Just When You Think It Could Be Worse

You find out just how much worse.



I wasn't anticipating three layers of comp roofing over the wood shingles, rat bastards hid a layer with a trim board. Well that sucked, hmmm, all that rot? Not too nice that there are two layers of wood shingles where I expect one. Ooooh rat bastards. No you shouldn't see the ground through a roof and wood shouldn't be mush either. I got all the junk torn off, it makes a truly impressive pile, and replaced wood shigles with decking and roofed the dog in.

The house is a rental that is empty with a couch and chair and bed and I get to squat until I'm done. I've got a laptop and Milwaukee job radio for company. Bend is rank for getting around in and my truck gets a whole 8 mpg so I'm pretty much stuck. I went out to the back awning for a Camel a little while ago, it is raining steadily ... and pouring onto my debris pile. That's close to a thousand pounds of comp in bits and pieces and big chunks all mixed together and on top like a cherry a big bunch of wood shingles. The thing that is annoying (being polite) is that it is supposed to go below freezing and snow. If it does that I'm going to have a giant ice cube of crap with slippery stuff all around to try to load into a wheelbarrow and into a dumpster.

Sometimes I'm ever so glad I'm me. I get that mess cleaned up I get to go home. I wanna go home. Whine, snivel, piss, and moan.

Something To Do - Fun To Be Had

So, I'm on my way to Bend, OR to tear off a couple layers of composition roofing and install the stuff on the trailer on the back of my truck. I do have to cross three mountain ranges to get there, 200 miles away and it has been snowing and icing and stuff like that. This is a 1978 Chevy K20 4x4 automatic with a 400 CID small block with a covered utility bed full of tools. Behind it is my car trailer/work trailer with 4400 pounds on it. Fortunately it has trailer brakes and the truck has studded snows on all four, and it has been in 4x low range and L1 on a couple down grades. In case you aren't getting it, this entire show weighs about 13,000 pounds and stomping on brakes ain't a smart thing to do, and neither is riding them.

Damn, I know how to have fun. Especially now that I'm in Bend and it has snowed and rained and frozen and been pretty ... shitty.

And then there was Street Vibrations in Reno, NV and as you may be able to tell, at the end of September there wasn't any snow...


The bike is mine but I didn't get to keep the pretty girls. The professional that was shooting the models has some more on page three.

You want to try to guess which was more fun? No prizes for getting it right.

You Wish You Were Me

Nice looking house, or will be when done, with a heck of a view sitting on the brow of a hill above town. It has aspects that makes it a bit of work to roof, but a nickle is a nickle and it is late in the season a week and a half to go to Thanksgiving.




Oh yes, it is late in the season and those "aspects" just got a lot larger. If you're having a problem figuring out the picture, that is part of my partially completed roof and yes, I'm roofing it while taking this shot.

I know how jealous everybody must be that I get to have all this fun and get paid for it too. It is a bit like trying to cut a brick with a butter knife to cut these shingles, this brand is about as bad as I've ever seen. Getting the wrinkles out of them (straight from the packaging) is a pain in the butt. First, of course, the snow has to be gotten off the roof. The only way I can think of to slow this job down more would be to break one of my limbs.

I've got a contract in a town 200 miles away to do as soon as I get off this thing, but I need a bit better weather. Jeeze.

***Update
I'm sitting in that town, the weather has sucked eggs but I'm closing in on getting it done.

You Think I Don't Know How To Have Fun?

Maybe you think all I do is ride a Harley and play at politics, not quite. My little operation is named CHBIII Enterprises Inc and its business is construction contracting - in this case roofing. This is a turn of the century house with wood shingles under composition shingles, in some cases a lot of them - like 5 layers in places. You could call this work considering that it is 26 feet of ladder from the ground to the first jack plank and these architectural shingles are 3 bundle square packaging and a bundle weighs in at just under 90 pounds. Yes, packed up on my shoulder to the 10 pitch roof (40 degrees) and it is summer, temps from mid-80s to mid-90s.

