Lemme see....tab A goes into slot B....then fold and....

Progress report:  Here is the current status of the major addition to the already large home we built for for M/M W two years ago.  They've developed a bad case of the "while you're at it" syndrome, adding even more on the fly.  Now the home will have a combined total of over 10,000 sq ft.

They're like rich kids turned loose with daddy's credit card.  Now they've discovered the large unused space just below the roof, aka the attic, would be a good place for another media room.  Yes, I said another.  

 

They sent me this email attachment yesterday saying this was the look they wanted to replicate, including the LED star field in the ceiling.  My response:  "Sure.  Make the check payable to...."

It will be quite the estate, I must admit.  And today it begs my attention.  Gotta go.  Have a great day everyone.  :)

S

That's my story and I'm stickin' with it!

I get razzed a lot for my rather pathetic attempt at retirement.  I work a while, then I coast a while, then rinse and repeat.  Here's why I can't / don't just hang it up completely:

First, K is still working (did I mention she just got a BIG promotion / raise?), so we can't just hop in the car and drive off for weeks or months at a time.

Second, while I did officially retire a year and a half ago....I resigned as company president and turned it all over to my brother....he does still need help in one important area.  For all those years I handled the operations (actual construction) while bro handled the "office administration", and there is a ton of office administration.  The paperwork burden just keeps growing and growing!

My brother's weakness is his lack of deep understanding of the structural aspects of building.  I'm talking about the foundation, framing, installation of mechanicals, etc, and understanding the building codes.  

When we have a home just beginning construction I come out of hibernation and handle things up through getting inspections.  After that it's pretty much cosmetic....picking paint and stain colors, marble, granite, fixtures, etc.  Bro is great at working with customers on all that.  That's when I can take a step back and coast.

While I no longer have any day-to-day responsibility, I still own half the company and derive income from it, so of course I want to see it succeed.  We're too small a company to hire someone else full-time to do what I did.  It's a nicely profitable business if you watch your overhead, but another split of the $$$ won't work, so.....

And finally, I actually like building homes.  I enjoy watching things progress day-to-day all the way to completion.  I like driving through a neighborhood we built in 5 or 10 years ago and saying to myself, "We built that one, and that one, and that one...".   And when one of those old customers comes back and asks us to build them another, it's hard to say no to a friend.

If I can just steer clear of all the #$^& paperwork, I rather enjoy the work / retire rotation.  We'll see how long it stays fun.  :)

S

"To be, or not to be? That...is the question."

Wha...?  I think what Bill Shakespeare meant was "To be retired, or not to be retired?  That is the question."  Lemme answer that:  Retirement is OK for a while, but occasionally it's nice to do something a little more challenging.

One of our previous customers, M/M "W", called on us to make another addition to the home we built for them just 2 years ago.  They're bringing in "mom", but I don't think they want her right on top of them, so they bought the lot next door and are building her her own quarters.

 

"Quarters"?  It's a good sized house all by itself.

It was about a month ago that we began construction, drilling 33 piers (steel reinforced concrete shafts that go down to bedrock) to support the foundation.

Then we put in all the PVC drain pipes and copper water lines, inspected it, and covered it with a moisture membrane.

After the foundation set-up was then inspected and approved by the design engineer we brought in the concrete pumper truck and things got interesting.

This is how the concrete comes out the other end of the hydraulic pump 60' away from the truck.

 

It's kinda cool to watch as it slowly oozes down into the deep beams, rather like molten lava flowing downhill. 

After the concrete had cured for a week and the cables had been tensioned (stretched), the carpenters began framing.  This is where we were as of yesterday.

 

It's funny how a home seems to grow larger in size as work progresses.  The slab frankly isn't very impressive, but when framing starts and you can get a sense of perspective, it blossoms.  From this angle it seems to stretch for a city block.  (That's the existing home we're tying in to.)

My job in all this?  I walk around with a clipboard and a set of blueprints under my arm.  Occasionally I unroll the plans (making sure I have them turned right-side-up....appearance is everything, you know) and look critically at something, then roll them back up.  

I also walk around, nod, smile, and say "Hola" a lot.  They call me "patron", which I think means "the one who brings the donuts".  

I think I have the work / retire ratio just about right.  When either starts getting a bit tedious I switch over to the other for a while.  Right now the work is good.  Maybe in a few weeks / months I'll retire again for a while.  One nice thing about working....you learn to appreciate weekends again. 

Speaking of weekends, have a great one all you fellow working stiffs.  :)

S  

 

Another day, another dollar

This is a home we built last year for a prominent local attorney and his family.  He's called us back to build a 2500-3000 square foot addition....the final plans are at the architect's now.  Looks like I'll be doing the structural parts soon, then turning it over to bro for the pretty parts.  While I am "retired", the extra coins are appreciated.   Still going in late and leaving early, though.

