Measure twice cut once
Muse #291 - rooted in the basics
Recently we had some leaks in our second-floor bathroom shower stall. And this required reworking the tiles under the shower to fix this leak. We had a reasonably experienced team of handyman work on it.
I say reasonably experienced as I classify handymen into two categories - the ones who are fully not there yet and therefore they are handyman journeymen. The second type is the really all-rounded experienced handymen, who have been doing this all their lives and come back to do this because they just cannot retire from their enjoyment of their work. I like the second type, but unfortunately, they are hard to find.
In order to access the tiles for replacement, the team removed the glass door and two supporting glass walls. Once the retiling was done, off went the glass walls back again. The glass door could not be installed until the glue to hold these glass walls down had dried first.
But when they came back the next day, they found that the door wouldn’t fit because of a 4mm gap deficit. The left side glass was not accurately aligned in position. This had to be removed again. And another night for the fresh glue to dry.
The handymen came back the next day. And this time while fitting the door, they were still short by 2mm of space, now on the right side. The right side panel had also been installed inaccurately. Time to fix it again. Knife down the glue and reglue it. And then it had to dry again overnight.
And finally, the third time was a charm. But, the project had taken ten days to complete, something which could have been done in half the time, if everything fell into place. But yet, nothing did. Because one was not trying to deliberately make things fall into place.
A little bit of planning like marking the spot before the old glass walls were removed would have meant that the glass walls could have been assembled back correctly on the first try. But, yet, it was easy to see their work was using a seat of the pants approach. Approximations in alignment when accuracy was required. Failing to measure twice and cut once. And that is the difference between true craftsmen and also rans.