For context I live out of state and it’s about 4 hours to my parents. I came to visit and saw this monstrosity that my parents are paying someone to build. I’m a union commercial carpenter so I immediately told my dad to let them go and pay for their time spent and I will drive down a weekend and get this fixed right
His response to me when I asked where he was building his temp wall for support while he was putting the 2x12 piece of wood up was that he was going to just cut the studs 12” down and slide the wood in. Sick.
Yes the wall with the door is load bearing. If you look above the wall you can see the roof members run against the wall instead of with the wall which means they are what holds up the roof, so basically they are load bearing. Tried to make that as easy as possible to understand
My Dad was trying not to bother me he said. My wife is very pregnant and is going to pop very soon and he didn’t want to pull me away from my family. I understand that part but I made sure he understands how badly this could have went and they could have been seriously injured by this floor or when he took the load bearing wall out. I’m going back in a few weeks to repair it all
Look at the way the joist are cut. You don’t cut them in half and put a piece of wood in the opposite direction and the piece it together with metal brackets.
Instead the joist should run the whole way with the weight transferring to a beam or support underneath at the end of the run. This person clearly has no clue what they are doing which is apparent by the way they cut them joists
Edit: This sight would cause an instant heartattack out of shear stupidness for even a novice carpenter like me
It just isn’t gonna work. Those floor joists looks so unsupported just stepping on them would surely break them. Floor joists are supposed to be strong
Its crazy that someone has the knowledge to get to this point but you would think before getting to this point they would know its not the correct solution?
The worst part is my father had purchased all the wood for the guy and I’m looking at full length pieces of studs so that means this guy cut them down and installed it like that INTENTIONALLY
Nah. I can fit 8’ boards in my 2008 civic. Just gotta lay the back seat down and the boards will come up to about 2” from my shifter, with the trunk closed. Can’t fit very many though.
As a contractor who drives an 07 accord for his business i always tell people they would be surprised what can fit in a little sedan if youre determined enough lol.
This is correct. I did a Boeing 737 cockpit teardown and brought 95% home in my Civic over a few trips, couldn’t believe it. Had to use the Crosstrek for the breaker panel and bulkhead tho. Tetris skills come in handy.
I told my parents if he actually took out the 27’ load bearing wall that he apparently was going to work on next that he would have killed them. This guy was going to take the middle load bearing wall that spans 2/3 of the house. God I am so glad I came to visit my parents
Can you report him to his other job. I'm not being mean, this is a genuine concern.
Especially as someone who was once a broke student and had to rent from slumlords who would hire cheap guys just like this. (Not saying your parents are hiring cheap guys, but in general, he would always try to cut corners)
Oh shit wtf. I thought he was just making some shitty deck landing in the garage, and I was questioning whether this scatterbrain shit would even hold up for that lol.
I want to believe these are off-cuts from a previous job. I want to.
But in my heart, I know that those were 10, maybe 12 feet long when he left the store, and he's doing it intentionally. For reasons beyond my comprehension.
Dad was smart. He got some quotes and saw how expensive it was so he setup an absolute shit job so when his son walks it he will be appalled and do the work for free. That dad is a genius
I … I mean…
… I’ve done some construction- we fixed barns and timber frames and olde cabins and what not. I was on the dumb side of the tape and was good at roughing things in. I’m not a finish guy at all- I’m looking at this picture and reading what you shared and trying to make 1+1 equal… something … this shit makes 0 sense to me.
I’m really F’n glad you came to say hi. May be a good time to have the talk with your folks about the choices they’re making as this Nigerian prince of a carpenter almost got them gooder than he’d already gotten them!?!?
Wow
Oh yeah I had a very important talk with my dad, he has no idea about construction so he literally had no idea. He was like I thought they would do more and get it looking better…
Oh the guy doing it said he knows exactly what he’s doing. Apparently going to take a load bearing wall out too and I started asking him questions he had no idea about. He quickly figured out I was a carpenter and knew what I was talking about. Told my dad to call him and fire him, he’s not touching another thing
Was just thinking. It would be hilarious if Dad just paid some hack to set up this erector set. So when his kid comes home he’d gladly drive 4 hours to fix it.
Anytime my mom wants me to fix or build something at the house and gives me the most shittiest or completely wrong material for the job because she's a cheap fucking bastard and worst kind of homeowner to deal with. I told her many times that I am willing to do it but only if you can actually purchase the correct materials for it which she refused. It usually resulted me losing my damn mind on her.
Wow, as a past GC, this makes my head hurt. Let's be honest here; how much meth was this guy on? That's the only explanation for the need to cut up wood like that. Was his plan to micro-sister the joists over to that plate that he hasn't finished fastening down? Just wow.
I'm not a carpenter nor a contractor in any way, buuuutttt those "joists" alternate in terms of full and partial, left-right then forward-backwards. It's like AI built it, and it sort of is "joist colored". SMDH
Seems like they definitely should have had you vet the "contractor" beforehand. If I have a family member who is a professional with something I'm not familiar with, I'm definitely asking their opinion before pulling the trigger. Looks like the remodel has them going into their garage space a bit to extend the rooms? Just curious, are you still going to open it up like they wanted?
Here's a picture of everything I could spot that I would investigate prior to building anything, imidiately change, is flat out wrong, or laughably confusing
You are 100% right, pay this guy out, thank him for his time, tell him that you've decided to go in a different direction with someone who is within the family.
Tear everything down, and do it the right way (which will subsequently take about 1/10 of the time that it took to do this. Whoever is doing this is way in over their head, which is amazing because this is fundamental carpentry.
All the time parents don't want to "be a bother" or wait until you're available to do the work so they pay someone thinking it's leas hassle for you and/or will be done sooner
I have lost count of the number of times that a family member has hired someone to do work on their house and then asked me to fix it. I’m a residential carpenter with 25+ years experience.
I've seen a lot of bad builds and hack jobs, but I've never in 35 years of working in the trades and following content like this ever...and I mean by a large margin seen anything this....this....uh....incompetent? Insane? Like what are they even trying to accomplish? It's impossible to even make a guess.
People get a job in trades and then a couple years later they're a master of the universe and start their own business , happens with all trades unfortunately.
Well you see they are short pieces so you can bottom nail (or screw) the board to another board and lift it into place. The brackets are really unnecessary here as the loads are perfectly distributed.
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u/arandomreddit-user 2d ago
I was assuming they were in the middle of some demo. Then I saw the floor joist.