The Green, The Energy Star, The Chasing of Subs

I'm not happy. I'm gonna have to call the boss. That shower end wall above the tub bugs me. It follows the tub surround perfectly. Arrgh. Arrgh. It's me that put it in.

The twelve recessed lights and three pendent boxes need caulk, as does the overhead stuff in the garage.....45 minutes. Thirty-five feet of double-nailing the garage ceiling joints left to do and then that chore is over....twenty minutes for that plus another ten for getting the eight foot ladder and the nails. Got to caulk the drywall to the shower surrounds....ten minutes to do that, so that means getting some of that anti-bacterial mildew-proof stuff. Good stuff, rated for fifty years. At least the house will be ready for the drywall mud slingers this Monday.

My weekend is shorter....again, by 75 minutes. (Just called the boss, nail garage ceiling only...whoopee. Also caulk the shower surrounds...then off to enjoy the weekend!)

I went through over two pounds of drywall nails and at least that in screws. I had to screw and nail two ceiling joists that were missed as were seven studs. Also very few of the walls were nailed near the bottom. More complaints about subs in the next paragraph or so.

This is a Green, (beyond) Energy Star house. They (future mass production houses) will cost a little bit more but the owners will make it up in a building that will use far less energy to heat or cool, and will last far longer with a reduced maintenance cost. Hence the fifty year caulk and the Hardi-Plank, not to mention all the insulation and sealing. Also my boss is building a house that everyone else will be required to build in the next decade or so.

The work that the subs did in the course of this building would be passable to a normal tract house developer, but not to my boss. That's where we come in, me and the other two guys. We also adjust and fix the work the subs did, so the house can get its certification for the Energy Star and the Green. In ten years, everyone will have to build like my boss in this country..

This means, stick building (basically building a house one piece at a time) houses is going to have to stop. This also means that modular ( built in an assembly line process) houses will have to be built much better then they are now. Why modular? A modular house is built at a central indoor location under controlled conditions and then shipped to where it's supposed to be. Some rather fancy houses have been built this way. The only structures built in the field are the foundation and the garage. One day of setting the modules, and a month or less of finishing the hookups and the joins in the house. Peak Oil is a reality, not fantasy, and we all have to start dealing with it REAL soon. There is Palm Homes in Florida that is an Energy Star modular builder, but even they are not green enough for my boss.

So here I am, punch listing and chasing sub work. Wise up Sub-Contractor Guys......can't do schlock for much longer. The times, they have started changing now. The building codes will be a whole lot stricter in the next ten years. Keep doing schlock and your customers will get tired of paying guys like me to remedy it. Next thing ya know, you are going to get fewer jobs......

38 Minutes

In 38 minutes, I got to grab a shower and get to work. I'm a sub for now. Going to download both quarterly forms and send in the money. Need just a few more things, shop vac, and a decent tool pouch. I'm also going to build a portable tool bench slash work bench.

35 Minutes. If I decide to work for myself and decide I want to make ten bucks net, I need to charge about twenty. Five bucks for Uncle Sammy and Cousin State, Five bucks for the Insurance companies, and ten bucks for me. Or I could work for someone else, and they could do all that. Only problem is, that the economy is so soft, that I'd get about 9 bucks.

33 Minutes. The system if one wants to call it a system, is disadvantageous toward employing American workers. We cost too much. If I work for myself, I cost too much. Global economy can be a great thing if the playing field was level but the only open economy in the entire world is this one. There is no way anyone here could make a living wage and compete with someone in Vietnam or China doing the same thing for a buck an hour. In fact, the only jobs in the Ol' US of A with a hint of job security are the ones that require actual physical contact and/or communication.

27 Minutes. We also have a big problem with undocumented aliens. They work for cash and don't contribute tax wise. They take jobs from those who need it most, the lower middle class and blue collars. What we really need is a national identification scheme that can weed out those who don't belong here. Who even needs to go into the "Non, nod, and a wink." scheme that employers, especially construction industry types, use to hire illegals? Those guys need some serious fines and jail time.

21 Minutes. Get rid of the Green cards, and replace them with a provisional citizenship requirement, i.e., anyone who wants to work here has to show every intent of becoming a citizen. No more "guest" workers. Their welcome has been worn out for quite sometime.

17 Minutes. My boss is right. What we do need is a national ID tied into DNA and retina/fingerprint records. No ID, no work, no benefits, emergency services only, no collecting two hundred bucks and getting past go. Just a real fast ride to the nearest national border.

14 Minutes. A national language. English only is my suggestion. Or at the very least, English and Spanish Only, but then we would be like Canada which inflicts French on everyone in the place because of Quebec. I like Lowe's, really nice place to get what I need for my daily work, but everything is bilingual. This is America. English only.

11 Minutes. A residency requirement for non-citizens. In most countries, non-residents are required to register with the local law enforcement authorities. We need to do the same.

