Nice job guys. We put a French drain in for the owner and he was mad we dug up the yard. I thought we did a nice clean install, never realized the owner was nuts.
I got used to just telling them that anywhere I dig is going to be ugly and messed up. That way when I repair it, it turns out 10 times nicer than they expected. Not the best way to sell it… but I prefer them leaving happier versus the BS afterwards. When it’s possible…
I did the same thing. Put in a French drain. The guy was furious about his lawn damage, claimed that it would take 2 years for the grass to regrow, if ever. The grass actually grew in fairly full by the end of that summer. Crazy thing was this was a big project that went through 3 backyards, with two of them part of the drain and the third was just regular pipe until it ran into the creek. Topsoil was specified to be installed on the two of the backyards. He refused most of the topsoil and said he cared more about it being on the neighbor's, because he cared more about them having a nice lawn, and then he complained a week or two later or so about him not getting nice topsoil!
Good morning, Stan! This video proves that you and your crew can overcome any obstacle thrown in your way. Great job, Brother! Your crew is a winning hand. All Aces!
"Cant move the shed" "Fine, labor just went up 58% on that" "What! Why?" "Because, labor time and effort just went up 50% on it" "Whats the other 8 then?" "Asshole tax"
Great looking job done. Hopefully not being able to set your fabric as far back as you may have planned won’t affect the lifespan of the wall. Guy must have remembered at the last minute he had a body buried under his shed. 😂
I never say no. I always let the customer say no. If you price it right the customer will say “hell no”. Once in a while they say yes even when you’ve quadrupled the price. It’s a win either way.
Really nice work, nice to see Sam and Tim and Àlex out there, winter in the Minneapolis area has been very mild this year, People are getting some things done they normally can't this time of year, great job ,your guys always do a great job.
Hi. Engineer here. That wall is very pretty but will fail way earlier than expected under normal conditions for the area. any weather anomalies and the whole back yard is gone. Not thrilled by what I saw on the time lapse.
Glad to hear you about to walk off! I have done that on two jobs! One was a homeowner who said the color was off on the brick driveway We had just had the brick delivered and we showed him the sample and the delivered brick, I kind of felt sorry for him , His wife was telling him it's the wrong color (black and red).
That’s a great looking wall. Bummer about the extra work, but it happens. I just did an “easy” shrub removal job, that took almost twice as long as I planned on. They ended up growing tighter to the basement wall than I expected, and actually under the wall at one point. Had to get it all…..
Stan you have one awesome team of guys there. I'm truly jealous and wish I could work with others like that..... Hard to find good people to work with.
Love the stone base for the house retaining wall. Also, the sand based for the patio tiles. Nice screening job and the guard rail to hold it all together. What the heck with the shed. It is simple, even full, to lift it up and roll it 10 feet on dowels. I did that with our shed, one person pushing a 7' x 7' shed on elevated to have one 2x4 under each side of the shed, and one on the ground with 1.5 inch dowels between them. Rolled easily out of the way. Sold it and rolled on the trailer of the buyer. Then built a 10x12 shed in its place. That block wall looks great.
I think recording the job gives people a behind the curtain view of what it takes to do a great job and it give the builders protection because they can say here is how and what we did. Its a win win.
Looks to me like you guys did an excellent job. I love to see people putting pride in their work. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often anymore.
Ha! You answered my question before I could even ask it! I was wondering about liability with customers leaving loaded sheds on steep hills.... =) Nice job on the deck and walkway - and the retaining wall - love the Kubota skid steer!
Hey hey Stan, it’s been a long long time, these videos have been amazing, I’ve been on catch up. School has been going great, i was able today to complete an entire semesters class worth of work today so I knocked out a class, got home and went and salted some driveways with my cousin and made a little quick money. It was a very wet snow we got here in jersey, not fun by any means hope you have been well and keep on grinding,god bless you and the family and as always, your pal and friend, Alexander costa🤠🤠
Nice to hear from ya man! Glad things are going good for you. We’ve gotten pretty much NO snow up here in minny. Pretty nuts especially compared to last year. Keep up the great work and God Bless 👊
That's HARD work! You guys did a beautiful job on a SUPERHARD SITE!...Glad I"m a carpenter remodeling contractor, that landscaping stuff is too hard on the back..
Question Stanley; was the entire process explained, including a detailed summary of necessary steps to accomplish the Job?? I.E. the moving if the shed??
Scope of work agreements are soooo vital when dealing with residential customers. They like to bully contractors to do it their way even if they wrong they still push.
