The Contractor Journal

PRESENTED BY MASTER BUILDER CONSTRUCTION TX THE CONTRACTOR JOURNAL REAL JOBS • REAL PROBLEMS • REAL CONSTRUCTION THE BUSINESS OF BUILDING / CONTRACTOR LESSONS The Contracting Lie: Everything Is Going to Be Okay. What losing control of a growing construction company taught me about cash flow, systems, responsibility—and telling people the truth before the truth tells itself. FROM THE FIELD  •  RESTORATION  •  CONSTRUCTION  •  LESSONS LEARNED There was a point in my life when I had more construction work than I knew what the fuck to do with. And if you'd looked at the company from the outside, you probably would have thought I had made it. I had trained some sales guys about a week before a tornado came through. Then they went out and sold their asses off. In what felt like no time, I had around a million dollars in work sold....

PRESENTED BY MASTER BUILDER CONSTRUCTION TX THE CONTRACTOR JOURNAL REAL JOBS • REAL PROBLEMS • REAL CONSTRUCTION BEHIND THE FINISH / FLOORING The Finished Floor Starts Before the First Board Goes Down. The finished flooring gets all the attention. But demolition, substrate condition, preparation and layout can determine the quality of the installation long before the room looks finished. REAL PROJECT  •  FLOORING  •  DEMOLITION  •  PREPARATION  •  INSTALLATION Everybody sees the finished floor. That's the part people photograph. That's the part the homeowner walks on. And that's usually the part people use to decide whether a flooring job looks good. But by the time the finished floor is installed, a lot of the decisions that affect the job have already been made. The old flooring has been removed. ...

PRESENTED BY MASTER BUILDER CONSTRUCTION TX THE CONTRACTOR JOURNAL REAL JOBS  •  REAL PROBLEMS  •  REAL CONSTRUCTION FROM THE FIELD / ROOFING / WATER INTRUSION The Roof Leak Wasn't Where They Thought It Was. What looks like a simple ceiling leak can tell a much bigger story once you get behind the finished surfaces. REAL PROJECT  •  ROOF LEAK  •  WATER INTRUSION  •  FIELD INVESTIGATION This is the kind of thing homeowners usually never see. You see a stain on the ceiling. Maybe the drywall feels damp. Maybe water only shows up during a hard storm. Maybe you notice a drip and immediately look straight up. That's the natural reaction. ...

PRESENTED BY MASTER BUILDER CONSTRUCTION TX THE CONTRACTOR JOURNAL REAL JOBS • REAL PROBLEMS • REAL CONSTRUCTION WELCOME / THE CONTRACTOR JOURNAL Construction looks different when you know what you're looking at. Welcome to The Contractor Journal — real projects, real problems, finished work, and the construction that happens before everything gets covered up. HERE'S THE IDEA Everybody wants to show you the finished project. We want to show you what happened before it looked finished. Because that's usually where the interesting part is. Construction companies love finished photographs. And there's nothing wrong with that. We do too. A finished kitchen, new roof, custom cabinet installation, restored floor or completed outdoor space is what the homeowner ultimately hired somebody to build. But a finished photograph leaves out mo...