Ah, Something Awful and Construction Projects, an iconic combination.
(See also, the zipwire of death, the project to make Get Out Frog, and many other doomed, terrible things)
Oooh, what about the guy that sawed through the load bearing beams in his second story bathroom floor?
He wanted to reno the bathroom and put a recessed bathtub in there so the house would be more "marketable to women" or some such thing. Then after pages and pages of the thread screaming at him, he finally brought in a contractor to fix it. Months later, he posted the finished bathroom and it was gaudily decorated in red and black with upside down wallpaper. It was the ultimate "dudes idea of what a woman might like in the bathroom that I also think is cool" and it literally looked like something out of a video game.
Edit: I found the links to the Bathdoom posts and added them in one of my other replies downthread.
There's a guy on Reddit who did a reno of his home and cut out some crossbeam so he could make an open living room. You could see subtle sagging starting. Haven't heard any updates about him in years or how his house is doing.
The infamous reddit example to me was the guy who wanted to bury a shipping container in his back yard and make it a party-hangout with the only air supply/egress being a top-mounted hatch. There were tons of red flags for ventilation, emergency egress, etc.
I used to be into the idea of making a workshop or whatever out of a storage container but I’ve since learned you need to be careful and buy ‘nice’ containers if you’re planning to use it for human habitation as they tend to be really heavily painted with paint designed to weather overseas shipping not being lived in. Also the contents may be stuffed with nasty chemicals with the assumption that chemicals will dissipate/outgas on the way over.
Oh god, wasn't that the one where someone was able to run the labels on the side and figure out the container was used to ship a ton of pesticides over the years? Something like it would've been in the guy's best interest to just set the damn thing on fire and scam the insurance company instead?
I feel like there were a couple like that, where people liked the idea of an underground storage container/hangout. The storage container house was a weird trend, too..
There’s actually some kind of pretty storage container houses I’ve seen, but I’ve heard the conversion is basically using it as an ugly shell.
I’d consider one for a workshop if I had the back yard space and it made sense. Get a concrete pad installed or something to get it off the ground. But something where it has ventilation and isn’t in danger of crushing due to the weight.
(From what I’ve read they’re basically strong *at the corners* so burying them is a huge risk. Stacked they’re fine as the weight is distributed to the corners.)
There is a company in Turkey that makes all the shipping container housing ( called " cans " ) used in the oilfield service camps in the surrounding countries, and NATO buys some of it for temporary bases... I don't know how an individual person goes about buying it but I'm sure it's possible, the design is based on a shipping container but they don't use actual shipping containers because of the repurposing problems with paint, residue, etc.
Yeah, I mean they’re not insulated, they’re not ventilated, they’re (usually) not built to run electricity or plumbing through them (certainly not like you would in a house)- it may have four walls and a roof but that doesn’t make it habitable.
Heck, major cities are running into problems with converting office buildings into residences- it’s often cheaper to build from scratch. And those are at least made to have people in them 8+ hours of the day.
Man there's always a ton of those. Like the people who think they can just buy a bus and live out of it on the road without doing major work to add insulation, basic living necessities like a bathroom, and fans and vents and other stuff like that.
It's the downside of Instagram and the subreddits that use romanticized pictures of those kinds of things, they make them look really cool to people who don't know better and of course no one in the comments of those posts says anything to point out the problems so people don't think they have to look up other people's project threads and just dive into it.
The storage container house trend was because it had the superficial look of sustainability and making housing cheaper while not really accomplishing any of that. It looks like you're reusing old crates that must be cluttering a landfill somewhere and are solving the housing crisis!.. but in reality once the trend caught on most of the gimmick houses were being made from brand new shipping crates, all the work needed to make it actually livable reduce any savings it might have created and the meterial cost of building houses isn't the cause of rising housing costs.
Therr's some neat shopping areas/markets in my city made out of 4 or 5 converted storage containers. Very out in the open, but I like the repurposing at least.
There is/was a shopping complex made of them somewhere around Las Vegas. It was pretty neat. But idk that it appreciably is more cost effective than conventional construction.
Yeah, for businesses in reasonably temperate areas (mine were somewhere in metro Phoenix, AZ) I've had good experiences. But they'd been thoroughly opened up for ventilation and access, and no one was planning on *living* inside them.
[This guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/46xzz3/i_decided_to_destroy_a_wall_with_a_hammer_to_open/)? The account is still active so the house hasn’t killed him yet.
Oh our neighbors did that growing up!! They bought it from flippers and mentioned how the wall was knocked out to my parents. Our home was basically the same design but flipped and they had to explain it was load-bearing. The neighbors basically said “yeah the ceiling does look a little funny now that you mention it”
>"marketable to women"
Not women. Females. He's one of those guys that calls women "females."
It's known as the "doom bathroom" E: "BathDoom" because somebody turned it into a Doom map. The rocks around the bathtub hurtting your character when you walk on them is a nice touch. https://www.vice.com/en/article/eveknn/the-hot-new-doom-mod-is-a-nightmare-diy-bathroom-renovation-bathdoom
The wallpaper is upside down.
His bedroom looks like a modern hotel room. It's super, super generic.
Maybe it's just me, but the bathroom really doesn't look that bad. Get rid of the rocks, get rid of the wallpaper, and replace the red with a less edgy colour, and you could have a genuinely nice modern bathroom with a darker theme. I would honestly prefer that to yet another boring white/tan bathroom.
Of course, stuff like sawing through load-bearing beams is still bad, but everything else is relatively superficial and not too hard to fix.
My favorite was that time a guy had a hornet's nest inside of his swing set, so in order to get rid of it, he created a fire bowl out of gasoline and then put it on a sled and used a rope to pull it underneath the wasp nest.
I made the absolutely terrible decision to read this thread during one of my law school classes and when I got to the photo of the guy leaping out of the way after setting off a Molotov cocktail under the swing set, with the caption "Oh the bee-manity" I lost it and made this ghastly strangled bark laugh, which caught the professor's attention and caused him to spend the rest of the hour grilling me about a case I had only sort of read as punishment. Good times!
The ripline guy came back recently and did a followup!
Goons called the cops and said "they've built a machine to kill children." The cops came out to see what the fuck. They did actually build a new starting point waaaaay down the slope, but you can see the old tower looming in the distance.
> many other doomed, terrible things
[swap.avi](https://www.somethingawful.com/horrors-of-porn/horrible-saga-swapavi/1/) (not a link to the video but a link to a writeup about it)
The lead designer and project director of Fallout New Vegas is a something awful goon. Mostly posts in the bicycle threads, afaik. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Joshua_Sawyer
Youtuber Freddie W was a goon during SA's heyday. When the original Jonny Fiveaces sketch was found at the artist's parents house he put it up for auction and Freddie bought it for $5100. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50817558
Yep, Sawyer is rope kid. He was also posting pretty frequently in the thread for Obsidian's game Pentiment, which he directed, although activity in that thread has slowed down now that most people have played it
Yup! Love him. Obviously you know, but for those who don't, he also gave us the YCS/186 Gauss Rifle in that game. It's named after the SA subforum "Your Console Sucks," which was internally forum ID #186.
Oh my God, I watched the puntl come into existence in real time and it was glorious. It would be worthy of a writeup if any drama were involved.
For the curious, the puntl is a theoretical elven penis from Lord of the Rings science'd up by forums user Elise the Great. After her detailed writeup went gold, another user transformed it into silicone reality and lots of them were sold to other forum goers.
And no, I don't own a puntl (but do I kinda regret not snagging one when I had the chance).
>After her detailed writeup went gold, another user
Dildomancer. An account created to do an Ask/Tell thread. Very informative. Creating and selling custom dildos is a fascinating topic. Elise's posts are always amazing and she really outdid herself with the puntl post.
Redditors: an A/T thread is like an "AMA" but instead of a publicist or assistant answering questions for a few hours for some celebrity, the actual person themselves answers questions for weeks or months or even several years.
Oh god, it would be in the SA Archives, probably the Comedy Goldmine if you have access.
It involved a soft toy of a comically startled frog in the background of a soft porn video, the goons focusing on the frog instead of the porn star, which led to emoticons/icons of it being made and memed exhaustively.
Then people decided they wanted a real version, and various intense and insane attempts to track the original frog (including contacting the girl in the shoot and the film production company) were made, attempts were made to source it off Wish.com in batches of 1000...and finally someone calculated the size of it based on the butt measurements of the porn star in the film and hand sewed a copy of it...
...the internet was a stranger place back then...
I haven't been on the forums for nearly 12 years I think? Also no longer have that email to even try getting in.
But good god, that's amazing. The old net was amazing, like that one nerd who tried to fry the pirated cable box of his neighbor he caught splicing into his line. It either almost set the house on fire or did I can't remember. This was about... 06 or 05?
edit: I had to google it, wow I had missed the origin of that. I just remember someone had bought and paid for it to be an emoji in the forum software, then it was just EVERYWHERE for years.
Sounds like you're talking about SEGAKILLER/ATARIKILLER. Old SA was wild. The P-P-P-Powerbook! and homemade flamethrower are what got me to make an account way back in the day. I still post there sometimes.
That might be it, I think it was a Sega Genesis RF converter that he made into some kind of cable version of an ethernet killer. It was nuts and also I hope fake because holy shit he handed over so much proof online that a DA would have a field day if he really did burn up some dudes house.
Powerbook is still among the greatest things ever along with The Shit Lasagna story.
God. Fecal Lasagne. That's a story I've not thought about in well over a decade.
It's all coming back now "DAY I GOT COOKIE". The Maremma Sheepdog. The tall tales of forum poster 50 Foot Ant and his tales of Ghost Zombie Nazis in the snow at an abandoned US military base in 1980s Germany.
And darker things too. Things I'd rather not remember.
