It's really not safe.
Don and his dad employed this extremely dubious ladder-balancing tactic to put up a header for the middle wall yesterday afternoon (I know, working on a weekday! Crazy!). It's not much of a header -- just a large piece of lumber nailed securely to a couple of uprights that aren't going anywhere -- but they assure me that because it's not holding up much of anything other than the joists above it (as opposed to, say, an air conditioning unit, a person, or several adventurous and fat cats) it will be fine. I've given up worrying about things like this; my attitude is "well, if it falls down it probably won't hurt anybody since we don't go over there, and if the house is ruined we can collect our insurance and move somewhere finished." Works for me.
They'll be cutting out the studs of that wall this weekend, I assume, and I just got a call confirming that a vast amount of lumber is going to be delivered here tomorrow. Very exciting.
6 comments:
Wouldn't it almost have been easier (and safer) to just lay down a piece of plywood over the joists while working on it? :)
You would think! But the only plywood big enough to go under the ladder (they're using scraps for a little pathway across the floor, but they're all small) is leaning up against the living room wall, protecting a very big, very expensive window from being broken by falling debris from upstairs. And heaven forbid they go buy some more, just for a five minute header project! ;) Fortunately, the huge delivery tomorrow includes lots of plywood, so that won't be an excuse anymore.
Oh my. You should have gotten a video camera out, and threatened to post their demise on YouTube when the ladder broke :-)
Well, I did say I would be posting this picture on the Internet specifically so his mother could yell at him. That's gotta count for something. ;)
Looks like fun. If he was a true daredevil he'd do electrical work like that too. While the lines are live. :-)
Don't encourage him! :P
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