Scattered here and there in the desert are some very bad ideas. Some are honest but ill-advised efforts at doing something unconventional. Some might have worked out well with better funding. And some just seem put there to make me laugh. I do believe all phases of this guy’s project may have involved a certain amount of methamphetamine.
Truth is, I can’t laugh too loud because I’m no builder and early ideas for the Secret Lair didn’t really miss this level of oh-dear-god by much. Which is why when you don’t know what you’re doing it’s important to think, THEN build. There are aspects of the Lair I’d change if I could, but the revisions wouldn’t need to start with a bulldozer – as in the following example, presented for your amusement.
I have no idea who this guy is, so I hope he isn’t a TUAK reader.
When I was sixteen or so I thought the sleeping-cabin-on-the-roof thing would be cool. Access to this one is through an attic pull-down ladder, an idea I considered but abandoned for the Lair’s loft.
I’ve installed pre-hung doors that leaked, and pre-hung doors that were never quite square. I’ve never installed one that spontaneously fell out of the frame.
Concrete blocks laid on the ground are not a foundation. The dirt has just about finished eroding out from under these.
But credit where it’s due – he did at least nod at the idea of fastening the cabin to the ground. Here and there are fence rails stuck in the ground upside-down and then screwed to the walls. I have no doubt that’ll work.
Hm. It’s possible your structure isn’t quite as rigid as it needs to be, there, Bubba.
Oh, my gosh. And you know all those building materials were not simply found by the side of the road. With the materials available, and just a LITTLE better planning, he could have quite a nice little place. That’s sad.
Maybe when it falls down or he’s too far into the meth to survive, you can salvage at least some of that stuff. The windows would be nice for your kitchen addition.
As MammaLiberty wrote it is too bad. Another failure of the 7 P principal… Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
As one of the commenters over at Forgotten Weapon pointed out
“Bubba transcends all nationalities and languages and no gun [or anything else] is ever safe from his misguided enthusiasm”
In the words of the 25% of the Irish male population, who worked in construction during the boom time, a disturbing proportion of whom appear to have been called Bubba:
“Strong job, [it’ll] be grand”
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Joel, if you can somehow get a DNA sample from this guy (careful you don’t get any into a cut! what, with the dotguv shut down, you’ll never get any help or treatment), we might stand a chance of finding out whether Bubba is an inherited condition or caused by an infection. If it is inherited, we might have just found a homozygous specimen.
Joel, is the efflorescence on the stones under that cabin just common stuff like gypsum and salt, or is it something interesting like nitrate?
No, Keith, I think that’s just a trick of the light. We do sometimes get salt deposits on surfaces that soak and dry, though I doubt it’s anything you’d want to sprinkle on your potatoes. Nitrates require carbon, which is unlikely in essentially sterile soil. But in this case I don’t believe what you’re seeing is either.