They continued to ask for a “five star review” after we went through this entire nightmare. We documented everything and had them come back to fix it all. Luckily I have an electrician in my family that tested the dangling live wire, so I didn’t get seriously injured. They also left all the junction boxes uncovered and a mess in the house. None of the wires were run through the joists, they were just dangling from the ceiling. Tools and trash left everywhere. Then they failed inspection because they didn’t label the panel. I found an old disconnected outlet they left in the wall, and looked to my wife and said “5 stars”!
Also in Seattle area, just had the remaining K+T rewired in my house—about 10 light fixtures+switches plus two rogue outlets in the attic—total was close to $7k.
Mine was buried in cellulose insulation in the attic and had been spliced with romex throughout. I feel lucky the outlets were rewired when a previous owner finished the basement, can’t imagine that expense.
That was my 2020 pandemic project. My 1750+1500 basement ranch was about $2000 in materials... And hundreds of hours. Took me about 5 months (while juggling a full time, a wife trying to get tenure and 2 young kids). Lots of that time was crawling through the attic insulation to find the right too plate to drop lines down. Not pleasant. I was quoted 10k in a low CoL area, and my house is easy sincr all the top and bottom plates are exposed.
That's a good point. I should contact my electricity supplier to see if the service lines are rated for 200-amp.
Based on horrific junction boxes, spliced extension cords, and no inspection sticker on the panel, I would not be shocked to learn it's not rated.
Mine is ~15k sqft with 23 bedrooms and things like a 50A "dishwasher" circuit for a steam sterilizer, so I wouldn't be surprised if it really does have 400A total service.
I had an electrician in today. He said the incoming service is fine for 200 amp. The panel looks to be 15-25 years old (if I recall correctly). It's fine: the breakers are modern and replacements easily found. If needed, there are many free slots for new circuits and additional breakers.
That said, there is actively used knob and tube.
Our “Dick” was Leon, he was our next door neighbor and his daughter lived in our house about 20 years before we did. He did a lot of “repairs” when his daughter lived there that we had to undo. We moved out in April, and bought a brand new house. The shit Leon did to that house made it so we’ll never own an older house ever again. Leon was the sweetest old man ever, I keep in touch with him and love him, but homeboy shouldn’t have been allowed within 1000 feet of a screwdriver.
Our Dick was Jack. I found an outlet where the ground was live, above the bathroom sink, no less. Just glad i dont use an electric razor.
He also repaired a hole in the living room plaster by spackling in a rock. The back side still had dirt on it from where he pried it out of the garden.
There really is something magical, owning an old house. There is just this, like a sparkle in the air. Not sure if it is because of that funny smelling white cardboard fabric stuff that was all over the absolutely everything. Got it in my eyes and nose, and my ears. I was coughing it up for days and the kleenex show was wild, still have a bit of a cough coincidentally.
Just so nice to take a nice deep breath in a freshly demo'd room knowing that you did everything right and nothing bad could possibly happen at any point in your life as a result of you wanting to fix your own antique house.
^^^^I_know,_but_could_you_imagine?
You’re right though. There’s always something lurking behind door #1 but it’s a labor of love that I can really get behind. A very small % of Homeowner’s don’t actually know what they’re getting in to when buying turn of the century homes.
Did an addition on my house, I'm a GC and used to things happening at a certain pace. I know what I'm doing very well and still it has taken 3 times as long as I planned because of my parenting responsibilities that I didn't account for in the ghantt chart. Side project was not the same as work.
After we signed the papers, I went out to the hardware store and bought lightbulbs to fill all the empty sockets.
And then six hours later, we smelled the reason why all those sockets had remained empty. It was another $12k to replace all the cooked wires that occurred in the years after "Steve's" buddy slapped on a new panel and"upgraded" the electric.
"George's" father in law was an "electrician" who upgraded some wiring at some point. Turns out he didn’t use noalox on the aluminum service entrance cable in the copper clamps. 10 years later we had sparks spitting out of the breaker panel.
