I got pulled into a thread on home repair by Legal Twitter

I got pulled into a thread on Legal Twitter, but this time, just about home repair and previous DIYers. Enjoy?

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EBS - @estockbridge · 1h

A couple weeks in, and I’m convinced of what I suspected at purchase: the previous homeowner was a DIY-er who unlike me did not seem to know his limits.

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Kathryn Tewson - @KathrynTewson · 1h

oh no do you have a mr fixit

@solarbirdy can tell you stories about her mr fixit

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Kathryn Tewson - @KathrynTewson · 1h

mr fixit the loathed

mr fixit the despised

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[This link is where I came in]

@solarbirdy replying to @KathrynTewson and @estockbridge

oh no

where do i even start

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mr. fixit wanted to live in a studio apartment he built in the basement. it wasn't heated so he tried to patch a radiator into the main house's heat. but he didn't want to pay for a radiator so he used a refrigeration coil and a fan.

he did not know about unlike metals corrosion

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he wanted a kitchen for obvious reasons but he wanted to save on wire

so he tapped into a knob-and-tube light fixture in the basement

but wait my story gets better

he ran short of wire so he used some doubled zip cord on the neutral and a coathanger on the hot

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I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP I SWEAR

it was behind a cabinet and soldered (possibly welded) together so it did not burn the house down

somehow

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a good story is about how he wanted a fireplace and there had been an incinerator in the basement so he had a flue

so he built this massive fireplace out of rough-cut stone and cement

when i went to UW i noticed an econ building built at the same time had exactly the same rocks

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i'm 1000% convinced he went down there with his pickup and just offloaded a bunch one night

i can't prove it

but i know it in my heart to be true

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the punchline, of course, is that this was _his_ apartment, where _he_ lived

...and where he did absolutely his best work.

he was a very energetic homeowner

unfortunately

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rahaeli - @rahaeli · 56m

Oh my god I'm so sorry

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it's mitigated a little by the fact that i am _convinced_ his intentions were good

he was by god gonna make this the best owner-occupied student boarding house he could

and you can tell by the way that the dumbass shit he pulled was _much_ more work than just doing it right

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i _still_ have salvage lumber pulled from his... improvements... when i pulled them out.

antique old-growth doug fir

too bad about the HOLY HELL WHY SO MANY NAILS THEY AREN'T HELPING ANYTHING WHY?! though

I got pulled into a thread on home repair by Legal Twitter, Part 2

This was a fork from the previous Legal Twitter thread - all unattributed tweets are, of course, me.

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rahaeli - @rahaeli
Replying to @estockbridge @riScorpian and 2 others

Tip from an actual pro: never trust a plumber alone in your house with a sawzall

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[where I came in, part 2]

oh hon

you say that like i don't know

shall we talk about mr. fixit and plumbing? because i can talk about mr. fixit and plumbing xD

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rahaeli - @rahaeli · 53m

Oh dear, this is gonna be good

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okay. original house built 1911. uw music prof lived there, it was part of what they called "musician's row"

in 1924 he added on in back for student housing. we have a copy of the permit you used to have to get from UW in order to rent to students, in loco parentis and all that

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one of the nicer things they did was install a gravity-driven hot-water loop, going from the oil-heated hot water to the back and back to the tank. always hot water on tap, whenever you want it

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but that cost money and mr. fixit wasn't having any of _that_, you can wait 30 seconds for your hot water, if there's anything we have enough of it's water.

(n.b.: I _think_ this was mr. fixit but it _could_ also have been during one of the energy crisis moments of the 1970s.)

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so he cut it off in a variety of places in interesting ways and capped it which is all fine except

he was putting in his bath in the basement so needed to have pipes by there

and found it easier to keep that part of the loop alive than keep two leads going back to the addition

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which would be fine, you don't need both halves of the loop

but if you're going to pick only one

please don't pick the one that goes essentially _outside_

(it was in a hanging stub wall but unheated and uninsulated and basically outside)

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when this was a loop and the pipes were constantly heated this was just fine, it never would've frozen not even once

but he'd made it no longer a loop.

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first time it froze for us, i pulled off the plank someone had used to replace siding in that little wall and found out why they'd done that

(spoiler: they needed to get in there so often)

and found the _three_ most recent repairs.

there had obviously been more.

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which gets us to plumbers and sawzalls.

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obviously i wasn't going to let this stand and when we had the money i brought in some... well, initially i brought in the wrong plumbers, but i learn, and then i started bringing in the right plumbers

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there was a

lot

of sawzall

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it was like a goddamn three stooges short

water EVERYWHERE

well really only two places BUT STILL

STRAIGHT OUT OF THE WALL

none of us could even figure why there'd ever _been_ a pipe there, or what it had been for (tho' i figured it out later)

BUT THERE WAS

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(figuring it out later involved discovering the rumour that after world war ii the house had been an illegal chocolate factory supplying the then-owner's shop on the Ave was, in fact, absolutely true - they'd turned every room in the addition into a kitchen, most with sinks)

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_so many kitchens_

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so anyway, plumbers should not be trusted sawzalls

and neither should mr. fixit.

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rahaeli - @rahaeli · 55m

Oh dear. I shouldn't be laughing

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oh no, you should be, i mean, i am

_now_