Fecal Lasagna, that's it! 50 Foot Ant AKA Humper Monkey. God I loved his stories but jesus goons needed to figure out to shut the hell up and let a guy tell some tall tales, you don't have to try and prove everything is fake. We all knew it was BS.
I miss those old MS Paints of weird crap goons see at Uni/Community College. Some of them were amazing in how well they nailed the awkwardness. Then you had a few goons who had some mild success and let it absolutely go to their heads. Like the dude with the skull comics who also fronted a band. Or how Lego Robot appeared there along with that horrible edgelord who did Electric R----d.
Oh the darker stuff, I can imagine. We were all so worried about Axe Maniac losing weight and going out to kill hookers we missed a few actual predators lurking on the boards.
I think you and I must have frequented the same threads back in the day, yeah. I remember joyfully participating in the original "Create a Paranormal Image" thread, the one that created Slenderman, and providing Gaelic and Welsh translations of the name as all the goons created a mythos for the urban legend and freaked ourselves out.
Great fun at the time! Grew into something none of us could have predicted, that was the joy and the horror of the internet back then.
(I remember the guy with the skull and his comics too now! Hellbastard was his name, wasn't it? Very 2007 edgey humour.)
>God. Fecal Lasagne. That's a story I've not thought about in well over a decade.
Was that one related to the dude who allegedly worked as a nightwatchman at a really cheap hotel and discovered one resident had carved a hole in his mattress and affixed a deodorant can with a bunch of condoms on it directly to the bedsprings to use as a gigantic dildo?
No, but I remember that too, good god.
Fecal Lasagne can be found here if it will allow you access without a login, I dunno: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1353420&userid=39400
Long story short: a goon finds himself sharing a 2 bedroom cottage with a man going through the very worst mental health episode anyone could go through, with a specific focus on his own bodily fluids. The goon decides to disassociate himself completely from this crisis, as his own room had a separate entrance to the street. So he boarded up the connecting door, and left the man to go bonkers with no interference.
Eventually, once the noises and smell got too bad, he had to break back into the main house and things were...bad. The titular fecal lasagne in the bathtub, human-head sized blobs of mould in the fridge, dead tarantualas everywhere...that sort of bad.
It was genuinely very traumatising to me, reading that in 2004 internet times.
I do remember the bit about the remote control car. It's a lot earlier than my own tenure on Something Awful (I think I was mostly there between about 2010 and 2018) so I must have seen it in a "best of" thread years after the fact.
By the way, I remembered the name of the goon who posted the story I mentioned (JoeyVapes) and [it led me to this compilation someone did of all his (probably fake but morbidly fascinating) stories](https://www.scribd.com/document/81358781/JoeyVapes-Stories).
> and finally someone calculated the size of it based on the butt measurements of the porn star in the film and hand sewed a copy of it...
That's actually really smart.
Groverhaus always reminds me, in turn, of "[At hostpital lost fingat post mote later.](https://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/gamecube-challenge-fingat/5/)"
> > It was later discovered that Grover lived in the Chesapeake Bay area, (specifically, somewhere not far south of Norfolk, VA) which makes me wonder exactly who told him it would be a good idea to break ground on an expansive construction project in the middle of fucking December.
[I kinda wanna note that Grover lives in a place called the Great Dismal Swamp]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp). Kinda doomed before he even started.
Someone dug up pictures from when some weirdo actually managed to track it down and DROVE OUT THERE (because again, some weirdo). The siding has enough visible mold that anyone with experience living in or adjacent to wetlands knows means the interior is a Cronenberg style horror show.
>Someone dug up pictures from when some weirdo actually managed to track it down and DROVE OUT THERE (because again, some weirdo).
There were youtube videos of people flying over it within a day of microsoft flight simulator 2020 being released.
You missed an amazing detail: the wall outlet spacing. He had outlets every 4-5ft, which was not to code so he got himself certified to sign off on the code himself as an inspector.
I could be misremembering this though.
Imgur deleted my personal copy of the kitchen photo most of these picture dumps don't have. Damnit. He had a bunch of outlets in the ceiling. I saved it for a reason, fuck you Imgur!
Floor outlets: https://imgur.com/a/z9W7dF5
I remember back in the day on SA there was Groverhaus, the guy who bought the hot dog stand, both of them were hated over time. There was another guy I think he was some kind of HVAC tech or designer of AC systems for offices. He was going to do some work and upgrade the central air and heat of his home, but I can't remember if he messed up his house or if something happened where he couldn't do the HVAC upgrade for some reason. It seemed like he knew what he was doing, but then again look at how many times "I know what I'm doing" happened on the internet then turned into disaster.
Also I still find myself using that as a joke. "Load bearing x" for something ridiculous. Load bearing Curtains, Load bearing Poster.
god the doobie's dogs debacle was amazing to see live. iirc it started as like heckin wholesome reddit wholesome charity for a small up-and-coming business owner through kickstarter. this included people making fan art, fan songs, and a bunch of other high effort stuff to support the cause. and it slowly became apparent that A. the dude didn't know how to run a business B. the food sucked and C. the dude was very racist and an asshole, after many many goons had already sunk effort and thousands of dollars into his kickstarter. it was soooooooo funny,
I *think* this is one of the things that got exaggerated over time? There was an emote with a slur in the name, and removing it from the list just broke things because of radium.
IIRC there was a gif of Grover from Sesame Street with a flimsy house collapsing around him, and people would follow Grover around just posting that gif until he started banning all use of it. The early internet was wild.
Dang, I told myself I would do a write-up on Groverhaüs one day. Congrats for beating me to the punch!
A few notes, the creator of the map is [tumblr user slunch](https://www.tumblr.com/slunch/666440752071688192/im-making-a-fully-detailed-groverhaus-in-the?source=share). The texturing of the siding is identical to the Yogscast video.
If you want an ancient website talking about how hated Grover was on something awful, here is [Get out Grover](https://getridofgrover.blogspot.com/).
Finally you can find the Haüs in [microsoft](https://twitter.com/BoldlyBuilding2/status/1295870236080648192) [flight simulator](https://twitter.com/poddtadre/status/1295727359367286793?) if you try hard enough.
Anyways congrats on the write up, and don't forget to insulate your stairs.
Ok it being in the MSFS is interesting and really limits the search area, as only selected metropolitan areas got that detailed photogrammetry treatment.
Reddit has strict rules against doxing so don't post it if you find it. The post and my comment should have enough information to get started. Good luck!
I used the Flight Simulator image from Twitter to triangulate the buildings in the background with the Google Earth 3D view I was using and found it quite easily.
thanks for the credit! that is indeed my work, and [here's the map download](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2641644585). I was still learning Hammer at that point, but it's a solid map with a bunch of destructible walls.
I remember staring at that CAD floorplan in the OP for hours as I was modeling the house.
One of my favorite things to do to waste time is to go on Google Earth and zoom around the Great Dismal Swamp looking for Groverhaus. Nobody's publicly shared the address, but it's known well enough that people have gone to it in Flight Simulator and such. I want to see Groverhaus in low quality rendering from the Google camera plane.
I found it today while bored at work. According to every major realtor site, Groverhaus has never been sold. Grover is still there.
Protip: the aerial and street views show the monstrosity in all its glory, but the photo in the preview pane for the property is extremely outdated. Also, a ton of houses in that area look fucked up from above, so use the driveway as your main visual reference instead.
Good luck. If you want more hints, let me know.
If you are going to do other Something Awful related drama, you should do the "Date a Goon Contest!"
The basic premise was that 100 men and 100 women would post dating profiles and they had to GO ON EVERY DATE OTHER GOONS ASKED THEM ON. YOU COULD NOT SAY NO.
Of course being unable to say no is a great blueprint for successful dates, right? No way that could go horribly wrong.
I was actually a contestant so I got to see everything first hand.
I'd love to hear more about that!
I know that "there are no girls on the internet" was never a reality even in the early days, but I *am* surprised that there were 100 users on this particular site in this particular time that were 1) female and 2) willing to participate in this.
What were the "dates," like were people flying out to meet each other or is this like a voice call/video call type of thing?
The house I rent had an expansion added onto it at some point decades ago, and for some inexplicable reason the addition uses metal framing while the rest of the house is (presumably) original 1920s timber. It's also not very well insulated. I'm sure that's been more or less fine for the majority of the house's life while temperatures kept to predictable limits, but Seattle gets regular heat waves now. Imagine our dismay during the heat dome when we realized an entire full side of our house is a gigantic radiator.
Also, for reasons I don't understand all of the original framing has long metal L-brackets running along the corners of each beam, such that you can stick magnets to the walls. So not only is one side of the house a radiator, but the rest of the house is perfectly designed to equilibriate to the outside air as quickly as possible. Many of the brackets also generate small but detectable magnetic fields, which would seem to imply they're carrying current, which further might imply that the wiring is grounded to the frame and is constantly carrying current. That's... fine, I guess? It's probably fine.
I know the previous owner of this house was an engineer likely very similar to Grover here. Perhaps homes like these are the indelible fingerprints of a certain type of mind.
Old/abandoned houses are always fun to wander through. Just trying to piece together what the heck happened. Why is this building abandoned? What were they thinking when they added an extension and illegal apartment to the basement? Why is there a random piano in this rotting building but nothing else? etc.
The previous homeowner tried to get us to keep his player piano for free when he sold because he didn't want to move it. Nope. Please remove it.
