It’s cheaper to get it right than it is to make it right.

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So now, let's see if I've got this right.  We're to stop using pressure-treated lumber for the more environmentally friendly polyvinyl chloride and truck tire mash?  Well, at least we'll be seeing more 6s and 8s in Southern Yellow Pine.  Sometimes I think I'm the butt end of a cosmic confusion, that this isn't the planet for which I was intended.  That somewhere way, way out there a table is set each day for a meal uneaten and a bed is prepared each night and not slept in.  That in the great beyond there's an old man who looks sort of like me, and he's sitting on a park bench wondering why so very much makes so very little sense.

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For good reason, for good cause, digging deep has nothing to do with heavy lifting.

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It's sort of crazy making enemies of building products.  You know?  But if those products have cost you bigtime, hurt you bigtime, failed you bigtime, then just disliking is too good a word for 'em bigtime.

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Optimum Value Engineering (AKA OVE, Value Method)?

Pro:  No one and nothing is perfect in my neck of the woods.  There better always be room in my ways and means for doing it better.

Con: Satisfied customers can mean that they got that about which they didn't know any better.

Con: Cheaper means cheaper; cheaper doesn't mean better.  Better means better.

Con: To regard code-compliance as the objective is to leave definitions of quality to the other guy.

Con:  Engineers are . . . well, they're engineers. It is my firm belief that God did not make engineers to spec houses.  To hold houses together in unusual circumstances of high wind and seismic events?  Yes.  To spec houses altogether?  No.

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I have never said that architects suffer from the delusion that they themselves are the focus of a national Messiah Complex.  I've thought it.  But I have never said it.

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Please do not confuse me with Discount Dan The Plan Man.  He's much younger.  And short by several measures, among them, mental capital.

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Function derives from life experience.  Form derives from structure and aesthetics.  Of these – function and form – function rules.

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When we contracted actively for others, one day our client's house guest commented behind our backs that I sweated too much, my shorts should be pulled up higher, and I shouldn't bend so much at the waist when facing away from the house in which she lurked and leered.  Later on that afternoon, a neighbor to our client asked us over for an estimate, and refused to shake my hand as I had walked over from our worksite without showering, shaving, and otherwise disinfecting myself from my hours of honest labors.  It was a bad day.  For them.

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Anything done quickly is ephemeral.   It doesn't matter whether you're eating your lunch, falling in love, or designing and drafting your home building plans.

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There are construction adhesives and there is Franklin International Tite Bond.  If I were a construction adhesive, I'd be Franklin Tite Bond.

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Now I've heard it said but couldn't put money on it that an architect is like a NASCAR race driver.  Takes a long time to make one.  Costs a heap to get one on your team.  Needs high-octane refueling frequently.  With eyes glued to what's next and not you.

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No one who's done much rough carpentry doesn't know of someone no more than once removed who suffered terribly, often fatally, in a fall from an open frame. 

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My wonderful, lifetime partner can hunt down design problems and retrieve solutions – brilliant solutions sometimes – so fierce and fast . . . well . . . it'd shame your best bird dog.

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Few things make me sadder for my specie than arrogance of office.  In the world around me, I see it in all three branches of government at all strata, there in corporate towers and in those of ivory, among medical gangs and legal thugs, in those who sermonize.  Social glory and exaltation flow to them, deference and disparate baselines are theirs for the marking.  I think this is about fear of not bowing before something that you know can as easily, maybe more easily, harm you than help you — that's what fosters the fawning. 

I see arrogance of office in my own business all the time in so many ways.  Participants throughout the development of a real property get the hollow handshake.  They reckon it's owed.  Not all.  Too many.

As between people, power is gained or granted.  In Nature, it arises from itself.  But not so in humanity.  Folks devalue their own social currency, and quickly forget their foregone freedom.  Securing freedom costs dearly; its surrender, more dearly.  It could be that someday we'll recalibrate our national perspectives on responsibility and rectitude.  It looks to me that it won't be someday soon.

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The donkey to which you strapped that check must have lost his way or died en route.

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Symmetry?  The eye looks for it, the mind's eye expects it, the mind is comforted by it.  It's a home designer's habituation.  Reined in this side of obsession, it suits principles if not purposes.  Be not smitten.  It may be likened to the frame around a painting and may be artful; it's not art.  At its best, it counterpoints inspiration, its complement, even its antonym.  At its worst, it's a kiss from your sister.