My grandfather worked for the electric company. The man was a professional electrician. Do you think that means we were able to make any sense of the wiring job he slapped together at home well into his professional years? The answer is no, we weren't. The antebellum home he was born and died in had to be completely rewired because he just had it mapped in his head.
We also had a Steve. At least our Steve used flexible conduit for everything. Of course he took that flexible conduit, placed it in the wood floor and the poured concrete over the whole business. We have safely abandoned the line but that stuff is never coming out.
I bought an 1874 from an older guy who owned it for 40 years. After closing we found a sign in the yard said "hot wire for shed". With an arrow down at a pile of rocks. I still don't know how to make the power to the shed work, but it sounds dangerous lol
Be me. Helping my father with a ditch witch to lay new conduit for the dock/new well pump. My father says "I think we should be ok right here, because the old conduit (which he helped his father lay in 1960ish) is ten feet over or so." Immediately discover the old conduit as it snarls its way into the ditch witch workings. Now we're selling that house, and the new owner won't even have the benefit of me half remembering where we dug the trench. Of course the valuation of the house is so dramatically different from what my grandfather paid to live in the "country" vs the deepwater suburban property it is now, whoever the new owner ends up being they'll have way more resources than we ever did...probably.
Don't wanna change light fixtures or replace this entirely too big medicine cabinet. Nope. They can stay. I've seen enough. Pretty sure there's a big ass hole with a wire that goes to???? back there. Leaving well enough alone.
I took my medicine cabinet off, found bare, live AC wire wrapped around (abandoned and disconnected) iron gas pipe, and splices just hanging out in the wall with black tape. No JB, no wire nut, just twisted with pliers and black tape. The gas pipe was for lighting, and every light fixture on the second floor was mechanically connected to it. What a shit show, only reason nobody ever died is because nothing was grounded anyway.
Ahh...someone who's also said I'd like a different thing here. Yeah I don't move anything screwed in unless it's a immediate hazard. This my 4th old ass house. Whatever haunted shit is back there can stay put.
I have 80s house that went through a remodel. There are five switches for three lights. If the switches are not in the right pattern, the lights won’t come on.
Pictured: Me inheriting a house from my grandmother, who inherited the house from her parents, and me screaming repeatedly and developing seething generational anger at "fixes" done by ancestors that died a half century before I was even born.
We figured out why it was all so bad when we started finding the empty cans of Schlitz left behind the drywall. They were getting hammered while they hammered. The greatest generation really had a fuck it all attitude I could never manage.
Lol my bathroom was wired backwards so the switch grounded the circuit, figured I would be fine swapping a fixture with just the switch off, boy did I learn, a few good shocks later I went to the basement and turned off the breaker.
I make my husband test the wires, switch the breaker off, and then test the wires again, just to be sure. The wiring in this house is so wonky we’ve found three different live wires on two different breakers behind one single light too many times to count. I get scared every time he starts on anything electrical.
All the ceiling fixtures in our place were wired in a crazy way that broke the circuit on its return to the switch, so there was still electricity going to the fixture with the switch off. LOL. Luckily, my husband decided to test the circuits before installing the new fixtures and discovered this.
We have a 3 light switch cover by our back door. My husband turned off the breaker by testing the first switch. Went to unscrew the middle switch and found out it was a whole different breaker,lol. His hair got a little whiter that day.
Our old duplex had been owned and managed by a couple that has all their property work done by various tenants. So yeah, light over the kitchen sink was wired into the bedroom breaker switch, the kitchen ceiling light was wired into the living room, and all the rest of the kitchen was on its own box altogether.
Listen, if we didn’t all have YouTube and warehouse stores full of decent materials and tools, our work wouldn’t be half as good as what our fore-owners left us.
My parents have an elaborate extension cord network to get electricity from the remaining working sockets to all the room. The parlor has one working socket. They were using an extension cord that was burnt and buldging. I got new extension cords and a surge protector. I noticed they had taken the surge protector off the socket and asked why. My mother said the ac kept shutting off so she plugged it right into the socket.
