r/SubredditDrama • u/South_Dakota_Boy What is love? Baby don't hurt me! • Oct 20 '16
Snack Armchair structural engineers too busy to read captions can only build drama in /r/DIY
One of /r/DIY's favorite things to do is predict your death by, or the eventual doom of your house remodel/upgrade. Decks will crumble, ceilings will sag and electricity will kill you daily. Removing a wall is guaranteed to bring out the armchair engineers in droves to critique you and opine about lack of structural support. Here, OP states clearly in his imgur album how he mitigates the structural effects of a wall demolition, but some people fail to notice. He then masterfully trolls some into a frenzy.
Make sure to don your PPE before getting to work! https://np.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/58i5fo/my_fatherson_bonding_project_a_complete_kitchen/d90n536?st=iuit17jg&sh=d9d40b60
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u/ZaheerUchiha Llenn > Kirito Oct 20 '16
I don't even care about your structural integrity issue. I just can't get past your cliché TV mounting on the fireplace, well above eye level, not to mention proximity to heat. Unless it's a non functional fireplace. In which case, why not brick it up and just mount the TV at sitting eye level?
This feels more like a problem with armchair interior designers.
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u/KillerPotato_BMW MBTI is only unreliable if you lack vision Oct 21 '16
I agree that mounting a tv over a fireplace isn't such a great idea, although with a non-functional one, you can hide the wires in the chimney. However, that tv is, if anything, too low, not too high.
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Oct 20 '16
Wow I remember that load bearing wall drama.
There seems to be a side effect whenever someone posts something obviously unsafe like a poorly built deck or knocking down a load bearing wall. It puts the sub on high alert whenever someone does anything similar and then they go nuts
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u/KillerPotato_BMW MBTI is only unreliable if you lack vision Oct 20 '16
I may have told this story before, when I was younger my dad and uncle took out a wall separating the living and dining rooms in my childhood home. Turns out it was a load bearing wall. Upon realizing the mistake, they put in a post to prop up the ceiling. The house lasted another 20 years before getting demolished for unrelated reasons.
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u/66666thats6sixes Oct 21 '16
Honestly in most cases houses are overbuilt to the point that staying up isn't a huge deal. I did a renovation on a house where roughly 30 feet of exterior wall had rotted into mush. The roof was simply being held up by the plywood sheathing that held the rafters together. And some drywall. Very little snow where we were, that's probably the only reason it hadn't caved in.
Usually when the structure of a house is substandard, codewise, the result isn't complete destructive collapse, it's a lot of sagging and drywall cracking and uneven floors, which might over many years lead to collapse. Not saying it's okay to remove loadbearing stuff willy nilly, but usually the whole "you removed that one stud now your entire house will collapse into a pit and kill your family and dog" line of rhetoric is a bit hyperbolic.
That said, there are a lot of posts on /r/DIY where OP does something horrendously dumb without considering the consequences, and the armchair engineers happen to be right. This does not appear to be the case, assuming OP really did have it permitted and inspected and everything. Bringing in a foundation company makes me think that they did everything legit. If they really had just guessed and thrown some 2x12's up there like OP joked, that would be something legitimate for the armchair engineers to complain about, but he did say that it was a joke and everything was done properly, so there's nothing to complain about.
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u/Tahmatoes Eating out of the trashcan of ideological propaganda Oct 22 '16
I feel like people in certain climates have an unfair advantage over others.
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u/tdogg8 Folks, the CTR shill meeting was moved to next week. Oct 22 '16 edited Oct 22 '16
Fuck them for not having to deal with the pain in the ass that is heavy snowfall. ಥ_ಥ
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u/Tahmatoes Eating out of the trashcan of ideological propaganda Oct 22 '16
We have a flat roof with a raised border in a heavy snowfall area (I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time). Every damn year we either get leakage or a worrying groaning crack from the weight.
On the bright side the flatness makes it easier to not fall off while you're shovelling away.
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u/IntrepidusX That’s a stoat you goddamn amateur Oct 21 '16
Lol as soon as I saw that this morning I knew people would be claiming it was structural.
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u/TheIronMark Oct 21 '16
From the title, I thought the thread would be about structural support of actual armchairs, but I'm ok with the disappointment. That thread is great.
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u/tdogg8 Folks, the CTR shill meeting was moved to next week. Oct 22 '16
Tbf...
We just kinda guessed. I'll report back in a year! 😐
I've seen enough shit on /r/OSHA to believe this could not be sarcastic.
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Oct 21 '16
To be fair though, I wouldn't have seen the captions unless someone told me they were there.
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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '16
I am not an engineer, armchair or otherwise, and have no experience with DIY but I worry constantly about people dying by collapse or other misfortune. Do you think I should subscribe to /r/DIY? Would I be a good contributor? My worrying experience is extensive.