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OK so, someone put the mud down to lay tile, and then... shimmed it? So the tiles were just sitting on those shims?
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Aug 1, 2015 01:02
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Is that a drain for a washing machine or something else like a tub? Is the problem that they ran out of tile?
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Aug 1, 2015 01:30
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My bet is they didn't tile under a vanity in a small bath.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:40
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XmasGiftFromWife posted:My bet is they didn't tile under a vanity in a small bath. That makes way more sense. For some reason my mind wanted to see a shower even though it didn't make any sense that a shower would have trim pieces like that or a drain that stuck out of the wall.
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Aug 1, 2015 01:44
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XmasGiftFromWife posted:My bet is they didn't tile under a vanity in a small bath. Yeah, exactly. Seems like more of a pain than just putting the tile in
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Aug 1, 2015 01:52
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pac man frogs posted:Yeah, exactly. Seems like more of a pain than just putting the tile in Not really, you've got the offcuts just lying around. You don't have to cut any new tile. Put a couple of pieces under the vanity support boards and move on. A couple tiles saved, and you don't have to wait until after grout is dried to install the vanity. I'm digging that 22.5 on the black iron drainpipe with some kind of compression fitting into the P-trap.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:38
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That makes sense, thanks. I'll check whatever that thing is tomorrow when I go back and post another pic.
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Aug 1, 2015 04:07
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And cover/stuff a rag in the drain before it starts smelling like rear end throughout the entire house and people start getting sick. That's the crappiest construction thing I see in your picture.
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Aug 1, 2015 16:12
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 Truly magnificent farmer weld spotted on a tractor at auction.
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Aug 2, 2015 05:03
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Pile of Kittens posted:gently caress paper wasps. They're not endangered and they can die in a fire (literally). A weed burner makes a fun and effective tool for killing paper wasp colonies in fence caps.
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Aug 2, 2015 09:45
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This old shed was full of paper wasp nests right below the metal roofing. Tried spraying poison in the holes below the metal roof, then decided to use spray foam instead. Just tore that shed down last month and nests were all around the interior of the roof.
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Aug 2, 2015 11:01
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Javid posted:
It is something special, but there's a good chance it was done in the dark in the middle of a field so they guy could get his crops off, so he really prioritized function over form. Then used it as an excuse to buy a new tractor. I spent the better part of my weekend fixing up the roof at the family cottage. It was built by my now dead grandpa who wasn't too concerned about doing anything properly, so the sheeting on the roof is 1/2" plywood mounted the wrong way on 24" rafters. To say it is springy is a bit of an understatement.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:19
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Heard a great story at a construction site today: So a guy was coming back to a lovely suburban house in one of those neighbourhoods where buyers pick from a list of plans and then a house-building company buildings them all. He didn't work on it while it was being built, just coming back to fix some other things. The owner complained that the house always has had a horrible fruit fly problem, specially in the living room. He did his stuff, couldn't quite figure out the fruit flies, and then went next door to where they were building a mirror of the same house. There he noticed the workmen (the same crew who built the lady's house) tossing all their apple cores and lovely lunch garbage in this big void space under the fake fireplace mantle. There were already fruit flies all over. He then went back the next day, told the lady he could solve her fruit fly problem in half an hour she just has to leave for a moment. She left, he pried up her mantle and hauled out two full garbage bags of fast food wrappers and apple cores. Problem solved.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:49
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It's charming when you see someone doing a reno on a house and pulling out a 50 year old empty beer can. But that's just 
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Aug 4, 2015 23:51
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canyoneer posted:It's charming when you see someone doing a reno on a house and pulling out a 50 year old empty beer can. But that's just Yeah he was pissed and told the other crew off, not that they gave a poo poo. The only reason he got the home owner to leave is so she wouldn't get pissed off and go next door and scream at them. Apparently the fruit fly issue was something she was battling for months and had caused a lot of back and forth between her and the developer who ended up just accusing her of not keeping her house clean.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:55
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah he was pissed and told the other crew off, not that they gave a poo poo. The only reason he got the home owner to leave is so she wouldn't get pissed off and go next door and scream at them. Apparently the fruit fly issue was something she was battling for months and had caused a lot of back and forth between her and the developer who ended up just accusing her of not keeping her house clean. If I was that homeowner and I read this, I would be filing a lawsuit against that construction company immediately.
