A little back story-
Back in the glory days, when housing developments were sprouting like dandelions, and the market was growing exponentially faster than the population, anybody who was a slick enough talker could find themselves a rising star in construction. I know, because that's when I learned to be a slick talker. The point is, it didn't take a lot of real expertise to make money in the field at the time. I know at least one crew who made all of their money for about 6 years doing strictly roofs in one sub-development in Missoula. Don't get me wrong, these guys were not hacks, but many others were. And they, by and large, suffered when the boom ended and they were forced to do more than just roofs. They simply didn't know their way around floors and walls, and it took a bit of learning for them to get up to speed. Others, like some of the guys I worked for, had always been doing quality work on a number of fronts, and they were able to trim sails and survive; betting, as it were, on the card to come. A great many people who had never turned in stellar work, but still made money, have found themselves out on their hind-ends. Now, as those boom houses reach the remodel market, we are finding mistakes that were made in the boom years.
The first place I realized I was in for some real hard work was perusing the home inspection report for details that I had missed. Here are the photos of the garbage disposal wiring. Lets Recap: I am not a licensed electrician. However, I don't think it is appropriate for romex to be wire nutted sticking out of the wall.
Also, I am more accustomed to seeing the disposal with a cord and a half hot outlet, servicing the disposal and dishwasher. And I am certainly not accustomed to having copper wiring sticking out where a person can hook it when getting something out of a cupboard. Or where children can lick it. This screams, "Touch a metal pan to me, it would be so awesome!"That was not the end of my electrical trials and tribulations. The next came when I was safing the house up for demolition.
Rachel touched on the photogenic aspects of demo, but I'm going to clarify a couple points. She mentioned that my style of demo is a little different from the kind you usually see on HGTV, or Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Their style is lots of sledgehammers, lots of people, lots of cameras, and general destruction. Its fun, cathartic, and looks great on video. It gets people really into it, with lots of glass shattering and drywall demolished. They also don't show people cleaning up after it gets over. It makes a MESS!
I go about things in a much more controlled fashion. Lots of sawzall, and almost no BMFH (the first word is Big, the last word is Hammer). A good day of demo for me is when I can remove drywall and studs that are almost reusable. It makes less dust and its good for salvaging materials.
Back to the story: I was getting ready to remove the various walls that surround the kitchen. This involved opening up walls to clear the drywall, identify electrical and plumbing, and opening up the ceiling to get access to the roof framing. I started flipping breakers; I have a nifty little magic wand that tells me whether a wire is live without any contact. OK, lets read the panel list.
OK, that makes no sense whatsoever. Lets try 
THIS one. Nope, living room. OK, how about THIS one... and so on. It took me 4 breakers to kill the kitchen. When that was done, I think I had power to two rooms in the house. Not a win for circuit organization.Almost immediately after that, I began to notice more signs that something wasn't right. Wires going the wrong direction than I thought they should, wires not being where I expected them; just general weirdness. Then I pulled the first box open. I am not, as aforementioned, a pro, but I think that there are supposed to be wire nuts in these things, not just black tape... about three quarters of the boxes in the house had crimped and taped wires. The other quarter had only one wire coming
in, so they don't really count, do they? Not even very well taped, quite a few of them came apart and exposed live wiring during the initial 'poking at the box to see what the heck' phase.So I wound up with 4 circuits running into the kitchen. Two of them were dedicated circuits for the dishwasher and disposal. Dedicated 20 amp circuits, for a 5 amp appliance and an 8 amp appliance. The dishwasher, BTW, was wired exactly the same as the disposal, with wire nuts and romex running directly to the unit. Non-sealed connections in water contact areas of the house without GFCI protection. The third was the refrigerator outlet and 3 of the 5 outlets.
The fourth was the entire back of the house.
