drawn vs. built
This happens Frequently
And a lot more than it should in my opinion! This is a photo from the site crew for the Island Outpost project showing progress on the sliding barn door at the workshop (yes, it’s still under construction). On the right is a portion of the exterior elevation drawing from the construction documents.
The total drawing set for the project is a little more than 50 pages which is pretty typical for a project this size. I've drawn and called out everything: details, alignments, and board spacings. I've scheduled all the doors and windows and hardware. I don’t leave things to chance because: 1) I’m a control freak and 2) I hate surprises.
In spite of my best efforts, I was pretty surprised by the photo.
Can you spot all the differences between what I drew and what was built?
Scroll down for the answer key.
When you draw things clearly it doesn't always mean your contractor will look at the drawing, but it does mean when you run into a situation like this, you can point to your drawing and show them what they *agreed* to build and ask them to remedy it.
It's pretty clear, right?
Unfortunately, many drawing sets lack this kind of clarity.
They’re flat and difficult to read which makes them easy to ignore by the people who rely on them most: your clients, your contractors, and your consultants.
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Here are the discrepancies:
Siding boards are smaller than specified. This is no fault of the GC as the siding mill had a fire and lost the building that stored our custom milled board stock. They had to re-mill using smaller boards. This causes a few ripple effects like centering brackets, the light, and the two boards at the corner instead of the single larger one called for and #2...
Barn door is wider than 12 full boards. They added small strips at the end to account for the smaller board width due to #1. Had we discussed this before the door was built we could’ve made an adjustment by adding another full board to the overall width rather than two slivers of unequal size.
Sliding door track isn’t long enough. Should extend beyond door end when open by 1 board and to the building corner to the east.
Track hangers: too few and not equally spaced.
Gutter lacks the extension. The deck to the right was added after the drawings were complete and the original design would’ve directed water onto it, so the photo shows the process of it being modified.
No bar pull on the door.
No lower door guides.
No stone step. The rough grade was set a little too high to accomplish the step as drawn.