The “we can do that easy”,and the subsequent “all you gotta do is” will make your most well paid , trusted man , rethink his decision to work for you if you hand him that crap sandwich to often to close together, because odds are you bid for smooth sailing and your going to require your man to kill himself to make your “we got this” bid into making money, don’t forget the struggle
as soon as he took away access he would have signed a waiver bc you never know sometimes, it could have collapsed and you know he would of tried to get out of paying you guys, I feel that was his goal there. People like that don't get my services a second time. That building was so small it could have been moved quickly and easily for very low cost, stuff like that is so frustrating
Beautiful job! Do you put an outfall on that drain pipe or does it just weep out the wall--with the pipe as a reservoir? In such a tight space to the property line, how would you handle an outfall?
I noticed that you are using geogrid to stabilize the soil around the shed. I need to build a 1200 foot driveway through marginal soils. Would you suggest using that with 1&2 limestone or using geo cell with 304 limestone? Also should I put fabric down first or will that not be necessary with the geo grid or geo cell?
For the wall section nearest the shed, is there any difference in construction required due to the “shed full of stuff”? I’m thinking about the additional lateral load the weight of the shed causes.
Do those retaining wall blocks allow water to seep through? Isn't that what you want? Or did you guys install a french drain at the bottom of it as well? Noob question, but isn't that the risk of a retaining wall? All that waterlogged soil and weight behind it can cause them to fail if they can't drain properly when it's wet? I do see the drain hose now 'behind it'. Is that enough though?
Difficult clients are one of the reasons i gave up residential construction and went to driving a truck. Nothing irritates me more than someone with no concept or ability, trying to tell me what or how, with the job Ive mastered. Theyre havng the job done 9/10 times because they dont know how, only option i would have presented is to move the shed or hire someone else. I wont make my guys work 10x harder or sacrifice the quality of my work to satisfy them, when they dont know what theyre asking for.
Home owner will regret not moving that shed later. You can see the timbers it's sitting on are just as rotten as the wall. Moving it would have let them set it on footings. Once those timbers give the whole shed will start coming apart from the unlevel loads on the floor of it.
If I were the homeowner, I would have moved the entire wall back as far as possible. Then there would be no issue with the shed, and regain lost yard space.
pavers and wall look great. im no mason but we had a retaining wall made and it require to be under the hillside 4' but was probably more than double the height as this.. is that why?
Masonry is hard to beat, just tore down a 40 year old metal shed with a wood frame floor. Shed was rusting through, floor was all rotted, but the cinder blocks the shed was sitting on, were in great shape.
I don't understand what's retaining that whole lower elevation other than maybe another wood landscape wall and border property a cedar fence. But great work as always.
A lot of times customers will throw a curveball in like that to make it harder on you. So that when things go bad they can say that it's your fault and then they don't so that they don't have to pay. Usually with my friends construction company Would give them an estimated cost on things and have it in writing if they change the rod or the design or things that they wanted to add or make things even more complicated but not moving the shed when they know a shed means to be moved then you can then you add a higher cost of Labor time and all everything else once they've seen see that that it's gonna cost more to do it a certain way then they usually change their mind.
i've got two really old barn/sheds that i want to set on concrete foundations rather than the original stone stack, and add a slab. it would be a fun job i bet. if i had to move the whole building, i absolutely would. especially if the contractor said it had to be done to get the work done. if cost is not an issue, but if it was why'd o the work? lol. ultimately, my plan is to make the barns last a long time since they use wood siding taken off an 1800s area carriage shop that existed on my property back then. so its worth preserving a bit. i can't understand Why some people go and ask contractors to do a job and then reneg on their part of the bargain like that guy did to you. on a large project like ive got for the future, i would trust my contractor would be right about what needs to be done and let him do it lol.
Stan, because the homeowner changed their minds about the shed, would that be enough to have a change order because of the big increase in manual labor?
2:00 you do realize that walking all over your screed sand is causing different compaction compared to when it is loose... Causing false addition of sand to those areas that the employees are walking on... When the patio pavers are then set into the sand it will cause unevenness... Keep the screed sand loose between the bars!
Nice job guys. We put a French drain in for the owner and he was mad we dug up the yard. I thought we did a nice clean install, never realized the owner was nuts.
