Good news, the opening has been plugged (yesterday’s post). After some manual coaxing and careful manipulation I managed to do it all by myself. At worst we’ll be 20mm too long and that’s better than 5mm too short.
Architects should be lined up and shot. It’s been done in the past you know. It’s tradition during revolutions, coups and juntas to round up the intellectuals like doctors, teachers, hard core librarians and architects. Not engineers mind you, you need them, but architects – soft handed megalomaniacs who need to put their fucking mark on everything. Everything has to curve, or use some exotic material…I once had an architect who wanted to flout the laws of physics and good sense by trying to push shit up-hill. The plan called for us to dig a trench from the building and hook into a main sewer line. Except the building was on the side of a hill and where we were supposed to join was 6 feet higher than where we were. We had to call the architect who was astounded because the plan on his desk had been flat, you see.
One fit-out I did back in Canada for a large restaurant required the Greeter’s little phone-desk-thingy (technical term) to be made from laminate which had to be ordered from across the country, took 6 weeks to come and cost $1500 per sheet. There are other similar laminates for about $150/sheet but the architect wanted this stuff with real copper in it (because he just did). On top of that the plan required one and one quarter sheets, so the clients were up for $3000 right there. We could have made the thing six inches shorter and saved them $1500, but no.
Rooms made 12’2” long when carpet comes in 12 foot rolls.
Entire kitchens built using stainless steel screws at 50 cents each.
Plans where stairways go UP in both directions.
I once worked on a house that had so many rooms nobody was sure what they were all for. Apparently the plans were revised at some point but earlier ones were also issued. There were bedrooms coming off each other, a second kitchen off the hallway with no windows, a huge 7 sided windowless room downstairs and another hallway that went nowhere and was 8 inches wider at one end than the other. I was doing carpet back then and we laid 3200 square feet of blood-red plush Berber. We used to work at night and it was spooky.
A waste of space and parasites on society. Like faith healers posing as doctors, some architects try to tread in the realm of engineering with no other qualification than a degree in design and, god help us, some fresh ideas. Sure you get your Frank Lloyd Wright’s and your Art Deco’s, but the average slogger out there designing the world’s post offices and strip malls should be rooted out with dogs or perhaps wild pigs and chased away.
