Jake Bruton visits Ryan Hay of Oakman Building Company on a renovation project in Austin, TX where the conversation centers on mockups as a client communication tool. The house — built with reclaimed military lumber and full of non-standard geometry — demands a hands-on approach to decision-making. Three mockups are explored: sanding and restaining original wood beams, experimenting with epoxy to achieve near-clear grout lines in a radius glass block wall, and roughing in an oversized bathtub with a six-foot waterfall filler to confirm fit and function before tile and plumbing are locked in. Each example illustrates how three-dimensional mockups surface problems that drawings simply can't.

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