How Tea And Crumpets Taught Me To Save The World, or something...

My wife, an intelligent and inquisitive woman, can name all the tools and tell you what it is we're doing. There's a bit more to it, doing it right, doing it safely, and making a few bucks doing it. My wife can find the phone at 3:00 AM.

Things are never as simple as they could be, knowing the tools and their capabilities and then how to think of them differently allow you to keep moving and do something different.

It looks the same as ever, floor joists and a floor to install, thing is you're now above the roof tops of other buildings and the easily available and inexpensive machine can't do it. You still have to solve it without breaking the budget. A combination of the inexpensive machine and muscle power do it, not what you might have thought.

It is something entirely different to have a rather large hot tub on a building's third floor, you better solve it because if it's not there you can't get it there.

When you took the job on you had ideas, as you move through the process you find that those ideas either work or you're in real trouble, the odd order of assembly to be able to accomplish each piece depends on the the following pieces and still being able to finish the work at the moment. Almost nothing was done in the usual manner, because it couldn't be. For instance, you cannot get to that roof with a ladder and you cannot stay on it without planks, best get this right, when it's too late, it is too late.

At a point everybody expects the result you were asked to produce. They don't know and don't care how much innovation, improvisation, and planning for unusual conditions it took. It looks like a house, it is a house, so what? The what is that you can watch all kinds of home improvement shows and be married to a contractor and have absolutely no idea how to get something like this to, 'it's just a house.'

If you've been around a thing, you may know the names of the tools and you may know where you want to get to, but the devil is in the details so you hire people who can work them out. The owner had the judgement to hire some one on the basis of real experience and a proven ability to complete work in the manner desired. I am not the owner, I am the hired help, I am the details man. Nobody is experienced at being President except serving Presidents and ex-Presidents and only the elected President bears the responsibility. The President hires people like me and you expect him to have that judgement.

I bet you didn't expect a contractor advertisement to be a political commentary, saving bytes. Double click pictures for full sized. Photos by owner. Attaching building is a B&B