I Needed to Find a Stud Today. Badly.

How I found a stud with help from Stanley. 

I’ve never in my 43 years needed to find a stud. 

However, life does throw curveballs, and you have to adapt. So, being an open minded fellow and willing to try new things, even things that are foreign to me, against my nature, and frankly not to my preference, I endeavored to locate a stud. Actually, more than one. I had to. Really. 

One of my agents, apparently, has found numerous studs in her time and offered to help after I explained things to her. The trick is you can’t just grab around, or grope, or even tip toe. You need good equipment. I don’t have any equipment. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, as an average suburban guy I hold my own in the tool department but I sure never had the hardware to find any stud. Especially with a thick rug involved like this morning. 

You see, locating a floor joist is seldom something a real estate broker needs to do. However, on a bank-owned listing of mine, a creak in a bedroom floor was turning people off. When I explained to my asset manager my predicament, he recommended that I get some 6-penny nails and reinforce the loose sub flooring to the joists at the edges of the carpet. Easier said than done, however, because the floor was covered in wall to wall carpet. Now, mind you, I’m no carpenter. Believe me. I studied English. I never took shop. When the other kids were building tree houses I was scoring baseball games and reading history books. 

Anyway, my agent recommended a “stud finder.”  I never heard of such a thing, but they are readily available at any hardware store. I went down to Ossining Hardware and they recognized me as that weird guy who just bought 20 six-penny nails for 60 cents and asked for a receipt. I asked for a “stud finder” and he told me to go somewhere else if I wanted that. But he did carry the Stud Sensor 250 from Stanley, which operates the same way. It located the joists in spite of that wall to wall carpet over the sub floor.

So I got to some serious nailing, which felt a little funny, because it had been a while for me. But you never really forget how to do this stuff, and I got right down to it. Now I may not be a pro, but I didn’t want to pay for it. It actually wasn’t so bad to do it myself. 

I have done many new things in this business which they don’t teach in real estate class, as we all have, but some rudimentary carpentry was never on the list until today. You just never know what the next challenge will be. Ann is very happy that I brought the Stud Sensor home, because she has wanted to hang a nice mirror above our fireplace and couldn’t find the right place on the wall to screw. 

Anyway, I’m pretty exhausted now, and I think I’ll just go sleep early. 

Next week: Why beefcake is the superior treat at broker opens to hors d’oeuvres.