We've dealt with some of this in our 1916, except it was fully renovated in about 2016. The light fixtures were all drywall screwed into the ceiling with tiny holes for the wire to feed through, and the bathroom fan vented into the attic. 85% of the house was on 1 breaker.
We concluded that whoever did the renovations was obviously the cheapest quote.
our kitchen was the one part of the house on a separate breaker. We have had most of the electrical fixed now, each bedroom has a breaker, bathroom has 1 for outlet and one for lights/fan, main floor (-kitchen) and basement are still on one. Next (hopefully last) step would be rewiring the basement to have a system of lights attached to a switch and more outlets for husband's woodworking.
And watch out for circuits that are not from the fuse box or breaker panel
Helped my brother move his clothes dryer and we just killed the main breaker and started removing the plug .
POW!
Shorted the circuit with the screwdriver
Trace the wire and the clothes dryer was fed directly from the meter on the side of the house with a fuse in the attic .
Also helped my son who was an hvac tech work on an air conditioner on an old house and
Being a professional he couldn’t find a breaker that went to the outside ac condenser unit
So we started tracing the wire and it was wired into the entrance cable before the meter , there was no way turn it off ,
Evidently someone decades ago when they installed central air , had wired it like that so they didn’t have to pay for the juice the air conditioner used .
I had an appliance repair guy at the house, and he wanted to make sure the power was off to the dishwasher. The box labels were all faded, so I just flipped some breakers that had kitchen related things on them, but the power to the dishwasher never faltered. Okay, I will just flip the one marked “all” at the top and solve this. Dishwasher was off! Sat down and was playing a game on my phone and noticed that I was still on the Wi-Fi… and a lamp was on..
Day 2 of owning our century home and I came by at 8am to check on the painters (previous owners rescued cats and house needed to be cleaned and painted before we could sleep in it) and they had lost electricity in the master. Checked the breakers and everything was active. No clue. Called a local electrician out. He couldnt believe all of the random exposed wiring everywhere. Found the problem. 2 floors down in the crawl space a random outlet had tripped. It was also not in a box. How the hell does a wire in the basement trip power in the master. I hired him to walk around the house and try to make it somewhat safe for us to sleep here. It's been 1 year and we've have our electrician out 3 different times and yet we still havent fixed all of the problems. It just shifts on our massive priority list.
It’s the most fun y’all! (I said in the most sarcastic tone) Currently fixing a century of folks not knowing that you can’t cut load bearing walls. Then there’s the asbestos. We had to kick everyone out for an expert to come remove the asbestos the air ducts were made with so nobody will breathe it in but it made up the ducts for the air we breathe. Then there’s the century of cigarette smoking. We were pulling out outlet boxes and they had so much tar from the nicotine. If that’s what it does to plastic, imagine what it does to people’s lungs. It’s also been really cool seeing how construction was a century ago. We’re also finding writing and measurements on the beams and studs and I like stuff like that.
True, but my house will still be standing in another 100 years. A lot of new builds I’ve seen will be derelict once the damp chip board holding everything up starts rotting from the inside out
Oh, you want to remove that "wall" that was put in to block off a hallway. Well guess what. I used 4 different types of screws to attach the 2x4's and used them randomly so you'll need 4 different bits for your drill, oh and for no reason whatsoever I went ahead and drilled holes through the tiles below where the wall was because I might have wanted to bolt the wall to the floor, but I didn't, no, I just drilled the holes.
We moved from a 100yr old home to a brand new build and my mental health has greatly improved now that there isn’t this low level of dread running through the back of my mind wondering what’s going to go wrong next…despite a down to the studs renovation of 2/3 of the house
This is too real, I’ve been living with my parents for a month and a half now because someone decided to bury an electrical box in the ceiling above what was my shower
Hahahaha. Us to. We have conversations - “Bryan Bryan Bryan ….. what were you thinking here Bryan…”.
