Jim Baird

Electricians carry refridge dollies with them don't they? Click to Enlarge 40.7 KB

Bain and Erby just showed us good reasons why HGTV should be taken off the airwaves.

Measure once, cut twice?

There are two kinds of skylights. Those that leak and those that will leak.

I found one whose "can" was not fastened at all to the structure...can't believe the guys plugging the meter in did not notice.

How about this one for convenience? Click to Enlarge 34.44 KB

When the return filter don't fit, sometimes you have to force it, like this.[:-bigmout Click to Enlarge 58.51 KB

That occured to me on a trip to Big Blue not long ago. I thought if I'm going to be coming to the home center so often, might it not make better sense to just move into one of the aisles at the home center?

Looking for filter at return grille in former hair salon I lifted the cover and found a sort of a filter.[:-bigeyes Click to Enlarge 57.83 KB

A carpenter I know was paid to go into a subdivision dwelling and screw plywood on the inside casing of all the windows and doors but one. He found out later it was used as a "warehouse" for herbal shipments.

Current plumbing code requires 2" laundry drain to go directly to a 3" pipe, the 2" not shared with anything else. Plumbers have told me the rationale is that soap manufacturers thru time have developed soaps that are more and more sudsy, as consumers think sudsy means better soap. One told me a lady had soap suds backing up through the toilet.

Met a realtor recently who was offering me more houses to inspect while just getting underway on a "fixer upper". On leaving I said to him, after agreeing with the buyer that I would send them both my report, "Have a look at my work and then call me about those others if you like". He calls me two minutes after I send out the document with another address. I mention that I just sent out my report to him. He says he hasn't looked yet, and his new buyer is sitting across a table from him, that they had another inspector booked, but he wanted them to hire me. Then I tell him that one will cost extra because it is bigger and farther to travel to. "My client's on a budget, and he can't do that." I think, 1) he was not sitting at no table, as his signal kept coming and going. 2)he was trying to get me for this buyer cheaper than the first guy. 3)he was only impressed at the first job that I actually crawled all thru the crawlspace and actually got dirty doing it.

I have learned a lot here, friend, and thanks for being so welcoming.

Never been asked, but have found access openings I couldn't fit thru, leaving to look like Mike O's avatar. At 5'10", 165 I still qualify as little I guess. Forty minute yoga session every morning for longer than I can remember keeps me toned and flexible, but have never liked exercise for its own sake. Plenty of that comes with cutting & splitting firewood every year off my five acre woodlot. A cpl of years ago I moved 14 tons of #7 crushed granite with a shovel and a wheelbarrow to make a front walk at my house. Click to Enlarge 88.82 KB

Snakes = no rats. Which does anyone prefer?

Frank Zappa was one of those artists who keeps alive the flame of what it is to be human. Great goooglimoogily!

Thanks Marc. I'm going to polish it and offer it to a cpl of local rags... JB

Cancellation was not an option for last week’s visit to the Emerald Coast of Florida’s panhandle west of Pensacola. Yet trepidation loomed large as a backseat passenger all the way there. The pounding surf drowned our sighs of relief on evening’s arrival at Perdido Key. It didn’t look too bad at first walk’s glance. At the edges of each wave’s effulgence the receding water left crescent shaped arrays of little brown beads like rat droppings over a caramel corona like every cup of latté leaves near its rim. Where sandy surfaces leveled out to landward, the deposits were more finely dispersed, except for random blobs of greater size resembling tobacco quid ejected from a sailor’s foul mouth or the fecal leavings of some larger, stranger mammal. Pieces that attained an age of a tide or two accreted a coating of sand and other sea detritus that gave them a granular and firmer look like Fido’s dog park dropping from the weekend before. The first morning’s beach chair bask at water’s edge was soon truncated, however, by the cleanup crew’s arrival on big long buses with tinted windows. The work week had begun. The buses unloaded onto a public access lot a hundred and fifty tee shirt clad workers in teams of greens, oranges, and whites. The shirts said “Qualified Community Responseâ€

I know. They think "more is better."

Any earth tremors lately?

When I was four my brother dropped a brick on my head while we played illegally at a house under construction. At the ER they installed something very much like Richard's headgear before they stitched me up, so that ever since I never needed a radio to be able to pick up any station I wanted to.

not funny

Check this flashing job. I told the buyer that the roofer must have been in a hrry to get paid, but found out that this was a DIY by the owner. Click to Enlarge 46.5 KB

Is that carpet in the kitchen? Wonder what it is covering up?

I saw a leak stain like that once from a condensate line that was longitudinally fractured, with splits so as to actually work but just letting a little drip drip that took years to show.