In a prior thread… I mentioned a nightmare I uncovered when doing one house.
I opened up the electric panel and found #8 wire scabbed with a jumper consisting of two #14 wires … black and white wire… (still in the romex covering) wire-nutted to the #8, and then both wires were inserted and tightened into the breaker.
It dawned on me that there are probably MANY a story out there of either really funny… or really scary… things that we have found, or uncovered, while remodeling.
Anyone care to share?
One neat story… I was doing demo prior to a room re-configuration. Found an bottle of Coke… perfectly preserved… between the walls. Not sure if it was left there from a prior remodel… or from the original construction (house was built in 1922). Either way… it was kinda neat to see something that was left by the prior carpenters that worked on the house.
Replies
Helped a buddy rehab hud housing, tenant had used jumper cables to hook up the power after the meter was removed. The house was also the victim of a drive-by shooting , six shots to the front and not one window hit.
No nightmares. All the houses I've remodeled in have been near-perfect. Flawless construction, wiring and plumbing. Noteworthy square and plumbness, not to mention really awesome floor levels! I must be in heaven. Never seen any mold, rot, bugs, snakes, other vermin evidence; no bad smells, stuck pipes, overstuffed electrical panels. I always feel safe-- no worries about prior installations, falling through attic floors or bad electrical power for my tools.
Plus, the customer is always right! Yay for the great unlauded cash whippin' at me client! Praise be to them for thinking of my wants, needs, concerns, overall well-bein'. The tips and love they spread are enough to wait to tell my grandkids about. I'm so glad they always pay on time, are gushing with praise for my hard, unhealthy work. They really do care, I'm telling you I am a lucky carpenter!
I've heard of an unfortunate few who have come across an occasional problem, like maybe a joist that was cut into or a mystery wire. One time I knew a guy who even had found an unexpected layer of flooring! Sure glad nothing ever happens to me!
Happy late Ap. fools,
Dog
ROFLMAO!
Friend of mine brought a house that built in the 50's and had been remudled a couple of times, at least once with an addition.
The basement had drywall and we where cutting some of that away and started seeing sparks. Thought that the DW saw torn into some of the old romex.
Turns out that it was "junction" wrapped in tape about the size of small fist. Running splice, if you can call it that, with the wires "gentally" hell in place with the tape.
Along other things that lead to an old box burried in the wall.
Not to mention the 3 way switch with a plain wire added to the 14-2. And that wire was "spliced" in the middle of the garage on the joist. May have had a wirenut on it until it was twisted hard endough to tear off the wires leaving abut 2/3's of a turn of one wire against about 1/8" on the other. Made contact "SOMETIMES".
Nor will I mentions the cable that had been tapped off the dryer line to feed a new dishwasher.
This isn`t electrical related but the wierdest framing I`d ever seen. When I opened up this house for a remodel the joists between the first and second floor were 2x4`s 24 in. on center. I met a nieghbor later on who had met an old guy from the nieghborhood who had seen the house under construction 80 yrs ago. I guess the guy who built the house was a real cheepskate who had collected a bunch of scrap lumber and put this house together. My client warned me that it was poorly framed but I had not seen such shoody work in my life.
2x4 joists you say?Iwas trying to jack from in cellar to take out a sag, before we openned it all up, just wanted to halfway straighten a couple things out and set props in ya know?I ran the twenty ton jack up all six inches and gained nothing. Wanna see why?
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Edited 4/5/2005 6:35 pm ET by piffin
on another job, somebody had palyed the game of "How many layers of flooring can we fit around this stool without taking it up"
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I bought a house once that had carpet in the kitchen. For rentals I like commercial tile. So I took up the carpet. And the 6 other layers of various flooring that were installed there. 1 1/4" thick.
I remodeled a bath for a customer once that was 5' wide. And the floor sloped 2 3/4" in 5 feet. Looked like a roof. Some one had sawn a triple 2 X 10 years ago to install duct work. I got 1 1/2" back but then it all stopped moving. DanT
I stripped a roof on a 135 year old log cabin that turned out to be 5 layers thick in most places. It seems that the cabin began as one room, and each summer the owner returned, stacked up three adjoining walls, and added a room. It ended up w/ 6 or 7 rooms, and a roof like a pagoda. I had to wheel barrow the shingles down the mountain to a dumptruck. When I drove the 9000#'s of shingles to the landfill, over what looked like the Burma Road, I was terrified that the F600 truck might swap ends.It made me realize that was why I was the first one to bother to strip 'em off. Anyhow, I put 24ga steel on the roof, and 10 yrs. later it still looks dynamite.
