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PopeCrunch posted:This is from a few pages back but ahahahaha. I have a side gig doing home inspections for insurance companies, and several insurance companies will straight up refuse to insure you or cancel your policy if they find out you have any FEP or Stab-Lok stuff in the house. This is one of the VERY FEW absolute dealbreakers - they'll even shrug and not give a poo poo about knob and tube or that oldass aluminum wiring that sucked. It's pretty goddamned bad when a piece of equipment is so hosed up that insurers will flat out refuse to take your money. :V I bought a two-family house with a 120 amp Federal Pacific panel. I was told that I couldn't get insurance until I replaced it. It was a bitch getting the electricians out there on the day of the closing.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:54
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Things like that that hold up closings cost realtors a LOT OF MONEY, I have no idea why more handymen / contractors don't specialize in last minute repairs like that, as the realtors are usually willing to pay RIDICULOUS SUMS for last-second work.
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Jun 25, 2013 17:40
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PopeCrunch posted:This is from a few pages back but ahahahaha. I have a side gig doing home inspections for insurance companies, and several insurance companies will straight up refuse to insure you or cancel your policy if they find out you have any FEP or Stab-Lok stuff in the house. This is one of the VERY FEW absolute dealbreakers - they'll even shrug and not give a poo poo about knob and tube or that oldass aluminum wiring that sucked. It's pretty goddamned bad when a piece of equipment is so hosed up that insurers will flat out refuse to take your money. :V
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Jun 25, 2013 18:24
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Bad Munki posted:There are some floor squeak kits where you basically drive a special screw in, and the head breaks off below the board, fixing the floor to the joist underneath without leaving (much) of a visible mark. I can't remember what they're called, and I've never used them or seen them used, but the ads claim they work. Of course, that's for addressing spots, as opposed to, say, an entire floor. I've never used them, either, but I've seen them in the McFeely's catalogs I get. All of the other types of fasteners I've bought from them have been top-notch, so I would expect these to live up to the hype. http://www.mcfeelys.com/product/SNM-3320/Squeeeeek-No-Morereg-Hardwood-Floor-Kit-w25-Screws
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Jun 26, 2013 04:00
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My cousin recently purchased a house. In this house, the previous owners installed a bathroom in the back of the basement. Before this, there was no bathroom in the basement. The electrical panel was at the back of the house.
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Jun 27, 2013 07:33
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Wild EEPROM posted:My cousin recently purchased a house.
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Jun 27, 2013 08:22
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Nitrox posted:And? Betting nice water leak or breaker in the new bathroom resulted. Doubt the basement had good drains installed either.
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Jun 27, 2013 09:19
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The panel was inside the bathroom. About 2 feet away from the bathtub. It didn't have a door on it, either. Said bathroom also didn't have any kind of venting for hot steamy air. The only drain in that bathroom was under a raised floor, with the bathtub, toilet, and sink all draining into it. His entire house is like that. Even more fun: There is a boob light In the basement kitchen, and right next to the (partially knob and tube) wiring, old leaky pipes. No access panels, of course.
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Jun 27, 2013 10:27
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 What in the hell made that place a 'good buy'?
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Jun 27, 2013 13:46
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I hate boob lights, but I'm biased; had a slow ceiling leak through the not-quite-sealed former chimney hole and through what must have been several months of water slowly dripping into the boob (& being evaporated out by the heat of the bulb before anyone noticed it) the nipple nut completely rusted onto the bolt holding the glass boob dome up. You ever try to unscrew a rusted-on nut with essentially nothing but a round piece of glass as your pliers? I have...in pitch black darkness, no less, because it was the only light in the room & the bulb burned out. The bathroom boob is connected to an exhaust fan that we accidentally left on during the hurricane rains last fall, so that one was full of water practically to the bulb before we saw it Not looking forward to getting that one apart either.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:24
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Splizwarf posted:
Probably the fact that the new bathroom is very much removable. House flippers do that sort of stupid poo poo on hourly basis. They care about total a number of bathrooms, not how functional they are. You get way more buyer traffic simply because of the higher number. Then they'll knock off $500 because both faucets are running cold water and the toilet drains into the crawlspace.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:26
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By new bathroom, I mean several years old, used by the previous owners, and built with leftovers scavenged off construction sites and dumpsters. The same homeowners moved a couch into said basement, then built that bathroom, and when the time came to move, the space was too small to move the couch out, so they had to saw it in half. They also moved a bed into the third floor, then installed railings (where there were none before), and when the time came to move, they had to saw the bed in half as well. They also decided that they liked colorful houses, so on the third floor, one room had purple walls and baby-puke green ceilings, and the other room had orange walls and red ceiling. I could go on.
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Jun 27, 2013 20:11
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Yesterday while replacing wall sockets I found one with a swapped hot and neutral plus the ground wasn't connected.
Gold Dust Gasoline fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 21:08
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Wild EEPROM posted:They also decided that they liked colorful houses, so on the third floor, one room had purple walls and baby-puke green ceilings, and the other room had orange walls and red ceiling. Stop, you're giving me deja vu.  (I did not buy the house. The amazing paint job was only a minor influence.)
