mostlygray posted:

I just used a lamp by my bed at home but his way was more fun. Apropos of nothing, when I slept over at his house, he'd wake me up with ammonia held under my nose. Just about the worst way to wake up.

Platystemon posted:

My blade has been awfully lonely...

Bad Munki posted:

I want to believe it's like one of those drinking birds where it keeps tipping down to touch the water then back up again, repeatedly.

Rob 2.0 posted:

Around 6 feet. Frequently wears a Giants / Bears baseball cap. Thin, scruffy. Eyes wander around frequently. Kinda looks like Scumbag Steve. Officially banned through consensus — the whole deal. Repeatedly shows up at the space anyway. Kick him out on sight.

Synthbuttrange posted:

Is there any way you can convert meth BACK into allergy medicine?

quote:

While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties. Such side effects may include insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations. Other side effects may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance.

Platystemon posted:

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

What happened, did they pile so many packs of shingles onto the roof that they exceeded its load limit? I guess that counts as "crappy construction".

canyoneer posted:

Hahaha, per the youtube comments they used 600 blocks.
A 26 pack is $154. You're looking at $3,600 or more in construction legos there.

Even slumlords subdividing places illegally don't spend that much, and their results actually look better.

The Glumslinger posted:

Yes, but I'm sure you could charge tech bros extra for this

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

What happened, did they pile so many packs of shingles onto the roof that they exceeded its load limit? I guess that counts as "crappy construction".

Platystemon posted:

Blindeye posted:

Roof live loads are relatively small compared to floor loads unless it is a high snowfall area. You should never store things on a roof without checking its design limits. I once did an inspection for a contractor's project to add a floor with a flat roof to a brownstone. Not only did he store cement bags and equipment on the roof, he put it all in the center, causing the most stress, and sagging the roof. Rainwater had already started ponding in this low spot and we had to more or less clear out the building because the roof joists were overstressed.

gentle pete posted:

The latest McMansion Hell is a real doozy

gentle pete posted:

The latest McMansion Hell is a real doozy

gentle pete posted:

Baronjutter posted:

I've never really seen houses like on her blog. they seem like weird alien TV sets. I like how she got into kit houses and suddenly it was like "hey, here's all the houses that look like where I live!" I don't know how many are actual kit houses or just houses built in the same general turn of the century to pre-war times. A cool construction history thing I learned though is that a ton of the houses of a certain vintage (I think 30's) where I live are all made out of old box-cars. Around that time the railway was switching from wood to metal cars, or just had a ton of wood cars they retired. So people bought up this wood for cheap and used it for houses, and when you are doing a reno you'll clearly see old box-car ads and CPR logo's and reporting marks and stuff on the boards.

Tunicate posted:

I've heard that there are a ton of converted boxcar buildings in Panama, because there used to be a tax loophole where buying a single boxcar made you a railroad or some poo poo, so people would do that and not give a gently caress about what happened with it. End result, thanks to the vagrancies of international economics? Tons of boxcars migrating down to Panama with owners who didn't care what happened to them.

quote:

So, I'm in a little bit of a pickle right now. So, the backstory is my parents bought a house back in 2012. There was (and still is) an HoA. We knew there was. But my parents decided to not pay the monthly dues because the escrow company never gave us or our realtor any information about the HoA. My parents believed that because of this, anything regarding the Home Owner's Association didn't apply to them.

My father in particular took advantage of this. In September of 2012 (right around the time we bought the house), he added an extension to the fence that was already there. The Secretary(?) of the HoA came to us and told us that we needed permission to build the fence from the Association. After talking, he went right back to building the fence. This was just the beginning. Over the next few years, he would continue adding whatever he loving pleased to the house:

-He made a lovely extension to the house. You know that small concrete staircase that you place your shoes on, and it leads to the backyard? He put a loving wall on top of that with glass in it. Now it's like a three-foot wide "room" that's useless because it's three loving feet wide. And there's a door he added to the end of it, that doesn't even have a lock on it because the frame is just a bunch of 2x4s nailed together.

-Added another door in front of the original door (same deal as the backyard door -- no lock on it)

-He painted a part of the front of the house a different color. Not even a whole side. It's so loving ugly to look at from the front, especially with the door

-He added some thick, six foot pieces of wood onto our lawn, where it meets the sidewalk. Hammered it down in place with some stakes. He claimed that "it's so the loving little pirate motherfuckers don't ride their bikes on our lawn and destroy it". When I removed them, the grass was destroyed anyways and left a bunch of dirt and mud underneath.

-Part of the fence that he made can be removable, sort of like a sliding gate. This was so that he could put two of our cars and a trailer in the backyard. The result is a lovely-looking fence.

-etc.

My mother told him time and time again not to do any of this poo poo. But since she sleeps during the day, he went behind her back and did all of this. Cost her thousands of dollars. Of course, the HoA got pissed the gently caress off. We were fined $20,000. Lean(?) on the house. My mother went to court because the HoA wanted to foreclose the house. The order was vacated, but we still had to pay $20,000. Apparently, it was a garnishment. We're not 100% that it is a garnishment, all we know is that the HoA took all of my mother's money from her checking account ($6,000). They haven't taken any money from her savings account (which is about $10,000).

The big question that we're wondering is if she withdraws money from her savings account to her checking account (to pay the bills), will it automatically be taken away by the HoA because of the apparent garnishment? If so, then what are my options? What are the pros and cons of each option?

