So I’m watching This Old House. It looked pretty new but I apologize for not knowing the exact episode. And I only caught it half-way through–but that didn’t diminish what a good reminder the show provided me, notably (1) that it is surprisingly easy to build stuff all-the-way-wrong and still have it stand up longer than it should and (2) what an unqualified tragedy-in-waiting some structures actually are. Here’s what I mean…
Norm, Tom, and Kevin were demolishing a two-story porch set on the back of a house. They of course started at the top and stripped down. On the upper deck framing it became clear as they exposed armies of carpenter ants and CDX plywood (the ply- was just this side of bark mulch) that the porch was not built properly in the first place. It was hard to tell from TV but the lumber looked like SPF (not suitable for to-the-weather framing) and that water could pool in places hastening its demise. Yet, there it was.
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