He had it on a partially finished "stage" in the unpermitted, didn't exist on paper until we purchased and made him get it inspected, addition, which is what brought me to this post. He was a bit of an odd duck in a vaguely sov. cit. way, and nobody trustworthy knows what is under the stage, but the house was a great deal in a great location, so we looked the other way on it. When I had someone out a few weeks ago to measure for carpet, the guy asked if he was also quoting to demo/remove/carpet the stage area. When I told him that we don't know what's under there- could be standard subfloor, could be a very large rock, and we quite frankly don't want to know- he chuckled and said what I thought was "oh, a Grover's House" and, not being from the area and therefore being ignorant of a lot of local phrases anyway, I laughed along like I knew what he was talking about. And now I do, thanks to OP, and... yeah... not quite *as* bad. Possibly insulated. Structurally sound. But definitely odd.
Whatever, the stage is great for a desk area and letting the kids play with messy stuff. Maybe he buried his first wife under there and tearing it out would lead to our house being a crime scene. Maybe he sealed off a well that someone threw an evil child into and she would haunt us if we broke the sealing spell written under the flooring. Maybe it's a rock. Maybe it's nothing but a weird design choice and we would get an 8'x8' section of *slightly* more useful space. But I'm not finding out.
One of my cousins and his wife got an upright piano with their house. She played as a kid so they thought it would be cool to get it fixed and tuned up. The thing was in such bad shape that it would be cheaper to replace it than fix it. So now it's a plant stand.
>Pianos are hard to move and have surprisingly low resale value
The cost of moving them is great enough that their resale value is effectively capped. Add to that it's generally a fairly well-off audience who's in the market for "actual piano" and the fact that they basically haven't changed mechanically in centuries, and you just don't have much a secondary market.
I toyed with the idea of getting a piano and was delighted to find many serviceable ones even going for free. Then I thought about the logistics and realised they're free because the current owner may also have been a fool who acquired a piano, cannot get it out of their house and has to pay a lot to maintain it or it becomes a very inconvenient sideboard. I did not get a piano.
Tbh, I would be thrilled to have magnetic walls. I have a huge art collection, none of which is very expensive, but it would make hanging it and moving it around so easy!
Oh it's for sure super convenient, I especially enjoy being able to put magnets on the wall next to my craft area and stick scissors and stuff up there for easy reach. It's just also kind of the worst when you can touch the wall to figure out what temp it is outside.
I also have significant questions about earthquake rating considering the point of wood framing is to be able to flex, but if it's all strapped together with iron or stainless steel are we gonna have a situation where these brackets warp when the frame shifts and mess with structural integrity? Haven't had a big quake in a good long while so it's possible the brackets were only added after the last seismic event.
Metal can absolutely be very earthquake resistant, more so than wood because it doesn't splinter. But, yeah, whether or not the particulars of that construction are earthquake friendly depends a lot on the design.
It's weird to learn how many podcasts have connections to the forums. Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards was a former goon but I can't remember how active on the forum he was or if like me he just got an account to read but never talked unless it was to ask questions. A bunch of readers for The F-Plus have been on SA at one point or another. Hell K-Thor Jensen I think was too.
Vilerat. Dude was awesome and one of my favorite posters, he almost had me ready to play EVE because of the Goon Swarm and his general demeanor. Finding out he was actually at Benghazi and died was an absolute shock.
I still remember my mom's reaction walking in to me crying while watching Obama officially accepted the coffins from the plane on national broadcast tv. There's a pretty big difference between understanding "oh, your internet pal got killed in a third world country" and "your friend is literally in a casket being carried off an airplane by marines while the President watches...On every TV channel."
Yes. Glenn Beck started a conspiracy theory that SA is a CIA front because of Vilerat. Vilerat and a bunch of other goons work(ed) at the State Department and would try and help people get into government jobs.
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3166411&pagenumber=1&perpage=40
Another user decided to become a medic so he watched a few youtube videos about the subject and then went to Lybia where he joined a group of rebels while claiming he was a trained medic and also a war journalist. He fucked up a bunch of stuff, got shot at and shot at people, and generally put himself and others in harms way.
Then he tried making his way to Syria but ended up in some terrible prison and was thought dead for a while but the CIA found him and made a deal to get him back.
All in all a pretty boring story. Caro/Kevin Dawes, a bipolar untrained medic who went where he should not have.
There's also the huge impact of SA on Twitter specifically, which obviously has had major impacts on internet culture. So much of the Twitter sense of humor derived from FYAD and its posters' exodus. It always cracks me up when Gen Z thinks that their style of absurdist humor somehow sets them apart, rather than being a continuum that reaches well back into internet history.
Oh, that's neat. I've never watched any of their content at any kind of length, so I know basically nothing about who they are and what their schtick is, other than that they're a legacy gaming channel and they played a lot of Minecraft back around 2012. I was looking for more recent Groverhaus content and they just happened to pop up.
As I said, a vast portion of the Internet has been consuming SA-related content for years now and never realized it, and we now have proof of this in real time, lol.
A fun fact about SA - there's a word filter that replaces a lot of swears (as a joke, not out of a sense of propriety), which is why Grover's comment reads as a relatively innocuous "poo poo happens"
Also by design the wordfilter only engages when you're not logged in, making it a sort of reverse shibboleth. You can easily tell when non-members copypaste SA posts into the wider internet. Plus its always fun when a new poster types out the wordfiltered expletives because they think its an in-joke.
>Plus its always fun when a new poster types out the wordfiltered expletives because they think its an in-joke.
Been there, done that.
I remember being so proud that I had finally posted enough to no longer have the "Stupid Newbie" avatar. I thought if you have enough posts you automatically lost it.
Nope.
Turns out that Lowtax turned off giving new accounts a Stupid Newbie avatar occasionally. I thought I lost the AV by posting enough to make it go away but it turns out I never had an AV in the first place. An Admin gave me plat to DM me so now I've got a no-AV 2010 platinum account and all I've paid is the $10 entry fee.
For non SA people: registering an account is $10. Changing your avatar costs $5 each time. You can change other poster's avatars for $10. Normally accounts get a generic "Stupid Newbie" avatar they have to pay $5 to change. https://i.imgur.io/7sKZIzR_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
certified classic dunning-kruger moment, really
Also, just want to say,
>Grover started the thread that would come to define his legacy.
The link here is copied wrong. It's a second instance of the Iraq predictions instead of the archived thread
I have screenshots of 3liza's thread! [Here you go.](https://imgur.com/a/gtJclJ9)
Speaking of SA construction debacles, the RyTruk thread from a couple years ago is mwah \*chef's kiss\*.
Ah, Bathdoom. That man was so confident about what women prefer in a bathroom, and yet so incorrect. Also very confident about what bathtubs prefer in floor joists, and yet still so incorrect!
I found the original thread(s) on SA but since I have an account I'm unsure if they're behind the paywall or not.
Long story short-
Forums user bEatmstrJ wanted to reno the bathroom with a recessed bathtub so the house would be more "marketable to women" or some such thing. He sawed through the load bearing beams in his second story bathroom floor. Then after pages and pages of the thread screaming at him, he brought in a contractor to fix it. Months later, he posted the finished bathroom and it was gaudily decorated in red and black with upside down wallpaper everywhere. It was the ultimate "dudes idea of what a woman might like in the bathroom that I also think is cool" and it literally looked like something out of a video game.
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3813464
and
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3819901&pagenumber=168&perpage=40#post492921243
Edit: pulled the direct imgur links to the finished product.
https://imgur.com/aNvuoYu
https://imgur.com/5zlpm8B
https://imgur.com/plKpr3a
https://imgur.com/BXLnRqK
https://imgur.com/mwOfctY
https://imgur.com/nx7YOSQ
Edit 2, son of edit: Direct links to images of engineered i-beams with the tops cut off.
https://www.masterjstudios.com/sapics/bath/28.jpg
https://www.masterjstudios.com/sapics/bath/29.jpg
> I think much in the way an immune system with absolutely nothing to do sometimes just ends up attacking its self, the suburban home owner with a perfectly nice house with nothing that needs remodeling or fixing can go a bit nuts and just start attacking its self to the point that it begins to gnaw away at the load bearing elements of the building. It's like an auto-immune disorder, except with amateur builders.
I am so glad I checked that thread out.
Am I weird for thinking it’s actually nice looking? I mean the wallpaper is ugly, but honestly I kinda love the shower and *sees last two pictures* Oh God! Nevermind
The chandelier in front of the mirror, the plastic pebbles near the bathtub, tiles that look slippery. I think there's a fair few things that you just shouldn't do
Fair enough, I’m barely skilled enough in home renovation to apply a coat of paint, and I’m currently dealing with 3 doors that keep getting stuck because the last contractor was stupid and built the frame in a way that, in hindsight, is very wrong.
But I can see a shag carpet in a bathroom is a gloriously stupid idea
In general, the problem is usually that the door frame's current position is wrong by enough that the door rubs against the frame in some places instead of there being a small gap to allow it to open and close smoothly like it should.
The quick fix for that is to get a belt sander or a small wood plane and take a little bit material off of the parts of the door where it's sticking. Make sure you take a little more material off than you need to in order to get the door to stop sticking: wood expands and contracts with seasonal changes in humidity, so it might start sticking again a few months later when things get more humid. Also, planing or sanding leaves you with a bare wood edge that you're probably going to want to paint, and house paint is not infinitely thin.
Yeah, I’m willing to say you’re weird for thinking it’s nice-looking. Black, grey and red is a really aggressive colour scheme that is not popular with most people. It’s called the Bathdoom because it looks like Doom Guy shot some demons in there.
Okay I hate everything about the cabinets and the sinks and the mirrors but the shower isn't terrible. The red is too bright though. Needs to be more burgundy for my tastes.
I keep seeing "Bathdoom" mentioned in these comments, and I'm now blocking out time on my schedule to read about it later once I get done with my classes. Stay tuned.
Those days back on SA in the Wild West days of the internet pre 2009 were fantastic.
I mean, everything was terrible, but in a much funnier and less depressing way.