(Click pics for full size)

I generally avoid some sorts of practices, if I roof over an existing composition roof I remove the preceding roof's hip and ridge shingles and I do not wrap field shingles over hips and only one side over a ridge. The "roofers" who went after this thing not only put on too many layers of comp, they wrapped over the hips and went over the preceding hip shingles - the result was well over 3 inches of shingle and a forest of nails.


The above picture is from the only small roof section with only 2 layers of composition over the wood shingles. There are two methods of dealing with a wood shingle roof, one is to take off all shingles and put OSB or plywood over the skip sheeting (wood shingles were applied over planks spaced a couple inches apart) or if the wood shingles are in fair shape and the customer doesn't feel a need for a smooth roof to go over the wood shingles. Going over wood shingles with 3 tabs created an obviously lumpy roof and the tabs sealing down was somewhat questionable, architects have performed well for me over the last 20 years in this application. So you understand, redecking very nearly doubles the cost of the roof for a fairly minor improvement in performance.

I thought I'd managed to get the cell camera level to give you a feeing for being up high on something steep, not such a good job of that. You'll just have to tip your computer until the trees in the background are upright.

It is a fact of life that construction contractors are considered rip-offs by a large percentage of consumers and that those engaged in manual labor are over-paid ignoramouses. Next time somebody comes up with that kind of crap feel free to ask if they'd do this for any amount of money if they even began to have the physique to do it. I'd bet not, and I've heard from enough people who've tried simple projects that they'd never ever do it again. This has been hard filthy work and I'm not complaining about that - I bid the job, after all - but I do get pretty tired of people acting as though only their level of education qualifies them for decent income.

Work Interferes And Intrudes

Regular readers may have wondered what has happened to daily postings at "Chuck for..." over the past couple weeks. Well, I'd like to offer an explanation.

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This 1890's construction house has a 12 pitch roof with the eave about 20 feet above ground and needed the composition shingles torn off and replaced with these new architectural shingles. The roof deck is plank, 1 inch thick rough sawn and cooked for a century so the nails were really stuck making a very tough job out of it. After the issue of getting the thing cleaned up there was the little matter of getting 90 pound bundles of shingles up to the roof and then up the roof...I was 45 ten years ago. Friday the Thirteenth made it ten years, I find that I get more beat up now. That's a consequence of having birthdays.

Work has been thin so there's just me out there (and Gus, I don't know what he's looking at). I like what I do for a living, but some days are rough and that can leave little juice left for research and composition. I'm on the home stretch, the side opposite the lower roof is now torn off and awaiting shingles. This is a good thing because two weeks of rain stopped this job in its tracks before it was a quarter done. The owners are nice folks and haven't complained about the mess of equipment and supplies.

Writing this blog is something I enjoy doing, but it also is something I only really enjoy if I produce something of quality. It is important to respect my abilities and my reader's expectations. There is no money or fame in blogging like this, there is only the satisfaction of doing it well. I hope you'll bear with me as I try to get this back into running order.

Roofing is exceptionally good exercise, but I don't recommend it for a starting program...or the faint of heart. Check with your physician before beginning any program of exercise - in this case he may send you to a psychiatrist.

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

Architectural Wonders?

photo Peter Farrel/Miami Herald

So, how do you like this architecture?
	Striking
	So What
	Cold
	Nasty
	Interesting
	Innovative
	Historical
	Playful
	Connected
pollcode.com free polls

These bare concrete buildings started appearing in the late 1950s and had their strongest influence in the '60s to '70s They had the benefit of low maintenance and straightforward construction techniques that allowed for unusual shapes. These buildings are beginning to reach 50 years of age which is where as architect Jan Hochstim told The Miami Herald

"The problem is, we get attached to buildings that are more than 50 years old. Until that time, no one pays attention to them.''

Some people call them concrete monsters, some people find them excellent buildings finely executed. Since I have such an eclectic readership of unsurpassed quality I thought I'd have you make a judgement.