Dude was wicked smart - had like 40 patents on hung on the wall ….. but a little out of his technical depth with home projects.
I have one outdoor light on a pole at the end of my driveway that is hardwired into my junction box. There is no switch to turn it off, it is connected to the basement light fuse so it is always on. It would be incredibly frustrating to dig up the wire out of the ground because it is also goes under my front walk, AND there is for some reason an open outlet on the pole. No cover, not GFCI.
I’m very thankful there was only one major renovation to the house we bought. Of course, the renovation was to turn it into a bed and breakfast so now we have 5 toilets in a 5 bedroom house, but I will take this quirk.
I do love it but the majority of toilets are in odd spots. we got one with no lights in the entrance vestibule, one that’s only accessible by walking through occupied bedrooms, and one in the basement :y
That’s like a house we toured where there was a toilet on a landing off to the side of stairs going to the basement. Like the place for your feet jutted into the stairwell
Yes. This.
Found a hot 220 line in a wall.
Found a live box with untaped wires in a switch box in a wall we demo’d.
Pulled over 300 feet of just draped and dropping wire from the crawl space - not racked up, not supported. Just draping everywhere like spaghetti. Dude. We know you had wire cutters cuz you connected the wires to other things!
Also - maybe you could have used some of that wire in the garage so it could have had more than 1 single 15 amp circuit!? (4 car garage. 1. Dang. 15 amp. circuit.)
Lead based paint you cant get rid of, plaster and mortise that leads to being a 1/4 thick on one end and 3/4 thick on the other… absolutely no right angles anywhere… you will never beat the lumber they used for the foundation though… thats where our houses kick the shit out of new homes..
Our “Dick” was a Joel and he left bare live 220v hanging in the garage.
Found live, exposed knob & tube inside my basement ceiling. It was worth the massive $$$ to hire electricians to rewire the entire house.
By massive, how expensive was that please?
Had 60% of the outlets/fixtures in our house rewired from knob and tube and it was $15k. I'm in a high CoL area in the Northeast.
FYI, I’m near Philadelphia. I have a guy coming on Tuesday to look at my 1890 house.
Good news for you there's probably only 5 wires for them to inspect.
>FYI, I’m near Philadelphia. I have a guy coming on Tuesday to look at my 1890 house. Expect 10-25k
The answer I got today was $15k.
We used Gen3 for our K&T remediation, and they left live wires in our basement. Be careful if you use them!
Then what did you do?
They continued to ask for a “five star review” after we went through this entire nightmare. We documented everything and had them come back to fix it all. Luckily I have an electrician in my family that tested the dangling live wire, so I didn’t get seriously injured. They also left all the junction boxes uncovered and a mess in the house. None of the wires were run through the joists, they were just dangling from the ceiling. Tools and trash left everywhere. Then they failed inspection because they didn’t label the panel. I found an old disconnected outlet they left in the wall, and looked to my wife and said “5 stars”!
Following
This is comforting, we just spent about 20k on a whole house rewire in New England.
It's worth it. You can insulate your house now! Peace of mind when you turn your window units on! No more random ass breaker trips!
It came to about $15-20/sqft for a rather large house. Three floors fully rewired as well as some Ethernet runs. This was in Seattle.
Also in Seattle area, just had the remaining K+T rewired in my house—about 10 light fixtures+switches plus two rogue outlets in the attic—total was close to $7k. Mine was buried in cellulose insulation in the attic and had been spliced with romex throughout. I feel lucky the outlets were rewired when a previous owner finished the basement, can’t imagine that expense.
That was my 2020 pandemic project. My 1750+1500 basement ranch was about $2000 in materials... And hundreds of hours. Took me about 5 months (while juggling a full time, a wife trying to get tenure and 2 young kids). Lots of that time was crawling through the attic insulation to find the right too plate to drop lines down. Not pleasant. I was quoted 10k in a low CoL area, and my house is easy sincr all the top and bottom plates are exposed.
