Overheard a homeowner tell his buddy he could do my job with a butter knife

I was mudding a basement in a new build out in Maplewood last Tuesday and this guy walks through with his friend, points at my drywall and goes 'looks easy enough, I could do that with a butter knife and a bucket of spackle.' I just kept working and pretended I didn't hear him, but inside I was laughing. Dude had zero clue about the prep work, the tapered edges, the tape, the three coats of mud, the sanding, the dust everywhere. I wanted to hand him my trowel and say go for it but I know better. Honestly it made me think about how much we take for granted as installers. Has anyone else had a homeowner or customer say something so clueless you just had to bite your tongue?

2 comments

2 Comments

morgan_jenkins901d ago

That comment about tiling a bathroom in an afternoon got me too. I used to be that guy honestly, I remember watching a tile guy at a friend's house and thinking "how hard can cutting a few squares really be?" Then I actually tried laying tile in my own laundry room and spent a whole weekend just trying to get the first row straight without it looking like a broken Etch A Sketch drawing. So yeah, I've been humbled by reality real quick. People see the finished product and skip right over the hours of measuring, leveling, and fixing mistakes in their head.

logan_schmidt1d ago

Read a post last week where a guy said he could tile his whole bathroom in an afternoon.