When you realize the owner is nuts after the fact…that’s the worst
I got used to just telling them that anywhere I dig is going to be ugly and messed up. That way when I repair it, it turns out 10 times nicer than they expected. Not the best way to sell it… but I prefer them leaving happier versus the BS afterwards. When it’s possible…
I did the same thing. Put in a French drain. The guy was furious about his lawn damage, claimed that it would take 2 years for the grass to regrow, if ever. The grass actually grew in fairly full by the end of that summer. Crazy thing was this was a big project that went through 3 backyards, with two of them part of the drain and the third was just regular pipe until it ran into the creek. Topsoil was specified to be installed on the two of the backyards. He refused most of the topsoil and said he cared more about it being on the neighbor's, because he cared more about them having a nice lawn, and then he complained a week or two later or so about him not getting nice topsoil!
Good morning, Stan! This video proves that you and your crew can overcome any obstacle thrown in your way. Great job, Brother! Your crew is a winning hand. All Aces!
Do what ya gotta do right! Thanks man
"Cant move the shed"
"Fine, labor just went up 58% on that"
"What! Why?"
"Because, labor time and effort just went up 50% on it"
"Whats the other 8 then?"
"Asshole tax"
I would put it down as AST( Asshole Service Tax)
I always listed it as the PITA surcharge.
Thank you team. Truly appreciate the years of videos and learning from each project.
Love to hear it. Thanks for sticking around
There’s none so blind as those who will not see! Great job Stan, even though the owner was blind to the obstacles he put in your way!
You said it
But you did the job and it came out great. Every job can’t be a walk in the park. I’m sure you still made money on the job, no?
I just caught this Stan and your crew did a phenomenal job.
Aw thank you kindly 👊
Dang, what kind of energy drink did the crew have to make em move so fast? Lol. It's funny to me, watching time lapse video. You guys did a great job.
I know time lapse makes it look so much easier than reality 😭
Redbull gives you wings!
2 cans of timelapse per person does the trick
Incredible workmanship!
Appreciate it 🙌
That was definitely a steep grade for that equipment. Great job
No doubt. Thanks
Great looking job done. Hopefully not being able to set your fabric as far back as you may have planned won’t affect the lifespan of the wall. Guy must have remembered at the last minute he had a body buried under his shed. 😂
Shhh!🤣good one.
That didn't look easy, the finished product looked great. Good work guys
Not easy but worth it 👊
one of the best things i learned is learning how to say "NO!"
fr
Well said 😂🙌
I never say no. I always let the customer say no. If you price it right the customer will say “hell no”. Once in a while they say yes even when you’ve quadrupled the price. It’s a win either way.
It never ceases to amazed me how you get a rounded corner out of rectangular blocks!! Great job by you and your crew.👍👍👍
Really nice work, nice to see Sam and Tim and Àlex out there, winter in the Minneapolis area has been very mild this year, People are getting some things done they normally can't this time of year, great job ,your guys always do a great job.
Yup we’ve moved pretty much NO snow so far…And it’s February
Stan turned out great surprised they didn't have to put fence to stop accidental fall hazard definitely tons of hand work extra labor
Nice job using the Beak with the SS bucket as a mini dumpster. No switching.
You got it 🙌
Wow. That is a beautiful wall. I love that your team doesn't take any shortcuts.
Hi. Engineer here. That wall is very pretty but will fail way earlier than expected under normal conditions for the area. any weather anomalies and the whole back yard is gone. Not thrilled by what I saw on the time lapse.
"SUPER JOB" Quality through and through Regards from U/K.
Guys, that looks amazing!! The rail road tie retaining wall is about my skill set haha
Glad to hear you about to walk off! I have done that on two jobs! One was a homeowner who said the color was off on the brick driveway We had just had the brick delivered and we showed him the sample and the delivered brick, I kind of felt sorry for him , His wife was telling him it's the wrong color (black and red).
Can’t stand crap like that 🙃
just tell them no problem. you pay for labor and delivery and any restocking fees.
That’s a great looking wall.
Bummer about the extra work, but it happens. I just did an “easy” shrub removal job, that took almost twice as long as I planned on. They ended up growing tighter to the basement wall than I expected, and actually under the wall at one point.
Had to get it all…..
I'm a general contractor. You guys did a great job here.
Stan you have one awesome team of guys there. I'm truly jealous and wish I could work with others like that..... Hard to find good people to work with.
Forever grateful 🙌 hasn’t always been like this.
Another awesome job! Wall looks great even with all its struggles!
Sure does. Thank you!
Awesome job on the new project guys 🎉
Much appreciated brother 👍
Love the stone base for the house retaining wall. Also, the sand based for the patio tiles. Nice screening job and the guard rail to hold it all together. What the heck with the shed. It is simple, even full, to lift it up and roll it 10 feet on dowels. I did that with our shed, one person pushing a 7' x 7' shed on elevated to have one 2x4 under each side of the shed, and one on the ground with 1.5 inch dowels between them. Rolled easily out of the way. Sold it and rolled on the trailer of the buyer. Then built a 10x12 shed in its place. That block wall looks great.