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A tradesman is someone who just might know more than you think he does, work harder than you realize, and may be better at what he does than you are at what you do, nine out of ten.

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It shall be understood that enclosing any water feature bigger than a soup tureen, drinking fountain, kid’s aquarium, or cutesy tabletop fountain – e.g., spa, hot tub, fountain bigtime, whirlpool, jacuzzi, pond, pool, waterfall, etc. – shall require third-party, professional, definitive direction, such as that which can be gained from Dectron, Inc., before construction.

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Once in a while, I come across a structure that belongs in an house design hospice.  I reckon that's why God made engineers and bulldozers.

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Suffer me not to lie down with those who waste their whilings to bleat, blurt, and blather.

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What you don't know you don't know is a pure frustration of mine now and again.  Who can guess where I'd be and what I'd be up to if I'd walked away from all that honest ignorance, let the questions fade, talked over you, talked over your head, left doors closed to you in the hallways of ideas.  For sure, I'd be worse off.  Speak for yourself.

· · · · · · ·

There are good times and rightful places for budgets in consulting, designing, and drawing.  Such good times and rightful places do not include suddenly surfacing late in the project's life, when they're a dead giveaway for a bad case of the cheapies.

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Style is an identifiable design.

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MDF, or medium density fiberboard, is an Environmentalists answer to wood, just so long as don't mind dull saw blades and drill bits hurry up quick, you sand it with more care than wiping a baby's bottom, get over the dimpled displacement every time you air-drive a nail into it, brush it off meticulously before caulking and painting so it doesn't look like the neighbor's kid was your trim sub.

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Design me up, Scotty!

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My saddest moments come when I see clients put in-play between architects and consulting engineers, neither player driven to end the cash spin-offs from sending and retrieving my client back and forth between them. 

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When did it all begin to make sense to me?  When in my early twenties, I realized that I personally had known many more men dead than alive.

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It is my belief that we live to learn about good and evil.  My business overflows with educational opportunities.

· · · · · · ·

Builder to builder, issues and answers pass quickly.  Builder to most anyone else, issues and answers remind me of my Second-Year French class.

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Have you ever noticed that in common language how many unpleasant words begin with the letter "i"?  These quickly come to mind: insincere, incompetent, indiscrete, indelible, irrational, irritating, irritable, ill- , insult, inquisition, insinuate, imbecile, insipid, irate, incontinent, insufficient, illegal, etc.  It's interesting to me that relatively few words in design and construction begin with the letter "i".

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Many of my most rewarding, satisfying relationships with others started out unpleasantly.

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Stock plans exemplify that old advertising shibboleth, "One size fits all."  The good news is that you might be ahead of the game in that a lot of smart, hard thought and complex deeds have gone before you, saved you much time and effort, because it's tough to get the pieces of a house to fit well, functionally, artfully.  The bad news is that those pieces probably won't exactly fit you and yours.  One size in stock plans does not fit all.  And that's your wakeup call to connect with Before The Architect.

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Too much of a good thing is bad.  That's what I've been told. 

· · · · · · ·

You wonder why I write so many notes on drawings?  I am glad you asked.  Because I once had to rewire 3000+ watts somebody allowed on a 15-amp circuit.  Because I've seen big headers with butt joints.   Because I've known some guys to use bright nails on decking.   Because I've known of houses – big houses – built without using a level.  Because I've witnessed the same concrete steps screwed up not once, not twice, but three times running.  Because I've reviewed plans of others where three doors conflict in the same space.  Because I have worked nearby painters in very cold, very dark, very wet houses.  Because I've seen wood flooring come off a wholesaler's delivery truck in driving rain and go straight to chop saws and nailers.  Because I've seen drains that'll only draw when water runs uphill.   Because I have seen 2x12 headers over big, wide windows where both members were butt-spliced.  Because I have witnessed electricians and their helpers layout extensive recessed lighting design entirely on their own.   Because there's a custom house builder in my neck of the woods that commonly passes off 8d nails for 10ds and 10ds for 12ds.  Because I really have measured a 6-month old mansion's kitchen floor deflected 5/8" on 4'.  Because there truly is a roof over a cathedral ceiling in Maryland that's been replaced 3 times in 8 years, and in the ninth year is rotting out again even as I write this.  That's why.

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Time was when time was valuable, a virtue in its respect, a key element in close consideration, an indicium of maturity, even wisdom.  Now, so many reckon time's simply something in the way of getting from here to there.

