I-I hope no one didn’t use the toilet before y’all realized the pipes froze.
its been very cold here but also very dry. My hands are all chappy and I keep needing to put lotion on them. Lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s but it’s sunny! Anyway, I’m wearing three sweaters, leggings with leg warmers and a big scarf indoors because I’m cold!!! At least cuddling my doggo at night is nice :3
Well, guess how I found out. 
Oh dear. I am so sorry. I worked somewhere once were the toilet nearest the outer wall literally froze over. I’m from the deep south. I don’t understand this “winter” thing people speak off.
Currently were are living in the first “modern” place in over 10 years. It was built in the late 1980’s - with insulation and all plumbing on the interior walls between the apartments. Plus, we are on the third floor, so we are leeching off everyone else’s heat. It is glorious! Morning temps here have been in the low teens - normal is upper 30’s and 40’s. But, no ruptured pipes! No drafts you could fly a kite in. Electric bills under $300. Yeah, Historic charm is nice and all… But I like not having to fight to get the room over 50 degrees.
Yes, I love my century-old house and its charm… it took us years to properly Winterize it but this cold snap outdid our efforts. Luckily for us, night temperatures will rebound into the mid-20s in the next few days so hopefully we’ll dodge the bullet.
We’ve been in rentals with much delayed maintanence. I would love to own and fix up a historic property. Where I live has neighborhoods with old craftsmen and queen ann cottages, even some Sears kit houses. They are so pricey now, unfortunately. Our budget will only stretch to a tent in a park.
I hear you. This one was in our price range because it needed maintenance, it also was posted for sale at a less fortuitous time of year to sell a house (November) and that worked in our favor, too.
Honestly though, for all we saved in the initial price, we’ve made up for it with waterproofing the basement, replacing the roof, replacing the century-old single-pane windows… the works.
So there’s charm but the responsibility is real.
That said, I had both sets of parents (bio and in-law) downsize into new construction in the last 5 years and be screwed over by cheap building materials and rushed labor. One set had to replace their leaky roof in the first two years and the other’s wooden floor was installed so poorly that it bubbled and buckled. You really have to pick your decade and builders carefully these days.
And for all the angst our old house put is through, the damn thing doesn’t budge in windstorms. It has those old, solid oak timbers that old wooden ships used to repel iron cannonballs with like Superman repelling bullets. I’ve never lived in a house that refuses to shift or creak no matter how the wind blows, so that’s been a huge plus.
if all goes well we’ll be doing a brand new build this year. We’re checking out the options right now. Very exciting
My husband is watching more and more “off the grid” youtube and talking about living out in the middle of nowhere. I’m actually okay being “nowhere adjacent”… but I at least want running water and flush toilet. It would also be nice to be somewhere that is nearish to a grocery store.
I just really want to live some place else and have my own home with some land.
I’ve looked at some acreage and while it’s a nice thought- I don’t have nearly the patience or desire to try off the grid stuff. Plus I’m a city boy. I like my city things.
I hear that. I grew up in the country and miss wandering around in the woods, but I don’t miss having to drive for even the littlest things. We’re down to the one-car lifestyle and walking for all our errands except groceries and we have 5 breweries and 4 bars all within 20-minute walking distance to each other.
That said, I really do miss just chilling in the woods with the peace and quiet though. If only you could have both.
I know I’m going to get smacked upside the head for this, but why do Americans live in houses made out of foam and plywood?
Almost everything I see online is foam panels and treated pine, stuff that wouldn’t even pass muster as a shed down here in Oz. From online alone, it would seem every house built in the past 30 years is some foam abomination that looks like it should only cost 50k but ends up costing half a million or more.
Can people who are actually there and not part of the online outrage-engagement cycle explain this aversion to building a real house out of bricks, mortar and plastic? It just seems so absurd to me to pay so much money for products that wouldn’t cost more than a few thousand dollars, for a product that wouldn’t even meet minimum build standards for a shed in my country.
Tradition.
You have to understand for a lot of the country’s history, one thing we had in abundance was dense woodland. Timber was the cheapest building material available.
Two centuries later, Timber is no longer the cheapest building material available but it’s been what homes have been built out of for two hundred years. It’s not even a conscious decision on our part really, that’s just how stuff is built. Even now that the forests are gone and we have ample evidence it’s not a conductive building material in a land of elements gone mad. That’s just what you use.
I don’t see this at all. There are some poor houses though.
I live in the PNW, which in the ye olde timey days was dominated by the timber industry. We still have a timber industry but it’s definitely not like it used to be. In any case, older homes here, like the one we bought, the sidings, interiors and roof are typically made of pretty high quality wood because it used to exist and was also affordable.
For example, we have cedar shingles. It used to actually be really common and cheap because we just had a lot of great wood supply out here. Now they are considered “exotic” and more much expensive because you just can’t get the quality cedar at a reasonable price point anymore. We have about another 10 years on our roof and when it’s time to replace it, we plan to switch to something more standard and also cheaper.
Our siding is all solid thick wood made from single trees in big long strips. You really can’t find that anymore unless you pay top dollar. There’s actually salvage businesses that exist out there that will dredge up logs and other things that used to hold up docks and w/e because even if they sat in the water for 20-30 years, they’re still better quality than the trees that are being cut down now.
Newer builds are definitely made from cheaper material. We got really lucky with the house we bought. We did have to move further out from the city/metro area.
Yah, whenever off grid stuff comes up, I’m like bruh I need plumbing or a really expensive incinerator toilet.
Also sometimes with those off grid folks, you kinda read between the lines. Do they ever show you about what they have to do with their black water and things like that? I seen a few on TikTok that are pretty open about the sucky side of things.
On the flip side, my friend has a friend that lives on a ranch in the middle of nowhere Montana. The ranch next to them is owned by some big head hancho guy from Time Warner so they got fiber internet in nowhere Montana. Plus plumbing haha. They say, basically once a month you plan a weekend to drive into “town” and collect all your mail, prescriptions, groceries and w/e. Now that is something I could consider 
Treated pine is commonly used in Australia for house framing as well though. TBH, there really isn’t much difference in the spectrum of building practices for the two countries.
Yes, but where are the bricks? The sturdiness? Every structure/build video I’ve seen is wooden supports and foam panels with stucco outsides.
I could punch through that. A year of radiotherapy and cancer medications, and I could walk through that nonsense.
Why don’t you use bricks and cement.
We literally do? I’m literally sitting in a brick house right now??
That is what I was asking!
Every time I see one of these build videos pop up onto my feed, it is a poorly-assembled wooden frame with foam panels and stucco. It can’t possibly be everywhere, it has to be some sort of kit-build or regional thing.
So fun fact - at the turn of the 20th century, you literally could order a kit built house from Sears.
When people started settling the US, they had an abundance of wood to build with.
Entire industries were built around it, craftsmen, tools, hardware specifically for wooden structures, etc etc.
It’s not anything we’ve ever had to or needed to do differently.