nemo

This discussion of carpentry is perfectly timed. I just started planning out my workbench in the garage. I know it's easy enough to slap together some 2x4's but I want to make this shit sturdy and last forever and not deflect an inch.

Anyone have some good carpentry resources I can read up on?

Actually, that's not a bad idea for my parents' house. They have rock with wallpaper over it in half the rooms, and it probably wouldn't hurt to re-insulate too, given that the house was built in 1956.

Yep. Re-insulated as well. I went with Roxul - but to be honest, I should have done sprayfoam. I'm kicking myself for that.

I also saved a piece of sheetrock. I want to create some type of "art" from it displaying each of the layers of paint/wallpaper/skimcoat and hang it up to remind us what POS my house was/is before we bought it.

Why did you go down to the studs?

Photos don't show how bad the walls were. 3/8" sheetrock with about 4 layers of wallpaper and even more layers of paint. It was easier to replace the rock than fix the walls.

And it allowed me to re-wire the rooms. The whole house has a mix of aluminum and copper.

figured i'd throw in a little good instead of my problems. finished up the nursery a day before he was born (3 weeks early!)

before:

During:

After:

NYS has a bullshit Property Condition Disclosure Statement form that they are required to fill out. It has every possible condition that can happen in a house. The homeowner can either fill it out and take all liability for everything in the house - or they can give the buyer a $500 credit and waive the form. Obviously everyone waives it.

Anyways, our den is right below those joists - there is sheetrock dated 1998 on it. They lived in the house since 91. I'm gonna try to find a date on the ceiling sheetrock and prove that they remodeled knowing about the fire. We called the fire department and they have a fire on record from 89.

We actually spoke to a lawyer and said the only way we could actually bring a full blown lawsuit against them is to prove they purposely misled us, or get a structural engineer to say the house is structurally deficient. I'm working on both. Alternative is to take everyone to small claims court - looking at that too.

Sucks so hard. So much money has gone into fixing problems caused by the fire. All of which were hidden under paneling or carpet or missed by the inspector. It's insane.

who wants to see my latest discovery? After we bought the house we started seeing signs of fire damage here and there. I was replacing the door to the attic yesterday, and the threshold wood was all cracked. So I popped it off to replace it and there is a 2x4 underneath spanning the wall that is burnt to pieces. Ripped that out and got this wonderful view of the floor joists

Stuck my phone to video what I can't see and the entire floor joists look like that. The gap is ~.5" and the joists dropped about .5" as well. I figured this was the reason the floors are all crooked but didn't think it was that bad.

Thanks for the info, guys.

The leak has probably only been going on for a few weeks, but it's obviously enough to cause a problem. Looking at ripping out the bathroom as we speak.

I don't think homeowners insurance would even cover this, would it?

Figured I'd give an update. Took a couple of photos of the damage. These are the only photos that actually shows something (my phone camera sucks). One is on the other side of the shower wall (bedroom shares a wall) and the other is under the tub (after it dried out for 12 hours). Looks like the water is getting behind the tile, traveling down the backerboard, and dripping on the flooring below the tub. It pools along the bottom frame of the wall separating the bathroom and bedroom, and is making its under the frame to the other side.

I caulked the shit out of the shower tile as a bandaid so we can still use the shower. Gotta figure out what to do next.

http://i.imgur.com/QroulVj.jpg

motherfucker. my wife texted me yesterday that there was a stain on our den ceiling. Bathroom is right above, ****.

I look closely, and all the shower tile grouting is slightly cracked. Some of the tiles are ever so slightly pulling away. I opened the tub to see water everywhere.. seeped through to the bedroom on the other side (just put up sheetrock so there is no basemolding) and see the water penetrating through. Mold is starting to form everywhere.

This should be fun.

Are you running a 30A dryer and have the same size condenser as him?

To alleviate the problem you can try to switch up the phases that the circuits are on.

If we have the dryer running and the central AC kicks on, any light in the house dims, my computer speakers click, etc. 200a is probably not needed (nor will it fix that issue) but 150a service doesn't exist and moar is better, right?

Honestly - it's still gonna happen even if you upgrade to a 200A service.

To get rid of the dimming in that situation, you need to bring a 3 phase service to your house - which the utility will happily do if you pay them

I thought it might have been as well, but it's not.

Some of the original house wiring is around and it's the cloth insulated 2 conductor wiring (no ground).

At some point they started upgrading to aluminum and copper. It's a complete mix. I'm assuming the copper was done after the fire (1989). COPALUM crimps were done in the early-mid 90s.

I'm just glad the panel is fairly new. Though I need to add a SPD to it.

Knob and tube can't have insulation batting around that... that's probably why there was an electrical fire. Nice work!

There's currently no knob and tube - but there's a clusterfuck mix of aluminum and copper. At least they had someone come in and do the copalum crimps everywhere.

So I'll be re-wiring the house as I go along.

That painted sink!

 

Nice work man! Heck of a project.

we originally hated it. Now my wife wants to paint the bathroom greyish - change everything else and leave the sink. For some reason she thinks it'll be "gardeny"

Thought you guys would appreciate this. Been working on the house and figured I'd share a few photos (with full album my wife has been keeping sort of up to date):

What we started with:

What we found under the carpets:

Garbage that the previous owners left (they left us more crap furniture than we moved in with)

New floors:

New stairs (needed 3 separate steps):

Decided to take down the sheet rock and start fresh:

Good thing, found there was an electrical fire:

Inspector missed:

New walls, electrical, floors, stairs, railings, etc. (Walls are finally painted now... new doors are going in shortly):

Obligatory pet pic:

OH, and we didn't notice that this was our front door until after we moved in:

http://i.imgur.com/NKzSfL5.jpg

Ouch. That's not safe at all. That ground wire has no path to ground. You need to re-do it all.

edit: looking at it some more, i see what looks like some burning on part of that white romex. take a look.

Just spotted this guy on 82 and 1

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Just saw an OBP Spec B (or LGT with spec B rims - painted black), dropped, exhaust outside of the liquor/sprint store in Somers Commons Shopping Center

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I'd love to do this. I'd imagine there has to be someone in EDM who can head over to a junk yard and get these parts.