My first project house had four layers of shingles on the roof including the original shakes (1923 house). We worked hard and got the whole roof stripped by the end of the day. When we tried to lock the house to go home, the front door wouldn't quite close. Seems stripping the roof allowed the house to "move" just enough.....
I'm more surprised if I dont find at least one buried junction box. The last house we did had wall sconces in the living room at one time. When they removed them, not only did they bury the old boxes in the plaster, they packed them with newspaper first.
> not only did they bury the old boxes in the plaster, they packed them with newspaper first.
That's very common. In my place, one of the tenants filled sconce boxes -- with hot wires still running thru them -- with expanding foam. Doesn't come out as easy as newspaper. ;-)
-- J.S.
<not only did they bury the old boxes in the plaster, they packed them with newspaper first.> Yeah, just in case a spark occurs--wouldn't want it to lack some nice, dry tinder!
This was the same situation. Sconce boxes that were still live.
Like these?
believe it or not, some genious back in '73 cut these bents ( in 12 and 14) to add a shed dormer. The 2x6 sistered cieling joists were all that was holding it up. Yes they had learned to sag like an eighty year old woman. We replaced the top chord beams with new doug fir and fitted joints
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#10 shows the "WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO NOW" shot
#19 shows how we held it and gained back up
#21 shows what can happen when the mortar dies in a chimney - actually I think maybe there used to be an insert for a wood stove sleeve where you see the lathe patched in the lower part of the picture.
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Piffin,
Are you sure #10 isnt "man Im cold, you cold??? I dont know, but as soon as I can feel my fingers lets start workin'!!".
-m2akita
Now there's an idea for a thread - post a "captions wanted" photo or three
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So anyway, we managed to get past it.
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Rich
I was re-habbing a condo 2 summers ago.
Got a call from the owners (living in it while I was fixing it up.)
They had the outside spotlights on and couldn't shut them off.
Since they just bought the place, they didn't know which switch went to what.
I said I'd fix it, thinking they just had the wrong switch.
I tested and tried every switch I could find. All were good and none controlled the outlet.
I thought somehow I'd shorted a wire while working, keeping the light on.
Rechecked all my work, nothing.
I was getting ready to bring a tracer back to track down the problem.
The wife asked me to move a TV for her in the bedroom before I left.
Looked down to make sure the TV was unhooked and saw a lone switch on the wall behind the cabinet.
Turns out, someone had installed and fished the outdoor floodlights to this bedroom wall and tapped into the power outlet.
Strange place and low on the wall, real odd.
She must have unplugged the TV and hit the switch.
We still laugh at it.
Jeff
Bought a farm house and some acreage. House used to be a corn crib. Don't know when it was turned into a house. So, I gutted it. The "remodeling" the previous owner did would read like a carpenters sit-com.
When I removed all of his stuff and started getting to the original stuff, I was hoping I'd find some union gold or confedrate treasures or something. Didn't. But when I pulled up the linoleum floor upstairs (real linoleum wood fiber and turpintine kinda stuff), I discovered two things. First was a corner of a newspaper that had only the date on it. Something like 1896. Cool I dated the house at least. The other was a complete sunday issue of a local newpaper from the mid-thirties. What a time capsule. Picture of Jesse Owens in college talking about going to the olympics. Byrd going to the antarctic and stuff. It was early in the year (about this time I think) so it had a complete spread about the up-coming Indy 500.
The classifieds were the best, though. New cars for a couple hundred dollars. used ones for $35. grocery sales, job openings, etc.
It was particularly good because it provides a real snapshot of the real daily goings on not just some moment in history.
was a complete sunday issue of a local newpaper
Which is cool to find, but it always makes me wonder--what sort of job site was it that nobody noticed them flooring over today's paper?
I've been a career counselor for those who thought the inside of a renovated wall was a rest room or a trash bin. Just something about having to actually explain, would you want to open the wall up in 20-30 years and find someone else's coke can as spit cup?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
When I got married and moved in with my wife, her ex had done a lot of remodeling and wife wanted an alcove in the hall made into a closet. I wanted to nail a framework with shelves into the studs and couldn't find any with the stud finder. I was puzzled because the wall was one layer of half inch drywall. Kept trying and finally the sensor beeped--turned out the guy had framed that part of the wall with 2X4's horizontal instead of vertical.
