A while ago, I watched a neighbour build a small fire pit out of bricks in his back yard. He scraped away a patch of grass and spread some crushed stone (or it looked like crushed stone) and then made it all nice and level. He then started to lay out bricks in a circle. It looked quite pretty, actually. I could see that he had a ring about three feet in diameter. He then took his level and checked all opposing sides to see if it was all ok.

Then he mixed up the mortar.

I’ve never met him, actually. He lives two houses away and I could see everything he was doing across the back yard of my immediate neighbour. I’ve noticed he’s done a good amount of work on the house since he moved in (which was fairly recent). There have been a number of times when I heard the familiar sounds of a mitre saw across that fairly short expanse. And I’ve seen the accumulation of a number of piles of junk that subsequently vanished.
So, I’ve imagined him to be all sorts of things. With all the renovating he was doing, I thought he might be a carpenter. But then I thought he might be a painter, because of how he looked returning from work one day. But watching him in his back yard, working on a fire pit, made me think that he’s a mason.

Anyway, whatever he is, he’ll have a pile of rubble a short while after starting to use the new fire pit.
I often wonder at other peoples’ renovations. I wonder how the work would look under?? close inspection. I’ve walked past more or less full product demonstrations at the oversized hardware stores. They are filled with eager beavers just bristling to get their teeth into dam building, whatever kind of dam it may be (normally, flooring) and I’ve seen the results of some of that. Those stores will encourage anything that gets product out the door and product destroyed by ineptitude tends to never be returned or ever have any warrantee issues. It’s a real win-win, since the eager beavers are invariably pleased with the outcome, even if the outcome is to hire someone who knows what he’s doing.

A fire pit, for example, cannot be mortared together. The heat from the fire will cause the mortar to crumble.

When I moved into my house, the living room had the ugliest commercial carpet I’ve ever seen. And, to my surprise, there was even uglier carpet under it.
The world is filled with the results of someone’s good ideas. They erode and rot like anything else in the landscape, though, and they almost invariably end up being someone else’s problem. A good idea that becomes a problem? Is there such a thing? Of course. Eventually, everything needs to be disposed of or at least fixed. Ah, but getting something done or fixed correctly simply delays the inevitable need to do it all again.

So why bother? Just do what you want, I think. The end result is never something permanent. Go buy a truckload of ceramic tile, for instance, and coat the entire first floor of your house with it. Don’t bother to make sure the existing floor can handle it, because you won’t live forever. Perhaps you’ll be either dead or moved away by the time the cracks form and pieces start to pop.

Yes, I can see into the backyard. I’ll avoid walking through the door. The neighbourhood turnover here is fairly quick, anyway. In a year or so, someone else will sweep away the ashes and broken brick. And I’ll once again hear the comforting sounds of the mitre saw squealing across the expanse.