I think recording the job gives people a behind the curtain view of what it takes to do a great job and it give the builders protection because they can say here is how and what we did. Its a win win.
You guys did a beautiful job 👌💯🔥
Thank you kindly 👊
Big ups from New Zealand. I deal with clients like this all the time also.
Looks to me like you guys did an excellent job. I love to see people putting pride in their work. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often anymore.
Ha! You answered my question before I could even ask it! I was wondering about liability with customers leaving loaded sheds on steep hills.... =) Nice job on the deck and walkway - and the retaining wall - love the Kubota skid steer!
I love these types of videos. Making these types of videos longer would be awesome.
Awesome to hear. I’ll keep that in mind & thanks man
This was my first video I’ve seen of you guys y’all do good work
Lazy Bastard didn’t want to empty it to move it. Great job, should have been an add on for working around it.
Hey hey Stan, it’s been a long long time, these videos have been amazing, I’ve been on catch up. School has been going great, i was able today to complete an entire semesters class worth of work today so I knocked out a class, got home and went and salted some driveways with my cousin and made a little quick money. It was a very wet snow we got here in jersey, not fun by any means hope you have been well and keep on grinding,god bless you and the family and as always, your pal and friend, Alexander costa🤠🤠
Nice to hear from ya man! Glad things are going good for you. We’ve gotten pretty much NO snow up here in minny. Pretty nuts especially compared to last year. Keep up the great work and God Bless 👊
Real pro's have challenge introduced by customer find a way around it and get the gob done. Great work
True that 🙌
My goodness, that end result is beautiful.
That's HARD work! You guys did a beautiful job on a SUPERHARD SITE!...Glad I"m a carpenter remodeling contractor, that landscaping stuff is too hard on the back..
The radius is on point!
Beautiful work in very tough conditions.
Clearly a frustrating job for you guys but the end result was worth it. 👍
You got it 👌
Sometimes agruing with people is dumb and you haft to give up, say if they argue the sky is purple there is no point in arguin with them.
Facts
I would have charged him triple for the hassle.
If only
That old bobcat excavator had seen some work! Keeps on trucking though
The blocks you guys use looks too quality
Nice work
Gday from Australia
Thanks bud!
I like watching this type of video only problem I always have is no one ever tells how many days they take.
I’m so jealous of that beautiful soil. Nothing but clay where I am currently living and it’s a nightmare.
Question Stanley; was the entire process explained, including a detailed summary of necessary steps to accomplish the Job?? I.E. the moving if the shed??
Oh my god that retaining wall is amazing.
Great video as always.. from the UK
Glad you enjoyed 👍
Great job it’s absolutely amazing
Wow that wall looks great
Much appreciated 👍
Scope of work agreements are soooo vital when dealing with residential customers. They like to bully contractors to do it their way even if they wrong they still push.
Looks damn good. How long did the whole place take to complete? 3 weeks?
The “we can do that easy”,and the subsequent “all you gotta do is” will make your most well paid , trusted man , rethink his decision to work for you if you hand him that crap sandwich to often to close together, because odds are you bid for smooth sailing and your going to require your man to kill himself to make your “we got this” bid into making money, don’t forget the struggle
Beautiful job. When I saw the vibratory compactor on the pavers , do you still use the steel foot on the compactor? Really great looking job!
Are those curved blocks on the corner? Or just straight blocks cut in the backside?
as soon as he took away access he would have signed a waiver bc you never know sometimes, it could have collapsed and you know he would of tried to get out of paying you guys, I feel that was his goal there. People like that don't get my services a second time. That building was so small it could have been moved quickly and easily for very low cost, stuff like that is so frustrating
Wow, that came out awesome 👊👍👏 !!!
Beautiful job! Do you put an outfall on that drain pipe or does it just weep out the wall--with the pipe as a reservoir? In such a tight space to the property line, how would you handle an outfall?
I noticed that you are using geogrid to stabilize the soil around the shed. I need to build a 1200 foot driveway through marginal soils. Would you suggest using that with 1&2 limestone or using geo cell with 304 limestone? Also should I put fabric down first or will that not be necessary with the geo grid or geo cell?
Love the vids, hope you charged him extra. Change the conditions, pay more!
Awesome looking job Guys
Thanks brother
Nice job even with owner created issues!
Appreciate it!