Oh, don't worry you won't bring on wrecking balls or historical societies...

How To Profit From War, Parsons Corp

Maybe you remember a slight difficulty in Iraq with a Police Academy, one that had crumbling walls and sewage running from the ceilings and walls? The name of the US contractor who had charge of that $72 million project was Parsons Corporation. The NYT reported 11/06/07 that the 'problems' had yet to be rectified. Parsons seems entirely overwrought with remorse:

A company spokeswoman, Erin Kuhlman, said that Parsons, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., had strictly abided by the terms of the contract it had received from the United States Army Corps of Engineers to do the work at the academy.

“Parsons completed its work at the Baghdad Police College in the spring of 2006,” Ms. Kuhlman said, adding that the Army Corps accepted the work as completed at about the same time.

It seems that in July of '06 the Army wasn't happy with sewage running out the ceilings. Parsons put them in contact with the Iraqi subcontractor. In July and August of '06 the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent agency led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr. took a look and was distinctly unhappy, finding “indications of potential fraud” and oversight by the Army Corp and Parsons to have virtually nonexistent.

Folks, I'm a contractor, nowhere in Parson's universe, and I know that you almost have to try to make this big a mess. This is a training academy not a 5 star hotel or mansion, it is not that difficult. There are ways screw it up this bad and they generally involve cheating.

On Sept. 28, 2006, as the inspector general’s report was released, Earnest O. Robbins II, a senior vice president at Parsons, testified before the House Government Reform Committee that the company would fix the problems at no extra charge. “We are repairing it at no cost to the government,” Mr. Robbins said in response to questions by Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.

On the Sunday previous to this 11/6/07 news report :

the American officer affiliated with the new project to repair the problems described an elaborate and costly effort to tear out and replace the plumbing on entire floors. The problems were so severe, the officer said, that the military had also been obliged to build new latrines outside and demolish some structures entirely and start over.

“These buildings are all Parsons-built,” said the officer. “The piping is bad. It really is. To be honest with you, it’s raw sewage, raw fecal matter coming out of the walls.”

Now if you've started to wonder if war is good for business and if they think it is there are some clues available as to their thinking, little deals like FEC filings, say Parsons starting in 2000 when there was no war to profit from

All Federal Candidates:
2000 $75,250 (38% to Democrats, 60% to Republicans)
2002 $130,500 (43% to Democrats, 57% to Republicans)
2004 $270,500 (50% to Democrats, 50% to Republicans)
2006 $417,050 (49% to Democrats, 50% to Republicans)
2008 $209,000 (61% to Democrats, 39% to Republicans) to date
Numbers courtesy Open Secrets

Now it seems that not too long after the BushCo started to make it clear that they'd like to outsource government it became important to influence thinking as much as possible. Now '04 was a Presidential cycle, but it sure seemed awfully important, not to mention that the war started in '03. The '06 cycle didn't involve any Presidential campaigns ( in '04 $0 went to Democratic Presidential) but there sure was profit to be made from death and destruction and governmental largess with the kind of oversight that Stuart Bowen found so "useful."

There's a $45 billion reconstruction project turkey to cut up in Iraq, in '04 Parsons had contracts worth up to $800 million. By 6/06 the Army Corp had cancelled a $99.1 million contract for a prison that was 1 year behind schedule, weeks after a $300 million contract to build clinics and hospitals was canceled for non-performance.

So, it's worth pretty big bucks to candidates to get work worth a lot of money but the doing of it seems not quite as worthwhile. We need some more of this, let's be sure to elect the same mindset to Congress and President, Parsons would be appreciative...

Getting High In Baker City

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Legally high, if not smart. The poles are 32 feet long and yes there is 2 feet extending past the eave. Oh yeah, I know how to have fun...and even get paid a little something for it. We'll paint our way back down. Some of the lower trim has already been sprayed on the way up...I never had any desire to be a house painter - I still don't.

