Words To Publish

So here I was, talking to my old buddy Lee over a couple of beers and the topic of his pending re-model came up. And boy some talk it was. I had to order in some of the good (and strong) stuff to get past the trouble that he was unloading on me. Heck, he never had this much trouble with his wife, dog, 2 sons and a daughter combined! (He loves them all like crazy though.)

From what I could make out, the problem was rooted in the fact that Lee’s contractor only had a limited number of carpenters that he could assign to his construction site. He said the economy was picking up and many of them who had been moon-lighting as construction workers were back in the city to complete college or run around submitting their applications to various companies. I suggested another contractor or maybe having the carpenters focus on building the stairs first and then work on everything else. Lee said he’d already been down that road (or asked for directions from someone still in the industry at-least) and it turns out that after building roofs, putting in stairs is still the most difficult job a carpenter can take up! With all the amazing tech mankind has come up with in the last decade, some things never change.

However, the bartender overheard us and asked Lee if he’d considered getting a set of prefabricated exterior stairs for the problem area on the site. Our reaction was that of immediate rejection and Lee cited the fact that getting them to fit in like wrestling with the Devil himself. However, the bartender made a point, that’s kind of made us both shut up. “If the carpenter measures the stair tread at 28 inches in width and he means to make the stair tread like that, then how does someone else measuring in 28 inches for the prefabricated stair guys make it any different.”

I’m still wondering how that one slipped past me…