Work History:

• July 1990 - March 2004: Residential Construction.

Reference websites:

• Town of Oak Island, N.C.

• WikiPedia: Oak Island, N.C.

• Island Online, Inc.

The only photo I have of 14+ years of construction work at Oak Island, N.C. In the photo, I am replacing the last of four 10x10x12' pressure-treated pilings beneath beach-front house "Swannie Gee". This was one of my "solo" work projects. A lot of heavy lifting, sweat, ingenuity, and luck! The photo was taken prior to pouring a "concrete boot" around the pilings' butt-end joint.

Background:

During my teenage years, I often had opportunities to use a few basic non-electric carpentry hand tools - cut-off saw, claw hammer, hand drill, miter saw/box, etc. My father chose not to own a lot of tools, and I could not afford to buy tools. While a teen, I learned to drive a Farmall tractor and to use its PTO mower attachment. I learned to cut and split firewood with axe and mall, to cut down small trees with a 16-inch-bar chain saw, and to build post-and-rail and chain-link fences. During my twenties, I bought and learned to use a few power tools while doing projects around and in the home my first wife and I owned in Burlington, N.C.

One of the houses my second wife and I owned in Roswell Georgia provided opportunities to remodel the rearmost ten-feet section of the two-car garage into a laundry room and a photography darkroom, to add a storage loft above the garage floor, and to partition half of the garage into two areas: a food pantry and kitchen storage area, and a handyman work area. I added a raised-deck-and-railed porch to the six-foot by twenty-foot extended overhang area leading to the front door. I built landscape - timber - enclosed garden/decorative-plant areas on three sides of the house. I tried my hand at building furniture, which taught me some of my weaknesses/deficiencies in this type of carpentry project.

Prior to moving to Oak Island, I became a proficient and capable house painter, interior and exterior ...and a "passable" hanger of wallpaper. I also learned about and did basic plumbing, electrical, roof, and window/door repairs. Instead of replacing non-functioning small electrical appliances, I learned how to repair them if cost effective.

In June 1990, I moved to Oak Island and into a 950-square-foot "Jim Walter shell" home that my parents completed, circa 1957-1959. During my first two years as a "beachcomber", (as the sole worker) I completely re-plumbed the hot and cold water lines, installed ceiling fan/lights in five rooms, upgraded the doors for three bedrooms and the bathroom to pre-hung raised-panel doors. I also painted the exterior and the interior walls/ceilings. I paid for installation of a propane-gas wall-mounted heater, wall-to-wall carpeting, and R-30 blown-in attic insulation. I installed new vinyl floor covering in the bathroom and kitchen. I paid for a new 100-foot drain field for the septic tank, a coqina-base driveway and rear turnaround/parking area, and removal of several pine trees whose roots had clogged the previous drain field. This was bartered work in lieu of rent the first two years, which helped to save money and to increase my carpentry and home-repair knowledge/skills. A few years later, I inherited this property and continued to add improvements, as time and money allowed.

I was fortunate to have a friend/relative who was (at the time) a building inspector and planner for a city in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. Through that friendship, I was given the opportunity to develop the first two versions of the website for The North Carolina Building Inspectors' Association, which in turn provided me access to all N.C. Building Code Manuals, and to consulting architects and engineers at the Engineering and Codes Division within the 'Office of State Fire Marshall' at the N.C. Department of Insurance. I extensively used N.C. Building Code Volumes relevant to Residential Construction, and to construction in high-wind zones and coastal areas. To assist me with planning both real and "wish list" projects at the beach cottage, I brushed up on drafting techniques learned (in part) a few years ago (circa 1975) during a brief stint at Southern Polytechnic State University - and, I purchased pc-based home construction design software and residential construction reference manuals.

Near the end of my second year at the beach (Oak Island), I introduced myself to several of the real estate management companies in the area, and solicited their residential maintenance and repair work. Of the four or five real estate companies I worked for (eg: 1099-basis), Scruggs & Morrison Realty, Inc. provided me with constant work for approximately ten years, including years following the sale of that business to Walter Hill & Associates, Inc.

For a few years, I worked a crew of from two to eight carpenters, and did residential remodeling and construction. Most of this work consisted of building elevated "on pilings" decks and stairs, remodeling interior rooms and living areas, exterior/interior painting, tear-off/re-roof, and pre-hurricane home protection and post-hurricane home repairs. All work projects with a projected cost in excess of $250.00 was designed by me and approved by the Development Services Department, Town of Oak Island.

During my last year or two of work in residential construction on Oak Island, I worked solo; preferring to accept small, one-man projects, to minimize financial and supervisory overhead.

With the exception of small-scale projects, I found it difficult to accurately estimate the total cost of many residential construction projects - mostly because of my on-the-job learning and because the real estate management companies refused to recognize and accept project estimates based upon area-adjusted estimates derived from industry-standard estimating software.

If I am ever again asked to lead a commercial/residential for-profit construction project, I would only agree if the work contract was on a time-and-cost basis.