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Aug 4, 2015 23:55
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Hah, when my parents' house was being built they checked in occasionally and my dad caught the cabinet guys brushing their offcuts and sawdust behind the baseboards/toe kicks and he exploded on them just for that. Actual trash and food waste? Holy poo poo that would've been a show for the ages.
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Aug 5, 2015 01:01
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Just fired up a dinky little 20A stick welder on what I thought was a 30A subpanel. Power immediately dies when I try to strike an arc. Power to the garage won't come back on despite all the fuses still being good and the breakers at the panel further up the line not having flipped. Turns out the garage power, despite having a 30A subpanel, doesn't even have its own breaker and is lumped in with the living room power and it's all riding on a 20A breaker at the main box. Still doesn't account for the power dying despite no breakers flipping, which seems to indicate to me that the line itself failed at some point. The line is almost entirely buried underground. I'm eagerly looking forward to crawling all over everything with a voltmeter and possibly having to dig a big horrible stupid trench to fix things.
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Aug 5, 2015 02:27
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RIP Ambrose Burnside In similar news, my hand-me-down mask and gloves came in today, so I can fire up that lincoln tombstone I grabbed on the cheap at a garage sale a little while back. Just need a place to plug it in, since the 240 outlets in my garage are all 6-15s. I think they ran both phases to the sub-panel in my shed, so that'll be the most likely spot to put it. But hey, maybe I'll be reporting back next week with an identical story to yours.  e: Damnit, they ran two 30A lines out to the shed, but instead of a 240V double pole breaker, it's one of those double-pole half-width deals so I'm getting two 30A 120V matched-phase lines, which means the two bars in the shed's sub-panel are carrying the exact same phase at 30A, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding this thing. I could just re-wire the main panel but I'm out of slots in that panel, which means I'll have to replace some OTHER breakers with some half-width ones and it's all just a big poopy hassle. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 02:34
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gently caress electricity man gently caress IT oxyfuel welding was good enough for my forefathers it should be good enough for anyone
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Aug 5, 2015 02:43
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I don't mind electricity, I was tickled pink to finally own my own place and get to put 240V drops in the garage, but man, I hate hate HATE having to put effort in to a thing.
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Aug 5, 2015 02:45
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Ambrose Burnside posted:gently caress electricity man gently caress IT forge weld 4 lyfe
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Aug 5, 2015 02:45
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Leperflesh posted:forge weld 4 lyfe this guy knows what's up e: Yeah, the silver lining is that if I have to dig all this crap up and fix things, there's basically no way it isn't getting redone to code and rigorously enough to last. And with glorious 240V outlets everywhere Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 02:49
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Still doesn't account for the power dying despite no breakers flipping, which seems to indicate to me that the line itself failed at some point. The line is almost entirely buried underground. I'm eagerly looking forward to crawling all over everything with a voltmeter and possibly having to dig a big horrible stupid trench to fix things. You have a pretty good chance of it having arced off a lovely connection as it entered the box and blew out enough material that it's no longer making contact. If so, that could solve your entire problem. But based on your story I'd want to make sure every last bit of that run in appropriately sized because it doesn't exactly sound like a professional installed it.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:46
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Yeah, I've got zero faith that they didn't just run daisy-chained lamp extension cords through some old pipe and called it a day. It's my folks place and apparently the state of the electrical was a concern when they bought the place that they've only partially remedied. Speaking of which, are there any decent online/free resources for homeowners redoing electrical stuff? It's all witchcraft from where I'm standing.