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The storms we had around here last week have really stirred up the pollen....I spent the holiday sneezing. I mean hundreds of times, one right after another.  And when I sneeze, I rattle windows.  There's nothing discreet about my sneezes.  How do people make those little tiny "ah choo's"?  

I think my poor dog is shell shocked.  He'd get nice and comfy on my ottoman right next to me, then I'd get hit by a dozen or so sneezes, and he'd jump straight up and run under the coffee table.  I imagine this is how school kids looked back in the '50's and '60's during those atomic bomb drills when we ducked under our desks.  All better today, though.

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I heard on the news the Commie Chinese have gotten into the computers at our major defense contractors and stolen all the good stuff....plans of our newest defense hardware.  Grrr!  

I wanna know why we haven't gotten into THEIR computer systems and just scrambled the hell out of 'em?  Or how about leaving them with nothing besides Windows?  They'll spend all their time rebooting and calling the Geek Squad.  Haha!

Hope you had a nice holiday, or if you're outside the US, a nice weekend.  :)

S

I should do this more often

WOW!  What a great birthday so far!  I took the dog out this morning at oh-dark-thirty to find the temperature at 63 degrees.  Woohoo!  Then I came back in to a big plate of brownies K made for me, complete with "Happy B-Day" written across it.  I would show it to you, but I've already eaten "Happ..".  Yes, I had a brownie for breakfast.  Sue me. ;)

Today is supposedly the first day of my semi-retirement, but all I see ahead of me is work.  Besides the client I met with last Saturday, another one of our homeowners from 16 years ago has sold their home and wants us to build them another.  I've been helping them look for some property, and yesterday they made an offer on one and it was accepted.  Looks like the next step is to visit the architect.  Then another one of our homeowners, this one from 14 years ago, wants to meet today to discuss building them a new home, too.  Looks like I'll have to postpone "sleeping in" for a while longer.

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Looks like this election will be the most expensive ever....to the tune of $2 BILLION dollars spent, which means at least that much was donated to the politicians all combined, right?

OK, let's think this through:  We have a TRILLION dollar deficit and our Congress / President are beating the bushes looking for ways to save a buck.  They've come up with the noble idea of closing tax loopholes and ending expensive subsidies to selected companies and industries, ideas which have been (on the surface) universally praised.  

At the same time rich individuals and large corporations and their PAC's have donated the vast bulk of that $2,000,000,000 the politicians have in their re-election war chests.  So we're to believe they're giving generously to politicians to show their support for them for closing THEIR tax loopholes and ending THEIR subsidies?

Why yes, I would like to buy a time share in a high-rise ocean-view condo in Nebraska, complete with a private white sandy beach and palm trees.  Who should I make the check payable to?

S

Time to hang it up....

With my 62nd birthday just a couple of weeks away, I've come to the conclusion that now is probably the right time to retire, or at least semi-retire.  While of course things have changed considerably over the past 40 years, the change that my industry has gone through has been especially dramatic, and not in a good way. 

I used to thoroughly enjoy designing new homes, or more correctly, working alongside the architects (they "drew", I "tweaked"), then turning those 2-dimensional blueprints into someone's "dream home".  I loved figuring out how to put 'em together, visualizing the 3-D geometry needed to get all the parts to fit together right.  And there's really nothing like the sense of satisfaction you get driving down a street where you built years ago and saying to yourself, "I built that one, and that one, and that one, too", waving at the people working in their yards, recognizing some, but knowing others had passed along your creation to other families for them to enjoy.

But back then you had a minimal amount of paperwork, customers were more trusting, a handshake meant something, your competitors were by-and-large honorable people, and the bankers had yet to go over to The Dark Side.  Because I dealt with them fairly and paid well and on time, the best craftsmen actually wanted to work for me.  Going to work every day was a very pleasant experience.

But then some shady types invaded our ranks causing people to look at us all as borderline crooks, which I resented greatly.  Standardized contracts went from 1 page in 1972 to nearly 30 pages today.  Workman's Comp, liability insurance, audits, waivers, EPA, OSHA, storm water/erosion control....the BS just never ends!  Today actually building the home is the easy part.  It's everything else that has become the albatross around my neck.

Since the economic meltdown of 2008 my industry has gone over a cliff and will probably never fully recover.  Regardless of who wins the November elections, our political system is corrupt and dysfunctional.  The money interest's have hijacked our country, and because they own the rule makers, they have an unlimited supply of "Get out of jail free" cards. They have things rigged and can get away with darn near anything.  It's play by their rules, or don't play at all.  The risks I would have to take if I were to soldier on are simply not worth the modest rewards I might realize.

My brother / business partner wants to keep pushing on, and of course I'll help him get through the technical parts of construction on a consulting basis, hence the "semi-retired" status.  But for me, I'm tired of beating my head against the wall.  This isn't exactly the way I wanted to see my career curtain come down, but I can accept it and be happy.  I'm sure I'll work or volunteer somewhere as I'm afraid I'd be a lousy rocker and probably an even worse whittler.  ;)

Cheers!

S