1. Billable Time using Trace Paper and Colored Pencils... Very few folks get to charge people for skills you mastered in Grade School
2. Totally cool Party/Bar intro. People love Architects. They just think we're awesome until they get to know us or until they ask us about Stainless Steel. (Then they get bored.)
3. Longstanding History of Superiority Complexes. Objectively, not a good thing, but if you're an Architect, its pretty fun to be Superior. Sure as hell beats the Inferiority Complexes that the rest of the world must have around us.
4. Gently used stuff that you get from a building site because your ridiculously wealthy clients want all new fixtures/appliances/fasteners/etc.
For this post, we'll mainly focus on Item #4. Although to be honest, most of my posts include a healthy dose of #3...
We had a bad kitchen sink faucet from day one in the new house. Some sort of gasket inside the thing had failed and the faucet only had two settings... OFF and STUN. Seriously, when we turned on the faucet, we usually ended up with about a quart of water on the wall behind the sink because the pressure was so high and there was no modulation.
Thankfully, we got a new "American Standard" faucet that perfectly fit the bill from a job site downtown where everything was being replaced. I almost got a new dishwasher out of the deal too but the lousy contractor pinched it before I could get my hands on it. Unethical Bastard.
So, I donned my headlamp and proceeded to remove the old faucet.
And, just to be sure, I kept the old faucet in a safe place until I was finished the installation of the "new-to-us" faucet. Becauce if I needed to scavenge it for any parts or just pose for an inappropriate photo, I would be ready.
And when we finished with absolutely no leaks, swearing, or dimes spent, we had a wonderful fully functional faucet and spray nozzle.
I knew there was SOME benefit to those six years of student loans.
