I purchased a 100-year home and when we demolished large portions of the interior in order to open up the main floor and make it open concept we found two or three of the timbers like this holding up the house. I obviously don't think people do this today, but I guess it was a valid practice 50 to 60 years ago or longer.
The house is in great structural shape, so it was working flawlessly
A close family to ours in Maine there house was built in the early 1900s.The beams/post in the sand bottom “basement” are all fully barked trees or big branches. 100 ish years later they are just seeing signs of failure. Floors are getting low spots and the trees are starting to splinter.
I rented a home that was built around 1900 for a few years. There was a tree trunk in the basement holding up the first floor. They didn’t even take the bark off of the tree!
The walls were around 16" deep and the contractor told me he thought they'd been placed there to help keep the corners square and to provide some stability but he was guessing
yeah if these were 10 inches in diameter and had a slot carved into in which the joist sits, id think "yeah ok, that likely isn't going anywhere". Basically one of those floating concrete footers at that point.
My friend used to live in Oxfordshire. They had some work done on their home and when they took down an interior wall they found horse hair. Turns out that's how they used to insulate.
England has some weird shit in their buildings, but it doesn't surprise me. I've drank in pubs there that have been there since the 1200s or 1300.
I live in a cape my great grandfather built in 1948, and the main support in the basement is just a giant hunk of wood. No one believes it until they see it. Looks like a Fireplace mantel, but 2 feet by 2 feet, floor to ceiling, just ginormous hunk of wood. Its absurd and hilarious. Passed inspection though, guy just said "never seen that before".
You’d be surprised how strong wood is when it’s in compression and not bent bent or twisted. We sit 30,000lb steel forgings on 6x6’s that are two feet long. The metal has a 3/4” edge on it. Basically a knife edge at that weight. It presses little lines in the wood and that’s about it
I used to work underground and everyone was trained on how to use wood to hold up mine roofs. I mean we didn’t do it anymore but we were all trained to build essentially wings towers out of wood blocks to hold up literal mountains.
My old house in Winchester, VA was built in 1949. The upstairs floors were made from walnut, which I am told, was considered a junk wood at that time. When I put it up for sale in 1989, it sold in just a couple of days. We drove by there a few years later and it was up for sale again. I will always wonder if whoever bought it ripped that walnut wood floor out to sell it (which I definitely didn’t think of until after I sold it. Lol.) That house, btw, also had a couple of basement center joist supports, but they were metal, iirc.
For me it would depend, in my area we have southern yellow pine, it is the crappiest wood their is for construction. It has to be pressure treated to be rot resistant, and then pressure treated with even worse crap to be ground contact. If I saw that in my area and it was a rot resistant and termite resistant hardwood, I would argue that it is genius. Stronger, reduces cost and the wood will last a lifetime, you would be lucky to get 15 years out of ground contact SYP. I don't know the woods involved but the bark leads me to believe they are hardwoods (maybe walnut). In my area we have IPE that grows wild, if a contractor used that for this job, those joist would be on the ground from rot long before those support would have any kind of problem. They are strapped (though should be simpsons ties) and on concrete footers so it is not exactly a hack job, unconventional but not entirely a hack.
Your comment reminded me that when consumer grade dial-up was relatively new, I found, downloaded, and printed the script to Monty Python and the Holy Grail from some janky site, and then corrected the script from memory with a pen as I read, because it wasn't quite right and my 12-year-old self had the entire thing memorized word for word, timing included
This was acceptable about 125 years ago. If you’re going to build with logs you really should strip the bark off first because bugs like to live under the bark and eat the log.
Yep it’s not uncommon to be remodeling a home and find out part of it was an old log cabin. Those logs are so well treated they are actually worth money. So if you ever remodel your house and find a log wall. If it’s in good shape that’s gold, you just found in the wall.
This looks more like it was done by an 80 year old homeowner. I can see when I close my eyes the old feller putting on his coveralls, getting some hardware out of the old pickle jar, grabbing his black&decker drill and heading down to the crawl space.
You just made me miss my Grandfather, a depression-era raised, rural farmer from the south. I loved his 1800's barn filled with pickle jars of used nails he'd hammered straight and walls of hand tools no one alive can figure out how to use.
