Dreaded Previous Owner

I came across the term “DPO” when I joined the Land Rover Owners mailing list — this is the guy you bought the vehicle from, who sealed an oil leak with bubblegum or put banana peels in the gearbox to hide the whine or rewired the entire vehicle using only one colour wire — you get the idea.

Turns out that houses have DPOs too. This crumbling plasterwork by the [1] kitchen window courtesy of not removing all of the iron framed window when replacing it with a nice new wooden one. The iron rusted, pushed the plaster out, and plastering over it just didn’t work (go figure).

Our “fix” might lead to the next owner of the house future-blog-equivalent-ing about it in much the same way. (We removed as much of the rust as we could, then stuffed the cavity with white shipping foam, then plastered over it, the idea being that future rust expansion would compress the foam and not lift the plaster).

[1] My brother objects to my use of “<over there> by the <something>”. Doesn’t stop me from (ab)using the term.

Because why, I can.

Tags: horrors