[TheForge] helper question

Fri Jul 25 04:59:00 2003

Evening Terry:

As you probably already know Deb and spent several years building the house
we're living in now. We started in 97' with raw woods and she's been on site
almost every day of the project. This was a completely alien experience for
her. Where she's right there when the vet does surgery on one of our goats,
often talking the vet through a proceedure, she'd go into high fidget mode
when I took a hole saw to a wall in the house.

From my observations two basic things are at work:

First, women look at a house entirely differently than men do, generally
speaking of course, there are always exceptions. Where you and I see a house
as a piece of engineering with attendant problems to be solved a woman has
much more personal feelings. The home is more like a living family member
than a construct of various inanimate materials.

Second, is just plain not knowing what to do and this factor isn't in any
way gender related. Where you and I may not need to be told what needs to be
done and have the skills to do it or enough basic grounding to figure it
out, many folks don't. Anybody with good intentions placed in a situation
where they don't know what to do WILL do what they know.

You and I see tools and materials in organized disarray, messy and dirty but
handy to the task at hand. To someone who doesn't know what's going on they
see a mess and wanting to help, clean it up.

See if this sounds familiar. Every time I turned around Deb had cleaned and
or decorated the construction site. Now, this wasn't while we were standing
walls, rolling trusses, etc. of course. However circumstanced demanded we
move in while the house was still under construction. We lived our first
winter with stud walls, urethane insulation, plywood floors, visquene
weatherproofing, work lights and a wood stove WAY too small for THAT winter.

That was a brutally cold winter, even here. Before christmas we had about 2
1/2 weeks of -20 to -30f. then a couple days before christmas it warmed up.
Christmas it was in the mid 30s and clear as a bell, the northern lights
were the best seen in 20 years, it was wonderful and we figured it was the
end of the really cold weather. Dec. 27th. it hit -45f and didn't rise
above -40f for nine weeks. We visquened off as many rooms as possible
including both the basement and second floor to help the itty bitty wood
stove keep us from freezing our butts off.

So there I was, plugging away as best as I could on the house and every time
I tried to do something I had to spend hours moving things so I could get to
the next thing. Then I'd start to do the next thing only to find nails in
the walls to hang pictures, fire blocking in partition walls being used as
knick knack shelves and worst of all my tool organized for me. <sigh>

My solution worked sometimes. I started teaching Deb how to build. She let
me SHOW her how to solder copper and though she had no interest in actually
doing it she knew what the tools and parts were and when she cleaned up
didn't organize them according to some alien criteria. She's also now an ace
at cutting and cleaning copper. Deb nailed every hurricane clip, seismic tie
and almost every other tie plate in the place.

Some things she's much better at than I am. For instance when I explained
why I was chewing on one of the grunts again for walking past the lumber
cutoffs to the bundle of 2 x 6 studs to cut a 14" block. In no time she had
the cutoffs organized in 2' incriments and she was ruthless about making the
guys use cutoffs before going to the full lengths. Also at the end of the
day she had them hopping, picking up and stacking all the cutoffs neatly.

It got frustrating sometimes, still does in fact but talking to the guys at
work I realize just how lucky I am to have a wife willing to get in there,
down and dirty working on a house.

Good luck Terry and when you're feeling frustrated just tell us about it and
we'll share similar stories so we can all laugh together and feel better.

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "terry l. ridder" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 10:27 PM
Subject: [TheForge] helper question

> hello;
>
> my helpers are normally my daughters or son. we work well together. my
> helper currently is the wife. she is driving me crazy over the
> remodeling nightmare. after a section of wall is demolished she is
> sweeping and vacuuming the area. today out in the shop while i was
> soldering a brass nozzle for a garden fixture she was sweeping the floor
> , collecting coffee cups, and emptying the ash trays.
>
> so my questions are:
>
> how do you get this type of helper to only clean up at the
> end-of-the-day and not every half hour?
>
> is there a short way of explaining the project? example today after the
> concrete shower floor was demolished is was clear that the sub-floor has
> serious water damage along with the surrounding walls. it took close to
> an hour and half to explain that the sub-flooring needed to be replaced
> and the walls would have to be torn out and rebuilt with new lumber.
> these walls were not on the original plan to demolish.
>
> on a side note:
> it is nice to know that my daughters did learn well. the middle one was
> helping this evening and right in there swinging the pipe wrenches and
> pry bars with me.
>
> --
> Terry L. Ridder ><>
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