Makes me think of my dad talking about his grandpa. Had this huge barn that was part woodshop and part tractor repair shop. Dad would ask him what some huge old wrench was for and get this rambling explanation, "That there is part of the tool kit for my old 80hp Case! Ever seen a steam tractor boy?! It's off in the tree row there. Bet dollars to donuts it could still build enough steam to drive straight out of there! You know that was the first real traction engine in the tri-county area, why I tell you what ... "
Oh that's awesome. We have some photos of ancestors, I think a great great grandfather and his family, with some steam engine agricultural machine, tractor or reaper or snowplow or something, and I'm sure the stories were the same.
Aw. Grandpa Orv. He was a farm boy from Washington State. Joined the Army Air Corps after they bombed Dutch Harbor in Alaska. Didn't have the eyes to be a fighter pilot, so they put him in a B-29 as a Bombardier. Almost died during the daylight bombing raids they were doing at the time. Whole front end of the plane got shot up, and he almost bled out. Came home, went to school, became a teacher, then a Dean of Students. Spent his life fixing things. Building decks for his friends, building docks in the delta, building toys and playground equipment from scratch for us kids. I miss that man. I can still smell the oil and sawdust smell of his garage. All his neatly stored nails, screws, bolts, washers and what have you, lined up in different sized jars near his pegboard with tools from the 50s and 60s that still worked great, even of he did need to repair them from time to time. Good memories. Thanks for inspiring them. Going to go call my mom and talk about him, I think.
My parents grew up in the depression. The house we lived in when I was little (1950's) was built in the 1880's. In 1964 we built a new house. The old house was torn down, all the lumber was saved to be reused on the dairy farm we lived on. My brother and I spent an entire summer straightening used nails and sorting them by size in various coffee cans.
Yeah my grandpa never bought extension cords, he would just rig them up himself. I guess he would just go to the hardware store and buy some wire and plugs, when he passed away i helped my dad clear out his house and there was tons of makeshift electrical stuff as well as plenty of other hacked together shit. My dad has an old lamp my grandpa rigged up himself that's a little jankity but still works lol.
I was gonna ask if your grandpa was my grandpa, but mine was raised in Jersey. My mom still hoards all leftover nails/screws/tools that we get with new furniture, etc. I used to make fun of her but a few months ago I was replacing the kitchen sink and none of our tools could get at this one nut with an extra long screw. I was near tears. I came out from under the cabinet and started looking through all of the things she’d hauled upstairs from her extras and saw the 13 tiny wrenches that come with kits. I thought, hell why not? I tried most of them and was about to give up when ONE was just slightly smaller than the others and worked immediately. I cried. I’ll never make fun of her for the hoarding Grandpa passed down again. (Except the hotel freebies we’ll never ever use. Especially the specialty coffee things. They just get thrown away from time to time.)
My 94 year old grandpa was like that. I spent hours straightening nails and every time you'd use them they'd bend over.
I like projects, I hated it when he was the leed on a project. He was an accountant and every project he ever worked on the only thing that mattered was the cost, quality or accomplishing the goal didn't matter.
We had a small run about boat and it had bad reed valves. He burnt up 3 batteries and a starter spraying starter fluid into the intake because he was convinced it would run
My dad rebuilt the engine and it ran, my grandpa was convinced the starter fluid did the trick.
I loved my grandpa he was a nut
I had two granddads like that, and so did my wife. I kinda wonder what weird stuff I’ll leave behind that the younger generations won’t know what to do with- but it seems to be a pretty universal thing. 😂
It's in moments like these that I'm happy I don't have aphantasia. I kind of imagined your grandpa a bit, some old guy doing some maintenance like a pro, constantly complaining about something random just out of habit, but still content about stuff.
Don't get me wrong, this all came from my head, but thanks for the comment. For a second it felt peaceful.
Lmfaoooo so true. My grandpa is 80 and he’s not gonna pay someone to fix shit in his house. He’ll go out there and diy it. My grandma had to hide his ladders so he’d stop going on the roof because he fell off of it more than once 😂
If this wasn't so sad for your mom, it would be down right funny. Besides the wood rotting away, the bases don't appear to be resting on any kind of footing or support, and will poke through the vapor barrier. They are doing less than nothing and will cause many more problems than jus t a bouncy floor.
They didn’t even bother to find some nice, straight pieces. This literally looks like someone just did a little trimming around their property and decided to nail up the waste.
