Have you ever built something? House, model, clubhouse, hunting lodge, restore an old car, re-model existing house, or any other type of building or such that might need work: anything could count as building.
You probably have gotten involved with some type of building project in one form or another. You wouldn’t necessarily have to be involved with picking up a hammer or hauling lumber. You could be on a planning committee or a finance committee. You could arrange for getting plans or ordering materials. There are lots of different things you could be involved in. You might be a designated worrier or complainer. You might just not do anything except tell people doing the work that they are doing it incorrectly. All those things are happening in any building project.
A building project has a plethora of jobs and they all seem to be needed for a building. Let’s get with the first one. Someone has to do something that involves action. A bricklayer told me that the hardest part of his job was starting. He always said that if he could get some mortar mixed and put one brick in place the rest was easy. He did big jobs and usually put bricks on the exteriors of building. He told me about driving up to a church and his job was to put up the exterior walls. He and his son showed up at the job site. There were stacks of bricks and pallet loads of mortar and piles of sand all around the yard. His son looked at the tall walls and asked his dad how were they going to finish the job. The dad replied that they wouldn’t be able to finish it unless they got started. “Let’s get out of the truck and go to work.” They finished the job right on time once they got started.
Action saved the day on that one. Actually, planning is the first and hardest part of any building job. What is it that you want to build? You’ve got to know what it is you want, what materials will be needed, and who can do this kind of work? This is before anything is done. Planning can keep a building project simple or complex. The planning can also lead to maybe the hardest part of the building project: finance. How much will this thing cost? Who is going to pay for it? Have we lost our minds?
I was looking at a picture of a church the other day. The church bulletin had a picture of several church buildings. One building was built in the 1890’s and another picture was of the present church built in the 1960’s. One wizened old woman that was the oldest member in the church told me about the near riot at the finance committee meeting about building the church. Half the church was praying for a new building and the other half was praying to keep the old building. Cost was the biggest complainant about the new church. The old member remembered that the church was so expensive that it would never be paid for. The end of time would come before this giant building could be paid for. She claimed that they just didn’t have any faith and when this too expensive church was completed and the members were through cussing each other out, they paid for it in five years. Several years later, everyone agreed that they should have built the church twice the size.
The cost of things does have a way of getting in the way of a big building project. One guy was building his house and the project was getting more expensive than what he wanted. He was trying to think of ways to cut costs. His contractor told him that he was starting to put in the chimney. There was an ash dump that was supposed to be put in the chimney. They could leave out the ash dump and that would save $20. He thought he could carry out ashes and save that twenty dollars. What a good idea. He said that he has been carrying ashes out of the fireplace and making a mess for the last fifty years. He did save that $20 way back then.
Any building project can cause all sorts of friction and turmoil for all sorts of reasons. It can cause businesses to fail, churches to spilt and even lead to divorces over trying to complete a building project.
We know that disagreements can be pretty bad. Seemingly small differences can cause big fights. Luckily building projects don’t lead to fist fights but they could. People will fight over small things. Just the other day they had a big fight at the nail salon. Seems a person from the dentist’s office came in and got into a fight. They had to call the SWAT team. Police reported that they were fighting tooth and nail.