Something To Do, For Awhile

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When I started this was a foundation and slab, now we're siding up and painting down. I'm not a painter, but the owner preferred to pay me to paint using my siding scaffolding. The tarped up tools are two radial arm saws, one 220AC 12" equipped with a diamond blade to cut the cementious siding (HardiPlank) and a 110AC 10" for OSB based trim (SmartTrim). The roof is 10 pitch and the eves on the sides are 30 feet above ground and yes, I have spent a fair amount of time walking those walls.

This house is quite unique, three stories are uncommon and this one has very close lot lines, 5 feet to the eves on the side and 15 feet in the rear. The building it attached to is turn of the century as is the house directly behind it, so features were added to make it congruent with the neighborhood. There is some heavy duty and complex framing within, all floors clear span the width of the building minus in places the stairwell and the elevator shaft, which is in the front right corner behind the small lower roof. The interior ceiling at roof line is vaulted, including the smaller side gables, some fairly involved and time consuming stick framing.

I enjoy what I do for a living, so I thought I'd share a bit of it.

1950 Chevy COE

This truck is for sale - contact 541-523-7520 or cbutcher1@hotmail.com Truck is sold
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Nah, it's not a fast car, this is a working truck. 1950 Chevrolet Cab Over Engine dump truck plated in Oregon at 24,000 pounds GVW. Those are not cheap plates, though in OR they're probably cheaper than a lot of places. The bed is 13.5 cubic yards, with side hung rear doors for loading or unloading.

It's so homely it's almost cute and when it's on the job I'm not the oldest "tool" there. Equipped with a 292 cid 6 cylinder, a 4 speed granny tranny and split axle it can run at 65 mph on the flat, empty and loaded just about get out of its own way. In granny 1st with the axle split down to low range the engine tops out at about 5 mph so it can climb just about any grade loaded, but it sure takes awhile to get anywhere.

I like the old beast, but once you've driven it for about 4 hours you gain a great appreciation for modern equipment - that I can't afford... Since it spends most of its life parked on job sites as the trash truck it should last very nearly forever.

Pretty Is As Pretty Does

If somebody was to tell you that this is your humble correspondent, would it scare you that you've taken him seriously? That intent look has a bit to do with a 15 foot drop, standing on 2 1/2 inches, a running chain saw, cutting the beam above, and a photog friend with the nerve to yell, "Smile!" right about here.

It might not take a real large leap of imagination to figure I'm not the type to be impressed with playing dress-up in a flight suit.

Baker City's Ordinary Isn't Quite That

Sunday morning I got a phone call from a lawyer I do work for sometimes, his office had been hit by a car and could I come down? I pulled into the parking lot and there was a late 90s Buick reposing in the block wall, right up to the windshield. The eighty year old lady driver was unhurt, other than absolute mortification. She was talking to the police officer who was busy soothing her. As I was cutting blocks loose from the car so it could be winched out of the building, neighbors came by offering food to the owners of the building, checking on the driver's condition and generally trying to be helpful.

In Baker City, on a Sunday in the late building season, no building supply houses are open and I needed some materials to cover that hole. Dick Hindman, dressed in his Sunday best, met me at Cashway Lumber and opened up so I could get some studs, plywood, and various little items to cover up the hole. The profit on that sale scarcely covered his gasoline costs, much less time, and etc. but I needed it for an emergency, so he covered me.

Back at the scene the owners gave me a ride to pick up my '50 COE Chevy dump truck for debris disposal. The truck drew admirers, who also had to get a good look at Gus - he's a 155 pound Great White Pyrennes who seems to have to go to work with me. The building's owners were trying to soothe the old lady, she'd seen the mess inside the hole, what was the firm's law library. Their concern was that she was alright physically and that she wasn't beating herself up over the damage.

I got the hole covered and the roof structure supported and the mess cleaned up and headed for home, reflecting. Neighbors helping neighbors and caring about their neighbors, pretty ordinary around here, but also, maybe, a bit extraordinary. Funny how much I like it here.