Journal Ethelred Unraed's Journal: Concrete houses and drill bits 4
Iamthefallen inspired the following by pointing out the following regarding the relative precision of metric and English drill bits:
Ah, but part of the trick is knowing what level of increment is the appropriate one! Is an increase from 1/2" to 9/16" more or less than a mm? How about 1/2" to 17/32"?
Of course it is a trick question, the answer is to use the 1/2" bit again, but this time tilt and swivel the drill around the hole
Or, depending on the task at hand, there are other possible solutions.
Take, for example, wiring. You see, BoE's parents have two houses on their property -- the one they live in (which they built when they got married) and the one BoE's great-grandparents built. When I say "built", I mean "they built it themselves" with help from the neighbors. Quite often they made it up as they went along (the rather...ah...interesting floorplan is ample evidence of this).
So a couple years ago, when BoE's grandmother died, leaving the older house unoccupied, BoE's family began to renovate the place. It needed a new roof, new windows, new wiring, central heating, you name it. (About the only modern convenience it had was indoor plumbing, and even that was a bit on the iffy side.) In the process, they made some interesting discoveries, like how the stone double outer walls (this thing was built by the method of "make your best guess as to how much material you need, then double it") were filled not with what you'd call standard insulation, but with interesting things like old newspapers, mouse skeletons, old clothing, and so on. (No word of any dead bodies, aside from the mice.)
BoE's grandfather was also something of an inventor, and he came up with a hand-cranked gadget to spray concrete. (He loved concrete. No, you don't understand. He did everything with concrete. Like repair BoEs's headless Barbie dolls with it.) So the outer walls are coated not in stucco, but in solid concrete. Unfortunately, for some reason the concrete doesn't hold paint too well, so the house is a drab dark grey.
(As an aside, BoE's grandfather sounds like he was really something else -- a true eccentric, in an endearing rather un-German sort of way. Very different from her for-God's-sake-don't-stick-out parents. I regret that I never got to meet him. But anyway.)
So anyway, when the electrician was redoing the wiring, he made some interesting discoveries. Like the fact that they apparently had exactly one (1) drill bit, given that all the holes were nearly exactly the same size (duh). This is interesting because the wiring they chose to use was a bit too thick. Their solution was not to go out and get a new bit, or jiggle the drill around to make the hole bigger, but to strip all the insulation off the wiring.
This was back in the mid-1930s, when they first put in electric wiring into the house (the house itself was built around 1900). How that house is still standing, I don't know.
Aside from the fact that the walls are strong enough to withstand a direct hit from an ICBM, that is.
Our house... (Score:2)
Ahem. Anyway, whoever added on to our house was pretty braindead: the prime lovely features are:
The window to nowhere in the master bathroom. They walled in the area right outside the window (now the dining room) and they just walled right over the window. If the window didn't have privacy glass, we would be looking at the back of the wall panels. Still looks weird however.
The interior sliding glass doors. When they roofed in the dining room (basically a big empty outside spac
Re: (Score:2)
My question is... (Score:1)
The land is probably worth much more money than the house itself.
Okay, demolition would cost also.... Especially if it can withstand a nuking from orbit. ;-))
Re: (Score:2)
Building a new house means you have to comply with a lot of expensive-to-comply-with regulations, and are basically forced to make a cookie cutter house.
So often it's far che