9 Minutes. Time to post and clean up the grammar.

The interim hammer

There I was, at Sears, hefting hammers, while a sales guy looks on in puzzlement as I try to explain what a good balance is. The nicest balance and feel of the lot was a 20 oz Vaughan Model 999fs. The head was milled with a waffle pattern though. Dog ears as we call hammer marks are bad enough. I finally settled on a Craftsman 16 oz rip hammer. The head was made by Vaughan but the handle is solid fiberglass. The balance is just wrong, but it's going to be for nail pulling and other not-nice things to do with a hammer.

My two Vaughan 99's will be here by the middle of the week. They will be the money makers. My old veteran is going to be sitting in a kitchen drawer for awhile. Saw some neat hi tech hammers that looked like they were designed by a marketing department. One had a slot in the head for setting nails. Still, a good balance and feel is everything and it didn't have that.

Still No Hammer

The drywalling subs showed up yesterday. As usual, one guy spoke English, the rest didn't. Spanish country and pop blaring in the background. They really messed up. Cut huge sheets into small pieces, left a piece of the framing sticking through the ceiling, just bad. Also they put white instead of green board in the master bath, so all that had to come out. I gave the boss the phone number of my Bro-in-law's father. He's got to be better then this crew.

Next house, which is a remodel. Not definite yet. It's a 70's single story with all the (lack) of quality of that era and area. They want a second floor. My boss builds pretty sturdy and not lightweight. He's gonna be doing exploratory surgery on the place to see how it can go.

The hammer handle transplant went badly, so I have ordered from Amazon, two each, Vaughan Professional Rip Hammer, Model 99. I'll run down to the hardware store and try again. My 28 year veteran needs still a handle. The one I bought a few days ago was pretty crappy. It was real brittle. Left my tools at the job site, so no major work this weekend on the pequeno casa de la cuidad. Amazon is great for selection, price is decent, but the shipping cost added to the total, does put them above the local price. It's just that no one here sells that hammer.

My Friend, the Vaughan Professional Rip Hammer, Model 99

My hammer broke yesterday. There was a 16p nail sticking out of the safe room wall and I was too lazy or too rushed to go get the right tool. My hammer is a twenty-eight year old Vaughan 16oz professional rip hammer. Model 99, no less. I've been beating on nails for about thirty years. That particular hammer has so sweet a balance, one could drive nails straight and true in the dark of night. So I pried and feel/hear the crunching/ripping of the fibers of wood in my hickory handle, tearing and splitting. Crap.

So handle number five goes on today. I would like to get another model 99 hammer and Vaughan still makes them, but no one seems to carry that particular model. Sigh. I can find those humongous rip hammers with the waffle head but that's overkill, and leaves a really ugly mark on wood. I'm an interior trim guy and cabinetmaker by inclination so it has to look nice. Even the framing should look nice.

To really do it right, the handle should be shaved instead of sawn out of hickory, since it disturbs the fibers less and makes the handle last longer. Oh well, only nine bucks for the only handle the store had, plus some extra wedges.

Yes, we should have worn Eye protection.

It's been awhile. One busy week is my excuse. My boss's house is going to get drywall tomorrow put up and we have the last minute Do This Now items to knock out. Latest thing, is that the framers put the outside window and door headers an 1/8th of an inch out from the rest of the walls. Yep, gonna be tacking up furring today. Add that to the pocket door hardware that has to go up, insulation around the second bathtub and the kitchen soffit needing a vent cutout and it's own insulation completed, it's gonna be a killer day. Attic catwalk still needs more plywood and blocking but that can wait until the house is ready for the dry-wallers.

Two days ago, we were all standing around having a committee meeting wondering if we needed eye protection before operating a table saw. All four of us. Then we started ripping Loblolly pine. The blade threw three carbide teeth. No, we weren't wearing eye protection, but we do now. Boss has replaced all his resharpened blades with new store bought blades too.

My lost tools of the week is one 25 foot tape measure and at least one pencil. I dropped my jigsaw and broke off the last blade, so I got 4 more. My caulking gun, American made no less, broke. Green houses mean caulking, lots of caulking.

I'm decent as a wood banger but still too slow and picky. Speeding up though.

Caulk, caulk, and more caulking.

After spending Saturday morning caulking on the new place, I spent Sunday afternoon caulking on my place. My gen-u-wine cedar siding has seen it's better days quite a few years ago, so up the ladder went, and on the caulk went. The splits and seams got special attention. My paint is a very close match for the original colour, so that's been done. My neighbor's other house got some attention as well, but his siding is in worse shape. He's going to need some new pieces and that's up to him.

The front porch fascia was riddled by carpenter bees, so off it came. The new piece was back painted with Kilz's all purpose primer. Hope the stuff works. Caulked the snot out of the voids behind it and sealed that up. The Kilz went on the rafter behind the fascia as well. Next is the utility shed/room on my back deck. It's going to lose it's carpenter bees as well, and the door molding is shot as well. That will be replaced by that new plastic stuff. I'm also thinking of replacing the two bottom clapboards with Hardi-Plank to stave off the dry rot.

It gets real old loading and unloading that monster toolbox on the back of the Baja, so it's going to get it's hardshell put on after work.

