Paper Houses

Kadizzle has seen a lot of homes built, but never like what they do in Payson, Arizona. Most houses have plywood or strandboard placed over the studs, not here. Many of the houses here have the exterior siding, some weather paper, and then insulation. Apparently the building code allows these paper houses. We insisted on a real house. Just looking at a home you cannot know if the walls are substantial or paper. Kadizzle thinks if you put a light fixture on an exterior wall and there is no sheathing behind he exterior siding you may be in for some sagging fixtures. Builders will make a nickle where they can. 

Kadizzle grew up in a home built in 1914. That home had one hardwood floor on top of another for a total thickness of about two inches. That does not happen any more. Hardwood was used everywhere in older homes. Today softwoods are pasted and glued to come up with a home. Maybe one is not better than the other, but the old homes had copper pipes. No more of that. The wires even seem smaller. Well the insulation is better. Craftsmen built the old homes, the new ones are build so quickly and the old fashioned woodwork is just not there. In Europe they build homes to last centuries. Here they might last until the paint dries. Once upon a time Kadizzle had a job supervising the demolition of homes where an interstate was going to go. The big endloader would put it's bucket under the corner of one of those well built homes and the entire house would come up as a unit. Now if you did that to a modern home you would just tear a hole in the corner.