Two baths (well, one very strange one at the time, but eventually/originally two baths) three bedrooms, the hallway lights, and the (wait for it) microwave (a remodel install, they jumped it from the back of the bathroom outlet). The breaker? 15 amps. You should see the lights dim when I fire up the shop-vac, its quite impressive... for scale, Rachel's hair dryer uses 1875 Watts (Watts=Amps*Volts), so peak draw when she turns on the hair dryer is (1875/120=) 15.625 Amps. 5/8ths of an amp more than the rated load for the breaker that runs half the house, and of course she doesn't dry her hair in the dark...
During demo, in addition to the exposed wire nuts,
poor/dangerous/stupid circuit organization, I found live wires sticking out of the ceiling (I think there were originally two lights in the kitchen, and one was removed, and the wires clipped off and left to hang); I found a lot more crimped wires; and the coup de grace: A critical lighting wire hanging loose inside the wall. The other end of this piece of 12-3 is a three way switch in the dining room that I kept trying to find the companion switch to. I guess this answers THAT question.
Moving past electrical, lets take a look
at plumbing. First off, we see saw this one in the inspection report: Corrosion at the water heater and at the drain valves in the crawl space. The reason? They used black pipe. Not even galvanized pipe, which itself is not code compliant anymore, but black gas piping. When I pulled the drain stubs on the plumbing in the crawlspace, I had to stick a screwdriver into the pipe to knock the rust loose before the lines would drain. There was about 8 inches of solid corrosion accumulated in the pipes. It was preparing to seriously start impacting our drinking water supply.Also, speaking of black pipe, we return to the curiously divided bathroom. This was originally two baths, and some delving into the crawlspace revealed that the original plumbing was still intact. After opening the wall
up, we found that yes, indeed, the original lines were still there. Plugged with black pipe threaded plugs. The corrosion from THAT was working its way back down the plumbing lines from the other end. Its still a mystery to me how we couldn't taste the rust in the water, or even see it, especially considering the house was sitting empty with full lines. As it was, every time I worked on the plumbing, I knocked loose another round of rust, that would work its way through all the plumbing until excised.For drain plumbing, not too bad, as it predates all this
work. They did manage to cap an ABS (black plastic) pipe with a PVC (white plastic) cap, but at least they DID cap it, so it could have been worse. Such as the improperly installed toilet which, as I noticed while on my hands and knees in the crawlspace, had been leaking probably since its install, leading to the unfortunate sewage smell that had permeated the house. A new $5 wax ring and problem solved. Forensic analysis showed that the toilet had been rested on the edge of the wax ring before install, so it had always leaked. We were fortunate it did not rot the floor, only filled the crawler up with nasty water.
Lastly, I'm going to discuss the framing. This I discovered a little later than the others, as I had to take steps to remedy all of these things as we went along. Remember the wood stove in the stupid position? Turns out the collar was not properly installed, so it was getting ready to light the house on fire. Which would have led to the roof falling in, because it turns out there was this pesky thing called a ROOF JOIST in the way when they put the stovepipe through. Turns out I'm not the only one who uses a sawzall. They did put some 2x4s under it, but the ceiling framing is not load bearing in any way, and they didn't even bother to nail the braces off. This one is still on the list to repair.
And the living room beam; I thought it seemed a bit lackluster for the span- turns out I was right, it was just a stack of 2x4s. Not continuous ones, either, just a nailed up selection of 2x4 that is supporting the ceiling in the living and dining rooms. Fortunately, the roof is true framed, and doesn't require center support, or this would be supporting the roof load.The more we get into this project, the more I am glad we have the opportunity to jump on this remodel from the get go. There are some things going on here that were serious fire hazards (I stopped keeping track of fire hazards when I got to 7), as well as health (drain plumbing) and physical hazards (possible roof and or ceiling collapse). We are making it right as we go along, but its a long and involved process, to say the least.
On that note, I have to go crunch some numbers, so we can get the beams and the framing fixed and replaced. The road goes on forever and the story never ends...
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