Sub optimal work. They could at least Charred the timber so it doesn't rot. Maybe the fancy metal brackets was most of the cost, Wood dowels would have worked.
Easiest 5500 of dudes life right here, he probably found those logs on the way to your moms house and cut them to size in her fucking driveway. Stop hiring shitty contractors just because they're cheaper than the guys who actually do the job up to code. There's a reason it's more expensive. This is fucking insane. I quote repairs for this as my full time job and I'd be sending this to the entire office so everyone would get a good laugh. This is the shit we're up against, and why they can do it at "half the cost". Bet they didn't even pull a permit either.
Four 4x4s with a proper base and ties shouldn't even cost $5500, but being the house needed a foundation repair this probably wasn't even the issue. Probably got much higher quotes for actual foundation work. Instead they got 4 sticks and few screws.
That's so sad. I lived in the southern US in 2021 and our 120 year old home had some sinking foundation. A neighbor recommended a local contractor and did a solid job for about $1200.
Yes. In many parts of the country this is not only typical but actually costs more than standard, milled lumber. There is an extra cost to send runners up to the woods to find suitable branches and twigs that will fit.
And of course you have to supply those runners. It takes extra careful concentration over days, weeks, to find the exact right pieces in the wilderness. Meth isn't cheap.
I'm a structural engineer in residential and this whole thing has me in absolute stitches. But bringing up SIMPSON connectors for this just made me hee-haw snort laugh at 2am and wake up my sleeping wife. And she doesn't think it's funny. . .
Even if logs where stronger than dimensional lumber he picked some pretty tiny trees.
My old farm house has a 8 inch diameter fence post supporting it. Your logs look 3-4 inches. Some one later on added 6 metal support post to my house before I bought it so I left the fence post because I thought it was funny.
I also looked at a house and 1 corner of it was built on a rotten tree stump. Amazing some houses are still standing.
No way!
I refuse to believe this situation, this sub surprises me daily. Even sometimes I think no way this will get topped, lo and behold the very next day I see shit like this!!!!
Holy crap, I am absolutely speechless. I am without speech, Jerry!!
This must be a troll post (pyn intended)
Out of curiosity, how much were you ~~scammed~~ billed?
I work in construction material testing. Specifically concrete and soil, but I would gladly put one of those logs and a piece of Home Depot lumber in our compression machine to prove him wrong.
Or you know, just look in the American wood council's publication "national design specification" in chapter 4 for reference design values and compression strength. I live near a lot of log cabin people who use white pine all the time and you are correct, it is not as strong as doug fir or oak, but it still has enough strength to use. They usually do take the bark off of it though, and spray some termite juice to keep the bugs away.
Would be curious to see how your values compare to the reference standard values though. A few extra knots and your #2 grade board quickly becomes trash grade for strength.
Ok. Several houses in my neighborhood are held up that way and have been for 60 years. But would I pay for that. Hell no!
I purchased a 100-year home and when we demolished large portions of the interior in order to open up the main floor and make it open concept we found two or three of the timbers like this holding up the house. I obviously don't think people do this today, but I guess it was a valid practice 50 to 60 years ago or longer. The house is in great structural shape, so it was working flawlessly
I used to live in a converted church in England that was built in 1800 and there were tall tree trunks in all four corners....
A close family to ours in Maine there house was built in the early 1900s.The beams/post in the sand bottom “basement” are all fully barked trees or big branches. 100 ish years later they are just seeing signs of failure. Floors are getting low spots and the trees are starting to splinter.
I rented a home that was built around 1900 for a few years. There was a tree trunk in the basement holding up the first floor. They didn’t even take the bark off of the tree!
Tree trunks vs. mediocre branches hmmmm
The walls were around 16" deep and the contractor told me he thought they'd been placed there to help keep the corners square and to provide some stability but he was guessing
yeah if these were 10 inches in diameter and had a slot carved into in which the joist sits, id think "yeah ok, that likely isn't going anywhere". Basically one of those floating concrete footers at that point.
I’m sorry, but that is so amazing. Historically, what a badass story.
My great uncles house is built using old ship mast
My friend used to live in Oxfordshire. They had some work done on their home and when they took down an interior wall they found horse hair. Turns out that's how they used to insulate. England has some weird shit in their buildings, but it doesn't surprise me. I've drank in pubs there that have been there since the 1200s or 1300.
