We all enjoy bloopers (other people’s, that is). Here are some that originally ran in Rural Builder in 1988.

“When I was a crew foreman, I built a building on the wrong piece of land. It was right next door to where it should have been built.
“The owner of the wrong property sat on his porch and watched us build. After we were done, we learned it was on the wrong site. He got a building and he never paid us for the structure.
“When I asked hi why he didn’t tell us we were building on his property by mistake, he replied, ‘It looked like you knew what you were doing.’”
“We had a 40-by-60 ft. building with 12 ft. sidewalls that was 8 ft. on centers with 6-by-6 in. posts. We had the framing all done and were ready to put steel on the roof and sidewalls.
“My brother had laid out the building to run parallel with the structure next to it. But come to find out, we had made it 3 feet out of square with the other building.
“While the owner said it was fine, we decided, even though our agreement was only verbal, to tear it all down and start over from scratch.”
 “I had a wealthy customer call me out to build him a horse arena. The mistake I made was letting him dictate where he wanted to put the building.
“He owned 165 acres and a 12,000-sq.foot house and he had this site all picked out to build the arena. I was really stupid, because I let him talk me into building there.
“We built the 60-by-180-foot arena with a second floor for hay storage right where he wanted it. Unfortunately, all it did was sink. There was 50 feet of muck under that site. I didn’t do any soil borings, or I’d have known this.
“We had to go back and put pilings under every post. Fortunately, I had it in my contract that I am not responsible for unusual soil conditions and the customer honored that.
“It was about $40,000 going back in and fixing this. The customer ate $30,000 and we ate the other $10,000.
“If there are questions about soil, get an engineer out there and make some borings. All you need to do is have one building sink for a cantankerous customer and you are done.” Have your own blooper to share? E-mail the editor at  renee.russell@fwmedia.com.