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Aug 5, 2015 17:48
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Yeah, I've got zero faith that they didn't just run daisy-chained lamp extension cords through some old pipe and called it a day. It's my folks place and apparently the state of the electrical was a concern when they bought the place that they've only partially remedied. Not free, but inexpensive. My dad bought me the previous editions of these when I bought my house and they were invaluable when I decided to add another circuit for the home theater/gaming stuff. Eventually, I'm going to have to re-do a lot of the pre-exsiting electrical in the house since some of it is questionable at best, but I may just hire a contractor at that point. I'll have to see what I uncover as I poke around. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-Complete-Wiring-Updated/dp/159186612X This is also in my library. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-Advanced-Home-Wiring/dp/1589237021
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Aug 5, 2015 18:17
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Yeah, I've got zero faith that they didn't just run daisy-chained lamp extension cords through some old pipe and called it a day. It's my folks place and apparently the state of the electrical was a concern when they bought the place that they've only partially remedied. The home depot book is a solid reference.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:13
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So I've recently been introduced to this amazing thread and want to share what I've encountered in a few houses recently. In the house I moved out of, there was a wall between two rooms that had a problem that I never noticed in the 15 years I lived there. The wall was about 16 feet long on the short side, 20 on the other, and 18 tall thanks to vaulted ceilings. Now the strange thing is that you can push on this wall, and it moves. It seems secured around the edges, but the middle moves at least half an inch in either direction. You could get some rocking going and it would rattle the doors in either room if closed due to air pressure. My sister moved into her house a couple days before Halloween last year, it was recently renovated by the previous owner. Simple things were done wrong. The second bathroom had it's shower fixture installed backwards, so it ran only hot or hotter water. The drain for it also wasn't hooked up the main sewer line at all, so it drained out under the house, which sits on a hill. Massive foundation problems have come up, in less than a year. gently caress you Texas. This house was built in the early fifties, so it's pier and beam, never had a garage, only an attached car port with a tiny shed on one corner. At some point, an owner decided to turn it into a real single car garage, and an owner after that turned it into living space. Now I mentioned pier and beam, the former garage is on a slab, free from the main house. This has also caused nasty issues with doors that no longer behave properly. That tiny shed that was the corner of the car port? When they enclosed the garage, they just built new walls around it. When we were tearing out the back of it for some French doors, we discovered the original wood siding and everything buried in the walls. We also found like twenty feet of power line that had just been hanging between two studs. When running power from the main building over, they didn't bother to cut the cord at all, and left a fist sized flying splice in the ceiling that brought four separate lines together. We lost a reciprocating saw thanks to that. Where the new wall met the original house was soo out of plum, we found a 4x4, that was flush with the wall at the bottom, but three inches off, about 8 feet up. This beam was also holding up a 4x8 roof beam. The house I just moved into was built in 61. It still has the original wiring, but thankfully a fairly new GE breaker box. I went through the house to replace all the old outlets and switches from that sand cooler to ivory, also because all the outlets were two prong only. I discovered that almost 80% of the house has no grounds running into the boxes, and the handful that did, just left them floating in the boxes, not connected to anything. I had to buy 12guage solid copper to tie the ground to the neutrals on almost all the three prong outlets I installed. I know it's not ideal, but I don't want totally open grounds. I also put a surge protector in the breaker box to help mitigate the risk to anything plugged in. I found more than a few of the old outlets and the metal boxes they were in, covered in scorch marks. Some wires had been burned through where damaged insulation has let the copper touch the box. I can't help but wonder how this house never burned to the ground. E; phone posting Hobold fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 02:15
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The Gardenator posted:This old shed was full of paper wasp nests right below the metal roofing. We put a metal roof on our shed and those fuckers moved right in under there. Thought about the spray foam thing but the back part is pretty high up off the ground and I don't want to die via ladder shenanigans when they come out after me. I just get them from a distance with a pump up sprayer.
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Aug 6, 2015 04:35
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Wulfling posted:The drain for it also wasn't hooked up the main sewer line at all, so it drained out under the house, which sits on a hill. Massive foundation problems have come up, in less than a year. This is part of the plot of an episode of Arrested Development, as part of a running theme of extremely shoddy construction.
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Aug 6, 2015 08:23
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DNova posted:This is part of the plot of an episode of Arrested Development, as part of a running theme of extremely shoddy construction. I vaguely recall that having only seen the show once. The whole remodel was full of half assed work. Hell the tile work in the whole house used scraps from other jobs so there was lots of oddly cut prices arranged to look like there was a grout river flowing along. The kitchen also has almost a dozen recessed can lights, plus a hanging fixture in the middle of the room. Living room is almost as bad. Add tons of new lighting, while keeping all of the old.