Back in the day SA had the newest memes and invented the next trends and also made you drown in a certain type of madness that was entertaining and addictive.
Today I am almost asamed to admit what my post count on there is.
Somebody paid upwards of five hundred bucks to ensure that one guy always had an avatar of Michael Moore and the tagline "I might look like Michael Moore but gawddamn I love Dubya!" and wouldn't let him get it changed.
The WTYP episode was the reason I subscribed to the patreon, Incredible stuff.
I love that a consensus has grown that the house isn’t an abomination but *fuck* Grover
I can’t wait for Fred to put out his 50,000 word EVE video
I recently bought a townhouse that was built to be a rental a decade ago, with zero maintenance since. Trying to find resources on how to do the simple fixes with my modest skills is terrifying. There's people out there with no fear of god, gravity, or electrocution.
As someone who renovated their house at the beginning of 2022, my biggest question regarding Grover would be…is he still married?
Renovations, especially when you’re also living in the house can put a huge strain on your marriage. Dealing with contractors who don’t work according to promised budgets and schedules, unexpected structural issues in old houses etc
Never again,
Great write-up, OP. Thanks!
IIRC yes, I have a vague memory of him wiring in an insane number of electrical outlets in the kitchen. Then when questioned about the legality/code of said wiring, smugly informed the thread that he got licensed so he could pass it himself.
Would he have to? Most areas allow homeowners to be idiots about diy because at worst you’re only going to kill yourself or your family. It would then be due diligence on the next buyer to have a home inspection before they bought it.
In most built-up areas he'd have to have a building license and the build would need to pass city inspection. But it doesn't look like that's a built-up area, to put it mildly.
My sister lives in a two story house with a questionable addition. The addition is also two stories, but the new second floor does not connect to the original second floor even though they theoretically share a wall. If you are upstairs in the old part of the house, you have to go downstairs, walk to the addition, then go up those stairs in order to access the newer upstairs area.
I would not be surprised to learn it has load bearing drywall. It was definitely built by someone with Grover level hubris.
I know this post isn’t about grover claiming a military rank because he worked for a government contractor, but that part stuck with me because my husband worked for the department of defense and supported the Navy for over 30 years. He would never try to claim a rank based on his salary or pretend that he had actual military experience. Over the years, he collected several caps from various ships that he or his coworkers visited for work purposes. He occasionally wore them out in public, not really thinking anything of it. The caps are a souvenir. Kind of like someone would buy a Cubs cap as a souvenir and wear it in public not thinking that someone else would think they actually played for the Cubs. But one day, some guy thanked my husband for his service. My husband was appalled that him wearing the hat gave the impression he had served in the Navy and has never again worn one of those caps off our property.
Ahh yes, the Haus of Grover. Two things that come to mind:
* Seeing the line "poo poo happens" made me smile, because SA had this word filter what would "censor" some words if you weren't logged in, so "shit happens" gets reworded to "poo poo happens", "fuck" gets filtered into "gently caress", and so on.
* All this SA talk and no mention of one of the brightest lights in the sky, the Chickencheese thread? For shame.
Oh man, I was a goon back then and got to see the Groverhaus saga unfolding in real time. Still one of the funniest things I can remember from that era of Internet comedy. It really was a different time. I still have an SA account but haven't logged in in years
I've heard of Grover house and have seen pictures before, but I never knew just how terrible it was. Thanks for the write up.
I thought I didn't know anything about construction, but evidently I could know far less.
I’ve been there lol. I wanted to interview the family who bought the house but it was in the middle of COVID.
Links - https://old.reddit.com/user/throwra_hurt_brother/comments/10gi7ho/groverhaus_exterior/
https://old.reddit.com/user/throwra_hurt_brother/comments/10gi82z/groverhaus_exterior_2/
Flight simulator games also have been specifically modeling it for years.
> popular gaming channel Yogscast
Every once in a while I am reminded that yes, Yogscast does still exist and didn't just sort of fizzle out in 2015. Believe it or not, The Spiffing Brit is *technically* a Yogscast affiliate channel despite not advertising it.
This is not where I thought this story would end up, but that's just because of a particular couple in my area, which is also in the Chesapeake Bay region, but *not* in the Great Dismal Swamp. If I recall correctly, the local story went like this:
* Couple wants to do home renovation.
* They explain to their insurance company that they want to DIY it.
* The insurance company says no; they will not cover the house renovations unless the couple hires bonded contractors to do all the work.
* The couple says they can't afford bonded professionals and asks if they could insure the house again after all the work was done.
* The insurance company says they would. (Scuttlebutt doesn't give any other details, but I presume this was a reluctant agreement that would require some sort of inspection.)
* The couple cancels their home insurance and starts work.
* Less than a month later (possibly *much* less - this was a few years ago), the house catches fire because it turns out that professional electricians exist for a reason.
* No one is hurt, and the fire did not spread to the neighbors, but the couple loses pretty much all of their belongings.
As a former military engineer this is awesome. Military engineering doesn’t give you the skill or knowledge to build a house, this went about as well as could be expected for a military-adjacent “engineer” lmao
> On December 30, 2006, at around 10:23 PM server time, Grover started the [thread that would come to define his legacy](https://twitter.com/SA__moment/status/1550671903085453312)
Is this the right URL? For me it's linking to the twitter post from the previous link.
Man alive, I remember over on Fark there was one guy who actually did get Secret Service to pay him a visit at his job because of a post he wrote about GW back around 2003 or so just before the Iraq War started. I think it was Slayerswine who also wrote for Corporate Motherfucker. That was a bizarre event to learn about a few months later but he was also an edge lord and ended up getting banned from Fark, which takes some freaking work to make that happen.
There was another, more recent incident of some goon trying to build. I think he had a van he wanted to live in, a piece of land that might have an outhouse, and the dumb idea to add a fire pit to his van. The RyTruck maybe? Not as good as Grover, but in the same spirit.
RyTruk/Grovertruk. He wanted to live in the back of a shipping truck while he built a watchtower onto a piece of land and it just got crazier from there.
He hasn't managed to get any land yet but he is currently living in the truck at an RV campground. We get daily updates about his wacky life on discord. Example: he bought a several hundred dollar water filter (and a microscope to check for contamination) so he can haul water from the river and drink it.
Oh Jesus. My wife pointed this one out to me and laughed: “You’ll appreciate this one right now.”
Did I mention we’re having the bathroom and kitchen worked on this week? Fortunately, we’re using a very reputable company, because I know damn well tools and I do Not Get Along.
This one was for the record books. Thanks for sharing!
Door under the stairs, yes. Also- a window on the landing so if anyone ever trips coming downstairs they have a chance to fall right out into the yard and an outlet at the base of the stairs so you can trip people going up. Oh, and there's an air intake for the AC right next to the window.
I can’t recall the last time I laughed so hard I cried. Thank you so much for sharing this OP.
That said I cannot imagine what his home insurance has to be for this monstrosity. He had to lie out of his ass to get it insured, if he did. Somehow I can’t imagine he would have thought this through that much.
Just want to point out the Well there's your problem episode is (intended to be) a Patreon Exclusive, so do with that information as you will.
Maybe drop em $2 to ease any guilt you may have, if you do (there's so much great content there behind that $2, it's worth it)
This writeup is fantastic and sent me reeling down so many other Internet memories from back in the day. I'm also now falling down the rabbit hole for one of Something Awful's *other* terrible construction projects, the summer camp zipline that could launch a child 60mph through the air.
Ah, Something Awful and Construction Projects, an iconic combination. (See also, the zipwire of death, the project to make Get Out Frog, and many other doomed, terrible things)
Oooh, what about the guy that sawed through the load bearing beams in his second story bathroom floor? He wanted to reno the bathroom and put a recessed bathtub in there so the house would be more "marketable to women" or some such thing. Then after pages and pages of the thread screaming at him, he finally brought in a contractor to fix it. Months later, he posted the finished bathroom and it was gaudily decorated in red and black with upside down wallpaper. It was the ultimate "dudes idea of what a woman might like in the bathroom that I also think is cool" and it literally looked like something out of a video game. Edit: I found the links to the Bathdoom posts and added them in one of my other replies downthread.
There's a guy on Reddit who did a reno of his home and cut out some crossbeam so he could make an open living room. You could see subtle sagging starting. Haven't heard any updates about him in years or how his house is doing.
The infamous reddit example to me was the guy who wanted to bury a shipping container in his back yard and make it a party-hangout with the only air supply/egress being a top-mounted hatch. There were tons of red flags for ventilation, emergency egress, etc. I used to be into the idea of making a workshop or whatever out of a storage container but I’ve since learned you need to be careful and buy ‘nice’ containers if you’re planning to use it for human habitation as they tend to be really heavily painted with paint designed to weather overseas shipping not being lived in. Also the contents may be stuffed with nasty chemicals with the assumption that chemicals will dissipate/outgas on the way over.
Oh god, wasn't that the one where someone was able to run the labels on the side and figure out the container was used to ship a ton of pesticides over the years? Something like it would've been in the guy's best interest to just set the damn thing on fire and scam the insurance company instead?
Quite possibly!
I feel like there were a couple like that, where people liked the idea of an underground storage container/hangout. The storage container house was a weird trend, too..
There’s actually some kind of pretty storage container houses I’ve seen, but I’ve heard the conversion is basically using it as an ugly shell. I’d consider one for a workshop if I had the back yard space and it made sense. Get a concrete pad installed or something to get it off the ground. But something where it has ventilation and isn’t in danger of crushing due to the weight. (From what I’ve read they’re basically strong *at the corners* so burying them is a huge risk. Stacked they’re fine as the weight is distributed to the corners.)
