One of the many reasons this is the MOST ENJOYABLE building channel is that you guys are real pros who are constantly learning. You explain your problem solving/thinking process and in this case, a few mistakes. My master plumber friend used to joke and say "Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment." He was a real pro, like you guys.
So a few years back I’m framing a floor system and for the beams and headers we’re using LVL’s. We get this triple LVL up, tacked it in place, and I get handed the hangar for it, this massive triple hanger with 30 somethin nails per side, like 70 nails total, and we’re using 3 1/2” hanger nails, into another LVL. I finish putting this thing in, and the boss walks by and asks why the headers on the wrong side of our layout lines. I put it in 6 inches to the left. These hangers are 80$ a piece, so I get handed a nail puller and told to get to work. Hour and a half and 140 nails later, it’s in again. That’s a mistake I’ll never make twice.
Too many people hide and fix there mistakes and pretend they never happen (unless someone is watching) and dont want to hurt their status quo by telling someone the mistake they made. They aren't the best teachers. Been at new homes and reno's in Canada for 14 years and love these videos, especially the basics. Learning some stuff from you guys. Thanks for the effort!
When I first started out we landed a contract with Sears to install windows, doors, garage door openers and gutters. First job was a beautiful house on the lake. We were sent there to install new gutters. The house had black gutters and fairly new. Couldn’t understand why they would want new white gutters but oh well. Two days latter the home owner called Sears and wanted to know why the job hadn’t been started yet. I told Sears we did it two days ago. Problem was there was a shared drive way and we put the gutters on the wrong house. Crazy thing is that the house we tore the black gutters off of and replaced with white never did call us or Sears. Did a few others stupid things over the years but we usually learned from our mistakes. Probably could write a book on how not to do things.
Thanks for this you guys are awesome. I’m just a professional home owner doing a huge renovation but I’ve learned so much from you guys and your videos are great. I’m bummed that I watched all the “building a xxx” series already but it was so fun finding the new content. Your mistakes make me feel like I’m winging it a lot less haha. Even in the normal videos you do getting to see some of the mistakes/problems you run into is helpful because I always have my fair share and think “jeez if I hired someone they would never have to deal with this” but I think I’m giving everyone too much credit. I share the same exact feeling about just doing things myself that drives you guys to NOT hire a bunch of subcontractors. I may not be as fast but when it’s my own work on the line, I feel like I’ll typically do a much better job getting things to be perfect like I envisioned.
I know I put goofy comments, but my partner and I who do construction in the Chicagoland area, watch you guys alot, our favorite was all the ways you can use a square....we use them to draw triangles on wood
It’s nice to see how humble the two of you guys really are!! Please keep making more great videos! Keep up the good work!! It’s always a pleasure watching the Perkins brothers !!😊
Your not alone...we painted the wrong house one time guy sat inside all day and just let us do it why wouldn't he he got a free paint job out of the deal
Installed three picture windows solo in one Saturday, was pretty pumped until Monday morning when I had to reinstall them in the next place over. Smh....
I was a rookie. Was cutting out the plywood subfloor on a washer/dryer bump-out into the garage. It was a foot or so above the garage floor. I cut it out and put in the new subfloor. We slid the washer and dryer back in so they could use it over the weekend. Ran water on the garage floor when they ran it. I had set the blade too deep and cut into the drain pipe so it leaked when the washer discharged. Fortunately all the water just ran out of the garage and down the driveway. You never forget those lessons!
A couple months ago I took a small privacy fence job on the side and since I was just trying to get a figure together for the customer in a hurry, somehow I managed to divide instead of multiply and gave that number to the customer. When I was pulling into home depot parking lot thinking about the material I needed I was like "wait a minute, thats nowhere near enough 2x4s" so I did the math again and yup I divided the linear feet x3 instead of multiply for the 2x4s so my estimate was less than I needed to even buy the material alone. Luckily she was super cool and I took a small hit and just met in the middle from the wrong number and the right one and I still ended up making a couple hundred dollars for a day of labor. Thank god it wasnt on a huge job lol
Ok here I go about 15 years ago my dad and me where remolding a phone store while they where still open for business we had a couple of cabinets to build for the storage room so we set up the tools tablesaw mitersaw compressor.... with a100ft air hose ran to back of the store around the edge of the wall so not trip anyone, sooooo I had to run the the lumberyard real quick but little did I know somehow that air hose was hooked on a wing nut on my tail pipe by the time I turned on the road I saw every single tool that was hooked up the the same 4 way plug as the compressor was dragging behind me I stopped dead in the middle of the main road in disbelief not only did I break ever single tool about $2,500 worth but that air hose got caught behind a long row of rolling chairs pinned people to their desks so many people where running out the building screaming I promise I couldn’t make this up it was some kinda bad day a few hours later the owner of the business looks at me and smiles and said man Im so glad I was here to see this LOL we get a good laugh it of it now
I put a whole half of a lightwell of structural metal studs in the window cripples over the window with the spine facing the direction of layout and had to flip em all today this video made me feel much better like there is hope for me yet lol thanks guys
About ten years ago I did a custom kitchen with wood flooring and oak cabinets and part of the installation included the garbage disposal for the sink About six years goes by and the disposal stops working. It is well out of warranty but the homeowner calls me to work on it and I replace it for a reasonable fee, but I forgot to knockout the plug so the dishwasher could drain into it. I didn't realize there was a problem until the homeowner calles to tell me the dishwasher is now broken and pumping water on the floor so I have to run back out, after 8PM, to fix it for them.
As I sit here taking a sick day, watching theough these, i think perhaps you guys coukd carve out some time for some more of these stories. Please and thank you!
As a retired framing foreman , I was told by my boss to go to a new job . I would see three identical foundations . Build on the first , the lumber is there . We had the knee walls , deck ,and materials for the next day up when the boss shows up and is lived . Apparently the lumber truck and I came in from the same direction as that was the shortest way . It turned out OK for me as the GC owned the three lots . Boss learned too .
