Masons are not neccessarily carpenters!
When myself and the not-quite-mrs Lurkaloid bought this house we knew we'd have the odd bit of work to do.. like replacing both doors, all the windows and getting rid of the horrible 70's orange shag carpet *no not that kind of shag*.

The chap that owned the house before was a brick mason and as far as that goes he did pretty good work. The fireplace is impressive, as is the brick bar downstairs (in the basement/cellar). What he wasn't good at was carpentry and framing.

We decided to re-do the finished part of the basement as well as the kitchen over it. When we opened up the floor we found that the sheetrock/plasterboard of the basement ceiling was held up by pieces of wood that looked remarkably like the pickets from a white picket fence. Upon mentioning our discovery to a neighbor they said "Oh yes, they did have a picket fence a while back, I wondered what happened to it".

I found all sorts of scary electrical connections and boxes buried in the walls. After a few of those I made it a priority to re-wire the entire house which is complete and no outages since.

Apart from that the house was pretty sound so I shouldn't complain. My father in law is a general contractor so any jobs I can't do myself we make a quick phone call and pops comes over and sorts it out.

L
(Lurkaloid awarded wanking black belt on, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 2:51, Reply)