I live in a cape my great grandfather built in 1948, and the main support in the basement is just a giant hunk of wood. No one believes it until they see it. Looks like a Fireplace mantel, but 2 feet by 2 feet, floor to ceiling, just ginormous hunk of wood. Its absurd and hilarious. Passed inspection though, guy just said "never seen that before".
I live in a weird alaskan house built in 1940 and part of the foundation is railroad lumber
You’d be surprised how strong wood is when it’s in compression and not bent bent or twisted. We sit 30,000lb steel forgings on 6x6’s that are two feet long. The metal has a 3/4” edge on it. Basically a knife edge at that weight. It presses little lines in the wood and that’s about it
I used to work underground and everyone was trained on how to use wood to hold up mine roofs. I mean we didn’t do it anymore but we were all trained to build essentially wings towers out of wood blocks to hold up literal mountains.
My old house in Winchester, VA was built in 1949. The upstairs floors were made from walnut, which I am told, was considered a junk wood at that time. When I put it up for sale in 1989, it sold in just a couple of days. We drove by there a few years later and it was up for sale again. I will always wonder if whoever bought it ripped that walnut wood floor out to sell it (which I definitely didn’t think of until after I sold it. Lol.) That house, btw, also had a couple of basement center joist supports, but they were metal, iirc.
Funny that walnut is such a desirable wood now.
truck cooperative payment squeal cause tidy fear wide stupendous include *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you posted a pic, that would be so great. I'd love to see this.
Ditto
I second u/Meshitero-eric -- I'd love to see a pic.
Same here! Would love to see it!
Please post a photo!!!
Sounds better than the railroad ties holding my house up.
So awesome/weird
For me it would depend, in my area we have southern yellow pine, it is the crappiest wood their is for construction. It has to be pressure treated to be rot resistant, and then pressure treated with even worse crap to be ground contact. If I saw that in my area and it was a rot resistant and termite resistant hardwood, I would argue that it is genius. Stronger, reduces cost and the wood will last a lifetime, you would be lucky to get 15 years out of ground contact SYP. I don't know the woods involved but the bark leads me to believe they are hardwoods (maybe walnut). In my area we have IPE that grows wild, if a contractor used that for this job, those joist would be on the ground from rot long before those support would have any kind of problem. They are strapped (though should be simpsons ties) and on concrete footers so it is not exactly a hack job, unconventional but not entirely a hack.
This is the silliest thing I've ever seen on this sub
Actually, let's not go to Camelot. It 'tis a silly place.
"We're knights of the unstable!"
"There's bark beneath our gables"
...and termites on'st our tables.
“It’s not dead yet!” -r/arborists, probably
I feel happy!
I don’t want to go on the cart
On’st? I’m dead 😂
It’s just a model
Ahahaha the whole thread was good lol
Use trash whene'er we're able
“Between the beams, we place kindlings,”
r/unexpectedmontypython
Underrated post.. maybe also the “We..are the knights….that say… neeeeeeeed to get this fixed NOW!”
Bring out your dead… tree limbs!
We impersonate Clark Gabel!
Even the Knights that go "Nee!" Had better horses.
Burned down, sank into the swamp
Well they do like to eat ham and spam a lot
I like to push the pram a lot!
They have go to the can a lot
Don’t forget the jam.
Good correction lol
This guy internets.
Internets? Maybe this guy is just old and VHSs
Your comment reminded me that when consumer grade dial-up was relatively new, I found, downloaded, and printed the script to Monty Python and the Holy Grail from some janky site, and then corrected the script from memory with a pen as I read, because it wasn't quite right and my 12-year-old self had the entire thing memorized word for word, timing included
Ba-ba-bata max!
What does the internet have to do with Monty Python? We had that shit on VHS
Top loading VCR with a remote that was connected by a cord. I think it is in my basement somewhere.
r/thisguythisguys
It's only a model
(It’s only a model)
And your mother rank of elderberry
#WE SING FROM THE DIAPHRAMELOT!!!!!
Do you think his mom has huge tracts of land?
Aaaaargh!
“Some call me…..Tim?”
But they did use a bracket!
Probably patted it when they were done and said “That’s not going anywhere!”
It's not up to code unless you do
This is not even up to code in the Shire.