Had a 5 gallon pail of fire engine red exterior paint fall over in the back of my truck. It looked like a murder scene with a blood trail all the way home. Clean up was equally as bad... I hate my self at times
I was sitting here thinking trying to find a good mistake to share and then I remembered one. When I was 20 I used to do a lot of side work on the weekends and evenings. I got this homerun side job doing the whole entire trim job on a $500,000 house. Sset 34 interior doors nd cased them, pine tongue and groove ceiling 20' in the air, 35 windows with ext. jambs and custom stools, and baseboard throughout. Well I was nearing the end of the job, installing the baseboard n the laundry room, and I decided to hand nail the base on with some 8d finish nails. I was pounding away in this one spot and was like man that must be a knot because it was so hard. Finished up for the evening and went home. Came back Saturday morning and there was drywall removed and I said to the homeowner, " Why is there a drywall patch there?" He said because you have the best aim in the world and he came in with the copper pipe with a perfect 1/8" hole in it. He just laughed and said it's ok me and my buddy fixed it. The reason I didn't know is because the nail was only letting a tiny drip out and it took a while to see any water. Needless to say I used an 18 gauge brad nailer for the rest of the job.
Trimming the interior of a closet.......3 cuts for the corner piece!! Finally got a full 14.5 inch piece, damn saw made 2 x 13.5 inchers for some reason
Nice video guys, reminds me of the saying "Progress not Perfection" and one that I came up with years ago, I should make it into a T-Shirt at some point, is " Don't let your Learning Curve turn into a Circle "
When I was younger as a chimney technician, I installed a chimney lining system in a house I was suppose to just chimney sweep 🤦🏻♂️ I got my jobs mixed up 😂 never forget that stressful moment
When I was starting out, my buddy- slightly more experienced than me, was running the waste lines for a cabin. He was on a roll, and got all the vents up through the roof, but he had put one right through a window opening, header and all.
Lol, I am pretty experienced in renovations but mistakes happen, I am replacing a interior door free because I cut 3/4 off the TOP to fit the new tile floor. First thing I did that day...
I was recently installing an engineered hardwood floor and went to the mitre saw 4 times to make a simple cut. Upside down, backwards, short and then finally good. It was an empty house and I yelled so loud at myself that the neighbours dogs starts barking. Then I starting laughing and got back to work. I think of that moment when I figure I’m too smart.
working on a office kitchen Sunday night, it had to be complete by the next day at 8am when the tenants would come back to work. It was around midnight and all that was left was to grout the room, it was all subway/metro tiles about neck height, thought it would take two hours or so to do and clean up. I forgot grout takes way less water than tile adhesive and mixed up all my remaining grout in a massive bucket of water. Ended up taking 10 hours and had to go over it 6 times to get it to stay, it was like grouting with milk. People were coming in and saying "your up early" and I hadn't even left, worked 25 hours. By the end I was so tired my head was actually numb. I will never... ever mix grout up wrong ever again.
I don’t feel any better, I’m as dumb as the both of you🤣 I unloaded an Anderson French door, leaned it up against the house. Cutting out the rough opening I was thinking this sawzall sure is cutting hard. Then realized I was also cutting the new door. Ain’t no fixing that 🤷🏼♂️
Me too. Laughing out loud in a hospital waiting area. I was cutting plywood recently on the ground between two 2x4s not knowing one board got out of alignment. The sawdust changed color and it smelled funky. Not to mention it was tougher to cut. I stopped and looked under to see that my blade was bad Azz and cutting concrete! Lol
Thank you for those. I needed a good laugh. Walker Properties Remodeling / Construction in Dallas Texas. You're not alone. We certainly have our own stories as well.
I have a couple detail comments/ questions on your kitchen. 1)Do you guys run LED strip toe kick lighting in the kitchen. 2) I see a dead spot of lighting under the microwave. I usually run a LED strip at the back of the microwave so it stays continuously lit up with the under-counter lighting. Do you guys do that also? 3) Do you guys use Lutron Radiora switch keypads and decora receptacles with screwless cover plates? Or do you guys use Control4 home automation system? Great videos guys! You guys do amazing work!
Me too!!! But people have to know people are in business to make a profit. As long as the profits are reasonable then should be okay. Also...if you luck out with good weather, fast crews, no mistakes, etc...then great for the contractor...sometimes things just don't go right and you don't make a profit or very little...risk of doing business. But as long as things go right enough to keep the doors open in the long run. The homeowner seems like a reasonable person...still friends...that's a good thing. 😀
@@johnschroeder1912 depends on the company I had a built in weekly check for myself plus profit I didn't get any money until the job was done and many times I lost money or broke even part of the cost of business though.
I had a similar paint incident. I had gone to Lowes to get a few gallons of paint. They neglected to put the top on the can on very well, which I hadn't noticed. I sat the paint in the seat of my truck and as I'm driving down the road the lid pops off sending paint all over my truck. I used a wet/dry vac like you did. Lowes paid to have my interior detailed. If you get paint at Lowes now and see them put little clips to hold the lid on....I'm the reason.
We all make mistakes its a part of the learning process the important thing is that we learn from it......thanks for all the great videos.....Perkins builder brothers you guys are so awesome thanks again
Me too. Only problem is I didn't realize it until the next project I was building like "hmm, I always end up having to add a perfect 2x4 under the header when I put the doors in.
I had a handyman friend doing some work at my home. I was helping him load his table saw into his pickup when we knocked a full gallon of white paint off the truck onto my asphalt drive. We were using a shovel to pick up what we could and I was hosing off the drive as well. The paint and water was running down the drive to the top soil I had delivered for some landscaping I was doing. While we were facing the truck cleaning up the mess we didn’t see my 3 year old playing in the paint, water and mud behind us. Of course, it was my wife who brought that to our attention!! Needless to say, the next project for my friend was to put a coat of sealer on the drive to cover the white.
One of my first years In construction I was working with one of my dad's friend's for this family. The family had a 7 years old girl and a 2 or 3 year old boy named Timmy. Well we had just gotten this gigantic glass front door delivered and the guy I worked with dropped his hammer off the roof and shattered this fancy ass door. He climbed down and the the little boy came from the backyard about a minute before the parents came out and the guy I was working with just goes "AHHHH TIMMY WHAT DID YOU DO!" 🤣 I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And the parents just go "well that's our Timmy, he's a little destructive" and they ended up paying for the new door. I was in disbelief!
