer with a sign on the side "Good Enough Construction".
 
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I saw a guy pulling an enclosed utility trailer with a sign on the side "Good Enough Construction".
Almost like “cant see it from my house” construction- We have masonry companys around town that are usually what we call runaway helpers with names like - “ do the right thing masonry...” and “ we brick 4 u” then we had one that popped up called “It’s my turn masonry”.😝
 
I saw a guy pulling an enclosed utility trailer with a sign on the side "Good Enough Construction".
Dear friend of mine, now passed, earned the nick name “Good Enough Gary” for his sense of framing tolerances, which were considerably outside of mine. He was frustrated with my precision when we first started working together and bellowed “you’re not building furniture you know!” My son to this day summarizes a so-so outcome by tagging it as “Gary good” to signal that its workable but not ideal. Great guy, I think of him every time I swing a hammer.
 
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Almost like “cant see it from my house” construction- We have masonry companys around town that are usually what we call runaway helpers with names like - “ do the right thing masonry...” and “ we brick 4 u” then we had one that popped up called “It’s my turn masonry”.😝
"Runaway Helpers"..........how true! They muddy-it-up for everyone else. The first thing they do is work too cheap.
 
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"Runaway Helpers"..........how true! They muddy-it-up for everyone else. The first thing they do is work too cheap.
It is amazing the cast of characters that get houses built.

Recently I referred a guy a job that we didn’t need to take on and he priced it for $80,000.00 Labor. That sounds like a lot of money but it isn’t for a job that needs to pay about 140,000.00. He is going to suck air. I just shook my head because of the amount of time that he’s going to spend making sure everything comes together right and that will be time he’s not working somewhere else because he’s managing the finish subs- The lost opportunities that that creates is going to hurt him.
 
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I taught plumbing for many years at the local PHCC. One thing I always pushed was you should always be proud our your work. Telling them when you have finished doing the top out (installing the water and vent piping) you should be willing to sign your name to it, invite your family to come to the job site and show off your work. Don’t have attitude that it gets covered by Sheetrock so it’s good enough.

Once you start to settle for so-so you may never get back my work is the shit (y)Instead it will my work looks like shit.(n)

I also made sure they understood the difference between between a lawsuit for faulty plumbing. If the parts fail you have the mfg to go after and you can sleep at night knowing you did your job properly .

But if it fails because of faulty workmen-ship you are only to blame. And if it not installed properly and to code there is not much hope you have of winning
 
I taught plumbing for many years at the local PHCC. One thing I always pushed was you should always be proud our your work. Telling them when you have finished doing the top out (installing the water and vent piping) you should be willing to sign your name to it, invite your family to come to the job site and show off your work. Don’t have attitude that it gets covered by Sheetrock so it’s good enough.

Once you start to settle for so-so you may never get back my work is the shit (y)Instead it will my work looks like shit.(n)

I also made sure they understood the difference between between a lawsuit for faulty plumbing. If the parts fail you have the mfg to go after and you can sleep at night knowing you did your job properly .

But if it fails because of faulty workmen-ship you are only to blame. And if it not installed properly and to code there is not much hope you have of winning
I just saw this. Doing things well is not always easy.

First it takes the dedication to learn, to know what a good job really is. Why it is good. Why it will work. How it will work.

It takes strength of mind not to take the easy out, not to cut the joist, not to oversize the hole when you have to crawl back out. To not let the pressure of the contractor, client or schedule deter you.

You have to be mentally and physically tough.

Overtime you learn that what you have committed to doing sort of becomes your salvation and you always have work and you always have money and you always feel good about what you do.
 
If a contractor wants to accelerate what I just described the best thing they can do is take pictures with a cell phone and show the client the nail plates, the street elbow, the cleanout- whatever you did to make the job what it needs to be , things like how you looked out for them down the road like making sure a drain snake won’t hit a 90 and bind later -

They will assume the competition doesn’t do that (and they didn’t, you did🙂) and brag to their friends at work or on the golf course about how good you are. Old ladies will show their protective adult sons you are treating them right.

You can even show it before you go on bids, before I ever see a job, if I remotely think I want it, I make sure the prospect knows what I’m capable of by sending pics of similar work or what to avoid when interviewing contractors. That being said, 90 percent of my clients do not even get other bids, and if it is a situation where the prospect is getting several and price shopping, I bow out.

Once you get established as someone who does it well, people will beat your door down, pay your price, wait for you, stay off your back and not be hyper critical and pay you fast because they want you to come next time.

This ends up being about as good as it gets in the construction world, then all you have to do is not be a jerk and mess it up.

Forgive me if I’m off topic, I have a real passion for this because I see a lot of people and their families go through some hard times in the construction business because they don’t know how to avoid bottom feeding.
 
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