Who actually needs four separate doors into a building that is basically just two rooms? Well, apparently the POs did. Between building the studio in 1999 and us purchasing Purgatory, they put a fourth door in the studio building. This was in addition to the two sliding glass doors that allow access from the south and east, and the French doors, our usual point of entry from the west. And they didn’t install just any door either–they put in a door with 15 panes of glass, a swing-arm mechanism to make sure it stayed closed, and a separate storm door. To top it off, whoever installed it did not do the best work. If you look carefully at the top of the small door in the first pic below you’ll understand what I mean: they just had someone cut a hole in the wall and then jam in the door.
Then there is the stupid little “shower” they installed. If you again look at that image, you’ll see a funny white box embedded in the wall to the left of the doors. That was the PO’s idea of an outdoor shower. It was a shower you would have in an RV, and it too was just jammed into the wall.
The stupidity gets even better! At some point the POs replaced the east-facing windows. First pic below is a shot of what they looked like originally.
It seems the POs really liked contractors who did craptastic work, either per the PO’s instructions, or by going on their own and simply not telling the POs what they were doing. We knew back when we had the minor flood in the building thanks to the uncapped pipe designed to connect to the stupid RV shower that, there was water damage in the southwest corner of the building and the northeast area where these windows are.
It wasn’t until our contractor (who doesn’t do things half-assed) pulled one of the windows apart to start addressing the water damage that he discovered just how stupid the POs were. At one point there were actual windows with actual frames in the openings. The POs had the windows AND their frames removed, but left the nail strips in place and just cut the frames out. Then instead of putting in new frames and panes, they just shoved in replacement panes. This meant there was no proper seal to keep water/moisture out.
Once again, you just can’t make this kind of stupid up.
Anyway, while waiting for the new windows we ordered, our contractor got busy on removing the fourth door. It was pretty much the same sort of craftsmanship–basically the POs just cut a hole in the wall and shoved in a random door, using small bits of weatherstripping as shims.
As you can see in the above pics, all of this made quite a mess, but it didn’t take long for the door to be pulled out and the old hole framed and sealed up. So since we were still waiting on the new windows (they had to be custom-ordered), our contractor got to work inside the building.