I feel like a Genius now! 🤣 Just kidding. You guys are great. My dad told me a couple...he was in commercial construction. One was a hotel I think. They hired a brick crew...and I guess the superintendent wasn't there...anyway...some how things got lost in translation. They bricked a whole side with no window openings. Luckily they make gas powered concrete saws! Another one...a guy plumbed a whole warehouse in the ceiling...got paid and was gone. Anyway...a bit later they went to test the system with water pressure. Water went everywhere. The guy only dry fitted everything...no pvc cement. That one reminds me of when my folks built a house. The plumber wanted to test the drain waste vent. Went on the roof...2 stories above basement with a garden house and filled the system. No leaks. So he had one of his guys climb up on a ladder in the basement with a 5 gallon bucket and open a clean out. Water went everywhere and the bucket hit the floor. Guess he needed a bigger bucket. 🤣 I was just a kid...but man many stories. We had a concrete get stuck...hydraulic hose to mixer motor broke...couldn't discharge...took 3 wreckers to pull him out. Had a sheetrock truck slide off the hillside...not completely if I remember right...but then again maybe it did...I can't remember...but enough to call another wrecker. Our dog got high on fumes too when we sealed the basement floor...he kept trying to dig holes in the concrete. Mom locked herself in bathroom with no lights no one there for a few hours while she was trying to install the bathroom door knob...that was before cell phones. If I think about it...could probably think of many many more. 😀
Friend of mine shows up, says let's get some lumber, paint and supplies. Got a big job to do. At the store, load it all up, he throws paint and stuff in the back seat. About 7 or 8 gallons. Were driving, he decided to hit this alley. A short cut. Lots of pot holes. He's flying through there. We start hitting these bumps, bouncing everywhere. All of a sudden, we hear a bunch of pops and there is fluff flying, paint splattering, windshield breaks, mirror gets shot off, dings of metal and plastic. Were ducking and screaming. Not sure what's happening. Stop the truck, bail out. The noise stopped, looks like hell unleashed in there. The culprit was his battery operated nail gun in the back seat. He set the paint and other stuff on it, and the bumps were making the stuff hit the trigger with bags and tools pressed against the front of the gun. Was funny till I saw the holes through the edge of my seat and into the door next to my arm.
A guy I worked with in the Hvac trade replaced the wrong A/C package unit for a store in the mall. The roof off the mall had many units and they all look the same.
I was working on a bathroom one time when pull the old subfloor the kitchen ceiling underneath me came down on that beautiful expensive kitchen😥 We had to clean that up quickly before the homeowner got back! 😂
I witnessed a paint fiasco two weeks ago in the Home Depot parking lot. A new immigrant family from India in their new minivan. Father and mother with four daughters and three sons along with grandma. The father had just place the gallon of paint inside the side sliding door as the kids were bouncing around and the father was attempting to control them. Somehow, one of the kids knocked the paint can from the seat to the floor, the lid popped off and dumped the full gallon into the seats, carpets, side door, the door step and running down the rocker panels. I gave him the same suggestion: powerful garden hose spray and suck it up with the shop vac as soon as possible. Luckily, all house paints are now water based. Not sure how he made out. It's tough to watch a grown man cry.
The paint can story was funny. A few words of wisdom......Never leave gallons of paint in the back seat of your new truck when you go away for the weekend. I decided to get a jump start on Monday and stopped at my local Benjamin Moore dealer for 4 gallons of Decorator White on Friday afternoon so i would have them for Monday morning. I left my truck parked in my driveway for the weekend and headed up to the country house for the weekend to escape the heat. When i got in my truck early Monday morning to head to work i had a very strong 'fresh paint" smell in my 3 month old truck. Apparently the inside of the truck got so hot that the cans expanded under pressure and blew the lids off and splattered white paint all through the back of my beautiful truck. I spent hours trying to get the baked on paint out of my seats and carpet. I will never let that happen again.
My mistake is more funny and stupid than horrifying and costly. Last year in February we were building a new house and we were finishing the floor joists for the first floor. So my foreman asks if I could drive my truck around the job site to carry the advantech plywood. So I load about 50 sheets of 3/4 plywood on my truck and my truck has a tool box on it so I have to drive with the tailgate down. Since the ground was relatively flat and frozen I am driving around no problem. Then I get to the back of the house and I feel my truck is about to get stuck so I hit the gas and I rip the tailgate off my truck and all the plywood lands perfectly on the ground. Everyone laughed and laughed because it was a stupid funny mistake and I only had to replace a cable on my tailgate.
Took a corner at an intersection a little too fast years ago and an entire pallet of ceramic tile took out my tailgate and ended up scattered across the road. Not my best day.
I was putting a piece of ply wood on top of a stack of FRP , I thought my ply wood was over hanging a bit. I forgot to look at my blade depth cut through frp.
My best friends dad is a great painter but sometimes very clumsy. He's the type that would step on a paint can lid and walk through the house. He also used the same paint tray over and over again without liners until the thing weighed a ton. One job we were painting the whole house so it could be sold. The previous owner passed away and the kids were selling it. So it had old burber type carpet even in the kitchen. I watched my buddies dad try to lift with one hand one of those paint trays full of paint. It was too damn heavy and he spilled the whole thing right in the middle of the kitchen onto the carpet. As we freaked out and ran for the wet vacs, one of the owners come in to check things out. My buddies dad panicked and grabbed a towel and threw it over the paint and pretended all was good. The owner walked right over the towel and the paint bled through onto his shoes and he tracked it through the house into the garage. I stealthily followed the owner cleaning up his paint tracks. My face face was beat red trying to hold in the laughter the whole time.
