What's the biggest or most costly mistake you've made?
- Thread starter rnt80
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tiralie
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Rob Lee said:
I agree. The upside of failure is innovation. If you don't innovate you can't get new customers and the old ones will soon move away. David Chang the chef that started the Momofuko restaurants in NY talks about risk and failure in the video below. It's inspiring I agree with him when he says "...there is something honorable about cooking. At the end of the day there was something just honest". I think this applies to carpentry too. I think cooks and carpenters are closely related, the raw materials they use are just different.
Tim
David Chang on THE PAUL HOLDENGRABER SHOW
Well unlike you guys, I'm perfect [big grin]
Seriously though, truth be told probably a mistake on most jobs, some worse than others. It's not about the mistake you make, it's how you fix it.
I once made an Oak staircase for an architect. We had a site meeting & he drew out how he wanted the stairs done. Well, I took him at his word, took sizes & made it. Long story short, there was not enough headroom. He said to me, how did that happen,,,,,,, well, it took me & an apprentice 3 days each & about £500 in extra Oak to fix it. I said to him that he drew it out but I should have checked everything. He agreed & said he would meet me half way with the extra costs. He handed me £100,,,,, WTF
Anyway, haven't made that mistake again ;D
Seriously though, truth be told probably a mistake on most jobs, some worse than others. It's not about the mistake you make, it's how you fix it.
I once made an Oak staircase for an architect. We had a site meeting & he drew out how he wanted the stairs done. Well, I took him at his word, took sizes & made it. Long story short, there was not enough headroom. He said to me, how did that happen,,,,,,, well, it took me & an apprentice 3 days each & about £500 in extra Oak to fix it. I said to him that he drew it out but I should have checked everything. He agreed & said he would meet me half way with the extra costs. He handed me £100,,,,, WTF
Anyway, haven't made that mistake again ;D
pierreblonde
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We all make mistakes, it makes us normal and the wife right for once
I made a few sets of French doors once , i ordered the double glazed units with the wrong color spacer bar in them and never even told the the glass supplier they needed to be toughend glass either , it was the worst kind of mistake,, the type you cannot hide or make a feature of it
Someone please post a picture of the skip full of mistakes behind Norms New Yankee workshop ;D
I made a few sets of French doors once , i ordered the double glazed units with the wrong color spacer bar in them and never even told the the glass supplier they needed to be toughend glass either , it was the worst kind of mistake,, the type you cannot hide or make a feature of it
Someone please post a picture of the skip full of mistakes behind Norms New Yankee workshop ;D
cliffp
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I had my house extended a few years ago and part of it involved extending the kitchen in one dimension. We were expecting the walls of the extension to be the same thickness as the original ones (house built in 1962 with two courses of brick). The architect indicated in his drawing that there would be room for a run of kitchen units along each side of the kitchen in the extended part so we planned for this. The builders extended the kitchen using one course of bricks and one of breeze block meaning there was a step in the wall on the outside and a few inches less between the internal walls. We ended up having to remove the space behind the kitchen cupboards on one side and cutting the equivalent amount of worktop rendering it much less useful.
rnt80
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It's been enlightening reading the variety of responses in this thread. Unfortunately, in some respects, it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one jacking things up. With that said....I have another chapter to add to this saga. I headed to the house today to start installing and realized that the guy (a coworker of mine) that was doing all the other remodelling (electrical, plumbing, drywall, etc) had added drywall to an area that we had not discussed. The kitchen is a galley kitchen with cabs on the east and west walls. Per our discussions he was going to get rid of the soffit on those two walls and then add new drywall. When I showed up today I found that he had also added drywall to the south wall. Because of that (without going into too much detail) I have to resize the sinkbase and the cab above the sink. It also means making 4 new doors and a drawer front. When I talked to him about this today he told me "That's what you do on a remodel, if you're drywalling the one wall then they all get it." He basically told me I should have known that would be the case. He also redid the ceiling (which was never discussed) which means I'll have to get a smaller crown. Am I in the wrong on this one and should I have known better?