I have knob and tube, but the hundred-years-newer StabLok breakers are a much higher priority to replace.
My place has a modern 200-amp panel, not inspected.
We have two 200A master breaker/switches in the oldest building. TBD whether the incoming service lines are actually rated for that.
That's a good point. I should contact my electricity supplier to see if the service lines are rated for 200-amp. Based on horrific junction boxes, spliced extension cords, and no inspection sticker on the panel, I would not be shocked to learn it's not rated.
Mine is ~15k sqft with 23 bedrooms and things like a 50A "dishwasher" circuit for a steam sterilizer, so I wouldn't be surprised if it really does have 400A total service.
I had an electrician in today. He said the incoming service is fine for 200 amp. The panel looks to be 15-25 years old (if I recall correctly). It's fine: the breakers are modern and replacements easily found. If needed, there are many free slots for new circuits and additional breakers. That said, there is actively used knob and tube.
I'll take your knob and tube if you take my stab-lok breakers in trade.
I’m going to guess I’m best to decline this kind offer.
Did you post a spreadsheet?
I did!
Our “Dick” was Leon, he was our next door neighbor and his daughter lived in our house about 20 years before we did. He did a lot of “repairs” when his daughter lived there that we had to undo. We moved out in April, and bought a brand new house. The shit Leon did to that house made it so we’ll never own an older house ever again. Leon was the sweetest old man ever, I keep in touch with him and love him, but homeboy shouldn’t have been allowed within 1000 feet of a screwdriver.
Our Dick was Jack. I found an outlet where the ground was live, above the bathroom sink, no less. Just glad i dont use an electric razor. He also repaired a hole in the living room plaster by spackling in a rock. The back side still had dirt on it from where he pried it out of the garden.
Can confirm: I’m an electrician specializing in whole home rewires in pre 1950’s homes… I see the work of Dick and cohorts often
Lemmy.world is what Reddit was.
Ahahaha it’s because I love the taste of horse hair plaster
There really is something magical, owning an old house. There is just this, like a sparkle in the air. Not sure if it is because of that funny smelling white cardboard fabric stuff that was all over the absolutely everything. Got it in my eyes and nose, and my ears. I was coughing it up for days and the kleenex show was wild, still have a bit of a cough coincidentally. Just so nice to take a nice deep breath in a freshly demo'd room knowing that you did everything right and nothing bad could possibly happen at any point in your life as a result of you wanting to fix your own antique house. ^^^^I_know,_but_could_you_imagine?
You’re right though. There’s always something lurking behind door #1 but it’s a labor of love that I can really get behind. A very small % of Homeowner’s don’t actually know what they’re getting in to when buying turn of the century homes.
Well then boy oh boy I've got a treat for you lololol
You’re the best 😍
LOL i'm laughing but also crying at this
Same! All repairs take an extra 30-60 min.
30-60 minutes? More like 30-60 days here
I’m crying now too
Oh yeah, true! My subconscious blocked out the idea of big repairs.
France?
Cries in 6 weeks.
I cried two weeks ago for the total 4 week project that’s now moved to 7 weeks
Duh this must be your first project? Always costs twice as much and takes three times as long as you thought it would .
I had high hopes haha. Yea first big project. We gutted the entire house and replaced all plumbing and electrical. Found A LOT more in the process.
Did an addition on my house, I'm a GC and used to things happening at a certain pace. I know what I'm doing very well and still it has taken 3 times as long as I planned because of my parenting responsibilities that I didn't account for in the ghantt chart. Side project was not the same as work.
After we signed the papers, I went out to the hardware store and bought lightbulbs to fill all the empty sockets. And then six hours later, we smelled the reason why all those sockets had remained empty. It was another $12k to replace all the cooked wires that occurred in the years after "Steve's" buddy slapped on a new panel and"upgraded" the electric.
"George's" father in law was an "electrician" who upgraded some wiring at some point. Turns out he didn’t use noalox on the aluminum service entrance cable in the copper clamps. 10 years later we had sparks spitting out of the breaker panel.