We had to install 10, 42 by 92 inch Windows with transits. 6 on the Second Story big wall and 6 on the Second Story deck. The six on the wall had grids in the transit and we didn't notice so we put four of the grids on the decks and two grids on the wall and had to switch out all but two of the windows after we had them caulked in and fully nailed off
True story: client said her shower valve needed to be replaced while she was at work. Got the job done in a pinch, feeling great that everything went well and the client was fully satisfied... Until I got a call saying the issue still remains. I was very confused because I knew everything was working fine when I left, only to find out I replaced the valve in the wrong shower! Had to come back and replace the other one as well at my cost. The good news? Client got new valves in both of her showers for the price of one!
So I'm jackhammering the 10 in x 10 in hole in a bathroom concrete floor, so as to move a drain and convert a bathtub drain into a shower drain for the new shower im building for a customer. You would think is largest this house was that I would manage to miss the low pressure line for the AC. But you would be wrong. So as soon as I hit that line a powerful rush of gas enters the house at high speed, feeling the entire house with a white foggy gas. So I expose the pipe, and solder together repair. The homeowner calls a technician to refill the unit. The sad part about it is, I didn't know at the time that such a pipe should be brazed and not soldered. So there is a crappy solder joint underneath a $3500 shower. That still keeps me up at night all these years later.
Maybe one. I had a client named Castrain. I emailed him with the details. I normally never proofread my email. "Too busy." I'm verrrry glad I did because the dreaded auto-correct had decided I meant "Hello Mr. Castrated!!"
Painting interior basement walls with a very light grey I poured white flat I had been doing the ceiling with and did about 3/4 of a wall with it. Didn't even realized. It was about 9pm and I saw about half a gallon left and thought: "I'll finish this paint, then I'll go" Next day I arrive, and the home owner says: "Oh, you're gonna be mad" laughing his ass off...😂
5 years ago we had to renovate a duplex First and second floor First floor we had to demo everything Second floor, everything except the kitchen I completely forgot about not demo the second floor kitchen So yea that was one of my mistakes
Was a super for a company and 3 days before closing boss comes out and says I've got bad news, what is it? We ( we does he have a mouse in his pocket) built the house on the wrong lot, the surveyor had made a HUGE mistake, he was one lot off on the plat, lucky for us they just corrected the plat and all was well, still closed on time.
Jaime you and I kind of had a similar experience. I went and bought two five gallon bucks of paint one interior one exterior the exterior paint was a horrible bright yellow (I tried and tried to talk the customer out of that color to no avail) anyway one of my guys was with me we decided to act like a couple of idiots and shoot across a field on the way back to the jobsite but I decided it was close enough to lunch so I stopped at a drive in A&W stand without knowing it they just had the parking lot repaved the five gallon bucket of yellow somehow lost its lid when I whipped into the parking lot the paint flipped over while we were sitting there waiting on our order the entire five gallons of paint leaked out the tailgate and all over their brand new parking lot OMG was the owner angry he called me everything but a human being and my luck got worse a newspaper reporter was sitting there eating also of all things yep a city of 50k where my family has lived at the time for about 130years or so and my dads business just hit the front page and not in a nice way. Thank God for insurance and better yet thank God for my mom my dad was so mad it at me one of the first major things he trusted me with and I blew it and get us on the front page of the paper. Lol its hilarious now but it sure wasn't fifty years ago God ole mighty where the years have went. Wait till you have been in business for almost 50 years the stories become just crazy but I grew my business to many crews and it got wild. I wouldn't ever recommend growing like I did profits were much higher when I was small and much less trouble but isn't it fun remembering the stupid stuff we have done? I even built a house on the wrong lot thankfully it wasn't my fault or problem. However the lot owner did try and take me to court also but I was smart enough by then to have the right paperwork in place guy did get a totally free house out of it though. The developer hand his ass handed to him. Lol all that being said I don't know if his insurance paid for it or not.
I was vacuuming up drywall dust and had the vacuum behind me in the other room (small bathroom). I turn around and can't see the next wall 8 feet over because so much dust was in the air. Turns out when I emptied it the filter came loose.
One of the many reasons this is the MOST ENJOYABLE building channel is that you guys are real pros who are constantly learning. You explain your problem solving/thinking process and in this case, a few mistakes. My master plumber friend used to joke and say "Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment." He was a real pro, like you guys.
So a few years back I’m framing a floor system and for the beams and headers we’re using LVL’s. We get this triple LVL up, tacked it in place, and I get handed the hangar for it, this massive triple hanger with 30 somethin nails per side, like 70 nails total, and we’re using 3 1/2” hanger nails, into another LVL. I finish putting this thing in, and the boss walks by and asks why the headers on the wrong side of our layout lines. I put it in 6 inches to the left. These hangers are 80$ a piece, so I get handed a nail puller and told to get to work. Hour and a half and 140 nails later, it’s in again. That’s a mistake I’ll never make twice.
The “paint truck” incident sounds like a scene out of Pulp Fiction. You needed Mr. Wolf, the fixer.
YES! my first thought was that scene!
Too many people hide and fix there mistakes and pretend they never happen (unless someone is watching) and dont want to hurt their status quo by telling someone the mistake they made. They aren't the best teachers. Been at new homes and reno's in Canada for 14 years and love these videos, especially the basics. Learning some stuff from you guys. Thanks for the effort!
“You get the experience you need shortly after you need it. “
Niw that's as true as it gets!!
The best tradesman have already made every mistake, best welder i ever known overspaced and bent and ruined a $60,000 staircase Lol
When I first started out we landed a contract with Sears to install windows, doors, garage door openers and gutters. First job was a beautiful house on the lake. We were sent there to install new gutters. The house had black gutters and fairly new. Couldn’t understand why they would want new white gutters but oh well. Two days latter the home owner called Sears and wanted to know why the job hadn’t been started yet. I told Sears we did it two days ago. Problem was there was a shared drive way and we put the gutters on the wrong house. Crazy thing is that the house we tore the black gutters off of and replaced with white never did call us or Sears. Did a few others stupid things over the years but we usually learned from our mistakes. Probably could write a book on how not to do things.
