8
This homeowner in Bellingham watched me frame a wall for an hour, then asked if I could just 'glue it'
I was putting up a load-bearing partition in his basement remodel, had the plates marked and the studs cut. He stood there the whole time, sipping coffee. When I started to grab the nail gun, he pointed at a tube of construction adhesive on my cart and said, 'Wouldn't that stuff be faster and quieter?' I had to explain why 16d nails in a specific pattern were kind of important for holding his house up. Ever have a client question the most basic part of the job while you're doing it?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
nathan1932mo ago
Honestly though, is a basement wall really that critical? It's not like it's holding up the roof. A good bead of adhesive and a few screws would probably do the same job without all the noise and mess.
2
dianagreen2mo ago
Oh man, I wish that were true. My basement wall disagreed last year and decided to bow in. Suddenly my floor wasn't level anymore, the door upstairs wouldn't shut, and I had a crack you could fit a pencil in. That adhesive idea sounds like the kind of shortcut I'd try, right before everything goes wrong. Trust me, a basement wall holds back a crazy amount of dirt and water pressure. When it fails, you notice.
-1
Read an article last year where some guy tried repairing a foundation crack with just caulk and ended up with water in his basement the next spring. Pretty sure the engineers who figured out how to hold houses together knew what they were doing with the nail patterns.
1