All Forum Posts by: Jim K.

@Michael K.

As God is my witness, I'll never be cubicled again.

@Michael K.

You see, this is the break in perception that interests me most. Derrick is talking about one thing, you're talking about another, and ne'er the twain shall meet. I can understand your point, Michael, but when you come home aching all over for weeks on end every summer, seven days a week because you had to use all the sunlight there was in the day, and the physical exhaustion shuts down your brain no matter how much you wish you could keep thinking, I don't think it's quite the same thing. Nobody at your white-collar job is going to lose a foot or end up in a wheelchair if they lose focus.

On the other hand, blue-collar people don't know the joy of being asked to draw seven red lines, all of them strictly perpendicular to each other, some with green ink, some with transparent ink, all while your manager insists, "There is no such thing as impossible!" The mind-numbing hum of a cubicle farm, the little family pictures on every desk, the chronic stress levels carefully maintained by bosses always ready with the stick and grudgingly offering the carrot only when forced to. The crisis management that forces you to lurch from one counter-productive activity to the other. The email that ruins your day. The jockeying for position in the office politics. The smarmy appeals for synergy. The way Nadia in Accounting always, always just lays her sticky coffee stirrer down on the break room table instead of throwing it away. That boss who is always spreading cheer and blame and keeps up his tan and teeth-bleaching in January.

@Scotland Ray Smith

Great post. But I'd caution you to remember that a lot of successful people tend to put together a personal hagiography after the fact. When they tell their stories about coming up in a hard business, a very large percentage end up being mighty selective. It's just the wildest thing...I recently read Lance Armstrong's self-serving, thoroughly mendacious memoir "It's Not About The Bike." I don't think I'm giving away the ending when I tell you that he completely failed to mention the organized and determined use of PEDs anywhere in the book.

@Jason Powell

I'm sorry you feel that way, Jason, and I wasn't out to shame you or be rude.

I hope we can have this conversation some other day in a different setting. It would be a long one. Good luck to you and everything that you do.

@Drue Chichi

It would help if you posted a shot of the doors and the damage. I would also like to see the herculean weedeater that packs that kind of muscle.

@Jason Powell

Oh, the hardest and the toughest jobs?

Maybe bullnose the granite for the bathroom on-site?

You ever build a mud pan for a shower?

Used a framing plumb bob?

Ever clamped a raised panel custom cabinet door? Would you know what Space Balls were for if I handed you a pack?

Ever put in a drywall repair clip?

Is it better to use fiberglass or rockwool insulation to insulate weight cavities before putting in replacement windows?

What kind of JC should I stick with for heavy composite tape and no=fastener reinforced corner bead?

Ever sawn out a section of cast-iron 3-inch stack and put in a ABS or PVC replacement with Fermco couplings? Is it ABS or PVC that you have to prime before you solvent-weld it?

You sweated any copper piping? Should I pick up L or M 1/2 in. pipe to run interior lines at the big orange retail giant? And what about water hammer and air chambers? Do I need a third or a fourth of a bubble slope on my runs of horizontal DWW piping? What does that translate to in inches of slope per foot?

Come on, Jason (hey, there's your name, the sweetest sound in the world to you, see my Dale Carnegie reading showing?). Your profile indicates no actual building or contracting experience. And you're most definitely not old enough to call yourself a master builder. The first property I renovated singlehandedly was in 2006, at 32. And I am most definitely NOT a master builder. Just an old fart home improvement contractor with a currently lapsed registration, a middle-aged dude running rentals in Steel City and the immediate environs.

I could NOT outwork everyone on a job site, most especially my plumber/HVAC guy and electrician. They both know this and they know I know and respect this. It helps that they also both own rental properties.

Any investor who doesn't spend his days up to his elbows in the work and decided to come in on the jobsite one day would be the New Guy, also known less politely on building sites worldwide by a number of less than politically-correct terms. Someone will have to hold her or his hand all day long, probably more than one guy, slowing down the whole crew. At best, such an investor would gain some respect for showing that she or he didn't think they were too good to work on a jobsite for ONE DAY. But in the end, Jason, have you devote a significant part of your life, thousands of man-hours, to building and renovating? Have you sacrifice your body to it over the years? Got a Flexbar set to work out chronic carpenter's elbow in both arms?

No matter how many times you try to show a sincere interest, no matter how many names you remember, no matter how often you work to be sympathetic, it'll still be obvious to your guys that you don't have the skill set to work daily on a decent general residential renovation crew. You won't belong to the pipe-hitting tribe, and it is a tribe, believe you me. There's a lack there that all the enthusiasm and goodwill will not cover. Nor will a six-pack lessen the degrees of separation between you and the people producing the visible work product on the jobsite.

Not going nuclear on you, Jason. This is a major interest of mine. I came late to building and I'm writing up a series of articles about the American skills gap in the trades and the ways I see it affecting much of residential real estate investment -- flipping, turning rental properties, self-managing SFRs and small multifamilies in C/D borderline areas. Hopefully, I'll put them on a blog here on BiggerPockets.

If you disagree with me, please feel free to tell me why. It would be very nice to be proven wrong here.

DO. OR DO NOT. THERE IS NO TRY.

Three-car detached garage that's part of a property that we don't rent. No issues ever. The neighbor's kid even thinks we only store useless junk in it. I've encouraged him through roundabout means to continue advertising his beliefs to the neighborhood.

@Dan H.

"We Hide With Pride"

"We Own on the Down Low"

"Lying To Your Tenants' Faces Is Aces"

"Need-To-Know Average Joe"

I'm here all week.

@Steve Vaughan

I remember the first time I met my first graduate school landlord. I had rented this cheap basement over the phone, sent my check to the address, and the second Sunday, out of nowhere as I'm relaxing in my sweats, there's a knock on my door. My landlord and her husband are out there, dressed to the nines in their Sunday church-and-brunch best, fully expecting to be allowed in for a snap inspection, no such thing as quiet enjoyment in their book.

I was a nice kid. I let them in, showed them around, nothing to hide. She told me again and again that she expected me to keep the basement clean and have the rent in on time. Then we all went out and she continued the high-handing as they climbed into their BMW, up to the minute they drove off.

I hated that woman. In retrospect, this was probably all a big defensive show, an amateur's bumbling way to try to train a student living in an obviously illegal basement apartment. But I was offended, and angry, and she was permanently in my bad books. I've never forgotten that experience.