On 3/6/2019 6:04 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 15:52:00 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 3/6/2019 1:12 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
Zen Cycle wrote:

:A good friend of mine is a general contractor that builds private homes for a living. He says the worst people he has to deal with are architects.

Architects and engineers say the same thing about contractors.

I suppose it's about different priorities. The contractor wants to get
the job done quickly so he can get paid and move on to the next project.
But ISTM that these days, lots of architects want to express their
sculptural talents, no matter how difficult it is for the contractor.

One of my best friends and his little company expanded our house, adding
a shed dormer to the upstairs of our little Cape Cod. I did most of the
design work, but had an architect do the details and draw it up.

Anyway, I specified thicker walls and extra insulation. My friend kept
asking "Are you _sure_ you want that?" Especially when framing and
finishing the windows, it was more work for him. But I held out, and
remain glad.

But, when someone designs a house and has a contractor build it
doesn't both the designer and the contractor demand specifications?

Our "Bangkok House" we had built and the builder/designer specified
everything from depth of the foundations to the peak of the roof. How
else could he cost out the project?

Oh, in my case there certainly were specifications. I think my friend
was just hoping the odd (to him) specifications didn't matter to me,
since they made his job a bit harder.

When he started that job, I was still only semi-retired. I was doing
things like grading papers during the day when he and his helpers were
working upstairs. But that lasted only a couple days. Of course the work
interested me greatly, and I couldn't prevent myself from working as
another helper, essentially for free.

It did give me a chance to be sure things were done as I wanted. It also
gave me a chance to photograph a lot of the project. That could be handy
if I want to cut into the walls for some reason in the future; I'll know
exactly where framing members, wiring, water pipes etc. run.

(In my fantasy world, every house would come with a full, detailed set
of original prints plus a detailed log book of all modifications since
then.)


--
- Frank Krygowski