3 ms·

I live in an old house, and routinely discover ugly hacks that were done by the previous owner, presumably due to laziness, cost or just lack of skill. For exam

I live in an old house, and routinely discover ugly hacks that were done by the previous owner, presumably due to laziness, cost or just lack of skill. For example, they buried tons of stuff (toys, furniture, water heater etc) in the backyard and built a terrace on top of the pile to cover it up, apparently because they were too lazy to take it to the dump. The terrace decayed, so I had to tear it down, but in doing so I had to clean up their mess so I could actually use the garden. I'm not annoyed at the planks for decaying, as that is to be expected, just like you are expected to e.g. keep up with third party dependencies that you have chosen to include. Discovering a mess like the one I found in my garden, however, evoked the same feelings in me as when I look at a badly written code base and just wonder how anyone could ship something of such low quality to paying customers. I guess my point is that there is a difference between things sucking because of the laws of nature, and things sucking because of incompetence, laziness or indifference.

swirepe 6y ago
To be fair, the previous person didn't know you were going to try to plant vegetables in their landfill.
- tetris11 6y ago
  But those same owners failed to mention the landfill during the handover
  - titzer 6y ago
    Not to mention, it was almost certainly illegal.
    - kordlessagain 6y ago
      Out of sight, out of mind!
- scrapgardener 6y ago
  to be fair ulrikrasmussen didn't know the previous owner was trying to plant scrap trees
jrumbut 6y ago
A similar thing happened at a relatives' house, a long disused storage space under a deck needed to be cleaned and whatever natural forces were at work had accumulated enough new dirt to actually bury items stored under there (a similar array of items, since no one had played with the children's stuff and a few old chairs and such had been thrown there). It's a lot of work to dig a hole large enough for a water heater, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened (I probably would have also checked inside the water heater since if you wanted to bury something and keep it dry one might consider a water heater tank as a possible container, not sure it actually works but it's a natural idea).

swirepe 6y ago

To be fair, the previous person didn't know you were going to try to plant vegetables in their landfill.

tetris11 6y ago
But those same owners failed to mention the landfill during the handover
- titzer 6y ago
  Not to mention, it was almost certainly illegal.
  - kordlessagain 6y ago
    Out of sight, out of mind!
scrapgardener 6y ago
to be fair ulrikrasmussen didn't know the previous owner was trying to plant scrap trees

jrumbut 6y ago

A similar thing happened at a relatives' house, a long disused storage space under a deck needed to be cleaned and whatever natural forces were at work had accumulated enough new dirt to actually bury items stored under there (a similar array of items, since no one had played with the children's stuff and a few old chairs and such had been thrown there). It's a lot of work to dig a hole large enough for a water heater, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened (I probably would have also checked inside the water heater since if you wanted to bury something and keep it dry one might consider a water heater tank as a possible container, not sure it actually works but it's a natural idea).