Thanks for this you guys are awesome. I’m just a professional home owner doing a huge renovation but I’ve learned so much from you guys and your videos are great. I’m bummed that I watched all the “building a xxx” series already but it was so fun finding the new content. Your mistakes make me feel like I’m winging it a lot less haha. Even in the normal videos you do getting to see some of the mistakes/problems you run into is helpful because I always have my fair share and think “jeez if I hired someone they would never have to deal with this” but I think I’m giving everyone too much credit. I share the same exact feeling about just doing things myself that drives you guys to NOT hire a bunch of subcontractors. I may not be as fast but when it’s my own work on the line, I feel like I’ll typically do a much better job getting things to be perfect like I envisioned.
I know I put goofy comments, but my partner and I who do construction in the Chicagoland area, watch you guys alot, our favorite was all the ways you can use a square....we use them to draw triangles on wood
It’s nice to see how humble the two of you guys really are!! Please keep making more great videos! Keep up the good work!! It’s always a pleasure watching the Perkins brothers !!😊
As a painter and construction worker I really appreciated the paint spilled in Truck story! Good times!
I installed a new dishwasher....in the wrong house.
Your not alone...we painted the wrong house one time guy sat inside all day and just let us do it why wouldn't he he got a free paint job out of the deal
Reroofing the wrong house, repainting the wrong house, this is one thing. But doing work _inside_ the wrong house, now that takes skill.
New construction install. I installed a garage door in the wrong house.
Installed three picture windows solo in one Saturday, was pretty pumped until Monday morning when I had to reinstall them in the next place over. Smh....
They were completely mint both times tho!
This video helps me feel better. I hate making mistakes, but I try to learn something from them.
I was a rookie. Was cutting out the plywood subfloor on a washer/dryer bump-out into the garage. It was a foot or so above the garage floor. I cut it out and put in the new subfloor. We slid the washer and dryer back in so they could use it over the weekend. Ran water on the garage floor when they ran it. I had set the blade too deep and cut into the drain pipe so it leaked when the washer discharged. Fortunately all the water just ran out of the garage and down the driveway. You never forget those lessons!
A couple months ago I took a small privacy fence job on the side and since I was just trying to get a figure together for the customer in a hurry, somehow I managed to divide instead of multiply and gave that number to the customer. When I was pulling into home depot parking lot thinking about the material I needed I was like "wait a minute, thats nowhere near enough 2x4s" so I did the math again and yup I divided the linear feet x3 instead of multiply for the 2x4s so my estimate was less than I needed to even buy the material alone. Luckily she was super cool and I took a small hit and just met in the middle from the wrong number and the right one and I still ended up making a couple hundred dollars for a day of labor. Thank god it wasnt on a huge job lol
Ok here I go about 15 years ago my dad and me where remolding a phone store while they where still open for business we had a couple of cabinets to build for the storage room so we set up the tools tablesaw mitersaw compressor.... with a100ft air hose ran to back of the store around the edge of the wall so not trip anyone, sooooo I had to run the the lumberyard real quick but little did I know somehow that air hose was hooked on a wing nut on my tail pipe by the time I turned on the road I saw every single tool that was hooked up the the same 4 way plug as the compressor was dragging behind me I stopped dead in the middle of the main road in disbelief not only did I break ever single tool about $2,500 worth but that air hose got caught behind a long row of rolling chairs pinned people to their desks so many people where running out the building screaming I promise I couldn’t make this up it was some kinda bad day a few hours later the owner of the business looks at me and smiles and said man Im so glad I was here to see this LOL we get a good laugh it of it now
Looool
Wow now that's a story. Craziness
I put a whole half of a lightwell of structural metal studs in the window cripples over the window with the spine facing the direction of layout and had to flip em all today this video made me feel much better like there is hope for me yet lol thanks guys
I'm Lmao lol. The paint can debacle was priceless.
About ten years ago I did a custom kitchen with wood flooring and oak cabinets and part of the installation included the garbage disposal for the sink About six years goes by and the disposal stops working. It is well out of warranty but the homeowner calls me to work on it and I replace it for a reasonable fee, but I forgot to knockout the plug so the dishwasher could drain into it. I didn't realize there was a problem until the homeowner calles to tell me the dishwasher is now broken and pumping water on the floor so I have to run back out, after 8PM, to fix it for them.
That’s a good one... surprise!!
As I sit here taking a sick day, watching theough these, i think perhaps you guys coukd carve out some time for some more of these stories. Please and thank you!
Welcome to being a contractor. I believe we've all had these type of mishaps. Great stories guys!
I tell my guys that "if you don't make mistakes you aren't doing anything". We've all been there!
Thanks for a good laugh ! We all have those moments , good to hear other guys share their goof ups . Keep up the great content !
As a retired framing foreman , I was told by my boss to go to a new job . I would see three identical foundations . Build on the first , the lumber is there . We had the knee walls , deck ,and materials for the next day up when the boss shows up and is lived . Apparently the lumber truck and I came in from the same direction as that was the shortest way . It turned out OK for me as the GC owned the three lots . Boss learned too .
Had a 5 gallon pail of fire engine red exterior paint fall over in the back of my truck. It looked like a murder scene with a blood trail all the way home. Clean up was equally as bad... I hate my self at times
I was sitting here thinking trying to find a good mistake to share and then I remembered one. When I was 20 I used to do a lot of side work on the weekends and evenings. I got this homerun side job doing the whole entire trim job on a $500,000 house. Sset 34 interior doors nd cased them, pine tongue and groove ceiling 20' in the air, 35 windows with ext. jambs and custom stools, and baseboard throughout. Well I was nearing the end of the job, installing the baseboard n the laundry room, and I decided to hand nail the base on with some 8d finish nails. I was pounding away in this one spot and was like man that must be a knot because it was so hard. Finished up for the evening and went home. Came back Saturday morning and there was drywall removed and I said to the homeowner, " Why is there a drywall patch there?" He said because you have the best aim in the world and he came in with the copper pipe with a perfect 1/8" hole in it. He just laughed and said it's ok me and my buddy fixed it. The reason I didn't know is because the nail was only letting a tiny drip out and it took a while to see any water. Needless to say I used an 18 gauge brad nailer for the rest of the job.