We put plywood down so bricks don't crack. Don't happen often but it does
For the wall section nearest the shed, is there any difference in construction required due to the “shed full of stuff”? I’m thinking about the additional lateral load the weight of the shed causes.
Nice one Stan. 👍👍🏴🏴
Thanks buddy
Turned out great. But I'm not sure what you mean that your access got taken away. The job was finished, right?
Do those retaining wall blocks allow water to seep through? Isn't that what you want? Or did you guys install a french drain at the bottom of it as well? Noob question, but isn't that the risk of a retaining wall? All that waterlogged soil and weight behind it can cause them to fail if they can't drain properly when it's wet? I do see the drain hose now 'behind it'. Is that enough though?
Difficult clients are one of the reasons i gave up residential construction and went to driving a truck. Nothing irritates me more than someone with no concept or ability, trying to tell me what or how, with the job Ive mastered. Theyre havng the job done 9/10 times because they dont know how, only option i would have presented is to move the shed or hire someone else. I wont make my guys work 10x harder or sacrifice the quality of my work to satisfy them, when they dont know what theyre asking for.
Home owner will regret not moving that shed later. You can see the timbers it's sitting on are just as rotten as the wall. Moving it would have let them set it on footings. Once those timbers give the whole shed will start coming apart from the unlevel loads on the floor of it.
Looks absolutely awesome. Like that curve
Thanks bud 😊
If I were the homeowner, I would have moved the entire wall back as far as possible. Then there would be no issue with the shed, and regain lost yard space.
pavers and wall look great. im no mason but we had a retaining wall made and it require to be under the hillside 4' but was probably more than double the height as this.. is that why?
Wow, just wow 💯
👊👊
Outstanding job
Very clean work!
You guys do a professional job and it looks laser straight
Much appreciated 👊
Stan do you get walls over 4 feet engineered or no?
Curious on your take on the sand vs a 3/8 chip stone. We have completely switched over to 3/4 base and 3/8 bedding since 2020
Sweet wall 👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you 👊
Not gonna lie. I like building timber walls but the longevity isn't there unfortunately. Definitely an upgrade
Masonry is hard to beat, just tore down a 40 year old metal shed with a wood frame floor. Shed was rusting through, floor was all rotted, but the cinder blocks the shed was sitting on, were in great shape.
Stanley, With that shed would it have been possible to lift it up, temporarily move it and then put it back in its place?
how do you get the nice curve? when i try to do that especially with the setback, it becomes uneven looking.
You guys make some super sexy walls!
You know it 😉👊
Fantastic, just to be clear you could have refused to continue after the site access was altered.??
I miss these videos!
Well here ya go 👊
What kind of gravel you use under the wall? Looked the color of sand.
Good stuff boys
👍👊
I thought geo grid supposed to go in as big as the wall is? Did you make an exception because of the building that he wanted to keep?
I think your crew did an excellent job.
I don't understand what's retaining that whole lower elevation other than maybe another wood landscape wall and border property a cedar fence. But great work as always.
Screw moving a shed. No. The wall came out good but tbh a waste of time and money that timber wall looked ok.
Looks great.
A lot of times customers will throw a curveball in like that to make it harder on you. So that when things go bad they can say that it's your fault and then they don't so that they don't have to pay. Usually with my friends construction company Would give them an estimated cost on things and have it in writing if they change the rod or the design or things that they wanted to add or make things even more complicated but not moving the shed when they know a shed means to be moved then you can then you add a higher cost of Labor time and all everything else once they've seen see that that it's gonna cost more to do it a certain way then they usually change their mind.
i've got two really old barn/sheds that i want to set on concrete foundations rather than the original stone stack, and add a slab. it would be a fun job i bet. if i had to move the whole building, i absolutely would. especially if the contractor said it had to be done to get the work done. if cost is not an issue, but if it was why'd o the work? lol. ultimately, my plan is to make the barns last a long time since they use wood siding taken off an 1800s area carriage shop that existed on my property back then. so its worth preserving a bit. i can't understand Why some people go and ask contractors to do a job and then reneg on their part of the bargain like that guy did to you. on a large project like ive got for the future, i would trust my contractor would be right about what needs to be done and let him do it lol.
Stan, because the homeowner changed their minds about the shed, would that be enough to have a change order because of the big increase in manual labor?
How was the permit process with shed remaining?....Best, Steve
little sketcky but came out awsome
What's the rule of thumb when spacing the drain holes?
2:00 you do realize that walking all over your screed sand is causing different compaction compared to when it is loose... Causing false addition of sand to those areas that the employees are walking on... When the patio pavers are then set into the sand it will cause unevenness... Keep the screed sand loose between the bars!