I have my own bank account, could she transfer her money from her savings into my account to pay the bills? Without getting taken away by the HoA first?

I'm a senior in highschool. I work at a fast food place during the weekends making $11 an hour. I have four college-level classes, so I can't work any more days unless I drop out. My mother works 80 hours a week, making about $16 an hour. My father is out of the question. He's homeless in another state. Long story. My brother is 16. He doesn't work. We have talked to our attorney about what happened, but he hasn't called us back yet. We have no idea what to do, which is why I'm asking for advice here. There's a lean(spelling) on the house. I have $600 in my bank account. My mother mentioned taking out money from her 401k and paying the debt directly.

I'm on my knees here, Reddit. I'd suck God's dick right now if he was in front me. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

tl;dr: $20,000 debt to HoA. They took all of my mother's money from her checking account, but not from her savings($10000). Will they take her money if she transfers her money to her checking account? If so, what are my options to help her pay the bills? What are the pros and cons of each of my options?

I'm in Washington State.

Baronjutter posted:

. God, to have the money to make such bad decisions.

Baronjutter posted:

I love hosed up old laws that end up having totally unforeseen consequences to the built form. Like wayyyy back in the day before they figured out how property taxes you'd be taxed by the number of windows you'd have facing the street, or just your street frontage, or some other arbitrary measure. So buildings of that era will try to be super narrow, or have as few individual windows facing the street or what ever weird way they taxed things. I remember on some tour I was on people pointing out in one area all the roofs were quite big and had dormers and saying it was because at that time buildings were taxed by number of floors and floor area, but attics didn't count. Attics at that exact time were defined any space above the bottom of the roof eves so they'd build these huge 2 story "attics" that were just regular floors in practice. The definition was quickly changed, but it was on the books long enough for a ton of buildings to use the loophole.

To be fair there's still weird arbitrary poo poo like that today. My friend is hoping to build a house, and she wanted to put in a little bedroom in the attic for her teenage son of have a little zone of his own. But the zoning only allows 2 stories and counts ANY habitable space as a story. So even if the building still falls within the maximum height laws and looks exactly the same on the outside, you're forbidden from using all the space inside your roof because your building would then be too many stories. BUT, if you sink the main floor down to an arbitrary point it then counts as a "basement" and isn't counted as a story and none of the square footage counts towards maximum building size. It's all still arbitrary and dumb.

NancyPants posted:

I love things like that.

In Greece, and this could be some thing that isn't really true and I'm just maligning people as tax dodgers here, property taxes are totally different if your building is under construction. So you'll see all these beautiful, otherwise finished-looking houses with random rebar sticking out of the tops for no discernable reason.

Darchangel posted:

Why in the world would you haul ALL of the roofing materials up and stack them all at the center like that? FFS, at least put them around the edges. Even I know that roofs are designed to hold up themselves, and not a lot more (at least in light snow areas.)

Ashcans posted:

That reminds me of that guy that wanted to build a huge house on his farm but didn't want to bother with any permitting, so he built it and tried to hide it under bales and tarp for long enough that it would get grandfathered in.

Zereth posted:

If I'm remembering the right story, the government then ruled that removing the hay bales counted as a big enough change that he still needed to comply with the regulations and demolished it.

Leperflesh posted:

(California)

quote:

Has anyone here installed EcoFoil / Reflectix or similar aluminum insulation? What do you think, "Scam" or effective way to keep radiant heat in in winter?

Platystemon posted:

Some small proportion of the population gets violent when woken suddenly.

It would be a shame if your friend was on the receiving end of an incident.

Baronjutter posted:

I've never really seen houses like on her blog. they seem like weird alien TV sets. I like how she got into kit houses and suddenly it was like "hey, here's all the houses that look like where I live!" I don't know how many are actual kit houses or just houses built in the same general turn of the century to pre-war times. A cool construction history thing I learned though is that a ton of the houses of a certain vintage (I think 30's) where I live are all made out of old box-cars. Around that time the railway was switching from wood to metal cars, or just had a ton of wood cars they retired. So people bought up this wood for cheap and used it for houses, and when you are doing a reno you'll clearly see old box-car ads and CPR logo's and reporting marks and stuff on the boards.

NancyPants posted:

I love things like that.

In Greece, and this could be some thing that isn't really true and I'm just maligning people as tax dodgers here, property taxes are totally different if your building is under construction. So you'll see all these beautiful, otherwise finished-looking houses with random rebar sticking out of the tops for no discernable reason.

Leperflesh posted:

It's not exactly construction but local governments gently caress this thing up (making tax rules that encourage everyone to do something weird) in exactly this way a lot. In my town, businesses pay a business tax that is based on the number of point-of-sale machines (that's the cash register). I'm sure you can instantly recognize exactly the impact this has on standing in line at local businesses when you want to buy things. Somehow this obvious consequence that literally anyone can imagine instantly as soon as they hear this, was not obvious to the city council and has been this way for at least a decade, probably a lot longer.

e. Looked it up and actually it's the state (California) that permits counties (my county) to tax POS sales machines, and bar code scanners. It's not a huge tax, something like $200 a year per machine, but I believe I have noticed a noticeable effect.

kid sinister posted:

How about crappy, dangerous maintenance?