Seriously, honest question. Why are homes made out of wood? A flimsy, degradable material that is so susceptible to the elements, that has pretty definitive expiration conditions. Especially when there’s a world of materials out there that aren’t nearly as vulnerable?
Naturally, with a query like that, it stands to believe that I’ve gone through some sort of negative experience, to which is affirmative. We’ve had some gnarly rain, and at one point, hail, and then suddenly, there are two places in my house that started leaking. A skylight in the sunroom breached at first, leading me to put down some buckets to catch water, and what started as one corner that was leaking eventually turned into three corners, leading to my disgust and aggravation.
Naturally, at the time in which all this occurred, there’s little sense in trying to call anyone since it’s not really an emergency, so I went on with my day, just very annoyed.
And then I heard the dripping; at first, I thought I left my kitchen faucet slightly on, but it turned out that the light fixture above my sink was dripping water. Worse off, there was a bunch of dripping along the window frame in front of the sink, and thinking quickly, I put a bunch of little Tupperware containers to catch the water, since they fit on the sill, but it was unmistakable, that there was a second breach in my house.
Long story short, I tracked it down to some angled windows in my master bathroom on the second floor, where moisture was seeping in through either aged seals or rotting wood, and trickling down behind the walls and into my kitchen. Also seeping through some cracks in the tile in the master bathroom itself too. But it was clear to where it was coming from.
So as the skylight was a definitive roofing issue, it wasn’t difficult to get a roof guy out to my house and take a look at the problem. Predictably, it was a case of where the seals around the window had eroded, and basically I paid $430 for them to basically re-seal the seams with probably $10 worth of silicone caulk. But whatever, that issue was taken care of, and that’s what grown-ups do, throw money at their problems.
Now the angled windows, that’s a different story, since they’re windows, and they’re basically 30 feet off the ground. It’s not something I can do, and frankly I’d rather hire someone to take care of it. I was hoping that it would be an instance of just some more silicone caulk, resealing the seams of the window to prevent future moisture from getting in, but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
Of course, it turns out that a lot of the wood framing the edges of the window have basically completely rotted at this point, and when the rain and hail came sideways, it’s the perfect entrance into the inner parts of my house, and obviously something a few stripes of caulk were not going to fix. Even the ladder touching the frame caused some of it to crumble away, like a trap block from Castlevania.
This too will be something that I will be an adult about and throw money at to get fixed, but that brings us back to the original question at hand: why the fuck are so many homes made out of wood?
Obviously, there’s the very apparent economical aspect, as wood is very affordable, as well as pliable and flexible, but damn does it suck that homes are built with materials that are known to have a finite shelf life and will undoubtedly be affected by inevitable moisture. Knowing the age of my home when I bought it, I always had in the back of my mind, concern for whenever there was too much rain going on, and now that I’ve actually experienced breaches into my home, things are never going to be the same ever again, short of me coming into a boatload of money and having everything inspected and fixed appropriately, and not by the corner-cutting Korean contractors that the previous owners of my home obviously went with, because that’s what all Koreans the generation ahead of me did.
But like, if I could Sim House the construction of my house, and money weren’t an object, I’d definitely build my home out of materials that weren’t wood, or at least limit the wood to areas of the home that weren’t quite so exposed to the elements. Like window frames wouldn’t be made out of wood, so that shit like this could even occur, and maybe be made from the composite materials that my siding is made from or something.
Either way, I’m just salty because my home fell victim to moisture, and I’m agitated that it all stems from wood rot, and wondering why everything is made out of wood in the first place. I know about a grand is pretty good for repairs, but because it’s definitely coming out of the blue and unexpected, any sort of expenditure like this is unwelcome lately. I’ve got my hands plenty full without my house needing to come into play.
