It’s not unusual to come across social media posts of the once-high and mighty abandoned by their families and living lonely lives in their huge mansions, perhaps with a servant attending to them.
Their children are now grown-ups and settled abroad, where they only invite their mothers to live with them, leaving their fathers to loneliness or squalid lives.
The narrative that’s always advanced is that the children witnessed how their mothers were treated unfairly by their fathers; the latter, too, mistreated them when they were young or were not present in their lives as they chased fleeting happiness out there in the heydays of their working lives.
This is the reason such men are abandoned by their families when their productive days are over, and their children have nothing to do with them.
Some experts have weighed in, saying that instead of an individual living in a huge bungalow alone, it would make economic sense to partition it into rental units and earn some income.
This will also help them have people to talk to whenever the family is absent.
Brick walls
The problem is the kind of wall partitions, which would make it a costly undertaking to convert the bungalows into rentals, as they’re permanent brick walls.
According to Peter Kanyi, an architect, if one is building with a future of converting the house into a rental, they should go for easier-to-assemble and disassemble inner wall partition materials.
“Gypsum boards can work well. They can look like real walls. Think of inserting them in metal studs that are fixed both on the floor and ceiling and screwing them in place. You’ll only need to unscrew them if need be to convert that house space into a different use,” he says.
These walls, adds Kanyi, should be soundproof and good for rentals and offices.
Wooden plywood walls are another example he recommends.
“They’re easier to fix. You can screw or bolt them into place. But like any timber, they may be prone to warping, so it pays to note if you’re in highly humid areas to know if they can work best in your place,” he notes.
Unlike gypsum board walls, plywood walls have some advantages. You can fix shelves on them and save space.
“Think of that large cupboard that can’t fit well or will take extra space. Shelves on the wall solve this,” Kanyi says.
There are other costlier versions like modular dismountable, which are aluminium frames with glass or ply and have a long shelf life compared to the two above examples.
He says it pays to know the type of walls to go for on matters of cost, privacy and durability.
“Think if you’re a tenant in such a house, where you can hear the tenant next door sneezing like through the wall. This may raise privacy concerns, such that you may be forced to soundproof your space,” observes Kanyi.
Eavesdropping conversations
Think of that kind of wall partition having a hole that may not be plain to you, but that tenant next door is eavesdropping on your conversations or whatever activities you’re up to.
Other than privacy concerns, what if that wall is paper-thin such that if next door occupants are having a physical altercation, the next thing you see is the combatants tearing through the wall and landing squarely in your house?
Plywood wall, other than warping in humidity, he notes, may also need frequent maintenance like treatment from termite attacks if your location is prone to termite infestation from time to time.
“There are seasons you’ll see termites, especially in rural places, destroying everything. You’ll need to watch out through regular maintenance; otherwise, frequent or periodic replacements with each termite attack will be costly,” Kanyi notes.
How about when a disaster like a fire outbreak happens? Will that wall partition buy you time?
Richard Nyakundi, an architect, says gypsum board walls are good when it comes to a fire outbreak.
“They can absorb the heat for a long time before fire consumes them. Better than plywood or timber and cardboard walls,” he says.
And in weight consideration, gypsum walls, he says, can hold well if the ceiling is gypsum too. For other types, you may need strong anchoring to minimise weight stress.
“How would you expect a cardboard kind of wall to hold a block of 200 kilo mass without pressure being exerted on it unless it’s strongly reinforced?” he poses.
The primary purpose of any wall is for privacy purposes; be it a replaceable wall or permanently fixed, nobody would like to rent where privacy is a concern.
You do not want to go to that extra length of soundproofing your unit to keep out the unwanted noise.
And other than using a replaceable wall, why not let or lease the whole building rather than be the lone occupant in a house with ghost rooms that serve no purpose if your family disowned you long ago, rarely visits or hardly calls to know how you’re faring?