Ken Nagrod
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Russell,
That's not "what you do". That's what he decided to do. Details, details, get it in writing to eliminate misunderstandings and confusion. THEN paint the walls that stay untouched in bright red paint - DON'T TOUCH .
That's not "what you do". That's what he decided to do. Details, details, get it in writing to eliminate misunderstandings and confusion. THEN paint the walls that stay untouched in bright red paint - DON'T TOUCH .
Convincing myself that I could form and pour the house foundation by myself - 3600 sq ft (I couldn't) - $60,000
convincing myself that I could (tile) roof the house by myself (I couldn't) - $26,000
Digging our foundation footings (in adobe clay) 1 week before the biggest rain storm we've seen in years.... $5000 (re-bury, wait, and re-dig)
THinking I was gonna plaster/stucco the house myself.... NOT $36,000
I could go on....
convincing myself that I could (tile) roof the house by myself (I couldn't) - $26,000
Digging our foundation footings (in adobe clay) 1 week before the biggest rain storm we've seen in years.... $5000 (re-bury, wait, and re-dig)
THinking I was gonna plaster/stucco the house myself.... NOT $36,000
I could go on....
nehardwoodfloors
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Yesterday I plunged my ts55 into the radiant heat tubes in the only room in the house with radiant heat!
To the original poster: Hang in there my friend. If you live thru that series of mistooks, take a deep breath and look out for the next one to come along.
Even tho i nivr mak mistooks, i could rite a bok on some of the things that have happened to me. Not mistooks, just that they happened.
for now, maybe the easiest to straighten out appened when i was still in the masonry biz. I was to put in a garege foundation and pour floor on a hillside. I was able to lay out for footings with only one step down. About 3/4ths of the building was on level ground with the last 6' had a drop off of about 8' down. I had to setup with transit from two locations, but having had lots of experience with working on hillsides (Hey, this is Connecticut. I have been on so many hillsides, one leg grew shorter than the other), I assured the owner i would have no problem getting the foundation level and square. I had once put in a house foundation with a 20 foot dropoff. the footings had over 30 steps altogether. This would be a piece of cake. The owner, being a builder, was somewhat skeptical. He had the attitude that anybody wearing a beard was some sort of a kook. In those days, we were thought of as hippies.
I set my batterboards and lined the ground where the footings were to be and went to work with my backhoe. I had ordered concrete for mid afternoon and was home enjoying a cold one when the phone rang.
"Tinker, I think you have made a mistake."
"Phil, impossible. What do you think is wrong?"
"I think the footing is too short"
"I don't see how that could be. I checked everything before i started digging." I went on, "I'll come over and check it out right away." Lucky for me i didn't argue.
Later that evening, I called back. "Phil, being a carpenter, have you ever measured a board to be cut at 6'6"? You used your 6' rule, made a mark at the end of the rule and then a second mark at 6" and then cut the board at the 6' mark?"
"Yeah, i guess I probably have done that atleast once."
"Well, i measured 20 feet and then added 8 feet to set my corner stakes. Unfortunately, i used the 20 foot lines to dig my footing along the back." It took me longer to straighten out the problem than it had taken to do the original excavation, and due to minimum load allowances, the concrete was actually more expensive for the relatively small correction than it had been for the entire job--- had it been done correctly in the first place.
AND, that was probably one of my very least expensive mistooks (remember, I have nivr mad a mistook. Those things just come along and sneak up on me when i am out to lunch :
)
I could probably fill up quite a few pages of a book with mistooks. [dead horse]
Tinker
Even tho i nivr mak mistooks, i could rite a bok on some of the things that have happened to me. Not mistooks, just that they happened.
for now, maybe the easiest to straighten out appened when i was still in the masonry biz. I was to put in a garege foundation and pour floor on a hillside. I was able to lay out for footings with only one step down. About 3/4ths of the building was on level ground with the last 6' had a drop off of about 8' down. I had to setup with transit from two locations, but having had lots of experience with working on hillsides (Hey, this is Connecticut. I have been on so many hillsides, one leg grew shorter than the other), I assured the owner i would have no problem getting the foundation level and square. I had once put in a house foundation with a 20 foot dropoff. the footings had over 30 steps altogether. This would be a piece of cake. The owner, being a builder, was somewhat skeptical. He had the attitude that anybody wearing a beard was some sort of a kook. In those days, we were thought of as hippies.