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Jun 27, 2013 21:18
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This is roughly what it looked like before, since I'm a bad person and didn't take pictures of the before.  This is what it looked like after some repainting. 
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Jun 27, 2013 21:34
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I like the Befores on both of those.
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Jun 27, 2013 21:40
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Heh. Crappy paint jobs. HEH. My house was... "unique" when I bought it. Kids bedroom 1: pine board floor, very lumpy and damaged, painted a bilious green. Ceiling painted white. Walls painted with fake stone-wall pattern, giant mural of an ocean and a castle on a hill on one wall. Kids bedroom 2: pine board floor, very lumpy and damaged, painted to look like sandstone blocks. Ceiling painted dark blue with glitter mixed in and white spots everywhere (I believe it was supposed to look like the night sky.) Walls painted similar to the floor but darker, with Egyptian murals everywhere and random nonsensical chemistry equations that weren't stoichiometrically (is that a word? it is now) correct. Kitchen: straight out of the 70s, all old wood veneer walls with vertical slats, except it had all been painted over with baby-poo poo brown (I'm sorry, "harvest gold") at some point. Living room: I would have to say the walls are somewhere between mauve and puce. Not really sure exactly. The dining room wasn't horrendous, the bathroom was stucco and painted a sickening cotton-candy pink. Everything was moldy and falling apart from water damage anyways, so it all met the sledgehammer, or rather, most of it has by now. Oh, several walls in the stairwell were painted a violent purple, only slightly less purple than Barney, but they couldn't figure out where to stop painting to make it look nice so it just sorta petered out with a few straggler brush marks on the wall over the dining room entry downstairs and sorta kinda half assedly stopped at the corner at the top of the stairs.
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Jun 27, 2013 21:52
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Bad Munki posted:Stop, you're giving me deja vu. I kind of like the paint job but the ivory switchplates, dark grey carpets, and dark brown door are really not complimentary. If you're going to choose a funky paint scheme you need to go all the way.
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Jun 28, 2013 01:14
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Wild EEPROM posted:This is roughly what it looked like before, since I'm a bad person and didn't take pictures of the before. That's not a bad paintjob. . . it's just a missing texture for that particular wall. Just reinstall and it will probably fix the issue.
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Jun 28, 2013 02:25
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Back in college I rented a shoddy apartment and befriended the elderly neighbors next door. They planned a vacation while their home was being resided and asked me to take photos of the work. After I emailed the photos, the crew was fired - the owner stated they weren't licensed, didn't pull a permit, and didn't remove the original siding like he asked. There was a stockpile of materials left on site and the new group had the luxury to remove the new and old siding.
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Jun 28, 2013 05:46
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Guacala posted:Back in college I rented a shoddy apartment and befriended the elderly neighbors next door. They planned a vacation while their home was being resided and asked me to take photos of the work. After I emailed the photos, the crew was fired - the owner stated they weren't licensed, didn't pull a permit, and didn't remove the original siding like he asked. There was a stockpile of materials left on site and the new group had the luxury to remove the new and old siding. I'm going to a share some recent photos that will feel right at home in this here thread. Let's play a game of Spot The Fuckup. Check out this cool faucet.  It hits the window sill before you can fully open the hot water Hey guys, instead of drilling through the wall, let's run our cable through this convenient opening...   Those are dryer vents that have been cut in order to have a cable fed through them. One was done by Verizon, the other by Comcast. Looks good to me, how about you?  $6,500 HVAC system install, this is the best vent they could manage  One drain good, two drains gooder  The second drain is blocked and is not needed by design The flex drain adapter: mark of the lazy handy man.  It drained like a sand dial This house must be ancient  Built in 2009 Why would you need a curtain rod outside the shower?  It's holding the wall from moving 3" towards the doorway. Seriously Looks just like in the instruction manual!  The pipe leads outside and is attached to a dryer duct. The level of carbon monoxide was several times the norm inside the house And here is a gift that keeps on giving. It swayed like a leaf. Try to guess why. 
Nitrox fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 07:06
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Guacala posted:Back in college I rented a shoddy apartment and befriended the elderly neighbors next door. They planned a vacation while their home was being resided and asked me to take photos of the work. After I emailed the photos, the crew was fired - the owner stated they weren't licensed, didn't pull a permit, and didn't remove the original siding like he asked. There was a stockpile of materials left on site and the new group had the luxury to remove the new and old siding. Obviously a horrible job, but you gotta lay some of the blame on the owners. They knowingly hired an unlicensed crew (which therefore couldn't pull permits), and probably went with the lowest offer. The cost to remove and dispose of the old siding, have an electrician deal with the exterior conduits, and fix any building envelope issues would / should been significantly higher. Also, some areas (in Canada at least), might require a rain screen system if the entire house is getting re-done.
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Jun 28, 2013 07:15
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Nitrox posted:The first 2 pictures are precious. I wonder if they planned to caulk all that later. Loving that seemingly random placed outlet
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Jun 28, 2013 13:10
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Nitrox posted:And here is a gift that keeps on giving. It swayed like a leaf. Try to guess why. Joists ran the wrong way?
