Just an update... The show with the railings in it?... Yea... The posts are just about done being veneered off site... Then they come back to me to install just shy of 1000 feet of oak moulding on them... After that, they all get a hand done stain treatment as unfortunately the stain in question isn't working out nicely out of a sprayer... (we billed for a hand done job, so I'm not too upset, but it would have been nice to make even more money on these things...) Oh, and the client is now thinking that they want the post to overhang the deck by 2 inches so the sound cable can run in to the bottom of the post... That of course means we will have to build a bunch of small post extensions to continue the look of the post down to the floor... That means yet another couple hundred feet of moulding... Yet more time hand staining these things... Yet more money... Had they decided this a couple weeks ago, it all would have been priced together, and wouldn't have cost anything more... Now its a separate build, so its a separate line on the invoice...
As for the rest of the show, we finally managed to get a decision made on the height of the walls, so we started building them today... The coverings for the lighting truss were all built by Thursday night, and Friday morning the lighting department decided to get rid of an entire truss, so we have to modify what we already built... Not the best planning on their part, but not really a tough modification for us... Hopefully they aren't going to stick that truss back in at the last second, but we aren't going to throw out anything until the day after the semi's leave for the event...
We arranged for extra space to do all the staining off site, as well as a couple dock spaces to swing freight around between our truck and the semi's... We sign the lease paperwork on getting our very own truck tomorrow, so we will be done with depending on the rental company to have what we need when we need it, so trucking all this stuff between shops will not be an issue for once...
We are picking up some demo project management software tonight (its downloading at the shop currently) to help us maintain some kind of grasp on everything... I learned this software while I was in college, and it seemed like a great idea at the time... The problem was then I had no idea how long it took for stagehands to build certain items... After a number of years with any number of stagehands working for me, I think I can finally use this software the way it should be used... As a tool for me, it will be good, as a tool to keep my partner calm it will be better... At times he gets a little panicky if we don't have everything planned out to the last minute... Of course that never works, but he feels better if it is... So being able to keep a running time-line and schedule will save me countless hours re-doing the daily schedule... Massaging the variables when you have the right software becomes far easier...
That's it for the moment... For the moment, I can relax... By the end of the week, I'll start losing sleep over this show, but not quite yet...