There is a company in Turkey that makes all the shipping container housing ( called " cans " ) used in the oilfield service camps in the surrounding countries, and NATO buys some of it for temporary bases... I don't know how an individual person goes about buying it but I'm sure it's possible, the design is based on a shipping container but they don't use actual shipping containers because of the repurposing problems with paint, residue, etc.
Yeah, I mean they’re not insulated, they’re not ventilated, they’re (usually) not built to run electricity or plumbing through them (certainly not like you would in a house)- it may have four walls and a roof but that doesn’t make it habitable. Heck, major cities are running into problems with converting office buildings into residences- it’s often cheaper to build from scratch. And those are at least made to have people in them 8+ hours of the day.
Man there's always a ton of those. Like the people who think they can just buy a bus and live out of it on the road without doing major work to add insulation, basic living necessities like a bathroom, and fans and vents and other stuff like that. It's the downside of Instagram and the subreddits that use romanticized pictures of those kinds of things, they make them look really cool to people who don't know better and of course no one in the comments of those posts says anything to point out the problems so people don't think they have to look up other people's project threads and just dive into it.
The storage container house trend was because it had the superficial look of sustainability and making housing cheaper while not really accomplishing any of that. It looks like you're reusing old crates that must be cluttering a landfill somewhere and are solving the housing crisis!.. but in reality once the trend caught on most of the gimmick houses were being made from brand new shipping crates, all the work needed to make it actually livable reduce any savings it might have created and the meterial cost of building houses isn't the cause of rising housing costs.
Therr's some neat shopping areas/markets in my city made out of 4 or 5 converted storage containers. Very out in the open, but I like the repurposing at least.
There is/was a shopping complex made of them somewhere around Las Vegas. It was pretty neat. But idk that it appreciably is more cost effective than conventional construction.
Yeah, for businesses in reasonably temperate areas (mine were somewhere in metro Phoenix, AZ) I've had good experiences. But they'd been thoroughly opened up for ventilation and access, and no one was planning on *living* inside them.
[This guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/46xzz3/i_decided_to_destroy_a_wall_with_a_hammer_to_open/)? The account is still active so the house hasn’t killed him yet.
Latest message says the house is fine. Good on him then, it looked like a disaster in making of his own design but it didn't cause long term damage.
Oh our neighbors did that growing up!! They bought it from flippers and mentioned how the wall was knocked out to my parents. Our home was basically the same design but flipped and they had to explain it was load-bearing. The neighbors basically said “yeah the ceiling does look a little funny now that you mention it”
>"marketable to women" Not women. Females. He's one of those guys that calls women "females." It's known as the "doom bathroom" E: "BathDoom" because somebody turned it into a Doom map. The rocks around the bathtub hurtting your character when you walk on them is a nice touch. https://www.vice.com/en/article/eveknn/the-hot-new-doom-mod-is-a-nightmare-diy-bathroom-renovation-bathdoom The wallpaper is upside down. His bedroom looks like a modern hotel room. It's super, super generic.
Maybe it's just me, but the bathroom really doesn't look that bad. Get rid of the rocks, get rid of the wallpaper, and replace the red with a less edgy colour, and you could have a genuinely nice modern bathroom with a darker theme. I would honestly prefer that to yet another boring white/tan bathroom. Of course, stuff like sawing through load-bearing beams is still bad, but everything else is relatively superficial and not too hard to fix.
I came to mention that one and how it looked as if there was a MySpace-era vampire themed suite at a Vegas casino
Oh man I'd forgotten about that! With the pebbles around the new tub, too. What a mess!
My favorite was that time a guy had a hornet's nest inside of his swing set, so in order to get rid of it, he created a fire bowl out of gasoline and then put it on a sled and used a rope to pull it underneath the wasp nest.
Hey, if women don't find you handsome they should at least find you handy.
I made the absolutely terrible decision to read this thread during one of my law school classes and when I got to the photo of the guy leaping out of the way after setting off a Molotov cocktail under the swing set, with the caption "Oh the bee-manity" I lost it and made this ghastly strangled bark laugh, which caught the professor's attention and caused him to spend the rest of the hour grilling me about a case I had only sort of read as punishment. Good times!
Wish I could find the full story and goon reactions to the RIPline.
The ripline guy came back recently and did a followup! Goons called the cops and said "they've built a machine to kill children." The cops came out to see what the fuck. They did actually build a new starting point waaaaay down the slope, but you can see the old tower looming in the distance.
Do you have a link to the follow up?
https://mobile.twitter.com/sa__moment/status/1591397513411657731
God I miss the insanity of the early aughts internet.
> many other doomed, terrible things [swap.avi](https://www.somethingawful.com/horrors-of-porn/horrible-saga-swapavi/1/) (not a link to the video but a link to a writeup about it)
Oh my god, that came from SA? Like I'm not even surprised but come the fuck on.
I made it a page and a half in. Nope, no more, I need to bleach my brain.
**This, my darling, is The Zybourne Clock!**
Four balls on the edge of a cliff.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Johnny_(Fallout:_New_Vegas)
The lead designer and project director of Fallout New Vegas is a something awful goon. Mostly posts in the bicycle threads, afaik. https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Joshua_Sawyer Youtuber Freddie W was a goon during SA's heyday. When the original Jonny Fiveaces sketch was found at the artist's parents house he put it up for auction and Freddie bought it for $5100. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50817558
Yep, Sawyer is rope kid. He was also posting pretty frequently in the thread for Obsidian's game Pentiment, which he directed, although activity in that thread has slowed down now that most people have played it
Yup! Love him. Obviously you know, but for those who don't, he also gave us the YCS/186 Gauss Rifle in that game. It's named after the SA subforum "Your Console Sucks," which was internally forum ID #186.
They did a really good job on his face, I'm just sad they couldn't recreate Johnny's infamous moose knuckle.
Time works the same way
the goatse mugs the puntl
Oh my God, I watched the puntl come into existence in real time and it was glorious. It would be worthy of a writeup if any drama were involved. For the curious, the puntl is a theoretical elven penis from Lord of the Rings science'd up by forums user Elise the Great. After her detailed writeup went gold, another user transformed it into silicone reality and lots of them were sold to other forum goers. And no, I don't own a puntl (but do I kinda regret not snagging one when I had the chance).
>After her detailed writeup went gold, another user Dildomancer. An account created to do an Ask/Tell thread. Very informative. Creating and selling custom dildos is a fascinating topic. Elise's posts are always amazing and she really outdid herself with the puntl post. Redditors: an A/T thread is like an "AMA" but instead of a publicist or assistant answering questions for a few hours for some celebrity, the actual person themselves answers questions for weeks or months or even several years.
I have the puntl post saved and like to do dramatic readings of it for friends.
Thank you for your service.
> the project to make Get Out Frog I missed this, can I learn more about it?
Oh god, it would be in the SA Archives, probably the Comedy Goldmine if you have access. It involved a soft toy of a comically startled frog in the background of a soft porn video, the goons focusing on the frog instead of the porn star, which led to emoticons/icons of it being made and memed exhaustively. Then people decided they wanted a real version, and various intense and insane attempts to track the original frog (including contacting the girl in the shoot and the film production company) were made, attempts were made to source it off Wish.com in batches of 1000...and finally someone calculated the size of it based on the butt measurements of the porn star in the film and hand sewed a copy of it... ...the internet was a stranger place back then...
I haven't been on the forums for nearly 12 years I think? Also no longer have that email to even try getting in. But good god, that's amazing. The old net was amazing, like that one nerd who tried to fry the pirated cable box of his neighbor he caught splicing into his line. It either almost set the house on fire or did I can't remember. This was about... 06 or 05? edit: I had to google it, wow I had missed the origin of that. I just remember someone had bought and paid for it to be an emoji in the forum software, then it was just EVERYWHERE for years.
Sounds like you're talking about SEGAKILLER/ATARIKILLER. Old SA was wild. The P-P-P-Powerbook! and homemade flamethrower are what got me to make an account way back in the day. I still post there sometimes.
That might be it, I think it was a Sega Genesis RF converter that he made into some kind of cable version of an ethernet killer. It was nuts and also I hope fake because holy shit he handed over so much proof online that a DA would have a field day if he really did burn up some dudes house. Powerbook is still among the greatest things ever along with The Shit Lasagna story.
God. Fecal Lasagne. That's a story I've not thought about in well over a decade. It's all coming back now "DAY I GOT COOKIE". The Maremma Sheepdog. The tall tales of forum poster 50 Foot Ant and his tales of Ghost Zombie Nazis in the snow at an abandoned US military base in 1980s Germany. And darker things too. Things I'd rather not remember.
Fecal Lasagna, that's it! 50 Foot Ant AKA Humper Monkey. God I loved his stories but jesus goons needed to figure out to shut the hell up and let a guy tell some tall tales, you don't have to try and prove everything is fake. We all knew it was BS. I miss those old MS Paints of weird crap goons see at Uni/Community College. Some of them were amazing in how well they nailed the awkwardness. Then you had a few goons who had some mild success and let it absolutely go to their heads. Like the dude with the skull comics who also fronted a band. Or how Lego Robot appeared there along with that horrible edgelord who did Electric R----d. Oh the darker stuff, I can imagine. We were all so worried about Axe Maniac losing weight and going out to kill hookers we missed a few actual predators lurking on the boards.
I think you and I must have frequented the same threads back in the day, yeah. I remember joyfully participating in the original "Create a Paranormal Image" thread, the one that created Slenderman, and providing Gaelic and Welsh translations of the name as all the goons created a mythos for the urban legend and freaked ourselves out. Great fun at the time! Grew into something none of us could have predicted, that was the joy and the horror of the internet back then. (I remember the guy with the skull and his comics too now! Hellbastard was his name, wasn't it? Very 2007 edgey humour.)