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Jun 28, 2013 13:38
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I'd say that plus absolutely no diagonal bracing on the legs.
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Jun 28, 2013 13:42
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And shouldn't they be 6x6s?
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Jun 28, 2013 13:59
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I'd use 6x6s, but I've seen plenty of porches built with 4x4s in that configuration that had no problems... as long as they were properly diagonally braced.
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Jun 28, 2013 14:02
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And attached with carriage bolts?
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Jun 28, 2013 14:03
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The supports aren't set in concrete or even resting on a footing, are they? They're just sitting on the ground or maybe dug into a hole like 6" deep. That and the supports just have like a little nail strap holding them on that provides like no strength at all. Ooh ooh and that central joint where the two halves of the deck comes together isn't secured. The two 2x10's are just resting next to one another, there's nothing making the 2 halves of the deck one piece, they're free to just wander around.
Uncle Enzo fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 14:42
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kastein posted:I'd use 6x6s, but I've seen plenty of porches built with 4x4s in that configuration that had no problems... as long as they were properly diagonally braced. I thought that was only okay if it was shorter than 6 feet? Or maybe this is shorter and my perception is off.
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Jun 28, 2013 14:54
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Cmdr. Chompernuts posted:Or maybe this is shorter and my perception is off. It's not. The deck starts at least 6 inches above a sliding glass door, so you have to figure that's at least 7 feet. But I think 4x4s are the least of their issues here. It doesn't look like anything is tied together properly to begin with, and then you have that whole problem with what looks to be a 12 (or more) foot span hanging off of each side of a single center girder...that's probably not even really a girder but just the rim joists of the two separate deck sections that happen to be close together, probably fastened with little more than the deck boards on top of them.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:23
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Reggie Died posted:Obviously a horrible job, but you gotta lay some of the blame on the owners. I think the owners, nice enough as they were, were ultimately responsible for their mess - hiring a bad crew, not doing their homework beforehand, and subsequently skipping town when work was being done.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:34
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ntd posted:Loving that seemingly random placed outlet 
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Jun 28, 2013 19:47
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That deck is terrifying, having just taken down one that was probably about as poorly built/attached but it was only 3.5' high instead of 8'+. Yikes.
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Jun 28, 2013 20:00
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Here is a complete album of pictures from that deck disaster. It is exactly what you get for hiring the cheapest guy on craigslist. It's basically built sideways and attached to the house/ledger in 3 places with angle brackets. The floor structure is resting on top of posts with nothing but angle brackets tying the whole thing together. Ledger board is barely attached with 1/4" bolts. Interior screws and nails are all over the place. No bracing whatsoever. Stairs are resting on a single 2x4. Everything is crooked and horrible. Have the complete picture set. Some of those pictures show the reinforcement structure that was added to make it properly rigid.
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Jun 28, 2013 20:05
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Oh god, that straight-on view of the stairs is the most wonderful thing. 
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Jun 28, 2013 20:09
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Gold Dust Gasoline posted:Yesterday while replacing wall sockets I found one with a swapped hot and neutral plus the ground wasn't connected. I am lucky since my cousin is an electrician. Our second weekend that we owned the house he came over to inspect the electrical. He discovered that there was an air compressor outlet in the garage that was a 220 made from 2 hot legs of 110. Apparently this is somewhat common when people don't want to pay an electrician to put in proper service for machinery. However, the neutral was run on the ground wire.
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Jun 30, 2013 02:24
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My understanding is that converting the neutral to hot to make a 240 line is entirely normal, as sometimes running new wires isn't really an option. You just have to clearly mark the neutral as being hot anywhere it's accessible. That in itself is fine. However, the ground being used as the neutral? I'm not sure I understand. Was it a 3-wire 240, or 4-wire? If it's a 3-wire, there is no neutral, it's just one phase, the other, and the ground. In the 4-wire setup, it's one phase, the other, a neutral, and a ground (so you can get both 240 and 120 out of the same outlet, so that appliances don't have to have a built-in transformer for the lower voltage stuff.) If it was the latter but sneakily without a ground connection, I wonder what grounds in the house went hot when the compressor was on. All kinds of fun places to get shocked! 
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Jun 30, 2013 02:45
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Older (80s and older, maybe as new as the 90s?) range, dryer, and oven outlets were usually 3 wire, despite there being 120V parts inside most of that stuff. Even new 240 appliances usually come with directions on how to safely hook them up to 3 or 4 wire circuits.
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Jun 30, 2013 05:30
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Someone tell me if these break tables, posting from phone My apartment:  It's paint, not crud.  Clearly marked! What's that, you say? There's a living room, bathroom, and bedroom in this apartment?  That big white glossy thing to the right is the range. You might remember being introduced at the breaker box.  I don't actually want to know what's behind that thing. I do know that if I have a clothes iron on in the living room, every time the heating element kicks on, the lamp dims.  Behind and above the fridge. How the hell am I supposed to plug in my toaster 8 feet in the air without a box and outlet?!  Do you suppose there's a moisture issue? BonerGhost fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 07:41
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