Rich
I was doing a remodel job, had to cut a new widow in, looked around before cutting and didn't see any power in the area.
Of course as I cut all power to the upstairs of this house (built in 1840's) goes out. Seems I cut the one line that fed the entire upstairs.
Told the homeowner that I would need to put a junction box in and he said no way, he'd get a electrician to come out and fix it.
The electrician just wire nutted the old romex together and left it hang in the wall.
I told the HO that that wasn't code, he said that an electrician did it so it'd be fine.
So maybe I didn't start out finding anything odd but I left with a little surprise for the next guy!
Doug
You know, that kind of story scares the h-ll out of me.
I assume the job was permited.
Why didn't you report the electrician?Quality repairs for your home.
AaronR ConstructionVancouver, Canada
Aaron
I don't believe that there was a permit on the job.
I told the HO that what he was doing was wrong and that's about all I could do.
HO is a damn doctor, you'd think he had a better than average amount of intelligence but I guess the thought of spending more money overruled the common sense thing.
A couple years latter I'm doing some more work for them and the docs wife mentions something about inadequate wiring in the upstairs of the house. I mention not only is it inadequate but its unsafe! She drills me for more info and the next thing you know she has her husband in on the conversation and she's getting a new electrician out and they are getting the whole house rewired!
That'll show the cheap bastard. I imagine the whole house rewire cost a bit more than doing the right thing up front.
Doug
From the everyone's an electrician file... I was working on a turn of the century Victorian in Portland, OR where the HO asked me to check out a motion sensor light in their back yard that only worked once in a great while. I tracked the wire (romex run between the vinyl siding and old siding) to a hole through the wall. It came out just above the garbage disposal and plugged into the gd outlet. The only time the thing worked was when it was dark and something was moving in the back yard WHILE the disposal was being used... UGH...
Rich,
A few years ago, I cut into an old lath and plaster wall with no windows (to add a window). What I found was remarkable to me. There were no studs in the wall (post and beam from the 1850's, near Peoria, Illinois). The sheathing was tounge and groove 1x10's run vertically from sill to beam. The wall cavity was only 3/4" deep (doubled lath nailed vertically on 16" centers like studs with horizontal lath nailed to the "lath studs"). I was dumbfounded.
I showed up ready to pop a window in, but the window (for a 2x4 wall) was deeper than the wall--only 2" from o/s of sheathing to inside of lathe and plaster. Not only too shallow for my window, but little room for insulation or outlet boxes, etc.
I ended up framing a new 2x4 wall inside the old wall for insulation, wiring, and my window. It turned out great, but I was humbled by my first (and only) post and beam remodel. I thought I would have 6 hours of work and ended up with about 30. Now I know that if most of the outlets are in the floor, you may be dealing with a house with 2" thick walls.
>>Now I know that if most of the outlets are in the floor, you may be dealing with a house with 2" thick walls.Or structural brick walls. They're about a foot thick. Thats what we have, and we had all sorts of weird floor outlets. I've replaced them all with regular in floor box outlets (with the brass covers). I just wished they made duplex ones instead of just single outlets.
Here is a plastic floor box and they show brass, aluminum, and plastic coverplates for duplex receptacles.Can run TV and phone out of it at the same time.http://www.hubbell-wiring.com/library/pressreleases/h4374.pdf
Those are interesting, but I suspect we passed on anything round 'cause we already had rectangular holes in the floor. I probably would have passed completly, except that the holes were already there and I needed to fill them with something.Personally, I try not to pass TelComm cable in the same bay as high voltage. I don't want any possibility of interference or of shocking someone.
There should not be any interfence if it is properly installed. That is unless you are trying to bundle them together for 1/2 mile or so.Nor is there a safety problem. Each cable should be fastened down and they are separated in he boxes.In fact there are divided 2 gang boxes so that you can have HV and LV in the same box.Now if the wall collapses and the box is crushed you might have a problem with the wiring. But then you already have a problem.
I have two, both electric.
FIRST ONE
A friend of mine, reasonably skilled, was helping his brother (unreasonably unskilled) do some repairs. Early Chicago spring, so he set up on the porch, and plugged the extension cord into the outlet in the house.
