It’s not crap. Pine is a ridiculously soft wood and should never be used for framing a house. Douglas fir is the standard for framing a house in most municipalities. They got it right.
RogueRacer - I don’t know anything, but here’s an excerpt a google search turned up. It’s from a page referring to understanding the elasticity of woods.
I’m guessing the problem wasn’t with using pine but with using that particular grade of pine.
I can see Carm cutting corners, but I can’t see her building a collapsible house. I haven’t gotten the impression that her dad does shoddy work either. Didn’t he build Tony and Carm’s house?
I didn’t realize this previously, but on second viewing of “Member’s Only” I caught Tony or Christopher say that Phil was Vito’s cousin. Would explain why they’re close.
According to this site, that’s not true.
http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/ourbusinesses/buildingproducts/softwoodlumber/species/southernpine.asp
Regardless, I’m sure they got it right in that it’s possible to build a house using inferior-grade lumber, and fail a building inspection as a result.
Utility-grade pine is not Southern pine. In general, pine is a very soft wood, a few counter-examples notwithstanding. I’m from the timber capital of the world, where Douglas firs grow like weeds and Weyerhauser is everyone’s neighbor. I also spent many summers in high school and college working construction. I never framed a house with anything but Douglas fir.
Utility grade pine is cheap and “unsuitable for framing.” (Heh.)
It’s prone to splitting and easily damaged by relatively light humidity. It makes sense that they would have regulations demanding a higher grade of lumber, especially if the area is supposedly a bit posh. (It is, right?)
You don’t want to knock up a cheap-assed house with a veneer of solidity and have it turn into a sagging eyesore in fifteen years.
It’s not unknown for inspectors to need a little, um, incentive to issue a certificate. Given the Soprano name, and all that implies, could it be that nothing much is wrong with the wood, but that the inspector needs a little “gift” of some sort? Also, is Tony being a bit passive-aggressive by always seeming to “forget” to call that inspector? Maybe, consciously or otherwise, teaching his wife a lesson about who’s really in charge?
GSW? 
Must be “gunshot wound.”
Well, I talked to one of my contractor friends last night and remembered to ask about the Douglas Fir thing. He knew right away what I was talking about. He said that he used Douglas Fir for floor joists where people didn’t want to use I-joists (a fabricated floor joist). He said he also uses it for the stringers on steps and things like that. Otherwise, “normal” 2x4’s, 2x6’s, etc. are used for the rest of the framing. He doesn’t build his own trusses and I forgot to ask what they were made of.
I guess I should also note that while the whole family/genus thing tends to give me a headache if I look at it too much, Douglas Fir is part of the Pinaceae family (ie. pine family). Although it is not currently (has been in the past) classified in the Pinus genus (it’s in Pseudotsuga), if I saw one in the woods, I would still call it a pine tree. I think it’s a far stretch to scoff at a house being made out of “pine”.
Most likely what they were getting at is either Carm’s dad used some real shit grade lumber or didn’t use proper thicknesses. Either that, or like someone said recently, the inspector wanted his palm crossed with some greenbacks.
I watched again last night looking any signs of what might have happened the past year worthy of flashing back to.
The only reference at all was Tony’s “The year I’ve had” comment.
There was so little with Paulie that almost anything could have happenned to him. AJ could have been in and out of trouble but it wouldn’t be very suspenseful knowing that he made it thru safely. Some have commented that Chrissy’s status with the family may have changed. What’s the conventional wisdom on that?
Here’s a story line that could be done based on what we know … Finn and Meadow get married with all the Mob wedding fun and excitement. Finn gets addicted to strip clubs (thus the show that Meadow did for him) and the marriage falls apart. For all we know he’s sleeping with the fishes … or was there a reference to him in the first episode? Maybe I need to watch it again.
Question … Carm referred to either “the family” or “a family” that will ultimately live in her “spec house”. Has she made any other references to wanting to move into it with Tony?
I was under the impression that all the stuff in the introduction was happening in the present.