Scott Brown here 15 years ago I started my first day of carpentry and in today's
exciting episode we're gonna go to the first three jobs over work
taking photos videos video we pulled up puck there and I walked across into my very first
Construction Set play I was 1718 and there were people everywhere like a hundred people walking
in every direction I was so distracted by it that I walked in and a digger like a bucket
had swung over my head I don't even realize it until the next day when my old man said as soon
as I dropped you off me you walked in and a digger swung over your head watch out next
time so this is Sanford's fishing company and the building itself has been here for like 100
years but what we were doing was renovating all over this was just a timber frame when I
got here all the way up and I I didn't know what I was doing when I was here I was so
green hadn't really done any building and this is where I learnt the first year of building
and this here is the first kick i ever helped build first one
fifteen years ago like I said I really didn't know anything about building then I didn't know
anything and to be honest I didn't want to know I actually hated cops too when I first started I
kind of got pressured into it by my old man who's also a carpenter he was basically just worried
about me he wanted me to do something I wasn't doing anything with my life that dropped out of
school all that stuff and he's got me the job and said you better stick at it so for the first year
while I was at this job I just didn't enjoy it I mean I could hardly hold a skill saw straight I
couldn't fire a nail gun I couldn't swing a hammer properly I remember one day after I'd finished
sweeping everything up and the foreman literally had nothing else for me to do he gave me a nail
punch and a hammer and he told me to go around all the warframes and punch the nails and so the
plasterboard could go on so he literally just made a job up but I was very green to carpentry
the only thing that got me through that period was turning up every day when gradually you get better
our next job isn't too far from here at all it's kind of right behind right right behind this
general area here we're gonna have to go we're gonna have to go downtown a little bit see it
there it is there that big blue building right there
ah so this is the job where I got my first pay rise as a carpenter you know I could put a bit
of plasterboard on I could help people frame and the foreman I was working with sort of
rewarded me for that we arrived on the site when it was all like and it was up to this
level and it was just it was just concrete concrete slabs kind of like that commercial
bait tower downtown you know just concrete slabs and concrete pillars forming the basic
structure of the building and by the time we went into it we just did the internal parts
where the toilets are and it'd be a lot easier to show you in person in fact why don't we go
and try and go inside the building I hope my skateboard on the tree here if the next
shot is me inside the building then you know I succeeded should be right should be all right
this is completely different to how I remember it completely let's try another level this is how I
remember it so this is the call of the building and we spend a lot of time doing these walls
here this it looks like meadow on the outside but it's encased in like a powdery kind of concrete
and it's a sort of tongue and groove shape and it all locks together like this then you screw it to
a track at the bottom of the top and that's what makes this wall and then you've got plus the board
over the top of it we spent a lot of time doing this here this negative detail because originally
I think something like five floors were done incorrectly the negative detail was at the wrong
height me and one of the guys I was working with had to rip out all the negative details on every
floor and and do it again a lot of work went into that right there all right let's go back outside
success I didn't get in illegally that was a perfectly legal another job I did on this one was
the gutter on the very top of the building we had to form like a timber box gutter and then that got
waterproof but it was like right on the edge of this dirty story building all the way over there
let's go all right the next job the third job 2005 I think was Rialto cinemas is outside of the city
at senta's fishery is the first job I had no idea what I was doing it was difficult
because I was catching a train to work and carrying tools and 13 hour days you know
and in the second job I sort of got good at a couple of things a good relationship with
a person who was giving me the work so that sort of made things a bit more positive by
the time I did this third job that we're about to go to I got my driver's license
and if you live in Auckland you'll know that that is a pretty big deal you kind of can't
get around without a driver's license it's a hard work as a builder anyway I mean you could
catch the train if you work in an office but when you've got all these tools and so I got
my driver's license I had a couple of years of building and I was getting the hang of it
good job
I can't really film aside because it's a movie theater quite ironic that basically this is yeah
a movie theater so we completely stripped us out and in fact this balcony right here is where we
threw all the rubbish down onto the street down there and we had to do that like 5 in
the morning because it is a street where cars drive is some I can remember how many cinemas
there are but we rebuilt every single cinema and I think we added cinemas as well we did the whole
entryway and all the plasterboard it was like two layers of 16 mil on one side and then a wall and
then a gap in another wall and there more various soundproof so this is where I first did finishing
carpentry there was where I worked with another carpenter who taught me quite a lot he actually
taught me how to do finishing carpentry if you go to the top of the these stairs of the inside here
you'll see a long hallway I did the skirting all in that hallway and the hack trades and everything
because the hallway was so long we had to join the skirting the carpenter that I was working with it
kind of gave me a goal now the goal was Scott if you can join it so I can't see it you're doing
a good job that's your that's your goal so you know I did a few you know you can see the kind
of joint is a little bump there try to stand it didn't really work but then eventually I got one
that was meant and yet to walk up and down the hallway trying to find it joint and then he came
up to me and he was diff you can hear things so he came out to me he just said good job
sir I kind of got to hang a cop entry on this job this is where I started feeling like he'd
helped and done of course I wasn't a carpenter at all so anyway yeah 15 years of building