· · · · · · ·

I wonder now and then how many others down all the years had my latest, greatest thought.  And I wonder where it got 'em.

· · · · · · ·

Some of the best designed spaces are the ones you hardly recognize, while they keep on doing that which they're supposed to do.

· · · · · · ·

Tell me the truth.  Stick to telling me the truth.  That's all I'll ever ask of you.

· · · · · · ·

Educate.  Entertain.  Inspire.  It's all I can do on a good day.  It's all that I look for in others on their good days. 

· · · · · · ·

Glad you liked the site.  It's a test, don't you know?  Some folks don't pass.

· · · · · · ·

Almost always, I'll get off on the wrong foot about some little thing or another - spelling a client's last name, getting magnetic North pointed right, the centerline of a vaulted ceiling - and I'll hop around badly for weeks.

· · · · · · ·

I am usually quite pleased to be found wrong: indicates that I am working with healthy inquisitive, skeptical minds of others; highlights that truth can prevail; points up my humanity.  When I am not pleased to be found wrong arises from a fetid condition that befalls me: that I hold dear to me an intractable, uninspected  thought about which I am quite sure I have it right, come off the bench full of righteous indignation,  and have the facts of the matter handed to me as garnish on a plate with my head as the centerpiece.  Crow is a taste to which I am not yet accustomed; however, I am bound to eat it, like it or not. 

· · · · · · ·

Going back to most anywhere important once upon a time has never done me a bit of good.  I'd rather harbor the best of my memories and live the day. 

· · · · · · ·

Dear Gerry,
This is not your grandfather's mea culpa. This is just a wee bit of insight about what happens to a keen mind left alone at the keyboard and monitor hours and hours at a stretch, days on end. A second residence in cyberville can be a dicey proposition.
It started out as a typo - fur instead of fir, as in furring strip rather than firring strip. One of us thought it was funny. In time, he would laugh about the misspelling while he spelled correctly. Then he decided to amuse himself by spelling the word incorrectly, correcting his incorrection before .pdf and .plt file transmissions. It became a game of Word Chicken, or maybe Spell or Dare. Then - not always, but sometimes - he'd forget to do the correcting. Amusement like beauty and many other things I've observed are indeed in the eye of the beholder. Some fun, eh?
Well, he forgot to do the correcting in the plan set sent off yesterday afternoon to you - realized at about 4AM this morning - mirthful in his own failure for the self-inflicted joke. No harm, no foul - he hopes.
I wonder now and then whether such happenings are akin to the Persians and their rugs - weaving into each one a mistake, because only Allah is perfect.  AG

PS: This one's just taken on an entirely new dimension. Not that Webster's was any help - been responded to forthrightly albeit without rationale by that bunch that construction-specific definitions are rarely picked up by them.
What I did just now was a word search on Google for furring strip and firring strip. In the real world, those spellings are virtually interchangeable.
It is my distinct honor to have discovered a three-tiered joke on me.  And it's not even 7AM.
AG

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I think that youth are so chock full of energy and reserves to defend against the possibility that there'll be nothing left later on in life.

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If she hadn't said early-on at our first house that the place couldn't look any worse, so we might as well start fixing it up; if I hadn't taken as a very young boy to exploring new home sites; if I hadn't dragged behind me the worst foot wound (walked sock-footed over a pair of toilet bolts - almost drove one of  'em clear through) seen to that time years ago at St. Joe's in Stamford; if I hadn’t had who knows how many stitches for all sorts of foolery across several states and spent spates of savage days and weeks in the agony of back and knee injuries; if I hadn't had a handful of guys who took the time to let me have my say and then patiently showed me how wrong I was about to get; if there wasn't this one woman who never gave up on me down all these years; if I hadn't hesitated just a moment when the built-up 4"x10" slipped from its jamb stud and only got a the lightest touch as is fell 8' and past my right temple; if I hadn't the sense to know that I'm not any good at most things and amazingly capable at only a few and then only some of the time; if I hadn't a capacity to think clearly in my sleep about stuff that just doesn't make sense when awake; if I didn't adore the smell of cut lumber on a worksite, the felt sear of sun's first heat on a cold wall; if there were not those now countless chances to see how other guys screwed up; if there wasn’t the time and talent to learn Autocad on my own; and if there weren’t a couple hundred other things to curse and course my journey; then I wouldn't ever be having such a good time now and getting paid for it to boot.   Imagine.  Lucky guy.

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