Totally get that, I always grab a notebook when my CAD fights me too!

Haha, gotta disagree with you on this one @patricia547. I always figured Santa gets his hands dirty too, like how else does he know if the chimneys are clear? It makes him more real if he does the work himself. That kid was probably onto something seeing the soot as proof. The magic isn't just in the clean suit, it's in the grit.

Ever check your bolts with a torque wrench every few months? Found three that had worked loose on my old bridgeport and it was making this faint buzzing sound you could feel more than hear. My surface finishes went from looking like gravel roads back to glass once I cinched everything down. That slow creep into bad tolerances is sneaky.

Yeah that physical walkthrough saves so much trouble. I almost dropped a bookcase last month because I skipped it.

So was your bricklayer even WARMING the bricks first, or were they just dumping chemicals in the mix? That cold brick will suck the heat and life right out of your mortar no matter what you add, and then you get ZERO bond. It's a total waste of time and materials.