Today’s SPOTD award goes to Ted Tremayne - the original owner-builder of our house in the 1950s. Based on the property title we received when we bought the house, Ted’s occupation was as an “engineer”. There are many sorts of engineers though, including civil, chemical, railway, and completely freakin’ insane [*]. Ted was the latter.

There have been more than a few times when we’ve gone to do something with the house in the last couple of years but been brought up rather suddenly by something Ted’s done. Installing the insulation batts in the ceiling, for example, would have been much easier if Ted had not built an attic up there first. Why he chose to not insulate the roof space in its entirety (about 1/10th of the roof space was insulated), we’re not sure. The main outcome of that task was that we learned to replace excessive profanity with the phrase “Good Old Ted!”. Smack your head into a jutting out board? Sliced your hand open on one of the eighteen odd-sized nails Ted used to build a fake wall? Don’t drop the F-bomb. Just grimace, count to 5 and say “Good Old Ted!”.

When we were pricing the kitchen renovation, we thought we could save some money on the rip-out and removal of the existing kitchen. However, when the price quoted was only $300 for what we could see was possibly a tricky task, we decided to let other people do the work for us. After watching the kitchen-removers rip into the kitchen for the first ten minutes, I was beginning to think we could have saved the money and done the work ourselves. But then it was time to say, like so many other occasions, “Good Old Ted!”.

Presumably saving himself a few dollars, or else as an expression of his apparent hatred for all things pre-fabricated, Ted had built his own firewall in the kitchen. Obviously a good idea if you want to stop the heat of an oven moving into the next room. But not a good idea if you build it out of solid concrete almost two inches thick… Yes, Ted managed to put together a rather spectacular structure of cabinetry and concrete that possibly may have - if we’d left it untouched - outlasted the pyramids of Egypt. The two blokes struggled with sledgehammers, crowbars and power saws to eventually destroy the wall, taking almost double the estimated 2-hours. If Di and I had tackled the job using the tools we own, we’d still be at it now.

There are also hints that we might be discovering one or two other surprises in the near future so it’s quite possible Ted will be accepting a couple of SPOTD awards.

[*] = Just before all my engineer friends reading this feel too smug, I’ll just point out that the categories are not mutually exclusive…*grin*

Categories: SPOTD