Groverhaus

About

Groverhaus, sometimes referred to as Grover House, refers to the construction of a DIY home addition by Something Awful forums user grover. The account of Groverahaus' process, detailed on Something Awful, grew in infamy on the message board with people mocking the attempt, the house's designs and the finished product.

Origin

On December 30th, 2006, Something Awful^[1] user grover published the thread "How we built a huge addition onto our house, doing it all DIY [56k no!]." In the thread, grover explains how he and his wife built a 2,000 square-foot addition on their house without the aid of construction professionals. They wrote:

My wife and I are building an $80k $85k 2000 square-foot addition onto our house- and we’re doing it completely by ourselves. Framing, sheathing, roofing, doors, windows, flooring, plumbing, electrical, housewrap, kitchen, stairs, tile, trim- everything but the concrete and siding. (And we later got lazy on the drywall, too…) Our existing house is 1600 square feet (3-bedroom, 2-bath), but the kitchen sucks and we have no garage and have absolutely no storage space- ever since we moved in, we talked about building an addition, but all we ever did was build a 12×12 shed that became our lawnmower garage/storage room/woodshop/autoshop/garden shed which helped, but is woefully inadequate. The new addition adds a new kitchen, 2-car garage, workshop area, 3 bedrooms (more accurately, a sewing room, guest bedroom and storage room), a bathroom and a living room.

The original post also included photographs of the construction (examples below).

Spread

On March 13th, 2014, Imgur ^[4] user Gaygeek published several photographs of the house (examples below). As of April 2020, the post received more than 58,000 views (example below).

While the original thread has since been edited, in the decade since the Groverhaus post, many have shared photographs and commentary on the build. For example, on July 29th, 2017, Twitter ^[2][3] user @3liza tweeted, "ok this is the Groverhaus thread. it's time we put this shit on twitter for real. no one rational will ever buy an archives account again so" (portions of the thread below). In the thread, @3liza points to many of the talking points and criticisms from the original thread, such as the proximity of a gas grill to Grover's vinyl siding, the staggered garage, the initial designs and the stairs, as well as using memes and phrases associated with the build, like "load-bearing drywall." They also commented upon Grover's claims that he was an electrical engineer and the thread's removal from Something Funny.

On September 10th, 2019, Imgur^[5] user CrompchwrapsUWUpreme posted a gallery of Groverhaus photographs. The post received more than 1,800 views (shown below).

Search Interest

External References