"SCREW" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

when you try to order your wood.

You: Hi. I'd like two eight-foot two-by-fours, please.

LuMBERMAN: What are they for?

You: What?

LuMBERMAN: Are they for joists? Headers? Beams? Rafters? Footers?
Sills? Framing? Tenons? Partitions? Templates? Easements? Debentures?
Just what is it you want, mister?

You: Uh, well, ah, maybe I better go home and recheck my measurements.

The home center: an alternative to the lumberyard? NO.

Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with it, let's build a
home center. And before long home centers were springing up, like herpes, all
over the United States.

Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay
higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware,
and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for," as opposed to
"obtain." This is the major drawback of home centers: They are always out of
everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have
no time to reorder merchandise, because they are too busy applying little
price stickers to every object--every board, washer, nail, and screw--in the
entire store. Once they've applied a round of stickers, they immediately set
out to apply a new set, with slightly higher prices, to the same merchandise.
This leaves them no time to learn about the products they sell, so it is
utterly futile to ask them for help.

Let's say a piece of your toilet breaks, so you remove the broken part,
take it to the home center, and ask an employee if they carry replacements.
The employee, who has never in his life even seen the inside of a toilet, will
peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive
Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, then say, "We're
expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week."

So the bottom line is that home centers are even worse than lumberyards
as a source for lumber. The only really good place to buy lumber is at a
store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form
of furniture, finished, and put into boxes.


Chapter 3
Electricity
You can safely do your own wiring, most likely