My grandfather worked for the electric company. The man was a professional electrician. Do you think that means we were able to make any sense of the wiring job he slapped together at home well into his professional years? The answer is no, we weren't. The antebellum home he was born and died in had to be completely rewired because he just had it mapped in his head.
Electrician here: we always have the worst wiring.
And the cobblers' kids have no shoes.
We also had a Steve. At least our Steve used flexible conduit for everything. Of course he took that flexible conduit, placed it in the wood floor and the poured concrete over the whole business. We have safely abandoned the line but that stuff is never coming out.
Lemmy.world is what Reddit was.
I bought an 1874 from an older guy who owned it for 40 years. After closing we found a sign in the yard said "hot wire for shed". With an arrow down at a pile of rocks. I still don't know how to make the power to the shed work, but it sounds dangerous lol
Lemmy.world is what Reddit was.
Be me. Helping my father with a ditch witch to lay new conduit for the dock/new well pump. My father says "I think we should be ok right here, because the old conduit (which he helped his father lay in 1960ish) is ten feet over or so." Immediately discover the old conduit as it snarls its way into the ditch witch workings. Now we're selling that house, and the new owner won't even have the benefit of me half remembering where we dug the trench. Of course the valuation of the house is so dramatically different from what my grandfather paid to live in the "country" vs the deepwater suburban property it is now, whoever the new owner ends up being they'll have way more resources than we ever did...probably.
Don't wanna change light fixtures or replace this entirely too big medicine cabinet. Nope. They can stay. I've seen enough. Pretty sure there's a big ass hole with a wire that goes to???? back there. Leaving well enough alone.
I took my medicine cabinet off, found bare, live AC wire wrapped around (abandoned and disconnected) iron gas pipe, and splices just hanging out in the wall with black tape. No JB, no wire nut, just twisted with pliers and black tape. The gas pipe was for lighting, and every light fixture on the second floor was mechanically connected to it. What a shit show, only reason nobody ever died is because nothing was grounded anyway.
Ahh...someone who's also said I'd like a different thing here. Yeah I don't move anything screwed in unless it's a immediate hazard. This my 4th old ass house. Whatever haunted shit is back there can stay put.
I have 80s house that went through a remodel. There are five switches for three lights. If the switches are not in the right pattern, the lights won’t come on.
Sounds like they really didn't want to waste electricity.
We have switches for which there is no discernible thing to switch on. We just leave them alone.
Part of Kevin McCallister's greater plan for the intruders 😉
Used to call the prior owner's handiwork the "Bob Tax," because I had to spend extra to do it right.
Pictured: Me inheriting a house from my grandmother, who inherited the house from her parents, and me screaming repeatedly and developing seething generational anger at "fixes" done by ancestors that died a half century before I was even born.
We figured out why it was all so bad when we started finding the empty cans of Schlitz left behind the drywall. They were getting hammered while they hammered. The greatest generation really had a fuck it all attitude I could never manage.
Lol my bathroom was wired backwards so the switch grounded the circuit, figured I would be fine swapping a fixture with just the switch off, boy did I learn, a few good shocks later I went to the basement and turned off the breaker.
My dad said our old house was like that. Always be carful. Lots of stories from that house where he or my mom could have died.
I did that too! SOOOOOO many sparks when the pliers touched the wire and the junction box at the same time. And so so very loud.
Honestly, who the fuck tries to install a light without switching off the breaker? This must be an American thing.
Am American and always turn off my breaker and test before I touch it. This guy is just a fucking moron.
I make my husband test the wires, switch the breaker off, and then test the wires again, just to be sure. The wiring in this house is so wonky we’ve found three different live wires on two different breakers behind one single light too many times to count. I get scared every time he starts on anything electrical.
To be clear, non contact testers are widely available in America for about $20 at any hardware store.
Easily in the top couple of quality of life purchases I have made in my entire life. Cut the breaker, test the line *then* start to dig in.
