Funny: drywall/construction stories.

S&SDRYWALL

I have a good one from an old employee. We left him at this job site and told him to mix up some mud and tape the wall w/ the banjo.He had never done anything with drywall before besides spotted screws, didnt know what anything was. Just told him to figure it out. We came back and hes like, dammit, I cannot figure out why theres so many chunks in my mud.. HAHHAHAHA he was mixing up accoustic texture as his taping mud..I had to laugh a little bit.

jim

left a guy to hang bead. came back later and he had NAILED it into the inside corners. I did NOT laugh!

Finewalls

Any new kids used to get sent to the stores for a " long-Weight" ( long wait )
The guy in the stores always played along.

I heard a story the other day about a spark ( electrician ) and his mate who turned up on a site. The Spark climbed his step-ladder and starting doing about with a light fixture. Whilst working away he felt a small stone or piece of grit in his boot under his foot; so, standing on one leg, he started to shake his other foot to move said stone. His mate thought he was getting an electric shock and promptly kicked the step-ladder out from underneath him!

Darren@Partners

Once had a builder get way behind on $ with all his subs, myself included. He owed me too much for me to up & quit, had the money worked out & continued to do his work. But his framers weren't so patient. They camped in his front yard, killed a bunny, built campfire and roasted it as he pulled in the drive. He paid them off on the spot -- but it didn't end there. Every house we rocked for him for the next year, when the builder's laborers came to scrap they found a very special "present" in the scrap pile. The framers had gone on to work for another builder in the same subdivision and wacthed for my hangers to be done and then would take a "ooney-goonoo" dump on the scrap and cover with 3 or 4 pieces of scrap. The laborers would make little scrap piles and then clean jerk the pile over their heads and carry it out with the weight rested on top of their heads. Well, it would then squeeze out and run down their arms. I quit him a few years later after getting most of my money. We visit every Halloween to "decorate" his driveway in various manners. Gotta laugh.

mudhen

I was given an address from the company i was subbing from,went to the house taped it,had all the bead on,that evening my employer phoned and asked why i didnt start the house, as it turned out,i did a house for a seperate contractor.i had the wrong house!

Whitey97

those are some good stories. I loved the taping with popcorn tex. Keep em' coming. I wish I had stories! I never come across things that are funny though. My guys just piss me off

Darren@Partners

Okay I'll tell this one on myself... Way back when I first started out was hanging apartment stairway to down (shoulda stacked it) I set up a bench with short legs in one end and longs in the other to cover about four steps. I climbed up on this non-OSHA rig and had two guys holding the 14' 5/8 sheet from above. I got one nail on the upper left(the short leg side) and then reach waaayy over to my right to get another(the long leg side) and just as I was about to send that nail home....The long leg end folded up! What happened next was something out of a cartoon. I felt my bench going out from under me so i ran up the bench to flee but before I reached solid ground the bench up-ended and began surfing the upside-down bench down a very long run of stairs. I briefly maintained my balance and tried to hop off only to fall onto the upside down bench and its folding legs now attaining full speed. I looked up to see my helpers beginning to grin but am still headed down the stairs. I was so entangled in bench legs I had no choice but to ride it to the bottom and came to rest in a pile on the landing. With a few scrapes and bruises and my pride the only major injury, I look up again and to their credit my helpers are still holding the sheet but now are busting up. No choice now but climb back up the stairs and tack the BOTTOM of the sheet so they could let go.
Have used benches in that manner ever since in stairways but always keep my fat a$$ on the uphill side and never lean over the tall end. It'd been funnier if it'd been somebody else but if you can't laugh at yourself......

muddymen

A friend called me to come look at a patch job someone else had done(guess he thought I was too busy to help him out). So this guy that came in to fix it just put one of those big "band aids"(think 3x5 note card size) on the wall and then painted over it, he didn't even try and hide it with mud!!!
These are the people taking our work from us.

butcherman

If you ever worked on high rises without a Porta John you know not to get empty buckets from the dumpster. That's for the new guy to do.

butcherman

Have you ever taken a paslode and nailed the feet of stilts to a floor? Or taken a tool box and taped the handle into the lid? Or loaded a tool box with tools with durabond? These are just a few of the things I would have to deal with. Spackle fights are for wimps.

