The Construction Life

We open the how at a new venue, we are at VenturesX workspace in Oakville and next week’s show will be all about this space. Thanks Trevor and Joe for offering up the space to record the show. Mike, what a great guy, calls himself the “toolbelt contractor” he loves being on site and seeing what’s happening and doing what needs to be done. Mike is proud of what he does for a living, but even more s...

Jesse Barbosa is back on the show and finally gets to meet Jim, we get talking loads of Framing. Jesse a 25-year-old framer with a solid crew that has old school heart and love for the trades and the construction life. He’s a hard worker that truly cares about his trade and what happens before, during and after his work, regardless if he can only blame the foundation guys for any issues while ever...

WE ARE BACK!! It was a nice hiatus, well worth the 4 weeks off and enjoy some downtime to ourselves. We hit 121 podcasts at the end of 2020 and now we are focused on reaching 200 podcasts by the end of 2021. We welcome Marc from Craigmhor Construction back on the show to have a great conversation about stigmas in construction and we just let the conversation roll from there. We open the show on wh...

We get right into the wonderful world of architects and designers. Talking about the formal education, the on-site education, the real construction life. We even discuss the egos attached to being an architect, a designer and how to handle those egos. Then we jump into the formality of drawings, zoning, committee of adjustments, urban forestry, conservations and all of that fun stuff months, years...

We get right into the world of working for women clients, single professional women, married women and the stigma attached to having a female client. Why do contractors treat the ladies differently? Why can’t all tradespeople treat all clients the same way? Women are concerned that they need to know all of the construction terminology, not true, women and men, all clients need to know what they wa...

We open the show with a couple of bottles of wine, a few cheeses, salami and bread as any great construction podcast should start. We don’t sugarcoat it…Covid is killing small business or should we say selective lockdown is killing small business. The panel today gets right into the motives behind the Canadian government and how they are handling the pandemic, lockdowns, and small business owners...

Something a little different but very relevant to our construction life, on today’s show we get right into a lot of health and lifestyle, eating and living. You really need to listen to your body and what your body is telling you because it is telling you a lot and listen up. It really is about what goes into your body has an effect on you, physically and mentally and what needs to come out, what...

Back in the Caruk Hall Boardroom and we have a couple of special guests, Dan Hall from Caruk Hall, Jim’s younger partner in construction crime and Terry a recently retired plumbing expert on today’s show and we are going to talk about the three segments of business ownership and operation. Both Dan and Jim got started in their late teens and went the union route and they partnered up 5 years ago,...

Back in the Caruk Hall Boardroom and we have a special guest, Dan from Tropical Heating and AC and today’s show is all about HVAC and Dan shares his experience for over 30 years, wait till you hear how much things have changed and how little things have stayed the same. Dan started at 19 years of age and eventually got partnered up with his brothers and built up one of the best HVAC teams in the G...

10 years ago Jim was on a road trip across Canada and with a phone call from a friend about his son in law returning from Afghanistan and struggling with his family and new born, Jim came up with Renos for Heroes and wanting to do something. We open the show with Mike and Dean sharing when they join the service and when they retired, the beginning as it turned out was a choice between military or...

We open the show with a shot across The Construction Life bow when Steve brings up his construction bone, he has a problem with people that talk negatively about tool influencers. We get right into the whole social media influencing game since Manny has been very vocal about calling these “influencers” the Tourist In Construction or TIC’s. Jim asks, what makes these influencers experts? Jim feels...

Andrew is back and we get very technical about glass and metal fabrication and design. The science behind the glass and the techniques and all the great details and expectations of tempered glass. We discuss Prince Rupert’s drops AKA Dutch or Batavian tears about the toughness of glass. Andrew discusses his designs from years back and how they are still difficult to fabricate with today’s tech and...

We open the show not with a song but rather a story about this General’s first job interview and what he did that secured his employment. We have Camilo a GC and Marta the only female Site Super on this site. We discuss what it is like building to this luxury scale and how the trades of today need way too much handholding, or babysitting or our new term, tradesitting because too many trades simply...