I set my batterboards and lined the ground where the footings were to be and went to work with my backhoe. I had ordered concrete for mid afternoon and was home enjoying a cold one when the phone rang.
"Tinker, I think you have made a mistake."
"Phil, impossible. What do you think is wrong?"
"I think the footing is too short"
"I don't see how that could be. I checked everything before i started digging." I went on, "I'll come over and check it out right away." Lucky for me i didn't argue.
Later that evening, I called back. "Phil, being a carpenter, have you ever measured a board to be cut at 6'6"? You used your 6' rule, made a mark at the end of the rule and then a second mark at 6" and then cut the board at the 6' mark?"
"Yeah, i guess I probably have done that atleast once."
"Well, i measured 20 feet and then added 8 feet to set my corner stakes. Unfortunately, i used the 20 foot lines to dig my footing along the back." It took me longer to straighten out the problem than it had taken to do the original excavation, and due to minimum load allowances, the concrete was actually more expensive for the relatively small correction than it had been for the entire job--- had it been done correctly in the first place.
AND, that was probably one of my very least expensive mistooks (remember, I have nivr mad a mistook. Those things just come along and sneak up on me when i am out to lunch :
)I could probably fill up quite a few pages of a book with mistooks. [dead horse]
Tinker
tiralie
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rnt80 said:
Not being there it's difficult to understand why you couldn't just take the drywall off? Remaking doors and resizing boxes seem way more expensive than replacing drywall not withstanding the fact that the design is thrown off.
I don't get it.
Tim
tiralie
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Tinker said:
I know Russ didn't want to give details but one wonders why drywall would throw off the design size of the cabinets so much as to require a resizing.
I mean wouldn't you plan on having the drywall installed and design accordingly. Like I said I don't really understand all the issues here. If you designed the cabinetry without the drywall being there, take it off. If there is a regulation that the drywall must be there for fire rating then your design must take that into account.
Tim
Jesus Aleman
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Stepping into Frank Pellow's Shed. The only way out is through a green slippery slope
sancho57
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This is a very interesting thread. Thanks everyone for being so honest and forthright.
For me it was building my first kitchen out of hickory. I when I was making the face frames, pocket holing them together, and pocket hole them to the box. i didnt adj the jig. It ended up costing me about another $ 200 - $300 in material due to the wood splitting, and a lot of time to remake the face frames staining , finishing etc..
But Ive found that sometimes a job can go very smooth and others are completly jacked up from the get go.
I cant explain why, the complexity of the progect has no influence as to how the job comes together. The only thing I can say is it depends.
Look at a earlier post where I trying to figure out how to route the grooves for drawer bottem when i first got my 1010. Ive done a lot of the them with no issues, but for some reason this one was a PITA.
I just made some yesterday, same router etc..it went to easy..
I guess it just goes that way sometimes.. huh?
For me it was building my first kitchen out of hickory. I when I was making the face frames, pocket holing them together, and pocket hole them to the box. i didnt adj the jig. It ended up costing me about another $ 200 - $300 in material due to the wood splitting, and a lot of time to remake the face frames staining , finishing etc..
But Ive found that sometimes a job can go very smooth and others are completly jacked up from the get go.
I cant explain why, the complexity of the progect has no influence as to how the job comes together. The only thing I can say is it depends.
Look at a earlier post where I trying to figure out how to route the grooves for drawer bottem when i first got my 1010. Ive done a lot of the them with no issues, but for some reason this one was a PITA.
I just made some yesterday, same router etc..it went to easy..
I guess it just goes that way sometimes.. huh?
I have been in the building trade for 53 years, a licensed builder for 37 years & the biggest mistakes that I have ever had was trusting clients, word of mouth is no good. I learnt the hard way.All extras & variations should be written down & signed for. dot your I's & cross your T's. [wink]