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Aug 6, 2015 09:27
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Wulfling posted:I vaguely recall that having only seen the show once. The whole remodel was full of half assed work. Hell the tile work in the whole house used scraps from other jobs so there was lots of oddly cut prices arranged to look like there was a grout river flowing along. The kitchen also has almost a dozen recessed can lights, plus a hanging fixture in the middle of the room. Living room is almost as bad. Add tons of new lighting, while keeping all of the old. How many outlets are there?
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Aug 6, 2015 10:35
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hailthefish posted:How many outlets are there? At counter level, or above the cabinets. I want to say 6 to 8 without actually going over there to count them.
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Aug 6, 2015 12:11
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Wulfling posted:The house I just moved into was built in 61. It still has the original wiring, but thankfully a fairly new GE breaker box. I went through the house to replace all the old outlets and switches from that sand cooler to ivory, also because all the outlets were two prong only. I discovered that almost 80% of the house has no grounds running into the boxes, and the handful that did, just left them floating in the boxes, not connected to anything. I had to buy 12guage solid copper to tie the ground to the neutrals on almost all the three prong outlets I installed. I know it's not ideal, but I don't want totally open grounds. I also put a surge protector in the breaker box to help mitigate the risk to anything plugged in. I found more than a few of the old outlets and the metal boxes they were in, covered in scorch marks. Some wires had been burned through where damaged insulation has let the copper touch the box. I can't help but wonder how this house never burned to the ground. Ack! The scary construction is coming from within the thread! Don't do that with the grounds. If that neutral line ever became hot it would be very dangerous and considering you've found damage elsewhere that's a very real possibility. If the neutral line were to get somehow disconnected on the way back to the box or have a lovely connection in the box everything on the circuit will have "ground" at 120V and considering a lot of electronics have the outer housing tied to ground that's a serious hazard. The proper thing to do is to find the first outlet in the daisy chain and replace it with a GFCI outlet, then run the rest of the daisy chain off the protected side of the GFCI. Any shorts or leaking current in excess of a few mA would trip the GFCI. Most GFCI's come with stickers that say "GFCI protected - No Equipment Ground" for exactly this use case.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:47
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Shifty Pony posted:Ack! The scary construction is coming from within the thread! Christ....I missed that in the wall 'o text. Holy poo poo what a bad idea. Wulfling you need to take Shifty Pony's advice very seriously and promptly. You've done something very reckless and dangerous.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:03
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But then how will you know if a lamp is on when you touch the stand? 
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Aug 6, 2015 17:36
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Motronic posted:Christ....I missed that in the wall 'o text. It is a really common handyman hack though, especially if the property was flipped by a cheapskate who didn't want to pay or wait for the permits to rewire the place. I've seen it referred to as a "Bootleg ground". The hosed up thing is that it reads as "correctly wired" on the tester that a lot of inspectors use and surge protectors will normally light up their "protected" light as well. You have to pull the receptacles out of the wall to catch it. When I moved into my rental house I checked the plugs and sure enough most of them had it done to them, even the ones in the bathroom and kitchen  . I actually need to finish switching over a few of them.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:09
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Shifty Pony posted:It is a really common handyman hack though, especially if the property was flipped by a cheapskate who didn't want to pay or wait for the permits to rewire the place. I've seen it referred to as a "Bootleg ground". And people wonder why the building code is moving toward requiring GFCI on all residential outlets...
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Aug 6, 2015 18:14
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Wulfling posted:At counter level, or above the cabinets. I want to say 6 to 8 without actually going over there to count them. Hmm... Is there a patch of newer siding on one exterior wall, next to older siding that looks sort of melted?
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Aug 6, 2015 18:21
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Yeah, wrapping the ground to the neutral is what I've had more than half a dozen electricians tell me to do. To fix it now I'd have to go back and undo the splice on more than thirty outlets. poo poo. Am I simply surrounded by incompetence? I need to learn more of this myself for doing repairs. ChickenOfTomorrow posted:Hmm... No, no melted siding. The house did alternate between original wood, and hardy board, with some vinyl siding on the garage conversion, conveniently hidden by bushes. E; I attempted to locate the lead element on some of these chains when I was replacing the outlets already, but it seemed like they would jump from room to room around the house. To the point that the master bedroom has four outlets, on three different circuits. My mind boggles at how absurd the wiring setup seems to be. Hobold fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 19:31
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