A job in Denver last fall showed me why I'll never trust a client's floor plan again

We were framing a sunroom addition, and the homeowner gave us a set of plans they drew themselves. The measurements for the ledger board on the house were off by a full inch and a half. I didn't catch it until we had the first header up and nothing lined up. Had to pull it all down, re-measure everything from the foundation, and start over. Lost almost a full day of work. Now I measure every single critical point myself, no matter what the plans say. Has anyone else had a plan from a client or even an architect that was just plain wrong?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam67523d ago

Trust nothing on paper until you verify it in the real world. I learned that the hard way with an architect's plan that had the window openings a foot off from the structural supports. It was a fancy custom home and the drawings looked perfect, but they were just wrong. Now my first day on any site is just for checking all the key measurements myself. It feels like wasted time until it saves you from tearing out a whole wall. That extra step is the only thing that keeps the job moving right.

victor_carr2523d ago

Guess the architect was too busy picking out fancy fonts to measure twice.

hugo_jones4d ago

Hang on, let's play this out the other way. If the architect measured everything perfect on the site, you'd be out of a job checking it again. @adam675 said it feels like wasted time, but honestly that's the whole point of being on site - you're supposed to be the one catching those errors. Why would you want drawings that leave you with nothing to do? That's like complaining your tools are too sharp. If every plan came out flawless, you'd just be swinging a hammer all day with no problem solving. I'd rather have a few wrong measurements and look like a hero fixing them than get handed a perfect set of blueprints and feel useless.