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View Full Version : why stupid people should not be allowed to own property



Neal Clayton
08-22-2010, 10:47 AM
my next project when i get done with the restoration of the inside of my house needs to be the driveway. it has kinda haphazardly poured concrete sections on it now but the 100+ year old trees i have around the house are really doing a number on it. logically, since they didn't pour concrete driveways that often when my house was built in ~1908, i figured there was probably some other surface under the concrete, so i pulled up a small loose section to find the below...

yes you're seeing what i'm seeing, they are granite pavers, not just bricks, and some moron poured concrete over them.

Myk Rian
08-22-2010, 12:54 PM
Little rocks in Little Rock? :D

John A langley
08-22-2010, 1:01 PM
What a lucky find! It will be a lot of work but it will make a beautiful driveway and go right along with the vintage house.

Jim O'Dell
08-22-2010, 2:40 PM
Yeah, that's right up there with the guy that owned our house before us. Used Oak laminate slat wall for wainscoting. On the shop and the little shed. :confused::confused::confused: Most of it was ruined by being on the concrete soaking up water.
Makes you wonder about people sometimes, doesn't it. Hopefully you'll be able to recover the pavers and it won't be too much work to clean them off. It will be beautiful when finished if that's what you decide to do. Jim.

Curt Harms
08-22-2010, 3:05 PM
Here in Bucks County, PA. there are old houses with Stucco coats over stone. "Oooohhh, I always wanted a stone farm house. Let's get that ugly stucco off"! The problem is that the house was intended to have a stucco coat and the stone walls consist of irregular small stones. The walls are structurally sound but they don't look good with the stone exposed. Oops!

Dan Hintz
08-22-2010, 3:16 PM
At least you have something quality underneath. So far, I've spent the entire weekend ripping down 8' of wood paneling, sheetrock, and non-PT lumber placed up against bare concrete block. No vapor barrier, and foil-backed fiberglass insulation (the block is underground, not in the attic.

Getting rid of the mold (and bugs) is going to be a long process :(

Russ Filtz
08-22-2010, 5:02 PM
There's no accounting for changing tastes over the years. There are MANY many hardwood floors covered up by wall to wall as we speak. At the time it was the chic thing to do. We even had some of that nice orange shag when i was growing up! :rolleyes:

Brian Ashton
08-22-2010, 5:15 PM
Best one I've seen is a guy here in aus that used busted up stone countertops for a driveway. Wouldn't have been so bad if he'd smashed the pieces up into gravel sized pieces but the pieces are a foot wide! There's black, pink, gray... looks like absolute crap.

Neal Clayton
08-22-2010, 8:40 PM
Here in Bucks County, PA. there are old houses with Stucco coats over stone. "Oooohhh, I always wanted a stone farm house. Let's get that ugly stucco off"! The problem is that the house was intended to have a stucco coat and the stone walls consist of irregular small stones. The walls are structurally sound but they don't look good with the stone exposed. Oops!

i've seen that a few times too ;). people wanna tear down plaster to expose brick, but brick has quality grades like anything else, alot of those brick walls were using B grade bricks and were meant to be plastered.

there was orange shag in here too at one point russ. i found some in the back of a closet when i decided to move the wall a bit, they had framed up said closet without removing the carpet. they had painted the doors orange and the door frames yellow to match, too, i also found one of those in the attic.

Van Huskey
08-23-2010, 12:48 AM
There's no accounting for changing tastes over the years. There are MANY many hardwood floors covered up by wall to wall as we speak. At the time it was the chic thing to do. We even had some of that nice orange shag when i was growing up! :rolleyes:


Thats what I was thinking about as I read the OP. I was ashamed of our hardwood floors 'cause all the other kids had carpet. I was ashamed of 4" QSWO floors my father had cut, dried, milled and laid... I was a stupid kid.

Curt Harms
08-23-2010, 8:14 AM
Thats what I was thinking about as I read the OP. I was ashamed of our hardwood floors 'cause all the other kids had carpet. I was ashamed of 4" QSWO floors my father had cut, dried, milled and laid... I was a stupid kid.

We all were to some extent. The lucky ones grow out of it.

Lee Ludden
08-23-2010, 1:27 PM
The farmhouse I grew up in had the walnut trim painted brown.

Dave Anderson NH
08-23-2010, 2:59 PM
Gentlemen, please modify your attitudes. What you are disparagingly refering to as ugly orange was actually the Autumn or rust colored shag and was the height of fashion. Now where can I get an avocado colored refridgerator and a lava lamp to complete my decor?

Pat Germain
08-23-2010, 4:17 PM
A friend of mine bought a house in Virginia Beach back in the late 1980s. Just before the sale was final, the woman who lived in the house accidentally spilled some bleach on the carpet. Thinking she was clever, no kidding, she bought a whole shopping cart full of bleach and proceeded to dump it on all the carpet on the entire first floor. It actually did make the carpet mostly white. But it also destroyed the backing of the carpet.

When my friend moved in, you could walk across the carpet and leave "footprints" as the fibers pulled out of the backing. What a mess! There were carpet fibers everywhere. Ironically, my friend was going to replace the carpet anyway.

Another friend of mine bought a house where the previous owners had wallpapered right over light switches. They didn't even bother to remove the switches or the switch plates. That friend had to cut out pieces of the wallpaper to turn the lights on and off before ripping it all down.

Dennis Peacock
08-23-2010, 4:25 PM
Little rocks in Little Rock? :D

Yup.....and even big rocks in Little Rock....I know....I live near Little Rock.

Dennis Peacock
08-23-2010, 4:27 PM
Neal,
That would be an awesome driveway....er uh...wouldn't it be a "parkway" since you "park" on it and not.....oh.........never mind. ;)

Jerome Stanek
08-23-2010, 5:49 PM
The only thing is if there is only a part of the drive that has the pavers.

