One thing I have said countless times that never sinks in is

that people that are old house remodelers are masters of the illusion as were the plasterers that finished the walls back in the day.

Crooked studs? No problem. Just put more plaster into the dips and less into the crowns. 

With sheetrock I have had to plane the rises out and shim the dips to keep the walls flat looking. Old houses are a nuisance that way.

And don't give me that crap about old world craftsmanship and back when people really cared because almost every piece of removed trim exposes pretty raggedy unfinished edges.

A lot of people don't realize that the instant a house even starts to be build things start shifting around. In a few years things are no longer straight, level, flush, plumb or square. You can run your mouth about how good the contractor or carpenters were. It ain't them. It's nature.

My house was built right after WW2, likely for GI Joe to raise his kids in after he returned from war where he was fruitful and multiplied. The lumber I was told came from Neville Island where there was a wartime shipyard. I believe it as it is slightly oversized.

It was slapped together and there are a lot of bowed and twisted studs and my guess is the plasterer was the one that made it all look good.

For me, in order to get the walls flat enough to take sheetrock well I've had to plane and shim or sister or replace a number of them.

After 75 years (like my house is) everything is out of kilter even though it doesn't look like it.

Depending on how things have shifted, a level really is only good to show the carpenter how far out of level something is. 

A remodeler's job is to make things appear to he straight, level, flush, plumb and square. 

Needless to say, the most aggravating thing a remodeler faces is Ken or Karen that went down to Homeless Depot and bought themselves a level to follow the now poor bastard around and hassle him.

After that happened a couple of times when I showed up to check the job out beforehand I started bringing a level and a square and showing them what their house was really like. It proved to be a smart thing to do.

One couple that had a recently built house got upset and wanted to go after the contractor that built it but I explained that the situation was pretty normal, especially where they were living. Kodiak has a lot of seismic activity and things shift around a lot.

One of the jobs that convinced me to talk to the client before I started work was a woman that had just bought herself a brand new level. She insisted the two front windows I had installed were out of plumb and she was right. They were. However, they matched the rest of the doors and windows which were out of plumb. No matter how I tried to explain things she wouldn't listen.

I agreed to do this with a caveat. If she was happy with them being plumb after I redid them, fine. No charge. BUT if she wanted me to put them back she paid for the time it took me to set them out of plumb, reset them plumb and rereset them the way I had it to begin with.

I did get paid three times for installing the windows because she went outside and saw they looked crooked even though they were perfectly plumb.

What is interesting to note is that about a year or two later thing reshifted and everything was plumb again...for a while.

Another thing that I remember is the time I built a fisherman a gear shed. He noticed I was taking my sweet time making sure the basic platform was perfectly level and flat. He asked me about it and I simply told him to watch what happened next.

On the flat platform I built a jig for building trusses and they went together clickety click. These were set aside. Next we framed the walls and carefully squared them up so the diagonals were dead on and then raised them and nailed them together.

We didn't bother to check them for plumb If the platform was flat and the walls were square they would be plumb. The fisherman saw that and questioned it. I told him to grab a level and check them. They were dead on.

We insured the outside walls were straight and the trusses fit perfectly. Clickity click.

The fisherman was impressed. 

Now, mind you, I had explained beforehand that hecause we had used green roughcut lumber (his request) and coupled with the fact that there was a lot of seismic activity on the island that things would shift. The doors we build and installed were slightly undersized. We hung them with huge oversized hinges.

I said that it was taking into consideration lumber shrinkage and shifting and he agreed. We did install kind of a 'weather flap' like most leather flight and motorcycle jackets have to keep the snow out.

About a year later we checked it and as to be expected everything was a little cattywampus but it did the job, the price was right and it wasn't an eyesore.

That's when he started talking about it to other fisherman and I wound up building a few more for other fishermen. 

Oh yeah, the guy that we built it for saved us a lot of explaining because he told the guys how we did things.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY