As best as I can determine, there have been three or four prior owners of this house since its construction in the long bygone age of 1979. Some, or all of them, had done serious DIY renovations. There's the large addition that appears to have taken place in two or more steps that resulted in the family room and the mystery space / office. There's the semi-flat roof (with a secret, hidden roof below it), the weird tile / granite projects through out , a bizarre front porch tunnel, an oddly reconfigured kitchen and the other mysteries of the cosmos that seem to triangulate at our humble address.
What I really don't get is some of the fantastical half-ass-ery done within these walls. Every time we open up a project, I find disturbing, problematic things that go well beyond poor workmanship or simple lack of knowledge. I find archeological evidence of lazy, asinine decision making,...installed with an appearance of intentionally poor workmanship. You'll find several of these examples throughout the Great Family Room Remodel story.
In my past posts, I refer to these ancient (well, ...ancient since 1979 anyway) renovators as my predecessors (sometimes as "mental-giants"). I don't know them at all; I don't know who did what. Former owners included the couple that sold us the house, I suspect a divorce was in progress, and before them, an older gentleman that may have actually passed away here. We actually know his name, from the AARP mail that shows up once in a while. Either way, these folks either did the work, or "hired" someone to do it.
Is it still considered "hiring" when they obviously paid them in straight rotgut whiskey?
It took serious work to create this feat of architectural idiocy.
Here's the most recent gem. While working on the pocket door replacement , I really looked at the room side trim around the door. First the hideous tile only goes up about six and a half feet before being capped to the ceiling with poorly installed black tile of a smaller size. The white tile escapes the shower area and runs to the door before terminating in a bull-nose edge, against the trim. What some mental-giant had done was rip the trim, cut a few inches off the bottom and slide it to the right. We now have the gorgeous detail above.
What the hell is that? Why not simply leave off the bull-nose, if you don't want to cut the tile?
They were willing to leave rough tile edge elsewhere in the room. This is an example of the renovation wizardry that my feeble, amateur mind is simply not equipped to comprehend. For someone to install this in their own home, it's obvious that such fine, custom craftsmanship is obviously meant for much more refined tastes than my own.
The first two years in our home, we slowly lost electronics in our family room entertainment center. A large television, two cable boxes, two Xbox 360's, a DVD player, and a VCR died, but slowly over time. Some items were old, some were cheap. We didn't think much of it until the second cable box died. My own dim-witted mind finally clicked on and I put a meter to the outlet. Over 200 volts! (vs. 120 expected). Long story short, I found and repaired was nonsensical electrical wiring: open/no neutral wire, missing ground, crossed wire colors, and generally crap-tastic workmanship throughout the room.
We're here to stay. All we can do is line up the problems and knock them off one-by-one. I hope to do my best, and leave something for future generations that I can be proud of. Something safe.
I'm still holding out for a hidden cash trove in the walls.
UPDATE:
Marc from the hilarious HomeFixated.com launched a new website HomeFail.com. The images above are featured on the site, for obvious reasons. Check it out!
My latest venture, HomeFail.com, doesn’t really intend to educate, and, any education you might receive falls into the “what not to do” category. HomeFail.com’s main goal is to entertain with photos and video of the worst construction in the world.- Homefail.com