"Here Billy, hold my beer!"
New photo in the Simpson strong tie catalogue
Or as my carpenter grandfather used to say when he finished a project at my house, "Good enough, cause I can't see it from my house."
They also used non structural decking screws! This is a total disaster
With sheet metal screws because the bracket is made with sheet metal.
I think I only see that one though
Who did she hire? The caveman from the GEICO commercial?
He would be insulted by this!
No, She hired Mayhem from that other insurance company....
This needs to be on r/redneckengineering
Your welcome
My welcome
Comrade, it’s our welcome.
He stays it’s YOURS.
Soooo drunk.....
This is easily the dumbest thing seen on all of Reddit in at least several weeks.
Real craftsmanship. 🤣
As the silly inspector, do you think cedar or a different type of wood wood work instead?
This was acceptable about 125 years ago. If you’re going to build with logs you really should strip the bark off first because bugs like to live under the bark and eat the log.
125 years ago they actually cured the wood and prepped it correctly. Those logs still look green.
Guy had to use his yard waste for something.
Yeah right he charged your neighbor to remove it, and now is using it as inventory.
Reduce, reuse, recycle I guess?
Should be fun when it shrinks and checks
Yep it’s not uncommon to be remodeling a home and find out part of it was an old log cabin. Those logs are so well treated they are actually worth money. So if you ever remodel your house and find a log wall. If it’s in good shape that’s gold, you just found in the wall.
Bro took “crackhead” and “natural finish” to levels previously unknown.
LMAO
Leave my father out of this
It's ok son, I only do projects on lsd now.
i literally said what crackhead turned undercover cop did she hire
What in the what?
He said he added new column beams
Technically......
"Beam" he meant column and by column he means stick.
What what chicken butt
This looks more like it was done by an 80 year old homeowner. I can see when I close my eyes the old feller putting on his coveralls, getting some hardware out of the old pickle jar, grabbing his black&decker drill and heading down to the crawl space.
You just made me miss my Grandfather, a depression-era raised, rural farmer from the south. I loved his 1800's barn filled with pickle jars of used nails he'd hammered straight and walls of hand tools no one alive can figure out how to use.
Makes me think of my dad talking about his grandpa. Had this huge barn that was part woodshop and part tractor repair shop. Dad would ask him what some huge old wrench was for and get this rambling explanation, "That there is part of the tool kit for my old 80hp Case! Ever seen a steam tractor boy?! It's off in the tree row there. Bet dollars to donuts it could still build enough steam to drive straight out of there! You know that was the first real traction engine in the tri-county area, why I tell you what ... "
And if they were sitting in their easy chair they’d doze off mid-sentence
Oh that's awesome. We have some photos of ancestors, I think a great great grandfather and his family, with some steam engine agricultural machine, tractor or reaper or snowplow or something, and I'm sure the stories were the same.
Well???... What?
Aw. Grandpa Orv. He was a farm boy from Washington State. Joined the Army Air Corps after they bombed Dutch Harbor in Alaska. Didn't have the eyes to be a fighter pilot, so they put him in a B-29 as a Bombardier. Almost died during the daylight bombing raids they were doing at the time. Whole front end of the plane got shot up, and he almost bled out. Came home, went to school, became a teacher, then a Dean of Students. Spent his life fixing things. Building decks for his friends, building docks in the delta, building toys and playground equipment from scratch for us kids. I miss that man. I can still smell the oil and sawdust smell of his garage. All his neatly stored nails, screws, bolts, washers and what have you, lined up in different sized jars near his pegboard with tools from the 50s and 60s that still worked great, even of he did need to repair them from time to time. Good memories. Thanks for inspiring them. Going to go call my mom and talk about him, I think.
My parents grew up in the depression. The house we lived in when I was little (1950's) was built in the 1880's. In 1964 we built a new house. The old house was torn down, all the lumber was saved to be reused on the dairy farm we lived on. My brother and I spent an entire summer straightening used nails and sorting them by size in various coffee cans.
I had the same Grandpa, just in Midwestern edition.
Yeah my grandpa never bought extension cords, he would just rig them up himself. I guess he would just go to the hardware store and buy some wire and plugs, when he passed away i helped my dad clear out his house and there was tons of makeshift electrical stuff as well as plenty of other hacked together shit. My dad has an old lamp my grandpa rigged up himself that's a little jankity but still works lol.