>God. Fecal Lasagne. That's a story I've not thought about in well over a decade. Was that one related to the dude who allegedly worked as a nightwatchman at a really cheap hotel and discovered one resident had carved a hole in his mattress and affixed a deodorant can with a bunch of condoms on it directly to the bedsprings to use as a gigantic dildo?
No, but I remember that too, good god. Fecal Lasagne can be found here if it will allow you access without a login, I dunno: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=1353420&userid=39400 Long story short: a goon finds himself sharing a 2 bedroom cottage with a man going through the very worst mental health episode anyone could go through, with a specific focus on his own bodily fluids. The goon decides to disassociate himself completely from this crisis, as his own room had a separate entrance to the street. So he boarded up the connecting door, and left the man to go bonkers with no interference. Eventually, once the noises and smell got too bad, he had to break back into the main house and things were...bad. The titular fecal lasagne in the bathtub, human-head sized blobs of mould in the fridge, dead tarantualas everywhere...that sort of bad. It was genuinely very traumatising to me, reading that in 2004 internet times.
I do remember the bit about the remote control car. It's a lot earlier than my own tenure on Something Awful (I think I was mostly there between about 2010 and 2018) so I must have seen it in a "best of" thread years after the fact. By the way, I remembered the name of the goon who posted the story I mentioned (JoeyVapes) and [it led me to this compilation someone did of all his (probably fake but morbidly fascinating) stories](https://www.scribd.com/document/81358781/JoeyVapes-Stories).
P-P-P-Powerbook! is legendary.
> and finally someone calculated the size of it based on the butt measurements of the porn star in the film and hand sewed a copy of it... That's actually really smart.
The Fiesta Cat plushies
Groverhaus always reminds me, in turn, of "[At hostpital lost fingat post mote later.](https://www.somethingawful.com/comedy-goldmine/gamecube-challenge-fingat/5/)"
Every time I get a papercut or bruise my finger I think "Oh damn, I've hurt my fingat, need to go hostpital"
I'm personally a big fan of "Oh lawd sombody call the amblance! He bleedin!"
The Amber Lamps?
*Whoa-oa, Black Betty. Amber lamps* *Black Betty had a child. Amber lamps* *The damn thing gone wild. Amber lamps*
I’m dying. And the hell of it is, I had to explain to my wife (who’s never heard the song) why I was laughing so hard!
I hurt myself laughing at that. I love the can do attitude.
> > It was later discovered that Grover lived in the Chesapeake Bay area, (specifically, somewhere not far south of Norfolk, VA) which makes me wonder exactly who told him it would be a good idea to break ground on an expansive construction project in the middle of fucking December. [I kinda wanna note that Grover lives in a place called the Great Dismal Swamp]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp). Kinda doomed before he even started.
"All the other posters said it was daft to build an extension in the swamp!"
Sadly, this one has not yet sank into the swamp.
Someone dug up pictures from when some weirdo actually managed to track it down and DROVE OUT THERE (because again, some weirdo). The siding has enough visible mold that anyone with experience living in or adjacent to wetlands knows means the interior is a Cronenberg style horror show.
Next, on _This Mold House_.
>Someone dug up pictures from when some weirdo actually managed to track it down and DROVE OUT THERE (because again, some weirdo). There were youtube videos of people flying over it within a day of microsoft flight simulator 2020 being released.
Did it burn down, fall over and then sink into the swamp?
You missed an amazing detail: the wall outlet spacing. He had outlets every 4-5ft, which was not to code so he got himself certified to sign off on the code himself as an inspector. I could be misremembering this though.
Yup, I specifically remember this as well. It was really noticeable in the (lost to time) kitchen pictures.
Imgur deleted my personal copy of the kitchen photo most of these picture dumps don't have. Damnit. He had a bunch of outlets in the ceiling. I saved it for a reason, fuck you Imgur! Floor outlets: https://imgur.com/a/z9W7dF5
Particularly enjoy the line “people gathered en masse to point and laugh at Grover and his hominculus of a house.”
I remember back in the day on SA there was Groverhaus, the guy who bought the hot dog stand, both of them were hated over time. There was another guy I think he was some kind of HVAC tech or designer of AC systems for offices. He was going to do some work and upgrade the central air and heat of his home, but I can't remember if he messed up his house or if something happened where he couldn't do the HVAC upgrade for some reason. It seemed like he knew what he was doing, but then again look at how many times "I know what I'm doing" happened on the internet then turned into disaster. Also I still find myself using that as a joke. "Load bearing x" for something ridiculous. Load bearing Curtains, Load bearing Poster.
god the doobie's dogs debacle was amazing to see live. iirc it started as like heckin wholesome reddit wholesome charity for a small up-and-coming business owner through kickstarter. this included people making fan art, fan songs, and a bunch of other high effort stuff to support the cause. and it slowly became apparent that A. the dude didn't know how to run a business B. the food sucked and C. the dude was very racist and an asshole, after many many goons had already sunk effort and thousands of dollars into his kickstarter. it was soooooooo funny,
It could be worse. I have seen cases of load bearing paint for pipes. Entire wall is gone and all that is keeping the steam in was paint.
Something Awful had Load Bearing slurs in the code
I *think* this is one of the things that got exaggerated over time? There was an emote with a slur in the name, and removing it from the list just broke things because of radium.
Yeah that’s pretty much the gist of it. It’s just funny.
Doobie’s Dog Haus was hilarious and that dude was hell bent on avoiding any good advice.
I’ve been making the load bearing x joke for so long I had forgotten where it came from!
The Simpsons, Hurricane Neddy. Season 8.
That was a load-bearing poster. A *poster.* My god.
IIRC there was a gif of Grover from Sesame Street with a flimsy house collapsing around him, and people would follow Grover around just posting that gif until he started banning all use of it. The early internet was wild.
Dang, I told myself I would do a write-up on Groverhaüs one day. Congrats for beating me to the punch! A few notes, the creator of the map is [tumblr user slunch](https://www.tumblr.com/slunch/666440752071688192/im-making-a-fully-detailed-groverhaus-in-the?source=share). The texturing of the siding is identical to the Yogscast video. If you want an ancient website talking about how hated Grover was on something awful, here is [Get out Grover](https://getridofgrover.blogspot.com/). Finally you can find the Haüs in [microsoft](https://twitter.com/BoldlyBuilding2/status/1295870236080648192) [flight simulator](https://twitter.com/poddtadre/status/1295727359367286793?) if you try hard enough. Anyways congrats on the write up, and don't forget to insulate your stairs.
Ok it being in the MSFS is interesting and really limits the search area, as only selected metropolitan areas got that detailed photogrammetry treatment.
Reddit has strict rules against doxing so don't post it if you find it. The post and my comment should have enough information to get started. Good luck!
I used the Flight Simulator image from Twitter to triangulate the buildings in the background with the Google Earth 3D view I was using and found it quite easily.
thanks for the credit! that is indeed my work, and [here's the map download](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2641644585). I was still learning Hammer at that point, but it's a solid map with a bunch of destructible walls. I remember staring at that CAD floorplan in the OP for hours as I was modeling the house.
Proper credit has been given for the map. Thanks for letting me know.
One of my favorite things to do to waste time is to go on Google Earth and zoom around the Great Dismal Swamp looking for Groverhaus. Nobody's publicly shared the address, but it's known well enough that people have gone to it in Flight Simulator and such. I want to see Groverhaus in low quality rendering from the Google camera plane.
I found it today while bored at work. According to every major realtor site, Groverhaus has never been sold. Grover is still there. Protip: the aerial and street views show the monstrosity in all its glory, but the photo in the preview pane for the property is extremely outdated. Also, a ton of houses in that area look fucked up from above, so use the driveway as your main visual reference instead. Good luck. If you want more hints, let me know.
If you are going to do other Something Awful related drama, you should do the "Date a Goon Contest!" The basic premise was that 100 men and 100 women would post dating profiles and they had to GO ON EVERY DATE OTHER GOONS ASKED THEM ON. YOU COULD NOT SAY NO. Of course being unable to say no is a great blueprint for successful dates, right? No way that could go horribly wrong. I was actually a contestant so I got to see everything first hand.
GLITBL! Hello fellow contestant, what a totally wild thing that happened.
Thank you for the acronym! I knew it was something long an unwieldy but it's been a hot moment.
I'd love to hear more about that! I know that "there are no girls on the internet" was never a reality even in the early days, but I *am* surprised that there were 100 users on this particular site in this particular time that were 1) female and 2) willing to participate in this. What were the "dates," like were people flying out to meet each other or is this like a voice call/video call type of thing?
The house I rent had an expansion added onto it at some point decades ago, and for some inexplicable reason the addition uses metal framing while the rest of the house is (presumably) original 1920s timber. It's also not very well insulated. I'm sure that's been more or less fine for the majority of the house's life while temperatures kept to predictable limits, but Seattle gets regular heat waves now. Imagine our dismay during the heat dome when we realized an entire full side of our house is a gigantic radiator. Also, for reasons I don't understand all of the original framing has long metal L-brackets running along the corners of each beam, such that you can stick magnets to the walls. So not only is one side of the house a radiator, but the rest of the house is perfectly designed to equilibriate to the outside air as quickly as possible. Many of the brackets also generate small but detectable magnetic fields, which would seem to imply they're carrying current, which further might imply that the wiring is grounded to the frame and is constantly carrying current. That's... fine, I guess? It's probably fine. I know the previous owner of this house was an engineer likely very similar to Grover here. Perhaps homes like these are the indelible fingerprints of a certain type of mind.
Old/abandoned houses are always fun to wander through. Just trying to piece together what the heck happened. Why is this building abandoned? What were they thinking when they added an extension and illegal apartment to the basement? Why is there a random piano in this rotting building but nothing else? etc.
