Estimating job completion - where I've been going wrong

[Ian Bond]

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/learning_material/exemplar/Pa_exemplar_3.pdf

Came across this guide from HM gov. How to paint 8 doors in a day.

That's where I've been going wrong with my house - it takes me more like 8 days to paint 1 door.




I particularly enjoyed the question:

"If everything goes to plan, by what time will 8 doors be finished?"

My best guess so far is 2010 (and I don't mean 10 past eight)

 

[biffvernon]

:lol:

He's not using linseed oil paint.

60 minutes = 1 hour I knew, but a working day = 8 hours. Hmmm...

 

[arl]

he hasnt allowed anything for rusted and theaded screws, door furniture that falls apart, paint spillages, weird stains that reappear. Never mind the required half a dozen tea breaks to sigh about how long it is taking to paint the darn thing and thats before he spends 2 hours trying to match 8 slightly differing door handles to 8 doors because he forgot to label them earlier. :roll:

 

[Ian Bond]

true arl, very true!

I thought you'd notice the paint Biff - I'm convinced and will definitey be going green with my paint in future. Plus I like the smell of linseed oil.

It takes me so long to do anyway, the drying time is not a factor.

 

[biffvernon]

I wonder if all training in the building industry is of this high standard. Could explain a lot.

 

[Sue Wilkinson]

Biff, I think you are right. I'm painting for a neighbour who had a large extension built last year by builders who claim to be conservation and restoration experts. The finish of the work is shoddy at best and criminal at worst. I would not have paid them, but most people these days seem to accept poor quality in everything without much question. New is everything, regardless, and these builders are always in demand round here.

I've just been moaning to my husband about the wood I'm painting. Its the cheapest fast grown pine cut with too powerful electric tools so that all the edges of saw cuts and drilled holes are ragged and frayed. No attempt has been made to fill the screw holes in the skirtings and door frames. If the skirting butts up at the corners you are lucky. The plasterer was told to do soft corners rather than beaded ones (gypsum naturally) and they are really rough, with drips and groves in them, and rather than natural soft round edges they are big corners spanning about 5", but he didn't check the depth of skirting first and just guessed where he might need to bring the exagerated soft corner back to a point for fixings, so the skirtings come to hard pointed corners and the wall disappears down the back of them leaving a triangular hole!

Oh, and they seem to have forgotten to put the sealant strips into quite a few of the new double glazed windows on the outside, so that the rain runs down the glass and straight inside the frame. This I discovered after I tried to hoover up dust from sanding the inside of the frames and found I was hoovering water up out of the window guts.

This firm's one nod at conservation techniques was to use a bit of hydrated lime in the cement mortar which they then buttered all over the stones, and despite huge concrete footings etc, the new walls have some quite impressive cracks in them on the outside. Before I got to know better I asked this firm for a quote for some repairs. They assured me they worked with lime! Thank goodness they were too expensive for me to use.

Quality training = quality workmanship, but I don't think we get either anymore unless we do it ourselves.

Sue

 

[Penners]

Of course you can paint 8 doors in a day. All you need is 8 hardboard-faced flush doors and 8 painters who don't care what kind of crap they put on the doors. No probs, mate!

But what a useful website. Full of handy hints, like "there are 60 minutes in an hour", and "it takes one hour to get from half-past the hour to the next half-past".

If I can remember that lot I reckon I could get an A+ in a GCSE.

 

[biffvernon]

so the skirtings come to hard pointed corners and the wall disappears down the back of them leaving a triangular hole!

That's the mouse friendly way of doing it.

Oh, and they seem to have forgotten to put the sealant strips into quite a few of the new double glazed windows on the outside, so that the rain runs down the glass and straight inside the frame. This I discovered after I tried to hoover up dust from sanding the inside of the frames and found I was hoovering water up out of the window guts.

That's not so clever. The units are more likely to mist up if the are sitting in a puddle

 

[Penners]

Its the cheapest fast grown pine cut with too powerful electric tools so that all the edges of saw cuts and drilled holes are ragged and frayed.

Actually Sue that's far more likely to be careless use of blunt blades than it is the fault of the wood or the power of the machine. If saw cuts and drilled holes are (a) made with sharp cutters, and (b) done against a scrap backing piece of wood, little or no breakout should occur.

Your neighbour's builders really knew their stuff, didn't they?