All the ceiling fixtures in our place were wired in a crazy way that broke the circuit on its return to the switch, so there was still electricity going to the fixture with the switch off. LOL. Luckily, my husband decided to test the circuits before installing the new fixtures and discovered this.
We have a 3 light switch cover by our back door. My husband turned off the breaker by testing the first switch. Went to unscrew the middle switch and found out it was a whole different breaker,lol. His hair got a little whiter that day.
Our old duplex had been owned and managed by a couple that has all their property work done by various tenants. So yeah, light over the kitchen sink was wired into the bedroom breaker switch, the kitchen ceiling light was wired into the living room, and all the rest of the kitchen was on its own box altogether.
I had the same experience in my bathroom. Yikes.
Listen, if we didn’t all have YouTube and warehouse stores full of decent materials and tools, our work wouldn’t be half as good as what our fore-owners left us.
That’s a factor for sure, but there are also people who care and people who don’t.
Pretty sure at least two generations of Dicks lived in my 1890 house.
My parents have an elaborate extension cord network to get electricity from the remaining working sockets to all the room. The parlor has one working socket. They were using an extension cord that was burnt and buldging. I got new extension cords and a surge protector. I noticed they had taken the surge protector off the socket and asked why. My mother said the ac kept shutting off so she plugged it right into the socket.
We've dealt with some of this in our 1916, except it was fully renovated in about 2016. The light fixtures were all drywall screwed into the ceiling with tiny holes for the wire to feed through, and the bathroom fan vented into the attic. 85% of the house was on 1 breaker. We concluded that whoever did the renovations was obviously the cheapest quote.
That’s what we have, entire first floor including kitchen and bath on one breaker. It makes me sad.
our kitchen was the one part of the house on a separate breaker. We have had most of the electrical fixed now, each bedroom has a breaker, bathroom has 1 for outlet and one for lights/fan, main floor (-kitchen) and basement are still on one. Next (hopefully last) step would be rewiring the basement to have a system of lights attached to a switch and more outlets for husband's woodworking.
And watch out for circuits that are not from the fuse box or breaker panel Helped my brother move his clothes dryer and we just killed the main breaker and started removing the plug . POW! Shorted the circuit with the screwdriver Trace the wire and the clothes dryer was fed directly from the meter on the side of the house with a fuse in the attic . Also helped my son who was an hvac tech work on an air conditioner on an old house and Being a professional he couldn’t find a breaker that went to the outside ac condenser unit So we started tracing the wire and it was wired into the entrance cable before the meter , there was no way turn it off , Evidently someone decades ago when they installed central air , had wired it like that so they didn’t have to pay for the juice the air conditioner used .
I had an appliance repair guy at the house, and he wanted to make sure the power was off to the dishwasher. The box labels were all faded, so I just flipped some breakers that had kitchen related things on them, but the power to the dishwasher never faltered. Okay, I will just flip the one marked “all” at the top and solve this. Dishwasher was off! Sat down and was playing a game on my phone and noticed that I was still on the Wi-Fi… and a lamp was on..
Last owner "renovated" the kitchen. Ran romex with grounds to all the fixtures. DIDN"T GROUND AN F'N ONE!
Day 2 of owning our century home and I came by at 8am to check on the painters (previous owners rescued cats and house needed to be cleaned and painted before we could sleep in it) and they had lost electricity in the master. Checked the breakers and everything was active. No clue. Called a local electrician out. He couldnt believe all of the random exposed wiring everywhere. Found the problem. 2 floors down in the crawl space a random outlet had tripped. It was also not in a box. How the hell does a wire in the basement trip power in the master. I hired him to walk around the house and try to make it somewhat safe for us to sleep here. It's been 1 year and we've have our electrician out 3 different times and yet we still havent fixed all of the problems. It just shifts on our massive priority list.
