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Cardboard—God’s own building material
May 6th, 2003
Corrugated cardboard. According to a previous owner of my house, anyway. Not only is it good for the odd wall, but as backing around plumbing!
Just one of the many fun things Kip and I discovered when a sixth of the ceiling of the downstairs living room collapsed. A very neat collapse to be sure, a perfectly square piece of dry wall. You see, a leak had developed in the outflow pipe of one of the tubs upstairs. This in turn soaked the insulation located between the two floors. The weight of this soaked insulated finally popped the drywall.
In a weird way, I’m relieved. Seriously. It’s like the other shoe has dropped, so to speak. One of the things a person has to be prepared for when buying an older home is that pipe in the wall or ceiling going. I now know of ten cases where this is the truth. And ours is one of the most minor—try all plumbing bursting at once, flooding two rooms and serious wall repair one month after purchase.
So, it could have been much worse than the annoyance and cost we have to deal with as it is. I mean, there could have been something under the ceiling that fell. Or a toilet could have been involved.
Filed under Home & Hearth |3 Responses to “Cardboard—God’s own building material”
Oh, dear. I’m sorry. Amateur builders scare me, but usually they also give me fits of the giggles. I make an exception for amateur electricians though; “I thought that was ok” is amateur electrician for “I didn’t know it was loaded.”
Laugh away! I do!
As for the electrical shenanigans that have gone on in this house that has been a rental for about 60 years…brrr…
Thankfully Kip was capable of taking care of most of teh crossed wires and mis-grounded plugs. And we has electricians in who ended up removing a circuit breaker box that had been recalled some year ago.
One of our friends bought a house with a lovely converted attic bedroom, only to find out later that it had been wired entirely with stereo wire. And not the good kind, either (don’t ask me what “the good kind” is; these were the contractor’s words).