Check your floor level first. Maybe your house is just nautical.

Seriously, specs are the bare minimum, but time is cheap insurance that saves headaches later.

Handled a customer wanting to stick shiny tape on a fragile old book once. They were adamant, but that tape would peel and stain the pages forever. I pulled out some test scraps to show how adhesives eat into weak paper. Offered to use simple, safe inks that still look nice. They backed down after seeing the proof, and we used a better method. Standing your ground on materials is part of the job, or you end up with a ruined book.

Picture art becoming more about the idea in your head than the skill in your hands. Someone could type a fancy prompt and make an image that took a real artist years to learn how to paint. That changes what we even think art is for. It starts to feel less about human touch and more about who has the best description. My worry is we make art itself feel cheap and soulless.

Your bridge story really grabbed me. I had a similar thing with an old train station in my town. It was boarded up for years, and I found out it was tied to a failed railway project from the 1920s. Turns out, the mayor at the time took bribes to approve the route, and the whole thing went bust. Just like your mill owner, the key people vanished, and records were buried. Now I'm always looking at old buildings and wondering what secrets they hold.