Old school framer told me I over-engineer everything, got me thinking

Was talking to a guy named Pete who's been doing this since the 80s. He saw me double checking every stud layout with a square and said "you're building furniture not a house, it'll hold." Now I'm debating if modern codes and square tolerances matter or if we're all just slowing ourselves down. Anyone else get called out by an old timer and still not sure who was right?

3 comments

3 Comments

david56228d ago

Used to figure close enough was fine till I had to shim an entire kitchen island.

angela68727d ago

And that's exactly what it comes down to in the end, isn't it? A quarter inch might not matter when you're looking at a roof from the ground, but it's a whole different story when you're trying to set a row of cabinets or slide in a pre-built countertop. People talk about "close enough" until they're the one shimming or scribing, and then suddenly that extra ten minutes of measuring doesn't sound so bad. I've seen too many jobs where the old way of "eyeballing it" turned into a mess of filler strips and trim pieces to hide the gaps. So I think you're right to take your time, because once it's framed and sheeted, you can't exactly go back and move a wall over an inch.

jana_scott28d ago

Funny you mention this, I had almost the same thing happen with a roofer last summer. I was marking every single truss with a pencil line and a level, and he just laughed and said "it's not a piano, it's a roof." But honestly, I've had to fix too many things that were close enough but not quite right. Like once I had a wall that was off by a quarter inch and the cabinets did not fit at all. So I'll take the extra few minutes over ripping things out later.