Brother had bought a new Craftsman belt sander (Sears was just a couple of blocks away). The friend was sanding away when the unit quit--just quit. Brought the unit back; Hmm; well, ok here is another. That one lasted a half hour. Brought it back again; Hmmmmmmmmm says Sears; well..........ok, here is another.
Friend was taking it out of the box in the living room, and plugged it in there. Sure runs slow! Plugged it into the extension cord. WOW!!! did it run fast! Voltmeter time: 240 volts in a standard outlet. The previous owner had rewired the outlet to run his 240 air conditioner. AND, he had run the wires from the line side of the meter to avoid the costs!
SECOND
My old house. Stripping rotten old drywall from the house. A three-way switch was installed--a single wire ran from the box, across the stud just under the drywall to the light. I disconnected that floor, and found even more fun&games with electricity.
This is not a hugely surprising thing but it could have been a nightmare for the owner. Yesterday we demo'd a kitchen and discovered a switch buried in a wall next to a pantry cabinet. It was unscrewed and tucked into a metal box. It was the other end of a three way for the overhead light.It was live.Seen a lot crazier stuff, but fits in well with this thread. Now I've gotta put it into a new cabinet, through filler space. Thank you very little.
Two of them.
One just last week. I had some old knob and tube in the ceiling of my basement that was hidden under paneling and mouse poop and old loose insulation. When I finally got it exposed I found two places where live wires were just cut and left hanging in space. Another place had three wires spliced together and for about three inches on all sides of the splice the insulation had been removed or had falled off. No junction box and not even electrical tape to protect the bare wires.
Removing a very old cedar roof that looked like it should be leaking alot worse than it was. It turns out there was three asphalt underneath and one more cedar under that! It took forever to clean it all off. When I was done I didn't need a ladder to climb on to the roof because the pile of debris was taller than the house. The reason I couldn't see the extra layers was because they had nailed a 2X6 around the perimiter to hide the first 4 layers.
BC
Man! cedar, asphalt, asphalt, asphalt, cedar.
You get a milkbone for that one. Roar!
This one was an interesting find behind a medicine cabinet. At least someone used wire nuts when they connected them together, except the orange ext. cord.
be concerned
I loved whatthey did here. Logs (whitwashed) covered later with handplaned 1x12 and wider T&G Pine..covered by at least 12 layers of paper ( some were pages frrom the Bible). Then 1/2" sheet rock, when ele became avail. The installer cut channels in the SR, stapled in the romex and spackled over the void.
THEN some one installed 1x8 cedar T&G wainscot...with out moving the outlets forward...when I ripped it all out, alot of the wide panelling has saw kerfs from the ele. install..lucky tho' all that was on the cieling is pristine..its about to be the floor in the LR when I get it cleaned up.
Shoot me. Please.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
"Success, is not pleasing others, it is pleasing yourself"
Among many other fun electrical issues, in my bathroom the "new" 1950s medicine cabinet had a light and an outlet, presumably for a razor; the power came from the ceiling light fixure.
This was done by splicing a piece of romex between the two (no boxes, and just tape, no nuts) and then for looks the romex was then IMBEDDED INTO THE CEILING AND WALL (a 90 degree bend, of course) WITH JOINT COMPOUND.
I don't think anyone ever used a hair dryer in there, because the house is still standing.
In a 1940's house, there was a plumbing leak in the bathroom sink that flooded the bedroom on the other side of the wall. From the bedroom side, I whacked a hole in the wall, grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled off a big section of wall. The inside of the stud bay was FULL of rusty old double-edge razor blades - I mean hundreds of them - sticking out at all angles from the framing and the inside face of the wallboard. It was sheer luck that I didn't get a handful of blades when I yanked that wall off.
That was the first time I'd ever encountered an old bathroom medicine cabinet with a blade disposal slot in the back. What a brilliant idea!
OUCH!!!
I had the same thing in my old house, Razor blades a foot high below the medicine cabinet.
I guess this one would fall under the same category but not electrical.
Our house in Richmond, VA ( see "Civil War house" in photo gallery) had a porch that ran the full length of the back of the house. Two 2x8 (saw mill cut) floor joist run the entire length of the porch plus the sills. A 4'' notch was cut at each end were it rests on the sill.
A 1947 survey shows the porch and shows the location of the out house on the lot.
A couple of the children of the past owner have told me that when they moved into the house in 1961 there was a small room at one end of the porch that had a flush toilet in it. You had to go out the kitchen door down the length of the porch and into the "flush outhouse".