About all that money I made as a rat racer.....my feet are so tired.

It probably scares quite a few potential employers that I made over fifty thousand dollars a year for a little while. What they don't seem to get, is that I don't want to do what I did to earn that. Namely forty-eight to sixty hour weeks, no or little contact with friends and family, and since I worked as a network operator, turning pale as a Morlock.

So, I'm happy up on a ladder, caulking away. If nothing else, even caulking siding leaves something permanent (fifty year caulk) and is doing something for the building, giving it a nicer look by filling the gaps and protecting the value by keeping the weather at bay. Working a severity zero with millions affected at the network operations center, was fun and fulfilling.....until the next day when a severity four would pop up because someone couldn't get to a website. Nothing sucks like single user issues as any support weenie can attest. Fifty year caulking beats that. The pay is far less but so is the stress.

So I bugged out of the rat race. I have no debt. I have no needs beyond food, taxes and bills. My townhouse could stand some work, but at this point, it isn't falling down.

I'm doing this job mostly because I think the guy is pretty neat and reminds me of my great uncle who loved to do fine building. The main reason why my great uncle liked to build houses, was so he could have fun doing the trim work. He would build the cabinets, mill the trim, build actual old fashoned paneling and coffered ceilings. He wasn't a green builder since "green" didn't exist back then, but he was thrifty. He scavenged a lot of old redwood fencing and milled that into molding. He also liked to salvage old paneling out of old office buildings and reuse it. He did make money at it, but the important thing, is that he was doing what he liked.

If that pharmaceutical materials job does pop up and they call me in, ie, shipping, receiving, and whatever, I might plump for it, for I think I know who it is. Good employers and good bennies. Then I could do my forty and and do what my great uncle did, he was a high school history teacher who liked to build. The San Francisco Public School System kept him afloat while he built houses. I am even smaller minded in scope. Just redoing rooms, kitchens and bathrooms. I like taking a room and redoing it so it's nicer. Just a small business working for my satisfaction, not some nameless metric punching tickets.

So back out today on the eaves, more caulking. Beats the snot out of being an HSD network operator.

Not throwing a brick through a window.

Well, I could be employed. Not sure really, otherwise I had qaulity time caulking siding yesterday. This is the first time I've seen Hardi-Plank in the raw, so to speak. Painted, it looks like wood siding, unpainted, it looks like textured wallboard. It's supposed to be like cedar when painted. Much better then the real thing, which is flammable and a favorite of carpenter bees and woodpeckers. (I have carpenter bees, my neighbor has the woodpeckers, and across the street, the end townhouse caught on fire and the wood siding burned like solid gasoline, spreading it to two more houses. Does it need mentioning the crap rots like crazy when wet?)

I was also setting nails and re-attached a piece of trim. Whoever installed the siding used nailguns and they were in a hurry. A big hurry. The evil of using subs these days.

The boss is pretty neat. The house is a "green" building. Also very traditional. The attic is actually framed out instead of trusses and it has what appears to my somewhat educated eye, load bearing joists under it. Most of the framing is actual wood instead of engineered stuff. No attic stairs though. Guess that would be too traditional. The front porch is an actual front porch, nice and deep instead of the afterthoughts that are tacked onto spec houses.

See how it goes.

Spring Cleaning

Spring has sprung, so I'm tossing stuff. That extra cabinet, gone. Anything with a hole in it gone. Of course it means my wardrobe will be under establishment for half a day. Tossed some old bits and pieces of bicycle. Also the car is up for re-registration and inspection. North Carolina always does stuff the hard way. I miss having to register every two years.

All that old software and that horrible Valve/Steam stuff, gone. The problem with Valve, is that one can buy the software physically, but if someone else has already run a crack on it and generated a key to it, you are so screwed. Steam is equally bad, clunky interface, uncontrollable automatic updating and a complete bandwidth hog even on DSL. Got rid of the Adventure Company stuff. 2D just doesn't cut it anymore.

I got to get employed.....some great deals on great old steel bikes. Whoever got that Team Fuji.....I'm so jealous.

Duct Taped Astronauts

Gotta love Da Gummint. Who could possibly make up such a thing as duct taped astronauts? This came about when a woman scorned who just happened to be an astronaut was arrested for planning to get even in a very final way. So of course someone would have to ask NASA what they would do if one of their anointed went nuts in orbit. Wrap em' in duct tape. The Red Green Show in outer space. Therapy through adhesive cloth tape. Oh yeah!

NASA also came up with a way of detecting, well just call it bad vibes from airline passengers. Apparently we give off a certain brain wave pattern when we are not happy. Slight problem with that is that very few people are happy these days at airports...including the staff. I could see all the people who work on the concourses and the TSA people all having to wear tinfoil hats. And to think some take drugs to see weird stuff?

Of course the TSA is trying out a neato gadget called a back scatter X-Ray device. It "undresses" people. Very anatomically correct images too...... Who would have thought Airplane the movie would be so right in predicting that.

Makes me proud to be a taxpayer.