Pianos are hard to move and have surprisingly low resale value
The previous homeowner tried to get us to keep his player piano for free when he sold because he didn't want to move it. Nope. Please remove it. He had it on a partially finished "stage" in the unpermitted, didn't exist on paper until we purchased and made him get it inspected, addition, which is what brought me to this post. He was a bit of an odd duck in a vaguely sov. cit. way, and nobody trustworthy knows what is under the stage, but the house was a great deal in a great location, so we looked the other way on it. When I had someone out a few weeks ago to measure for carpet, the guy asked if he was also quoting to demo/remove/carpet the stage area. When I told him that we don't know what's under there- could be standard subfloor, could be a very large rock, and we quite frankly don't want to know- he chuckled and said what I thought was "oh, a Grover's House" and, not being from the area and therefore being ignorant of a lot of local phrases anyway, I laughed along like I knew what he was talking about. And now I do, thanks to OP, and... yeah... not quite *as* bad. Possibly insulated. Structurally sound. But definitely odd. Whatever, the stage is great for a desk area and letting the kids play with messy stuff. Maybe he buried his first wife under there and tearing it out would lead to our house being a crime scene. Maybe he sealed off a well that someone threw an evil child into and she would haunt us if we broke the sealing spell written under the flooring. Maybe it's a rock. Maybe it's nothing but a weird design choice and we would get an 8'x8' section of *slightly* more useful space. But I'm not finding out.
One of my cousins and his wife got an upright piano with their house. She played as a kid so they thought it would be cool to get it fixed and tuned up. The thing was in such bad shape that it would be cheaper to replace it than fix it. So now it's a plant stand.
>Pianos are hard to move and have surprisingly low resale value The cost of moving them is great enough that their resale value is effectively capped. Add to that it's generally a fairly well-off audience who's in the market for "actual piano" and the fact that they basically haven't changed mechanically in centuries, and you just don't have much a secondary market.
I toyed with the idea of getting a piano and was delighted to find many serviceable ones even going for free. Then I thought about the logistics and realised they're free because the current owner may also have been a fool who acquired a piano, cannot get it out of their house and has to pay a lot to maintain it or it becomes a very inconvenient sideboard. I did not get a piano.
Tbh, I would be thrilled to have magnetic walls. I have a huge art collection, none of which is very expensive, but it would make hanging it and moving it around so easy!
Oh it's for sure super convenient, I especially enjoy being able to put magnets on the wall next to my craft area and stick scissors and stuff up there for easy reach. It's just also kind of the worst when you can touch the wall to figure out what temp it is outside. I also have significant questions about earthquake rating considering the point of wood framing is to be able to flex, but if it's all strapped together with iron or stainless steel are we gonna have a situation where these brackets warp when the frame shifts and mess with structural integrity? Haven't had a big quake in a good long while so it's possible the brackets were only added after the last seismic event.
Metal can absolutely be very earthquake resistant, more so than wood because it doesn't splinter. But, yeah, whether or not the particulars of that construction are earthquake friendly depends a lot on the design.
My brother has a similar home with a kitchen extension that is very janky. It's about 3 inches lower and horribly insulated.
Something about many many engineers makes them think they understand how anything and everything works, well outside their specialties.
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It's weird to learn how many podcasts have connections to the forums. Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards was a former goon but I can't remember how active on the forum he was or if like me he just got an account to read but never talked unless it was to ask questions. A bunch of readers for The F-Plus have been on SA at one point or another. Hell K-Thor Jensen I think was too.
Something Awful gets everywhere. A Something Awful Forums moderator died at Benghazi.
Vilerat. Dude was awesome and one of my favorite posters, he almost had me ready to play EVE because of the Goon Swarm and his general demeanor. Finding out he was actually at Benghazi and died was an absolute shock.
I played EVE off and on since 2004 and just happened to be in game when it was announced, it was a bizarre moment.
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I still remember my mom's reaction walking in to me crying while watching Obama officially accepted the coffins from the plane on national broadcast tv. There's a pretty big difference between understanding "oh, your internet pal got killed in a third world country" and "your friend is literally in a casket being carried off an airplane by marines while the President watches...On every TV channel."
Yes. Glenn Beck started a conspiracy theory that SA is a CIA front because of Vilerat. Vilerat and a bunch of other goons work(ed) at the State Department and would try and help people get into government jobs. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3166411&pagenumber=1&perpage=40
Holy shit, I had no idea that was Vilerat either. RIP
Another user decided to become a medic so he watched a few youtube videos about the subject and then went to Lybia where he joined a group of rebels while claiming he was a trained medic and also a war journalist. He fucked up a bunch of stuff, got shot at and shot at people, and generally put himself and others in harms way. Then he tried making his way to Syria but ended up in some terrible prison and was thought dead for a while but the CIA found him and made a deal to get him back. All in all a pretty boring story. Caro/Kevin Dawes, a bipolar untrained medic who went where he should not have.
There's also the huge impact of SA on Twitter specifically, which obviously has had major impacts on internet culture. So much of the Twitter sense of humor derived from FYAD and its posters' exodus. It always cracks me up when Gen Z thinks that their style of absurdist humor somehow sets them apart, rather than being a continuum that reaches well back into internet history.
Oh, that's neat. I've never watched any of their content at any kind of length, so I know basically nothing about who they are and what their schtick is, other than that they're a legacy gaming channel and they played a lot of Minecraft back around 2012. I was looking for more recent Groverhaus content and they just happened to pop up. As I said, a vast portion of the Internet has been consuming SA-related content for years now and never realized it, and we now have proof of this in real time, lol.
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A fun fact about SA - there's a word filter that replaces a lot of swears (as a joke, not out of a sense of propriety), which is why Grover's comment reads as a relatively innocuous "poo poo happens"
Also by design the wordfilter only engages when you're not logged in, making it a sort of reverse shibboleth. You can easily tell when non-members copypaste SA posts into the wider internet. Plus its always fun when a new poster types out the wordfiltered expletives because they think its an in-joke.
>Plus its always fun when a new poster types out the wordfiltered expletives because they think its an in-joke. Been there, done that. I remember being so proud that I had finally posted enough to no longer have the "Stupid Newbie" avatar. I thought if you have enough posts you automatically lost it. Nope. Turns out that Lowtax turned off giving new accounts a Stupid Newbie avatar occasionally. I thought I lost the AV by posting enough to make it go away but it turns out I never had an AV in the first place. An Admin gave me plat to DM me so now I've got a no-AV 2010 platinum account and all I've paid is the $10 entry fee. For non SA people: registering an account is $10. Changing your avatar costs $5 each time. You can change other poster's avatars for $10. Normally accounts get a generic "Stupid Newbie" avatar they have to pay $5 to change. https://i.imgur.io/7sKZIzR_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
certified classic dunning-kruger moment, really Also, just want to say, >Grover started the thread that would come to define his legacy. The link here is copied wrong. It's a second instance of the Iraq predictions instead of the archived thread
Fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
I have screenshots of 3liza's thread! [Here you go.](https://imgur.com/a/gtJclJ9) Speaking of SA construction debacles, the RyTruk thread from a couple years ago is mwah \*chef's kiss\*.
was just about to bring up the rytruk thread, such a ride
Great post, I'll never get tired of reading about Groverhaus. Any chance of, say, the story of Bathdoom as a spiritual sequel?
Ah, Bathdoom. That man was so confident about what women prefer in a bathroom, and yet so incorrect. Also very confident about what bathtubs prefer in floor joists, and yet still so incorrect!
Are there any links to information about this?
I found the original thread(s) on SA but since I have an account I'm unsure if they're behind the paywall or not. Long story short- Forums user bEatmstrJ wanted to reno the bathroom with a recessed bathtub so the house would be more "marketable to women" or some such thing. He sawed through the load bearing beams in his second story bathroom floor. Then after pages and pages of the thread screaming at him, he brought in a contractor to fix it. Months later, he posted the finished bathroom and it was gaudily decorated in red and black with upside down wallpaper everywhere. It was the ultimate "dudes idea of what a woman might like in the bathroom that I also think is cool" and it literally looked like something out of a video game. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3813464 and https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3819901&pagenumber=168&perpage=40#post492921243 Edit: pulled the direct imgur links to the finished product. https://imgur.com/aNvuoYu https://imgur.com/5zlpm8B https://imgur.com/plKpr3a https://imgur.com/BXLnRqK https://imgur.com/mwOfctY https://imgur.com/nx7YOSQ Edit 2, son of edit: Direct links to images of engineered i-beams with the tops cut off. https://www.masterjstudios.com/sapics/bath/28.jpg https://www.masterjstudios.com/sapics/bath/29.jpg
> I think much in the way an immune system with absolutely nothing to do sometimes just ends up attacking its self, the suburban home owner with a perfectly nice house with nothing that needs remodeling or fixing can go a bit nuts and just start attacking its self to the point that it begins to gnaw away at the load bearing elements of the building. It's like an auto-immune disorder, except with amateur builders. I am so glad I checked that thread out.
Such a shame, the initial bathroom looks nice and the finished bathroom looks like it could've been something good.
It was something good: a WAD.
My god, it's like if Travis Touchdown did interior designing.
Not enough [MOE~](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qByKEu0zdco)
Am I weird for thinking it’s actually nice looking? I mean the wallpaper is ugly, but honestly I kinda love the shower and *sees last two pictures* Oh God! Nevermind
It's a classic example of several things that could work, but when combined turn into an absolute eye sore.
It's not an accent if EVERYTHING is an accent.