They told me that not long after they moved in that there Dad and an Uncle made the room larger and moved the door so that access was from inside the house. Because porch floors have a slope to them, to shed water, they poured concrete on the floor to level it up. This was also done in the laundry room next to the bathroom. The rest of the porch was made as an extension of the kitchen.
A cast iron tub was set in place. One of the joist was literally cut in half to allow the drain to get past it.
The floor and for a distance of 4' up the wall and all around the tub, tile was set.
Now fill that tub with water and put a average size adult human in it and think of all that weight on those two floor joist.
Yep you got it. The joist that runs under the tub is broke off at the sill. The other one that was cut to allow the drain to get by is showing signs of stress at the cut. Also the toilet was unseated from the closet and was continued to be used. I have braced up the one under the tub and still have to figure out how I am going to do the other one. Not only plumping but wires in the way too. I will then reset the toilet back on to the closet.
Anything that I do now is only temporary as the old porch will be removed and rebuilt as part of the house instead of a porch.
Dane
I will always be a beginner as I am always learning.
Our first home - shower had leaked rotting framing in outside wall. Pest work started before we closed, but not finished. We moved in and the only bathroom in the house had a 2' hole to the outside for a couple of weeks. Many practical jokes resulted.Second home - removed "woodlike" paneling to find a join in the knob and tube wiring in the wall, wires twisted together and wrapped with tape. Not even a wire nut, let alone a box.Third home - for addition we opened the wall where the wall heater was, found all the framing inside burned to charcoal. Adjoining wall was hosting the termite party...Fourth (current) home - Studs turned sideways; power pulled from an outlet, through a hole drilled to the outside of the house, run along a siding lap for 6', going back in the house through another hole into a box - neighbor tells us they didn't want the T.V. power cord draping along the wall in the family room...; remove ceiling light fixture to find romex dangling through hole in sheet rock; glass in upper half of front door replaced by a sheet of clear plexi held in place with shipping tape; removing a long header for an addition to the kitchen found a hole drilled into the header from the attic and room for an electrical box carved into the header, wires going into the box were live, and all had been spackled and painted over - I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get that header to let go and finally realized it was hanging by the wire (barely visible), had no idea it was there, let alone live!; and so it goes..."A completed home is a listed home."
Edited 4/6/2005 11:48 am ET by Lisa L
LOL
Been there, seen that, ran fast
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Kitchen renovation in an 1840 farm house, kitchen to be renovated on what used to be a porch. First day, ripped into the interior diagonal sheathing (from when the wall was the exterior) and found termites. It didn't get any better. The plumbing was in an inaccessible crawl space, and the floor sloped 2.25" in 8 feet. With no budget left to fix the floors, I cut 8' long tapers on my band saw to level the new cabinets. The windows I removed to relocate/replace had had their lower sash buried in the wall; all that you could see was the inoperable upper sash above the counter.
My brother bought a house in MD that had a bootleg apartment in the basement. Lots of stuff wrong with it, but the one I remember is the light circuit wired with thermostat wire or telephone wire stapled to the wall surface.
When I was younger I worked summers as a laborer for a very high end construction firm ( 20 to 30 million dollar jobs were common) They were remodeling the original Hamms family estate (Hamms beer) right across the street from Kevin garnett's modern castle . The scope of work was rewiring, residing, and reroofing estimated cost was 4 million. Anyway, the whole time I was there I was working in the servants wing tearing floors out of the bathrooms to get at the wiring. In one bathroom Under tile, mortar, and 2x6 subfloor I found a small glass bottle of whiskey with the cork still in it. The house was built in the late 1800s so I thought that was pretty cool. I gave it to my Mom to put on a shelf and I have'nt thought about it for years.
I have run into a number of nightmares ( I refer to these as previous brain farts ). One that comes to mind is we werE installing vinyl siding on the wall flat roof garage turned additon and were having trouble finding the wall studs behind the osd sheeting, took off some sheeting and most of the studs / top wall plates were rotted off! The only thing that was holding the roof up was the interior drywall! I called the landlady who lived 50 miles away, took pictures for her, and explained what we found and she give me the go to fix it right ( 1day job turns into a week!) I didn't curse the previous worker's becuse it was her late husband who build the place! She was a trusting cleint, thankfully, some just want to cover up and leave for the next poor guy & it's hard to explain why I won't do it, like re-shingling over multi layers. I Also installed a sloped roof on the garage to elininate the 5 gal. puddle's!
