WtfDan

From IckyWiki

WTF, Dan?

This is what we say when we find weirdness in the way our house and/or barn was constructed. It seems that our house was largely a do-it-yourself project for the previous owner. While we like our house, sometimes we have WTF sorts of moments:

• There are no closets downstairs in this house. We already lack a basement--it seems, from looking at old blueprints and hearing from people who had been in or near the property before we moved here, that this house was originally intended to be the garage for a bigger house, to be located on the large flat spot in the yard that now sits empty. Upstairs, we have a fairly good-sized linen closet, bedroom closets, and crawl spaces behind the bedroom closets (it's sort of a cape-cod style house without dormers, so the upstairs rooms have slight cutoffs in the corners of the ceilings for the roof). But downstairs? Nothing. Just a few hooks to hang your coats on.
• The bathroom hot/cold water for the shower was hooked up backwards, which apparently is fixable with Moen faucets but, according to the plumber who just tried to install our new ones, not with all. So we'll probably be sticking H/C decals over the existing fixture to indicate reversedness, in case we ever have guests.
• There is a sink in our bedroom. No bathroom upstairs, just a sink. Hmmm.
• Since this was apparently a garage, they had to bring the water into the house through the side instead of up through the (already poured) concrete pad. This means our bathroom is at least a good foot up off the ground. It's pretty small already, and the short ceiling makes it seem even shorter.
• We have alarmingly low water pressure occasionally, usually at the shower and kitchen sink--just where you'd want pressure. The pressure is astoundingly high, by comparison, in the bathroom and upstairs sink.
• When we were on well water, the well regularly ran dry in late summer and we'd have to have someone deliver water to it.
• Neither sink had a cabinet under it; the sinks were just installed with open space under them. We eventually just got some little folding louvered doors to cover the space.
• There is a large set of pipes (not for plumbing) coming out of our family room ceiling, forming a sort of chin-up bar. I suppose we could remove them, but then where would we hang our collection of stuffed velcro-handed monkeys?
• Our 'laundry area' (really a few walls off the side of the bathroom to wall off a stackable washer/dryer) was constructed so that the largest washer/dryer set you could install is a 24" apartment set. Which is fine, if you never want to wash anything larger or thicker than a queen sized fleece blanket, and don't mind doing laundry several times a week. We could never figure this out--we don't have kids, but Dan and Mary did--they must've constantly been doing laundry! At any rate, we have just moved the wall about 6" so we can fit a new full sized set soon, thanks to my uncle Mike the carpenter and Paul the amateur electrician.
• Speaking of laundry, it appears that at one time they had a dryer installed in the family room, as there seems to be a dryer vent at the ceiling level. No plumbing though, so obviously they never had a washer there.
• The kitchen was never quite 'finished'. There was a large empty corner where there was a pump for the well water (eventually removed when we got on town water), and the cabinets weren't really sealed off from the empty area behind, which happened to be connected to the area under the bathroom (see above). When we got Icky, several times he worked his way behind the cabinets and under the bathroom floor. We've since refinished to seal off the cabinets and have an island instead of the somewhat narrow U-shape the kitchen was before.
• There is a large telephone pole outside, closer to the barn than to the house. We assume this was for a ham radio project. It still has some wires hanging off it.
• Besides being full of all sorts of normal barn type of junk, there were several boxes of 'I've fallen and I can't get up' type electronic call boxes, not to mention the materials from an old greenhouse which was probably to be rebuilt at some point but never made it. When we finally rented 2 dumpsters to remove all the junk, we ended up installing the old door into the top floor of the front of the barn so we could just walk the stuff over and drop it into the dumpster.
• We like our loft area in the center of the house (makes a small space seem larger), but oddly it looks as if the drywall around the open beams was never quite finished (not that you'd notice it that often).
• Cracked north-facing window. We're so cheap we've never had it fixed--doesn't leak or anything.
• This place had bare concrete floors downstairs when we moved in. Upstairs was all carpeted, but nothing downstairs! And the family room just had some bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling--perhaps a holdover from its days as part of the garage?
• Constrained by space, our water heater had to be located under the stairs, which means it has to be direct-vent (limiting our choices at replacement time). Also, it turns out it's a pretty tight fit getting it in there, unless you remove one of the stair backs (which we've just decided to leave out entirely).
• Seems like the house is facing a weird way, or we need more windows. There are very few south-facing windows, so it tends to be pretty dark on the first floor. Not to mention, the really nice views are to the south and somewhat less so to the north, and those sides have the fewest windows.
• Not really his fault so much, but the living room (now our office) has no phone jacks, so we had to run some cords from other rooms (yeah, I know, we could do wireless ones now...) The one we ran actually came down through a hole in the ceiling in the family room, which led to a jack located in the crawl space behind the closet of the 2nd bedroom. Weird, eh? There's a little table built in up there--we think maybe a play room for the kids? It's holding all our junk, currently.
• No ductwork! I guess this is because it was a garage first. So no central heating/air.
• The garden was loaded with carpeting when we moved in. I dunno if this was to keep weeds down or what, but it was horribly messy for awhile.
• There wasn't any molding around many of the windows when we moved in (since fixed).

But then, there were some things we like:

• The shower head is installed on the opposite wall from the faucet. While this means a long wait between setting a temperature and getting results, it also means if the water suddenly changes temperature you can jump out of the water but remain in the shower, to adjust it.
• The bedroom views are actually pretty nice. If we cut some trees south of the house, the master bedroom view would be downright spectacular.
• The big propane stove at the center of the house actually keeps the whole house warm all winter, assuming you keep the bedroom doors open and blankets handy in the family room. We ended up removing some of the electric heat runs.
• Good sized septic (actually a Jet aeration) system. Seems it was planned for a much larger house.
• The barn is really well built. You could probably put a bowling lane upstairs and it'd support it.
• Big, 1000 gallon, buried propane tank. You can go a year on one tank (possibly more, if you're frugal).
• We own (or at least share) the high point in Wayne County, as well as a good portion of this hill (including the south facing portions). Really, REALLY nice views (not so much near the house due to trees and the western hill being in the way).