Thanks for sharing guys. Goes to prove we all have stories where we have messed up!
How many times did you put your tape on the one inch mark and forgot to add an extra inch.
Trimming the interior of a closet.......3 cuts for the corner piece!! Finally got a full 14.5 inch piece, damn saw made 2 x 13.5 inchers for some reason
Thomas Green at least once a month 🙄
Guilty
Nice video guys, reminds me of the saying "Progress not Perfection" and one that I came up with years ago, I should make it into a T-Shirt at some point, is " Don't let your Learning Curve turn into a Circle "
When I was younger as a chimney technician, I installed a chimney lining system in a house I was suppose to just chimney sweep 🤦🏻♂️ I got my jobs mixed up 😂 never forget that stressful moment
Painted the exterior with interior on a 4500 square foot home and had to repaint as well. Not fun!
When I was starting out, my buddy- slightly more experienced than me, was running the waste lines for a cabin. He was on a roll, and got all the vents up through the roof, but he had put one right through a window opening, header and all.
Lol, I am pretty experienced in renovations but mistakes happen, I am replacing a interior door free because I cut 3/4 off the TOP to fit the new tile floor. First thing I did that day...
At least it was latex paint in the truck. Oil based or lacquer would've been a whole 'nother matter.
I was recently installing an engineered hardwood floor and went to the mitre saw 4 times to make a simple cut. Upside down, backwards, short and then finally good. It was an empty house and I yelled so loud at myself that the neighbours dogs starts barking. Then I starting laughing and got back to work. I think of that moment when I figure I’m too smart.
working on a office kitchen Sunday night, it had to be complete by the next day at 8am when the tenants would come back to work. It was around midnight and all that was left was to grout the room, it was all subway/metro tiles about neck height, thought it would take two hours or so to do and clean up. I forgot grout takes way less water than tile adhesive and mixed up all my remaining grout in a massive bucket of water. Ended up taking 10 hours and had to go over it 6 times to get it to stay, it was like grouting with milk. People were coming in and saying "your up early" and I hadn't even left, worked 25 hours. By the end I was so tired my head was actually numb. I will never... ever mix grout up wrong ever again.
I don’t feel any better, I’m as dumb as the both of you🤣 I unloaded an Anderson French door, leaned it up against the house. Cutting out the rough opening I was thinking this sawzall sure is cutting hard. Then realized I was also cutting the new door. Ain’t no fixing that 🤷🏼♂️
That made me laugh out loud. Sadly, its just like something I would do.
Me too. Laughing out loud in a hospital waiting area. I was cutting plywood recently on the ground between two 2x4s not knowing one board got out of alignment. The sawdust changed color and it smelled funky. Not to mention it was tougher to cut. I stopped and looked under to see that my blade was bad Azz and cutting concrete! Lol
Lol not your fault Sawzalls are too good for their own good the pricks of things
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤔🤭😱😥😥
Thank you for those. I needed a good laugh. Walker Properties Remodeling / Construction in Dallas Texas. You're not alone. We certainly have our own stories as well.
Honest,human workers.Rare indeed.
I have a couple detail comments/ questions on your kitchen. 1)Do you guys run LED strip toe kick lighting in the kitchen. 2) I see a dead spot of lighting under the microwave. I usually run a LED strip at the back of the microwave so it stays continuously lit up with the under-counter lighting. Do you guys do that also? 3) Do you guys use Lutron Radiora switch keypads and decora receptacles with screwless cover plates? Or do you guys use Control4 home automation system? Great videos guys! You guys do amazing work!
I wish they were more home builders like y'all awesome story awesome videos.
Great video guys! I’ve been there, I needed a good laugh 😂
Oof the profit story with James hurts me in my bones
Me too!!! But people have to know people are in business to make a profit. As long as the profits are reasonable then should be okay. Also...if you luck out with good weather, fast crews, no mistakes, etc...then great for the contractor...sometimes things just don't go right and you don't make a profit or very little...risk of doing business. But as long as things go right enough to keep the doors open in the long run. The homeowner seems like a reasonable person...still friends...that's a good thing. 😀
@@mikewoods897 I dont understand, is this "profit" on top of labor they put in to the job?
@@johnschroeder1912 depends on the company I had a built in weekly check for myself plus profit I didn't get any money until the job was done and many times I lost money or broke even part of the cost of business though.
No, it is labor and markup.
Thanks for all the free knowledge guys!
I had a similar paint incident. I had gone to Lowes to get a few gallons of paint. They neglected to put the top on the can on very well, which I hadn't noticed. I sat the paint in the seat of my truck and as I'm driving down the road the lid pops off sending paint all over my truck. I used a wet/dry vac like you did. Lowes paid to have my interior detailed. If you get paint at Lowes now and see them put little clips to hold the lid on....I'm the reason.
We all make mistakes its a part of the learning process the important thing is that we learn from it......thanks for all the great videos.....Perkins builder brothers you guys are so awesome thanks again
THANKS FOR SHARING
Measured all of the door openings off of the sill plate, so all openings were 1 1/2” taller than they were supposed to be.
Me too. Only problem is I didn't realize it until the next project I was building like "hmm, I always end up having to add a perfect 2x4 under the header when I put the doors in.
I had a handyman friend doing some work at my home. I was helping him load his table saw into his pickup when we knocked a full gallon of white paint off the truck onto my asphalt drive. We were using a shovel to pick up what we could and I was hosing off the drive as well. The paint and water was running down the drive to the top soil I had delivered for some landscaping I was doing. While we were facing the truck cleaning up the mess we didn’t see my 3 year old playing in the paint, water and mud behind us. Of course, it was my wife who brought that to our attention!! Needless to say, the next project for my friend was to put a coat of sealer on the drive to cover the white.
Love your videos guys!!! I get an education from every video!
😂 At the end of the day, you guys can straighten your crowns because you’re still professionals in my book.