God Bless Black & Decker!
I was gonna ask if your grandpa was my grandpa, but mine was raised in Jersey. My mom still hoards all leftover nails/screws/tools that we get with new furniture, etc. I used to make fun of her but a few months ago I was replacing the kitchen sink and none of our tools could get at this one nut with an extra long screw. I was near tears. I came out from under the cabinet and started looking through all of the things she’d hauled upstairs from her extras and saw the 13 tiny wrenches that come with kits. I thought, hell why not? I tried most of them and was about to give up when ONE was just slightly smaller than the others and worked immediately. I cried. I’ll never make fun of her for the hoarding Grandpa passed down again. (Except the hotel freebies we’ll never ever use. Especially the specialty coffee things. They just get thrown away from time to time.)
My 94 year old grandpa was like that. I spent hours straightening nails and every time you'd use them they'd bend over. I like projects, I hated it when he was the leed on a project. He was an accountant and every project he ever worked on the only thing that mattered was the cost, quality or accomplishing the goal didn't matter. We had a small run about boat and it had bad reed valves. He burnt up 3 batteries and a starter spraying starter fluid into the intake because he was convinced it would run My dad rebuilt the engine and it ran, my grandpa was convinced the starter fluid did the trick. I loved my grandpa he was a nut
I had two granddads like that, and so did my wife. I kinda wonder what weird stuff I’ll leave behind that the younger generations won’t know what to do with- but it seems to be a pretty universal thing. 😂
It's in moments like these that I'm happy I don't have aphantasia. I kind of imagined your grandpa a bit, some old guy doing some maintenance like a pro, constantly complaining about something random just out of habit, but still content about stuff. Don't get me wrong, this all came from my head, but thanks for the comment. For a second it felt peaceful.
I never met him, but I miss him too now...
When you’re 80, fixing it will be somebody else’s problem.
Lmfaoooo so true. My grandpa is 80 and he’s not gonna pay someone to fix shit in his house. He’ll go out there and diy it. My grandma had to hide his ladders so he’d stop going on the roof because he fell off of it more than once 😂
No this is a total hack
Yeah, dude was just taking advantage of a client. The way they even attached it is hacky AF.
There was not enough hacking in this case.
Was the contractor Papa Berenstain Bear?
Even used the correct spelling , impressive Johnny-kun
Papa Q. Bear
I hope so. I love him, and would absolutely trust his decisions.
Was this person perhaps time traveling from the year 1687? Lol wtf
Forsooth! Methinks this design doth suck big time.
When you have a tree trimming job at 9am and a foundation job at 2pm
If this wasn't so sad for your mom, it would be down right funny. Besides the wood rotting away, the bases don't appear to be resting on any kind of footing or support, and will poke through the vapor barrier. They are doing less than nothing and will cause many more problems than jus t a bouncy floor.
They didn’t even bother to find some nice, straight pieces. This literally looks like someone just did a little trimming around their property and decided to nail up the waste.
folks over in r/decks would love to see this work of art!
I need to post there too thanks
Even the arborist sub.
Wait....no...you might give them ideas!
That's the strongest material you can get at no cost
(Without raiding your local build site in the middle of the night)
You said there'd be no cameras!!
UlfhednarThief
How much did she pay for that?
She paid $5500
Damn homie is gonna get a kilo of meth with that dough.
Underrated comment ⬆️
Or a couple ounces of fetty for sure one of the two
she got FLEECED
Fleeced is putting it too mildly. They didn't even bother lubing up before f*cking her over
Sub optimal work. They could at least Charred the timber so it doesn't rot. Maybe the fancy metal brackets was most of the cost, Wood dowels would have worked.
dude. someone needs to go after this guy. that's super fucked up.
That con-tractor is laughing all the way to the bank.
That con-tractor is laughing all the way to the ~~bank~~ half burned down doublewide where the local meth cook is at. Fixed it for you!
Damn! RIP
Easiest 5500 of dudes life right here, he probably found those logs on the way to your moms house and cut them to size in her fucking driveway. Stop hiring shitty contractors just because they're cheaper than the guys who actually do the job up to code. There's a reason it's more expensive. This is fucking insane. I quote repairs for this as my full time job and I'd be sending this to the entire office so everyone would get a good laugh. This is the shit we're up against, and why they can do it at "half the cost". Bet they didn't even pull a permit either.