Darren@Partners

Or filled the rookies nail pouch with adhesive?

rckslash2010

We used to screw around a lot, when I was working for the guy that trained me in. It doesn't seem like you can do that anymore, we have to be professional now. We used to rub insulation in the arms of one guy's jacket, funny watching him itching all night sitting at the bar. We would laugh our asses off watching him, and to this day I still don't think he has a clue. We used to mess with that guy a lot. Tie his sleeves up so he can't get his arms in, hide his tools, and put mud in his tool pouch's. One thing that I still do now and agian is, put my cigarette in the screw pouch of my helper. He'll reach his hand in there, and ouch... I just laugh at him. Or if anyone is around I say " look, he's moving so fast that he's smokin."

evolve991

On a commercial project there was a running feud between an electrician and a finisher who filled ALL the outlets completely with mud ( i dunno....) and refused to clean them out. On the last day before a long holiday weekend,after everyone had left,sparky lifted the lid on a mud bucket and placed a quarter stick inside,put the lid back on and walked calmly out the door.3 days later I never saw the mess but we heard the screaming from the other wing of the job.

During one of my 'vacations' from self employment ( I went to work on a paving crew for a season) my brother and his friend continued doing work for the contractor who had made me finally say 'F' drywall. We had invented a game that involved throwing our Estwings and sticking them in studs...and other things...well they were doing this on a job one afternoon on a high end job and paying no attention at all to the industrial size foam insulation tank in the hallway. My brother says he heaved the hammer down the hall and it bounced off a stud and took the valve off the tank!!! This was a 7 foot tall,5 foot wide angled archway. He and his buddy packed tools at record speed and rolled out. The next morning they found the contractor and the project super cursing and trying to tear foam off the walls and ceiling. They turned to my brother,who stood there with a dumb look on his face, and said GD KIDS!!!! I laughed myself sick when he told me all this. He said the super started a losing battle with some baffled local teenagers after that.

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Rockin' the suburbs since 9.9.1991 Shue Drywall .....Marylands Modern Rock Alternative....

Whitey97

Those are funny stories, however I may be dumb, but what's a 1/4 stick? I'm assuming the bucket was blown up. I just want to make sure I'm right. Thank you

brdn_drywall

i'm sure he's refering to mr.hankey(i thought i'd throw that in because i know you know him in reference to your north of the border jokes)

Whitey97

OH! LOL! That makes sense! I was picturing the mud blown up and all over the place, stealth like, 007 bondish. But a big ol' poo. That's better yet!

rckslash2010

We had a taper who got pissed at the sparky's one time so he filled all there boxs with durabond, and sanded smooth so you couldn't even see where they were. I'm sure at first we got blamed for covering them, but they soon found out the real culprit.

Finewalls

The spark deserves all he gets. how many times have you caught your taping gear on cables sticking out or hanging down. They also think nothing of cutting a hole in the wrong place and then writing/ ordering " FILL " above it. Not even a please!!! or you go into a finished room only to find the spark has chased cables in cut holes and taken the ' infill ' bits with him. if they pi55 me off i'll cut the end of his cable off ( the bit with his numbers or codes on ). or pull his wire out, cut it, push it back in fully and then push the cut-off end back in the hole.

evolve991

LOL not to mention wires running ACROSS studs,boxes set 2 inches low or leaving all thier shavings for the hangers to clean up. A quarter stick= 1/4 stick of dynamite and yes there was mud everywhere. I stayed out of that particular feud. I know some hangerswho will pull sconce wires thru on the other side in the other room, pull island wires from the kitchen floor into the basement ceiling or unhook a few recessed lights before hanging the lids.

__________________
Rockin' the suburbs since 9.9.1991 Shue Drywall .....Marylands Modern Rock Alternative....

rckslash2010

One time we nailed a light box over a fire place that got durarock on it. It was about the 13th unit and you would think that the tile guy's would realize that theres something different, but they cut right around this empty box. I can imagine what the electrian was thinking, standing there staring at a box with no wires in it, wondering what it was for.