IF IT WAS EASY, EVERYONE COULD DO IT!
After moving into our previous house my allergies really started acting up for the next two years. I ended up at an allergist who concluded I was alergic to ragweed and mold. Doc put me on a program where I got a shot once a week for a couple of years.
In the meantime I started renovating my basement which had been previously finished. It was drywalled and covered with wainscotting to about 4' up the wall. When I took the paneling off, all the drywall was covered in mold from the floor up to about 2 - 3' off the floor. Drywall was sitting on the concrete floor when it was attached to the studs. Must have been sucking up moisture from the floor for 20 years. Fiberglass behind was moldy also.
About a year after I started getting the shots, I also finished remodeling the basement and removing all the mold that was down there. My allergies have been MUCH better since then, I don't know who deserves the credit, me or the doc.
hey re your tag line
i used to tell he guys that were whining about be too hard too hot whatever
thats why they call it work,if it was fun everyone would want to do it
Remodeling a bathroom, probably this is all pretty common:
- 2x10s hacked big time by plumbers
- subfloor CDX
- tiles set in mastic
- tub surround tiles over GB, mold in DW ceiling below due to water leakage (no caulk between tub and tile floor)
- (added) no VB over studs, though walls were furred out to get non-existent VB over tub lip
- bottom plate and several studs rotted out from water damage
- 3 consecutive studs on outside wall with 60% notches to accomodate DWV pipe (probably original framing)
- wall behind vanity had one stud with 2" notch for (diverted) DWV, other stud was cut in two to allow access to PVC/CI coupling (stud was held up with plaster & lath; coupling was sliced up to get it to fit); wall was furred out with some strips of mason lath to "repair" the damage
- beam supporting one wall notched 2"x3" (in the center of the span) to accomodate pipe for recessed radiator
- one jack stud removed (cut away from below) to recess radiator; other jack stud sitting on some kind of subsill with no support underneath it (original framing?)
- window had undersized header, 2 2x4s on the flat; typical for its time but .... splice in 4x4 beam overhead had failed as header sagged and the whole beam sagging at that point; beam on next wall pulling away from this one by 1/4" at the corner as this beam seesaws up at the end; some of the sagging may be due to 4x10 beam supporting floor sagging, no way of knowing without taking down kitchen ceiling, it ain't gonna happen....
- plumbing: DWV not pitched enough because of distance from stack, all blocked up; rubber couplings used to connect PVC to waste stack; vent pipe rises 0" above roof
- electrical: no GFI (remodeled in 1996, one year before some idiot bought this place); above the ceiling, 4-way splice wrapped in tape and outside any box; one wire goes to switch buried in door header, another to a loose wire
- fan vented into the attic
- no insulation above bathroom except....they did wad FG insulation on top of the recessed lights, which of course were not ic-rated
- door was moved, original header cut away, some cripples just hang in space; new header is a single 2x4 on the flat; this is a load-bearing wall
- (added) window: NO insulation between window and RO and NO flashing
- (added) original ceiling box for kitchen buried in the floor, had maybe a dozen wires (old bx, new bx, romex) going into an old junction "box" that probably maxed out at four
Don't ask what disasters ensued when a carpenter and a plumber came in to help "fix" this mess.... I give the floor a 50% chance of surviving at one end when the vanity goes in, at the other end new joists have to be completely replaced because of carpenter's work.... Ever replaced some joists that already have a wall sitting on top of them?
Edited 4/9/2005 12:19 pm ET by Taylor
Edited 4/9/2005 12:50 pm ET by Taylor
Edited 4/9/2005 3:13 pm ET by Taylor
something like these last couple ones - I used to have a photo of this, but you would lose your lunch anyways...I got a call from a lady who sais that little brown mushroom type things were growing out from under the baseboard in her bathroomYou know what I foundAfter fixing the plumbing leak and totally replacing here floor framing subfloor, tiles, etc., I got paid, but in the process iof getting to know them, I figured out that they were rapidly running out of money. They were the kind of copuple who are constantly over-extended on everything while driving caddies...so a year later, I get another call - "our refridgerator is leaning to one side, can you fix the kitchen floor too?"This was totally on the other side of the house from where I had worked before so I'm really curious now...Crawlspace situation, so I take my maglight in for the crawl. On the way there, as I'm crawlintg along, a romex is slightly loose and drapes across my back - tingle buzz going on there with my paws on the damp ground... I know this is a big dollar job...next thing I come to anotjhre six feet in is a fine mist of water on my face. Hmmmm, this is interesting. Took me awhile to find where it is coming from. Tiniest of little holes in the incoming supply from the well to the pressure tank. You wouldn't believe such a tiny hole - that's why it took awhile to find it. Meanwhile, the stuff hanging from the joists looks like something from a science fiction ghoul movie.
