Back porch remodel, "what or why the hell did they do that for?"

Anyone who's ever remodeled has uttered this phrase, "'what the hell did they do that for?". Well this is a classic example. Brian and I started remodeling the back porch today. We moved all the stuff off the back porch Saturday and started demolition on Sunday. We decided to start with the floor since it was uneven and needed to be insulated from underneath. The people we bought the house from gave the floor a "face lift." They shimmed, put down some plywood, underlament, and some stick down 1'x1' vinyl floor. Here's Brian removing the plywood.

Here are the shims. As you can see, the floor is very uneven. It bows in the middle, but it's hard to tell in the pictures. Brian and I wondered why (the hell) the previous owner didn't tear out the floor and insulate. He sure did alot of work with the shims and they didn't even help. The floor has had that bow since we've been here. Looks like the porch settled on the North side, which would be the outside wall. At the most, the shims are four inches deep.

So under that layer of vinyl "tiles", plywood, and shims was another layer of plastic "tiles" and plywood. (Actually, there were two more layers of plywood, so all together three layers of half inch plywood, what the hell?).

So, we keep on working and get down to the original tongue and grove pine planks. Which were at one point painted blue. Around the edges we could see remnants of all weather carpet (the kind that looks like fake turf) which was also blue. (Blue is a recurring theme for our house. When we moved in every room had either wallpaper with blue designs, blue carpet, or blue linoleum. All of it at least thirty years old.) Go figure the original floor was blue. And we also found out why the floor sagged despite the previous owners efforts. (Although, we kind of had an idea because Brian had asked around about our house. Roger at the lumber yard knew about this surprise on the back porch. Can't guess what it is. Try an old hand pump well filled in with sand. (Why the hell not cement.) NICE. It smells nice too, like mildew and dirt.

At this point we still have some plywood to tear up. When we were removing the last piece on the southwest corner we found a trap door. Goody. Brian thought he was now going to be able to get under that part of the house and to the plumbing in the bathroom (another why the hell neither here nor there). I thought we would find a jar of money some depression era farmer had hid. We were both wrong. An old cistern tank. A pit under a supporting wall of the house. WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY FILL THAT IN? IN FACT, WHY THE HELL DID THEY EVEN PUT THAT THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? WHAT KIND OF IDIOT PUT A HOLE BENEATH A WALL, WHY THE HELL? The tank isn't in good shape and it's weak. It's rusted through on the north and dirt from the utility room is eroding into the tank. out from under the the house. I told Brian if the structural engineer who inspected our house had seen that, there's no way we would have got the loan.

We were not expecting this. It throws a wrench into our plans too. Brian called our neighbor (who builds houses) and Randy is coming over tomorrow to look at it. We'll see what he thinks. Probably going to either fill it in with sand and cement and put a cement slab for the floor, or tear off the porch, fill in the cistern tank with cement, and build new porch with cement slab for floor. We'll see what happens next. That hole is definitely creepy.