Often, my job can be as engaging as a four-star movie. I get the official sneak previews of the newest tools in the market. Sometimes, I even get a demo and use them around the house.
Turn to the help wanted ads in almost any newspaper and you'll see listing after listing asking for "three years experience ... minimum five years experience ... experienced person wanted."
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I have another one: Doing cheap work and cutting corners and then being shocked when the homeowner is unhappy.
Katrina really gave the Gulf Coast a shellacking. It was easy for me to sit back and take it all in on the TV, only to realize that I now live on the Florida coast and am not immune: There's another hurricane working its way up the coast as I write this.
Here are some fun awards to boost employee morale: "Pearls" and "Swine"-for persons with the neatest and messiest work station. Federal Express inscribes the names of employees' children on each
Every once in a while, I like to take a look back over the projects I've done over the past year. Usually, one or two of them stand out as noteworthy, and this month's column is a review of one that I think you can profit from.
In part two, we reviewed the new products offered via the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design green building rating/certification program. In part one, we saw how a statement made by USGBC President/CEO Rick Fredrizzi ("If it's not LEED, it's not green") at the November 2004 Greenbuild Conference held in Portland, Ore., caused quite a lot of controversy. Also, we saw how two reports and a user survey gave the LEED program its first "report card" after five years of implementation. This time, we'll conclude our review with a look at the international scene for LEED and a recent USGBC decision that will affect the walls and ceilings industry directly.
How do you view the world? How do you view the people you work with each day? Do you believe people are in control of their own destinies? Are people good or bad? Can you trust your customers and employees? People are in my opinion the biggest variable we deal with each day. For some of us, it's impossible to trust because of our worldview.
Gypsum board is now such a commonly used building material that it's difficult to imagine a construction project that doesn't use it somewhere. Most residential interior walls and ceilings are composed of framing and gypsum board; a very large portion of commercial interior walls use gypsum board; gypsum sheathing is frequently used in exterior construction; and area separation walls in townhouses and shafts for elevators and stairwells frequently are built using gypsum shaft liner board.
I recently visited the Carolinas' Lathing and Plastering Contractors Association show where members met and focused on their goals of providing reliability, accountability and credibility. Despite several years of testing,
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