My house is an archaeological exhibit of multi-generational half assed construction.
I’ve postulated a timeline to explain that which is otherwise insane. In phase one the house was built by hicks that didn’t own a level because they didn’t need one. Long ago. Before electricity. Likely before indoor plumbing. They probably hewed the wood from the raw land using axes and their bare teeth. Huzzah!
Then it was expanded by the next generation of hicks that retrofitted for modern conveniences like lights and shitters. They didn’t own a level either but the workmanship looks good even if the materials are museum age now.
This generation of stuff was retrofitted again (which makes sense as the early generation of utilities was a mite…crude). These were slightly less clever folks. They expanded and moved plumbing around using the “just keep adding bends in the pipe till you get there” approach. Their stuff is mostly solid if you overlook their wild misuse of fluid dynamics in the plumbing. The didn’t own a level either.
The next generation was a gaggle of monkeys. They rerouted everything and retrofitted whatever they got their hands on. They doubled the size of the house…presumably with a blueprint that was sketched on a pizza box. I assume all work was done with a beer in one hand and maybe brain damage. They had a level but they used it as a tire iron.
Some of earlier generation of stuff was left and some was removed. Occasionally a bit is still in use even though it serves no modern purpose. I hear the Roman Coliseum has the same issues.
With each passing generation they appeared to have more time and less money. The newer something is, the less likely the materials are anything but jerry rigged repurposed quasi fabricated crap. Anyone who will spend a day tinkering with bits of wood because they won’t spring for a couple new 2″x4″ studs had better be either dying in the final chapters of “The Road” or they should be banned from owning a hammer.
Finally the place was bought by an arrogant bastard hick who is trying to fix what is broke, retrofit what is shoddy, and basically impose order on organic chaos. Undoing stupid and making up for delayed (i.e. no) maintenance is a long process. I’ll probably die before it’s done. But by God I ‘aint leaving shit for the next generation (which will probably bulldoze it and install a house trailer).
Why am I mentioning this? Because the pluming is performing in a way that appears to violate laws of nature.
More in part II.
and those damn monkeys never brought my football back.
If you find a football somewhere in the walls of your house….well, don’t touch it.
I think I just hurt something laughing. What you have just described sounds _exactly_ like the multigenerational Alaskan cabin converted to rambling house. Except we add “stoners” in with the beer and brain damage.
Calmer Half laughed as well, and pointed out that in Africa, they only have one level – a stone and a piece of string. Everything is built against that, which explains a lot of African architecture.
Damn! What a teaser!
Seriously, I have lived (as briefly as I could arrange) in houses where the plumbing not only violated the laws of fluid dynamics, but the laws of gravity, cause-and-effect, and (just to throw in a little mysticism) similarity and contagion. Off campus housing, needless to say. I await your tale of tribulation with baited breath.
And then your hicks moved to the Annapolis area where they worked on some properties I used to manage. I mean, who installs a oil tank directly over the sewer line leading to the drainfield? Or a water heater that has no on/off switch but is simply hooked up with some romex and a couple of wire nuts? On a ledge 4′ above the rest of the ground in a cellar? Which makes things interesting when the side of said water heater splits open …