One of my first years In construction I was working with one of my dad's friend's for this family. The family had a 7 years old girl and a 2 or 3 year old boy named Timmy. Well we had just gotten this gigantic glass front door delivered and the guy I worked with dropped his hammer off the roof and shattered this fancy ass door. He climbed down and the the little boy came from the backyard about a minute before the parents came out and the guy I was working with just goes "AHHHH TIMMY WHAT DID YOU DO!" 🤣 I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And the parents just go "well that's our Timmy, he's a little destructive" and they ended up paying for the new door. I was in disbelief!
Love you guys! Evan from Indian Trail NC here! Keep up the great work and awesome videos! Thanks!
Great story’s!! Make me feel better about my story’s!!!
Great video ! from Nova Scotia Canada .
You have to be able to laugh at yourself!! "Have fun or go home" Our motto is..."Comes out nice cus we do it twice"
You guys are awesome! Very funny and very true! Thanks for sharing at such a personal level!! Thank you for being honest. A disappeared trait.
Love the show guys awesome content. Kept it up
I feel like a Genius now! 🤣 Just kidding. You guys are great. My dad told me a couple...he was in commercial construction. One was a hotel I think. They hired a brick crew...and I guess the superintendent wasn't there...anyway...some how things got lost in translation. They bricked a whole side with no window openings. Luckily they make gas powered concrete saws! Another one...a guy plumbed a whole warehouse in the ceiling...got paid and was gone. Anyway...a bit later they went to test the system with water pressure. Water went everywhere. The guy only dry fitted everything...no pvc cement. That one reminds me of when my folks built a house. The plumber wanted to test the drain waste vent. Went on the roof...2 stories above basement with a garden house and filled the system. No leaks. So he had one of his guys climb up on a ladder in the basement with a 5 gallon bucket and open a clean out. Water went everywhere and the bucket hit the floor. Guess he needed a bigger bucket. 🤣 I was just a kid...but man many stories. We had a concrete get stuck...hydraulic hose to mixer motor broke...couldn't discharge...took 3 wreckers to pull him out. Had a sheetrock truck slide off the hillside...not completely if I remember right...but then again maybe it did...I can't remember...but enough to call another wrecker. Our dog got high on fumes too when we sealed the basement floor...he kept trying to dig holes in the concrete. Mom locked herself in bathroom with no lights no one there for a few hours while she was trying to install the bathroom door knob...that was before cell phones. If I think about it...could probably think of many many more. 😀
Friend of mine shows up, says let's get some lumber, paint and supplies. Got a big job to do. At the store, load it all up, he throws paint and stuff in the back seat. About 7 or 8 gallons. Were driving, he decided to hit this alley. A short cut. Lots of pot holes. He's flying through there. We start hitting these bumps, bouncing everywhere. All of a sudden, we hear a bunch of pops and there is fluff flying, paint splattering, windshield breaks, mirror gets shot off, dings of metal and plastic. Were ducking and screaming. Not sure what's happening. Stop the truck, bail out. The noise stopped, looks like hell unleashed in there. The culprit was his battery operated nail gun in the back seat. He set the paint and other stuff on it, and the bumps were making the stuff hit the trigger with bags and tools pressed against the front of the gun. Was funny till I saw the holes through the edge of my seat and into the door next to my arm.
A guy I worked with in the Hvac trade replaced the wrong A/C package unit for a store in the mall. The roof off the mall had many units and they all look the same.
These were worth a good laugh.
I've done the paint thing. I now know all the different paint styles. Low luster will get ya
I have seen an entire plumbing chase next to an elevator shaft get left out and concrete poured over it. Concrete saws and jackhammering commenced.
I was working on a bathroom one time when pull the old subfloor the kitchen ceiling underneath me came down on that beautiful expensive kitchen😥
We had to clean that up quickly before the homeowner got back! 😂
The great thing about construction is you can always blame it on somebody else....I mean fix it, you can always fix it.
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment"
Those stories are nothing. Here's one: I got married!
I got you beat. I got married three times.
Love your work ethic
I witnessed a paint fiasco two weeks ago in the Home Depot parking lot. A new immigrant family from India in their new minivan. Father and mother with four daughters and three sons along with grandma. The father had just place the gallon of paint inside the side sliding door as the kids were bouncing around and the father was attempting to control them. Somehow, one of the kids knocked the paint can from the seat to the floor, the lid popped off and dumped the full gallon into the seats, carpets, side door, the door step and running down the rocker panels. I gave him the same suggestion: powerful garden hose spray and suck it up with the shop vac as soon as possible. Luckily, all house paints are now water based. Not sure how he made out. It's tough to watch a grown man cry.
The paint can story was funny. A few words of wisdom......Never leave gallons of paint in the back seat of your new truck when you go away for the weekend. I decided to get a jump start on Monday and stopped at my local Benjamin Moore dealer for 4 gallons of Decorator White on Friday afternoon so i would have them for Monday morning. I left my truck parked in my driveway for the weekend and headed up to the country house for the weekend to escape the heat. When i got in my truck early Monday morning to head to work i had a very strong 'fresh paint" smell in my 3 month old truck. Apparently the inside of the truck got so hot that the cans expanded under pressure and blew the lids off and splattered white paint all through the back of my beautiful truck. I spent hours trying to get the baked on paint out of my seats and carpet. I will never let that happen again.
No beer after a day like that
Or A WHOLE LOT of beer after a day like that!
My mistake is more funny and stupid than horrifying and costly. Last year in February we were building a new house and we were finishing the floor joists for the first floor. So my foreman asks if I could drive my truck around the job site to carry the advantech plywood. So I load about 50 sheets of 3/4 plywood on my truck and my truck has a tool box on it so I have to drive with the tailgate down. Since the ground was relatively flat and frozen I am driving around no problem. Then I get to the back of the house and I feel my truck is about to get stuck so I hit the gas and I rip the tailgate off my truck and all the plywood lands perfectly on the ground. Everyone laughed and laughed because it was a stupid funny mistake and I only had to replace a cable on my tailgate.
Took a corner at an intersection a little too fast years ago and an entire pallet of ceramic tile took out my tailgate and ended up scattered across the road. Not my best day.
