What is a preposition? My 8th grade English teacher, Miss Braun, taught me that a preposition was anything you can do to a house.
What? I mean, you can go inside, or be outside, over or under, beside or behind or in between, before or after, up and down. All those kinds of words are prepositions. They describe relation to a noun and govern it.
So, things you can do to describe your relation to a house would be a preposition. How prescient since that is what I do today!
So, when I pull up to a house and see a front porch stoop like this, I know I have to be a preposition, here and throughout the house.
Oh, the house immediately across the street has the same kind of porch stoop, so this guy went through the neighborhood!
But I knew it wasn't done with a permit because the hose was almost blocked, the mortar was so sandy I could remove it with my finger, some top-layer bricks at the edges were loose (a couple had come off) and the porch comes up over the rim joist and lowest three courses of aluminum siding, burying it all.
THAT is a termite invitation!
But there was something else.
I could not find the plumbing clean out in the front yard.
You know what that it. It's a large, white PVC tube sticking up out of the yard. It has a removable cap on it that can be twisted off so a plumber can put a snake down there to clean out the drain line should it become clogged.
ACCESS TO THAT CLEAN OUT IS IMPORTANT!
Remember, you have to be a preposition.
So I began looking up, down and all around, especially beside!
And guess what I found?
Peek a boo!
They notched off the edge of the paver on top of it, but the cap cannot be removed. And they bricked around it during the construction. Then, after the fact, they chipped off the edge with a saw!
No snake could go down there!
I assure you, had there been a permit, the County would have demanded that the stoop NOT be wide enough to cover that clean out. Hence, no permit was pulled.
My recommendation: be a preposition! Have a look all around things. ESPECIALLY NEW THINGS! See if you can determine if it looks right. And if not, ask a home inspector. You may be right!
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