Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Ceilings Pictures

As a carpenter and builder I have being part of projects with great designs, where every space  have being thought out to accommodate the vision of the client and the type of environment or feeling they wanted to create in every room.

Ceilings are always a good part of those projects and thorough the years I had built so many that I can recall the exact number, but as I always said, ceilings are one on my favorite projects.

Tonight browsing through my pictures, trying to find the right ones to present to clients as suggestions for their project I found pictures and with them memories about passed projects that if


would not be for the pictures I would not remember that easy ....  anymore !
But I do have the pictures.

I remember many years ago when I start taking pictures of my work, I always made emphasis in taking pictures of the process of building, not only of the final product and that have work very well the few occasions  I had to proof to someone that the picture I just emailed  its not a plagiarized picture from a design magazine and it truly is a sample of my work because I have the work progress pictures to prove it


Looking at some pictures now I realize that in some cases I documented the building process and then move to another site and did not have the opportunity to go back and take those finals pictures ...   or as far as I can tell now if  I did I have not run into them for along time.


I have thousands  of pictures of my work in previous projects, so organizing and matching all those pictures can be something I can do once my body can not take the heavy load of this type of physical work anymore, for sure the memories will be a lot more meaningful then.

So, I decided to post some of these pictures, the format of the blog did not allowed me to post them all ( ceiling pictures ) as I would like to do but for sure another day soon I will find an excuse to post another bunch.























Saturday, November 1, 2014

Value and Price



“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. 

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. 

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.” 

― John Ruskin


I “usually” apply this quote to all my personal and business transactions, I try to remember this when I am hiring employees or trades, buying materials and purchasing tools, I found that with time I can’t really remember the times I could overpaid a little bit for something, but I still remember every single time and the consequences of every occasion where at some point I thought I had got a great deal !

I always get a kick out of the employments ads that list all sorts of responsibilities and qualifications and then finish with something like this : “ pay base on experience 12 to 16 dollars “ , ….. 

My fellow employer, who do you think you are kidding ?

First one on line, its yourself, you will be posting that ad again in a week or two looking for someone to come and fix what that person just did. There is a big chance that time and money loses is all you are going to get from employing a person that is willing to work for 16 dollars an hour to perform any type of work that will required some qualifications or abilities on any field of construction these days.

Second one on line, It’s the Client you are working for… believe it or not .. I see it all the time …   people performing tasks they have not proper training for , obviously quality and workmanship will not be parts of that project.  As a dear friend of mine jokes about : the best business to be in three years will be renovations, all the defective work we see around now will be falling apart by then and they gonna need tons of people to fix it.

The third one on that line are us, all the contractors and trade people that feel passionate about the work we do, the ones that try to do it right ! Sometimes, the 16 dollars employers will be chosen over the other guys with decisions based on price and the circle of consequences will repeat itself over and over again.