Michael Weber
08-23-2010, 8:37 PM
I have a real brick driveway decades old. Let me tell you from experience that you're going to need Roundup.:mad: May be why the PO paved it. Just got tired of the maintenance. I was in Maumelle(sp) last weekend for my grand daughters Christening. My son is a minister there but lives in Conway.

Mike Cruz
08-24-2010, 8:05 AM
Let me guess, Dan...Ryan or Ryland home?

Dan Hintz
08-24-2010, 8:22 AM
Mike,

The home was built back in '72, but the previous owner had his own ideas about what made a house a home. Neglecting the changes he made to help out his mother who was blind and mostly deaf (such as hooking every smoke detector to the doorbell), he wasn't exactly a "code" kind of guy. His idea of electrical was "I'm here, I need power there, I'm going to drill straight through the joists until I reach my destination.".

Code violations so far:
1) Using non-PT wood for toe plates against bare concrete
2) Using non-PT wood against bare cinder block exterior wall
3) Not stapling wire within 8" of the junction box (or stapling EVER)
4) Aluminum-faced insulation up against (possibly-ungrounded) metal junction boxes
5) Junction boxes not securely fastened.
6) Switching the neutral line, not the hot
7) Using non-IC rated light fixtures up against insulation

It has taken me a full weekend and one night, so far, to tear down <16' of wall. Granted, I'm trying to do it with minimal interruption to our lives, which means moving the TV multiple times, etc. The guy uses nails every 6-8" on drywall, so I have the choice of digging in and pulling every nail to keep the board as whole as possible, or ripping it down in small chunks and creating a huge mess. Some sheets he'll do this with every stud, others he only did the outline and never put a single nail in the middle of the sheet.

I'm finding all kinds of mold in there, and I see wet and rotten corners on at least one corner of the room... my guess is it's rain leaking in from the lack of sill-plate seal (I can see grass and dirt in some areas!). The water isn't his fault, but his lack of sealing it off has hidden a potential problem until now. I'm also hoping we'll get a lot less bugs down there once I'm finished sealing the sill plate.

I'm overjoyed by his wonderful construction skills :) And don't get me started on the deck that needed to be replaced this year before it pulls the house down, but I'm forced to wait until next year due to time constraints.

David G Baker
08-24-2010, 10:11 AM
Dan,
You have described the classic reason for getting a home inspection prior to committing to purchase a piece of property.

Neal Clayton
08-24-2010, 11:02 AM
i'm all for inspectors but an inspector wouldn't likely have caught any of those. they can't open up walls to look inside.

Michael Weber
08-24-2010, 11:11 AM
i'm all for inspectors but an inspector wouldn't likely have caught any of those. they can't open up walls to look inside.

Have to agree with that, at least around here. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can call himself a home inspector and if he has any connection to a realtor, he's in business. No license required.

John Pratt
08-24-2010, 11:12 AM
Dan,
You have described the classic reason for getting a home inspection prior to committing to purchase a piece of property.

And lets not forget that all home inspectors are created equal. It really doesn't take much to call yourself a home inspector in some states.

Dan Hintz
08-24-2010, 11:30 AM
I agree with the others... a home inspector would never catch this kind of stuff. They typically look for gross (not disgusting, but large) issues like termites, no flue stacks on gas heaters, etc. A good one will at least poke his head in the attic, most take a walk around the house.

Meh, I married into it anyway, so it's not like I had a choice. Overall, the core of the house still looks solid, I just need to spend a few years fixing it up.

Joe Chritz
08-24-2010, 12:00 PM
You can make a brick paver driveway nearly maintenance free if the sub prep is done correctly.

Start with natural base, doesn't matter so much what it is but undisturbed soil is best. Lay a thick layer of crushed concrete stone, the same stuff they use for good gravel driveways. Rough level that and pack it down like it insulted your mother. A roller is best but getting a big one to do a driveway is tough. A vibrating tamper and some time is fine. Put about an inch of stone sand (I think we used finely crushed limestone but I can't recall for sure). The stuff is like fine sand but packs hard and is all rock. Level that in 4' x 4' sections and pack it down. Then start laying the bricks. Once all the bricks are in place, sweep some of the same stone sand into all the joints and you are good to go.

An application of non-select herbicide before the crush stone is cheap insurance also against weeds. When I did these almost 20 years ago we made a couple big ones and they are still flat and weed free.

They look great and are a ton of work to do right.

Joe

Don Orr
08-24-2010, 1:13 PM
Neal,

Around here we would call those cobblestones. They are still under many paved streets here and in Albany, NY. In some areas they have been exposed as part of the local history. They were brought here in the early ships as balast and then used to "pave" the streets when they were replaced in the ships by cargo. Some of them are nearly 400 years old. They can be a little rough on snow plows though.:eek::D

Dan Hintz
08-24-2010, 1:18 PM
They were brought here in the early ships as balast and then used to "pave" the streets when they were replaced in the ships by cargo.
What an awesome little bit of history there... I love learning stuff like that :)

Neal Clayton
08-24-2010, 9:57 PM
indeed, i've never heard that. makes sense to me.

Greg Peterson
08-24-2010, 11:01 PM
What's wrong with orange shag?

Jon Lanier
08-25-2010, 2:24 AM
Great day. Now you have to go through all that work of removing those pavers so you can pour the concrete properly!

Rich Engelhardt
08-25-2010, 6:09 AM
They were brought here in the early ships as balast and then used to "pave" the streets when they were replaced in the ships by cargo
:(
All we got here in Ohio as ballast was zebra mussels and gobi fish :(