Plaster Man<br>Picking Up the Pieces From Those We Follow

Robin discusses ways to make money through other workers' mistakes.

First off I wanted to thank you for your e-mails and letters. It is very good to hear from you and I encourage you to continue writing. To get started this month, let's look at a few pictures, which should set the mood nicely.

Photo #1 shows the project in a nutshell. I was called in to plaster four skylights and blend them into the existing ceiling. This was a day's work and from this first glance it looks like everything is fine. However, notice photo #2. Here's a view up inside one of the skylights. Do you notice anything unusual? I can count on one hand the amount of screws used to hold this board in place. I searched for one screw in the field but came up empty handed. As I surveyed this situation and scoped the job out, the board hangers who did this work were getting ready to leave the job site. I asked them about the lack of fasteners. "Oh, there wasn't much to screw to," they replied. "Besides, we wanted to make your life easier. You won't have as many screw heads to cover." As hard as it is on me to do this, let's leave this story right here for a minute. We'll come back to it after we finish looking at the pictures.