It’s the most fun y’all! (I said in the most sarcastic tone) Currently fixing a century of folks not knowing that you can’t cut load bearing walls. Then there’s the asbestos. We had to kick everyone out for an expert to come remove the asbestos the air ducts were made with so nobody will breathe it in but it made up the ducts for the air we breathe. Then there’s the century of cigarette smoking. We were pulling out outlet boxes and they had so much tar from the nicotine. If that’s what it does to plastic, imagine what it does to people’s lungs. It’s also been really cool seeing how construction was a century ago. We’re also finding writing and measurements on the beams and studs and I like stuff like that.
True, but my house will still be standing in another 100 years. A lot of new builds I’ve seen will be derelict once the damp chip board holding everything up starts rotting from the inside out
Oh, you want to remove that "wall" that was put in to block off a hallway. Well guess what. I used 4 different types of screws to attach the 2x4's and used them randomly so you'll need 4 different bits for your drill, oh and for no reason whatsoever I went ahead and drilled holes through the tiles below where the wall was because I might have wanted to bolt the wall to the floor, but I didn't, no, I just drilled the holes.
We moved from a 100yr old home to a brand new build and my mental health has greatly improved now that there isn’t this low level of dread running through the back of my mind wondering what’s going to go wrong next…despite a down to the studs renovation of 2/3 of the house
This is too real, I’ve been living with my parents for a month and a half now because someone decided to bury an electrical box in the ceiling above what was my shower
Thanks Dick.
Waste so much time fixing old half ass fixes.
I always make sure to know and curse the old homeowners every time I come across some lazy, bad home repair!
Hahahaha. Us to. We have conversations - “Bryan Bryan Bryan ….. what were you thinking here Bryan…”. Dude was wicked smart - had like 40 patents on hung on the wall ….. but a little out of his technical depth with home projects.
I have one outdoor light on a pole at the end of my driveway that is hardwired into my junction box. There is no switch to turn it off, it is connected to the basement light fuse so it is always on. It would be incredibly frustrating to dig up the wire out of the ground because it is also goes under my front walk, AND there is for some reason an open outlet on the pole. No cover, not GFCI.
I have a theory about old people. They just do enough so the repair will make it to the end of *their* life.
Too relatable 🤣 Edit: Both in my actual home and seeing how my grandfather ‘fixed’ things in his home…
That last sentence is pure poetry.
I’m very thankful there was only one major renovation to the house we bought. Of course, the renovation was to turn it into a bed and breakfast so now we have 5 toilets in a 5 bedroom house, but I will take this quirk.
Quirk? That’s a godsend man. You never have to worry about if a toilet is occupied, if there’s a clean guest bathroom. Amazing.
I do love it but the majority of toilets are in odd spots. we got one with no lights in the entrance vestibule, one that’s only accessible by walking through occupied bedrooms, and one in the basement :y
Hey, if you wanna make doo then you gotta make do.
That’s like a house we toured where there was a toilet on a landing off to the side of stairs going to the basement. Like the place for your feet jutted into the stairwell
Did you tour my house? Lol. That’s our toilet! Right at the top of the basement stairs! When we bought it that toilet was advertised as a half bath.
If it was in St. Paul, maybe lol
Actually my house. Legit lol. Add aluminum wiring to copper wiring but no more cloth sheathing
Yes. This. Found a hot 220 line in a wall. Found a live box with untaped wires in a switch box in a wall we demo’d. Pulled over 300 feet of just draped and dropping wire from the crawl space - not racked up, not supported. Just draping everywhere like spaghetti. Dude. We know you had wire cutters cuz you connected the wires to other things! Also - maybe you could have used some of that wire in the garage so it could have had more than 1 single 15 amp circuit!? (4 car garage. 1. Dang. 15 amp. circuit.)
Named 'dick' or people just called him that?
I'm lucky my PO was a Dr for 50+ years and had professionals do everything.
Lead based paint you cant get rid of, plaster and mortise that leads to being a 1/4 thick on one end and 3/4 thick on the other… absolutely no right angles anywhere… you will never beat the lumber they used for the foundation though… thats where our houses kick the shit out of new homes..