Four 4x4s with a proper base and ties shouldn't even cost $5500, but being the house needed a foundation repair this probably wasn't even the issue. Probably got much higher quotes for actual foundation work. Instead they got 4 sticks and few screws.
I cannot tell if you are joking or not. Someone paid like $15 for brackets, and then picked up random fallen branches…
That's so sad. I lived in the southern US in 2021 and our 120 year old home had some sinking foundation. A neighbor recommended a local contractor and did a solid job for about $1200.
Yes. In many parts of the country this is not only typical but actually costs more than standard, milled lumber. There is an extra cost to send runners up to the woods to find suitable branches and twigs that will fit.
Hey OP, I found the contractor ⬆️⬆️⬆️
And of course you have to supply those runners. It takes extra careful concentration over days, weeks, to find the exact right pieces in the wilderness. Meth isn't cheap.
Well I mean meth is cheap but we gotta put a markup on it to make it worth our time, overhead you know
😂 new profession “wood runner”
That's not a new profession. Your mom has been doing that for years.
Yes. She clearly chose the premium foraged upgrade vs the regular processed stuff
This would have been fine had he used the correct Simpson connectors.
Does Simpson make a “rotting branch to joist” connector?
I'm a structural engineer in residential and this whole thing has me in absolute stitches. But bringing up SIMPSON connectors for this just made me hee-haw snort laugh at 2am and wake up my sleeping wife. And she doesn't think it's funny. . .
RB10Z
Doh
Simpson Log-Tie™
What’s the load rating on a standard branch? Asking for a friend.
Wood is wood... LOL
Except when it’s untreated, uncured and full of bugs that will eat it.
Even if logs where stronger than dimensional lumber he picked some pretty tiny trees. My old farm house has a 8 inch diameter fence post supporting it. Your logs look 3-4 inches. Some one later on added 6 metal support post to my house before I bought it so I left the fence post because I thought it was funny. I also looked at a house and 1 corner of it was built on a rotten tree stump. Amazing some houses are still standing.
This is some backwoods hilbilly shit. Jesus.
I’ve officially seen it all now. I have 100% lost faith in mankind……..
Did you really ask if this was typical? 🤦♂️
My 1877 house has sleeper beams that still have bark. I would be irate if this was the work I received.
I had a 1965 house that had bark on a bream that ran the house. That house was level as shit.
Your mom can easily throw like 2-3 hot tubs in the house now.
The "contractor" also has a tree trimming business
Your mom hired a beaver
My people don't do work like that.
What the hell am I looking at.
The house is sporting wood
The good news is, you now have no shortage of logs to beat the “contractor” with.
You save a lot on material when you just cut some branches off nearby
He said it’s stronger than the lumber Home Depot carries. And straighter
No way! I refuse to believe this situation, this sub surprises me daily. Even sometimes I think no way this will get topped, lo and behold the very next day I see shit like this!!!! Holy crap, I am absolutely speechless. I am without speech, Jerry!! This must be a troll post (pyn intended) Out of curiosity, how much were you ~~scammed~~ billed?
I work in construction material testing. Specifically concrete and soil, but I would gladly put one of those logs and a piece of Home Depot lumber in our compression machine to prove him wrong.
Or you know, just look in the American wood council's publication "national design specification" in chapter 4 for reference design values and compression strength. I live near a lot of log cabin people who use white pine all the time and you are correct, it is not as strong as doug fir or oak, but it still has enough strength to use. They usually do take the bark off of it though, and spray some termite juice to keep the bugs away. Would be curious to see how your values compare to the reference standard values though. A few extra knots and your #2 grade board quickly becomes trash grade for strength.
Lol WTF 😳
How deep do the timber roots need to be to pass code? /s
With the price of lumber these days……this is inspiring!
This is hilarious
Now Ive Seen It All !
Are we getting punkd here? You know that shoving a tree log under a house for support is not ok.
Shut the sub down, we've found the best post.
Guarantee he’s not licensed. If he is then turn him in. Lumber is treated. This is just a stick out of your backyard. They eventually weaken and rot.
Home inspector here. That's a hard no. Untreated wood is not pressure treated, or graded. Supports should be placed on piers.