Where are the stairs🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was putting a piece of ply wood on top of a stack of FRP , I thought my ply wood was over hanging a bit. I forgot to look at my blade depth cut through frp.
Dang it Bobby on the paint in the dodge
My best friends dad is a great painter but sometimes very clumsy. He's the type that would step on a paint can lid and walk through the house. He also used the same paint tray over and over again without liners until the thing weighed a ton. One job we were painting the whole house so it could be sold. The previous owner passed away and the kids were selling it. So it had old burber type carpet even in the kitchen. I watched my buddies dad try to lift with one hand one of those paint trays full of paint. It was too damn heavy and he spilled the whole thing right in the middle of the kitchen onto the carpet. As we freaked out and ran for the wet vacs, one of the owners come in to check things out. My buddies dad panicked and grabbed a towel and threw it over the paint and pretended all was good. The owner walked right over the towel and the paint bled through onto his shoes and he tracked it through the house into the garage. I stealthily followed the owner cleaning up his paint tracks. My face face was beat red trying to hold in the laughter the whole time.
Hello and quick question. How do I find residential houses for bids. I’m out here in California.
reads paint label to owner. ....INDOOR/OUTDOOR paint. That would been the words outta my mouth. LoL
We had to install 10, 42 by 92 inch Windows with transits. 6 on the Second Story big wall and 6 on the Second Story deck. The six on the wall had grids in the transit and we didn't notice so we put four of the grids on the decks and two grids on the wall and had to switch out all but two of the windows after we had them caulked in and fully nailed off
True story: client said her shower valve needed to be replaced while she was at work. Got the job done in a pinch, feeling great that everything went well and the client was fully satisfied... Until I got a call saying the issue still remains. I was very confused because I knew everything was working fine when I left, only to find out I replaced the valve in the wrong shower! Had to come back and replace the other one as well at my cost. The good news? Client got new valves in both of her showers for the price of one!
So I'm jackhammering the 10 in x 10 in hole in a bathroom concrete floor, so as to move a drain and convert a bathtub drain into a shower drain for the new shower im building for a customer. You would think is largest this house was that I would manage to miss the low pressure line for the AC. But you would be wrong. So as soon as I hit that line a powerful rush of gas enters the house at high speed, feeling the entire house with a white foggy gas. So I expose the pipe, and solder together repair. The homeowner calls a technician to refill the unit. The sad part about it is, I didn't know at the time that such a pipe should be brazed and not soldered. So there is a crappy solder joint underneath a $3500 shower. That still keeps me up at night all these years later.
Maybe one. I had a client named Castrain. I emailed him with the details. I normally never proofread my email. "Too busy." I'm verrrry glad I did because the dreaded auto-correct had decided I meant "Hello Mr. Castrated!!"
Painting interior basement walls with a very light grey I poured white flat I had been doing the ceiling with and did about 3/4 of a wall with it.
Didn't even realized. It was about 9pm and I saw about half a gallon left and thought: "I'll finish this paint, then I'll go"
Next day I arrive, and the home owner says: "Oh, you're gonna be mad" laughing his ass off...😂
Great fun!
Love this channel
Lucky that paint wasnt a 4 litre 🤣😂
5 years ago we had to renovate a duplex
First and second floor
First floor we had to demo everything
Second floor, everything except the kitchen
I completely forgot about not demo the second floor kitchen
So yea that was one of my mistakes
Was a super for a company and 3 days before closing boss comes out and says I've got bad news, what is it? We ( we does he have a mouse in his pocket) built the house on the wrong lot, the surveyor had made a HUGE mistake, he was one lot off on the plat, lucky for us they just corrected the plat and all was well, still closed on time.
Jaime you and I kind of had a similar experience. I went and bought two five gallon bucks of paint one interior one exterior the exterior paint was a horrible bright yellow (I tried and tried to talk the customer out of that color to no avail) anyway one of my guys was with me we decided to act like a couple of idiots and shoot across a field on the way back to the jobsite but I decided it was close enough to lunch so I stopped at a drive in A&W stand without knowing it they just had the parking lot repaved the five gallon bucket of yellow somehow lost its lid when I whipped into the parking lot the paint flipped over while we were sitting there waiting on our order the entire five gallons of paint leaked out the tailgate and all over their brand new parking lot OMG was the owner angry he called me everything but a human being and my luck got worse a newspaper reporter was sitting there eating also of all things yep a city of 50k where my family has lived at the time for about 130years or so and my dads business just hit the front page and not in a nice way. Thank God for insurance and better yet thank God for my mom my dad was so mad it at me one of the first major things he trusted me with and I blew it and get us on the front page of the paper. Lol its hilarious now but it sure wasn't fifty years ago God ole mighty where the years have went. Wait till you have been in business for almost 50 years the stories become just crazy but I grew my business to many crews and it got wild. I wouldn't ever recommend growing like I did profits were much higher when I was small and much less trouble but isn't it fun remembering the stupid stuff we have done?
I even built a house on the wrong lot thankfully it wasn't my fault or problem. However the lot owner did try and take me to court also but I was smart enough by then to have the right paperwork in place guy did get a totally free house out of it though. The developer hand his ass handed to him. Lol all that being said I don't know if his insurance paid for it or not.
I was vacuuming up drywall dust and had the vacuum behind me in the other room (small bathroom). I turn around and can't see the next wall 8 feet over because so much dust was in the air. Turns out when I emptied it the filter came loose.
I was on the job and an apprentice cut the overhanging floor sheeting but he cut the inside 3&1/2 inch line on both sides
Sounds like good people to work for
He still had his fingers 🤦🏿♂🤦🏿♂
Such a fun content, love these bloopers and we also have a saying we say shit happens hahaha great video guys ❤️❤️
Make video on layout starting point...(laser use in layout)...,
Stairs,
That paint job on the exterior made me larf. Best Fk up going, lol.
Hilarious. I'd recall some of the really dumb things I did but i embarrassed myself enough. 👍
love the paint story,lmbo!
It's so weird to see Jaime with fingers !!! 🤣
NAILED IT!🤣