Green, black, white, orange - you name it.Finally I get to where the soft floor spot under the refer is. Other than the vinyl, there is nothing left holding one side of the refer up. I get a hydraulic jack and prop in something to keep it from falling through temporarily and proceed to write a report and estimate. I know I'll never get this job or get paid for what I've done, but trying top keep someone from getting hurt.The house ends up owned by the bank. Some hack outfit is seen in front of it for a few months and it is sold again.
and again
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Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
As a DIYer I don't see as many messes as you all.
Although my 1911 home was remodeled by an idiot in the 70s. Couldn't wire his way out of a wet paper bag with scissors in his hand...
The local paper here in Portland, OR had an interesting remodeling story. I swear it's true, you can probably find it in the archives for the Oregonian.
This guy is remodeling his old victorian. He opens up the ceiling, sticks his head up there to look around and finds himself face to face with a human skull.
They had a picture of it in the paper and everything.
I'd say a skull is worse than some dip spit any day.
I think I would have soiled myself.
Twenty seven years of old house work has given me too many nightmare stories to even think of. One of the few that really stands out though was a tiny 250 year old house right on the Hudson River that this old "cat lady" lived in. She was a bag lady. People would not go there to work because of the smell and disease. This was about 15 years ago. She somehow got some insurance money and wanted to replace a cieling in a small back room. People on the River knew that my heart was bigger than my business sense and so they pleaded with me to just do it. I did. It was only a two day job. The smell was not to be believed, the house was in tatters with ancient sticks of furniture, piles of newspapers from the 20's & 30's, 19th century books unopened since the War Between the States, sad reminants of dried flowers everywhere still sitting in their cracked vases, and cats, (somehow alive), they were everywhere. This was right out of Dickens. There were holes in the roof that I could have climbed through, most of the plumbing was rotted galvanized or threaded brass. Thank God it was a breezy spring day and I could open the doors to make things a little more tolerable. While she was out on a walk into town I decided to venture downstairs to "the kitchen". There was a rotting galvanized pipe scabbed into a live gas main right as you went down the steps, the framing of the walls had been rotted away at the base and nothing was there but crumbled plaster trying to cover the hand split lath. Cat feces was everywhere. Cats would scatter and leap around as I slowly walked down to the little basement kitchen not daring to touch anything. There were two or three of them chewing on the remains of a large river rat in the corner. Silence Of The Lambs had nothing on this place. Upstairs, I cracked open a door and there was the noise of leaping and snarling. Looking into the room I did a quick calculation of about 47 cats. There was a rusting pitted olive green Dodge Charger sitting just off the road in front of the house. I'm sure this place had quite the history, but it was too dangerous and disgusting to look for it. Later that year, the lady went to a home where she probably passed on. There had to be close to 80 cats in that place, two of them walked around with their guts dragging in the dirt. A couple of guys came along, bought the house and I think had it razed. The property was worth a lot. Some old houses just aren't worth it.
Turns out that this old sea hag had been quite the belle of the ball in Nyack NY back in her day, and she came from a rather wealthy family. Her father had been Thomas Edisons right hand man. And they wonder where authors get their material. Oh the stories that lurk!
Nope, most of you are far better.
I was finishing up a project, when the client asks to have the 7 treads on the basement stairs replaced also. A farmhouse built in 1930.
No problem. Pick up 7 treads. A quick glance for wiring or plumbing in the area, and none to be found.
Hack out the first tread with the sawzall. start hacking out the second tread and hit metal, "But hey, there is no plumbing or electric, so it must be a nail." Keep on hacking until there are metal shavings coming up out of the tread. "Hmmm....better check this out"
Reach under the tread and feel an insulated pipe, and where I cut the insulation. Then I feel what is left of the front sight of the guy's deer rifle! Seems he hid it under the steps, and I taken part of the front sight off, and had scratched the heck out of the barrel.
Bowz