I am Andrew. I worked the sheet metal trade for about four years and I have not taken a side job in fifteen.
These days I manage projects for a general contractor in Salt Lake City. So I still watch duct go in most weeks — from the other side of the table now, reading drawings and signing change orders instead of carrying snips.
Before the sheet metal I framed for a year, and worked a summer for my uncle in high school. Through college I did finish millwork, concrete, framing, gyp board install and building cleaning (yes, that is a trade). Twenty-two years in construction all told — four of them in tin.
That matters more than it sounds like it should. When a duct run has to dodge somebody else’s work, I know the impact to other trades because I have been the other trade.
What this site is
Everything here comes from doing the work or from watching it get done. Tools I carried. Numbers I see on real bids. Mistakes I made, including the ones that cost me a day.
There is no team and no content mill behind it. And when a post says I have never done something, that is true as well — I would rather tell you where my experience runs out than pretend it does not.
Why I built it
Most of what gets written about this trade is written by people selling something to it. Supply houses, software companies, marketing departments at contractor shops. Very little of it comes from somebody who has actually stood on the ladder.
That gap is the whole reason this site exists.
If something here is wrong
Tell me. I would rather it be right than be mine. Every technical claim on this site gets checked before it goes up, and the ones that turned out wrong got fixed.