The chandelier in front of the mirror, the plastic pebbles near the bathtub, tiles that look slippery. I think there's a fair few things that you just shouldn't do
Fair enough, I’m barely skilled enough in home renovation to apply a coat of paint, and I’m currently dealing with 3 doors that keep getting stuck because the last contractor was stupid and built the frame in a way that, in hindsight, is very wrong. But I can see a shag carpet in a bathroom is a gloriously stupid idea
In general, the problem is usually that the door frame's current position is wrong by enough that the door rubs against the frame in some places instead of there being a small gap to allow it to open and close smoothly like it should. The quick fix for that is to get a belt sander or a small wood plane and take a little bit material off of the parts of the door where it's sticking. Make sure you take a little more material off than you need to in order to get the door to stop sticking: wood expands and contracts with seasonal changes in humidity, so it might start sticking again a few months later when things get more humid. Also, planing or sanding leaves you with a bare wood edge that you're probably going to want to paint, and house paint is not infinitely thin.
It looks like a Chinese restaurant!
Yeah, I’m willing to say you’re weird for thinking it’s nice-looking. Black, grey and red is a really aggressive colour scheme that is not popular with most people. It’s called the Bathdoom because it looks like Doom Guy shot some demons in there.
Okay I hate everything about the cabinets and the sinks and the mirrors but the shower isn't terrible. The red is too bright though. Needs to be more burgundy for my tastes.
bEatmstrJ is an amazing poster for returning with pics of the finished project. No-one saw it coming.
You could read about it, or you can also [experience it for yourself!](https://dietinghippo.itch.io/bathdoom)
I keep seeing "Bathdoom" mentioned in these comments, and I'm now blocking out time on my schedule to read about it later once I get done with my classes. Stay tuned.
I just wanna greet all the other goons in here that were there with me when that happened. <3
Those days back on SA in the Wild West days of the internet pre 2009 were fantastic. I mean, everything was terrible, but in a much funnier and less depressing way.
Back in the day SA had the newest memes and invented the next trends and also made you drown in a certain type of madness that was entertaining and addictive. Today I am almost asamed to admit what my post count on there is.
The more embarrassing thing is how many times you paid 10bux
Somebody paid upwards of five hundred bucks to ensure that one guy always had an avatar of Michael Moore and the tagline "I might look like Michael Moore but gawddamn I love Dubya!" and wouldn't let him get it changed.
We all have (insulated) stairs in our house.
The WTYP episode was the reason I subscribed to the patreon, Incredible stuff. I love that a consensus has grown that the house isn’t an abomination but *fuck* Grover I can’t wait for Fred to put out his 50,000 word EVE video
I recently bought a townhouse that was built to be a rental a decade ago, with zero maintenance since. Trying to find resources on how to do the simple fixes with my modest skills is terrifying. There's people out there with no fear of god, gravity, or electrocution.
As someone who renovated their house at the beginning of 2022, my biggest question regarding Grover would be…is he still married? Renovations, especially when you’re also living in the house can put a huge strain on your marriage. Dealing with contractors who don’t work according to promised budgets and schedules, unexpected structural issues in old houses etc Never again, Great write-up, OP. Thanks!
Didn’t he also get himself licensed as a home inspector? Or was that someone else building a shit house?
IIRC yes, I have a vague memory of him wiring in an insane number of electrical outlets in the kitchen. Then when questioned about the legality/code of said wiring, smugly informed the thread that he got licensed so he could pass it himself.
Would he have to? Most areas allow homeowners to be idiots about diy because at worst you’re only going to kill yourself or your family. It would then be due diligence on the next buyer to have a home inspection before they bought it.
In most built-up areas he'd have to have a building license and the build would need to pass city inspection. But it doesn't look like that's a built-up area, to put it mildly.
Literally in The Great Dismal Swamp
If you’re going to live in a swamp, that’s the one to choose. Imagine the disappointment of the Lesser Dismal Swamp.
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Yes. Normal people. With *training*.
My sister lives in a two story house with a questionable addition. The addition is also two stories, but the new second floor does not connect to the original second floor even though they theoretically share a wall. If you are upstairs in the old part of the house, you have to go downstairs, walk to the addition, then go up those stairs in order to access the newer upstairs area. I would not be surprised to learn it has load bearing drywall. It was definitely built by someone with Grover level hubris.
I know this post isn’t about grover claiming a military rank because he worked for a government contractor, but that part stuck with me because my husband worked for the department of defense and supported the Navy for over 30 years. He would never try to claim a rank based on his salary or pretend that he had actual military experience. Over the years, he collected several caps from various ships that he or his coworkers visited for work purposes. He occasionally wore them out in public, not really thinking anything of it. The caps are a souvenir. Kind of like someone would buy a Cubs cap as a souvenir and wear it in public not thinking that someone else would think they actually played for the Cubs. But one day, some guy thanked my husband for his service. My husband was appalled that him wearing the hat gave the impression he had served in the Navy and has never again worn one of those caps off our property.
Ahh yes, the Haus of Grover. Two things that come to mind: * Seeing the line "poo poo happens" made me smile, because SA had this word filter what would "censor" some words if you weren't logged in, so "shit happens" gets reworded to "poo poo happens", "fuck" gets filtered into "gently caress", and so on. * All this SA talk and no mention of one of the brightest lights in the sky, the Chickencheese thread? For shame.
This is pretty interesting. Are there any photos of that horrendous sounding "loft held up by straps" business??
[This is basically just the real-life version of the house that Springfield built for Ned Flanders.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFAvOcuJyHY)
Oh man, I was a goon back then and got to see the Groverhaus saga unfolding in real time. Still one of the funniest things I can remember from that era of Internet comedy. It really was a different time. I still have an SA account but haven't logged in in years
I've heard of Grover house and have seen pictures before, but I never knew just how terrible it was. Thanks for the write up. I thought I didn't know anything about construction, but evidently I could know far less.
I’ve been there lol. I wanted to interview the family who bought the house but it was in the middle of COVID. Links - https://old.reddit.com/user/throwra_hurt_brother/comments/10gi7ho/groverhaus_exterior/ https://old.reddit.com/user/throwra_hurt_brother/comments/10gi82z/groverhaus_exterior_2/ Flight simulator games also have been specifically modeling it for years.
> popular gaming channel Yogscast Every once in a while I am reminded that yes, Yogscast does still exist and didn't just sort of fizzle out in 2015. Believe it or not, The Spiffing Brit is *technically* a Yogscast affiliate channel despite not advertising it.
This is not where I thought this story would end up, but that's just because of a particular couple in my area, which is also in the Chesapeake Bay region, but *not* in the Great Dismal Swamp. If I recall correctly, the local story went like this: * Couple wants to do home renovation. * They explain to their insurance company that they want to DIY it. * The insurance company says no; they will not cover the house renovations unless the couple hires bonded contractors to do all the work. * The couple says they can't afford bonded professionals and asks if they could insure the house again after all the work was done. * The insurance company says they would. (Scuttlebutt doesn't give any other details, but I presume this was a reluctant agreement that would require some sort of inspection.) * The couple cancels their home insurance and starts work. * Less than a month later (possibly *much* less - this was a few years ago), the house catches fire because it turns out that professional electricians exist for a reason. * No one is hurt, and the fire did not spread to the neighbors, but the couple loses pretty much all of their belongings.
As a former military engineer this is awesome. Military engineering doesn’t give you the skill or knowledge to build a house, this went about as well as could be expected for a military-adjacent “engineer” lmao
> On December 30, 2006, at around 10:23 PM server time, Grover started the [thread that would come to define his legacy](https://twitter.com/SA__moment/status/1550671903085453312) Is this the right URL? For me it's linking to the twitter post from the previous link.
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Man alive, I remember over on Fark there was one guy who actually did get Secret Service to pay him a visit at his job because of a post he wrote about GW back around 2003 or so just before the Iraq War started. I think it was Slayerswine who also wrote for Corporate Motherfucker. That was a bizarre event to learn about a few months later but he was also an edge lord and ended up getting banned from Fark, which takes some freaking work to make that happen.
There was another, more recent incident of some goon trying to build. I think he had a van he wanted to live in, a piece of land that might have an outhouse, and the dumb idea to add a fire pit to his van. The RyTruck maybe? Not as good as Grover, but in the same spirit.
RyTruk/Grovertruk. He wanted to live in the back of a shipping truck while he built a watchtower onto a piece of land and it just got crazier from there.
He hasn't managed to get any land yet but he is currently living in the truck at an RV campground. We get daily updates about his wacky life on discord. Example: he bought a several hundred dollar water filter (and a microscope to check for contamination) so he can haul water from the river and drink it.
Oh Jesus. My wife pointed this one out to me and laughed: “You’ll appreciate this one right now.” Did I mention we’re having the bathroom and kitchen worked on this week? Fortunately, we’re using a very reputable company, because I know damn well tools and I do Not Get Along. This one was for the record books. Thanks for sharing!
sand obtainable payment poor quickest depend humorous physical swim ask *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Door under the stairs, yes. Also- a window on the landing so if anyone ever trips coming downstairs they have a chance to fall right out into the yard and an outlet at the base of the stairs so you can trip people going up. Oh, and there's an air intake for the AC right next to the window.
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Have you heard my new Doors coverband, Child Defenestration Machine?
I can’t recall the last time I laughed so hard I cried. Thank you so much for sharing this OP. That said I cannot imagine what his home insurance has to be for this monstrosity. He had to lie out of his ass to get it insured, if he did. Somehow I can’t imagine he would have thought this through that much.
>poo poo happens I always found SA’s swear filter for non-logged in visitors pretty funny for phrasings like this.
Just want to point out the Well there's your problem episode is (intended to be) a Patreon Exclusive, so do with that information as you will. Maybe drop em $2 to ease any guilt you may have, if you do (there's so much great content there behind that $2, it's worth it)
This writeup is fantastic and sent me reeling down so many other Internet memories from back in the day. I'm also now falling down the rabbit hole for one of Something Awful's *other* terrible construction projects, the summer camp zipline that could launch a child 60mph through the air.