Before I go to bed, a short story and some short videos.

[LuckyCharms]

Back in a previous life, in the early 90s, I was close friends with this guy that I worked with. He lived in a small apartment with his wife and child.

He came up to me one day at work and said: I'm taking out a construction loan.

For what? I said.

I'm going to build a house. Will you help me?

I said...yeah! Ok!

I didn't think he was serious, but he was. We were not builders. I had completed trade school many years prior, and he was smart and very handy, but this was a big house with cathedral ceilings and complicated staircases. And I'm terrified of heights.

We both bought the book "Housebuilding Illustrated" by RJ De Cristoforo. We referred to it often.

And we built his house. It was just the two of us about 50% of the time, but sometimes, there would be 5 or 6 other people helping.

No roof trusses...we set a ridge beam and hand cut each rafter individually. No nail guns...everything was hammer and nail. We subbed out the electrical, plumbing, and sheetrock mudding, but we did everything else ourselves.

The result was truly beautiful. Especially for a couple of schmucks.

So, to relive those days, I've been watching these crazy short videos from a few guys calling themselves NB Construction. They are young guys, and they are fucking nuts. I thought they were some kind of joke at first, but it turns out that they are excellent builders. I'll post some links to some YouTube shorts below, but if you watch some of their longer videos, you can get an idea of what good builders they are.

Some notable things about these guys:

At first, it almost sounded to me like they have an Acadian accent, but as I found out, it is a southern accent. They are out of Mississippi.

My wife yells at me whenever I play these videos. She has to leave the room because they sometimes work either barefooted or with flip flops on their feet.

They are always falling off roofs.

They occasionally shoot a nail from their nail guns into their hands.

Two of the guys seem to have some kind of condition. Their hands sometimes shake uncontrollably.

They beat the living shit out of their $450 nail guns (use them as hammers, etc).

Here's some "shorts" videos:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BrC4UYs2uck?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PHCgij01W1w?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aU95xhsQTTY?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UuBES6qX3R8?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZuDQoDgQi3w?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bu_2v6Q5d1U?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wAzDODcQE2I?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TsgNZlaPTyk?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7m9TJO-VQPM?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3x9iQNzAB3I?feature=share

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Built my log home 27 years ago.

My BIL, and brother and friends that helped. Best time of my life.