The newly formed The Construction Life 2.0 with Manny and Jim asking the direct questions about the construction industry. The wine is poured, it’s a nice fall evening and Jim and Manny sit down to talk about the construction life. Let’s talk about Renovation Price, Quality and Time, pick 2. Clients need to understand how this renovation triangle works and why. It always begins with price, that su...

Wish was a metal fabricator and one day the writing was on the wall and he say his termination, worried Wish had no idea what to do next but quickly realized he can do some handyman work until he figures out his next move. Go figure, he got his first job a week after being fired and the work has not stopped. Wish was in his late 40’s when this all happened and with the help of a government program...

Rosie and Rob join Manny and Carlito to talk about construction and food and Covid and how things were, how they are and what we hope things will be like soon enough. We get right into how best to cook speducci and we get right the whole menu and how you can step up your lunch game on the job site with a little help from Speducci. Oh and the salt, wait for it, the salt is key. We discuss the upcom...

Nobody plans their day in hopes of getting injured on the job. What safety hazards commonly shut down jobsites or create injuries? What’s the deal with PPE and Fall Protection? What could the Ministry of Labour look for if they paid your work a surprise visit? Hear our interesting hard facts about jobsite safety, and some of the very reasonable cost & time saving solutions that are overlooked. We...

Jim Caruk is my co-host of a newly formed The Construction Life 2.0 where Jim and Manny will be speaking to more people that are passionate about construction. On today’s show we are speaking with Rob Renna about his recently completed project from Caruk Hall Construction. Rob tells the whole truth about working with Jim, why he and his wife went with Jim and his team and how Jim finished the proj...

Jake arrives at the recording session with famous Hamilton pizza from Shorty’s and swag for us. Jake began his construction career as most of the new generation did, shop class in high school and that led to post construction school at Mohawk and that is when things really changed for Jake. He embraced construction and learned what he could. Once out of school, he worked for a few smaller construc...

Adam discusses his path from HVAC to ICF and how his very first experience watching ICF being assembled actually frustrated him, he quickly realized the potential behind this new way of building. Adam truly believes most of the negative attached to ICF has everything to do with how and who is installing, like everything in construction. It is in Adam’s nature to question the status quo and build b...

Peter AKA Lundy shares his story with us from a teenager to his home being burned down by the meth lab neighbor and now he is dealing with the government and rebuilding his home in British Columbia. What a great talk with Lundy and prepare for a really emotional show. We open the show with a Construction Bone Lundy has to pick with us and free estimates. His career began with a newspaper article a...

We open the show with the Albanian National Anthem, The Construction Life rendition. Enjoy. Flo lived in Italy for 13 years, 6 in Albania and now 6 in Canada, he hopes to continue to build his legacy right here in the good old SIX. An immigrant coming to Canada and understanding the opportunities is something Manny and Carlito can relate to and can respect. We discuss the work ethics and how immig...

It all begins with our latest and greatest segment, Construction Bone to Pick and Carlito has a few things to say about trades that smell. We roll out this 101th show talking about the details of tiling and it begins with thin set. Omid draws a hardline in the mix, he only uses white thin set for all applications, no more grey. We talk about all the brands and the pros and cons of each product. We...

#100 THANK YOU. Carlito and Manny are the guests on this special show Hold on as we get to celebrate our 100th show and this round we have the hosts of the most listened to construction podcast be the guests. With over 130 hours of real construction conversations Manny and Carlito have change the industry beginning with one simple message, Good Enough Is Never Good Enough For Us. The show has been...

We get right into with a great History with Manny and a perfect Construction Bone to Pick and this time Carlito gets the talk going and Jesse brings up some really strong arguments. Then we finally get talking FRAMING! Jesse is 24 years old and began his career at 19 and fell into framing after a mason site visit that never happened, a framer called and asked him to come in for an interview and th...