Renovations. Ugh!

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Renovations. Ugh!

Postby rpoz-29 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 10:28 am

We've bought a much smaller house. (But the garage is pretty big!) I knew it needed some cosmetic work, and the floor in the bathrooms had seen some water. After painting 3 bedrooms, the living room, a hallway, and the utility room, hanging a new attic stairway, and fixing the range vent, I started on the bathrooms. Completely gutted one right down to the floor joists. Then I saw the leaks under the master bath. I fixed those, and started to examine the drain lines. The house was built in 1963 and has galvanized 1.5" drain lines, which were all but closed up. I've replaced almost everything with PVC. I retired as a pipefitter 1.5 years ago, so that made it easier, but crawling around under a house sucks. A buddy suggested he and I go into the "flipping houses" business. Ain't gonna happen.
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Re: Renovations. Ugh!

Postby Kenova » Sun Mar 06, 2016 11:08 am

I feel for ya. I may have to do my bathrooms this year. The sinks are starting to rust out. :shock:

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Re: Renovations. Ugh!

Postby rpoz-29 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 8:56 pm

I feel for you! This one was owned by an elderly lady. She passed away over a year ago and the house was empty. There was a slow leak from a supply line to a faucet in the master bath, as well as one from a toilet in the hall bath. Really made a mess of the floors. The plumbing I can handle, but correcting that floor is tough.
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Re: Renovations. Ugh!

Postby monzabug350 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:28 pm

back in 81 when I bought my present house I had a mold problem in the bathroom. I tried several paints to cover it but no luck. One day my son in law was outside in the back yard and noticed the old style asphalt shingles under the bathroom window were bulging out. He made the mistake of pulling on one and all of a sudden he was knee deep in an avalanche of shingles and wet insulation.
When we got into tearing out the shingles the more we found water damage. Some of the studs and footing were so rotten you could push your finger through them (Think wet balsa wood) The more we looked, the more damage we found. Long story short, we had to strip out all wood and paneling the beams to the inside wall. It took us about a week to rebuild the entire bathroom with new shower sink,lighting and vent fan system. I asked my son in law (works construction) WTF. He told me that all these houses were built in the late 60s/70s and all had a bathroom window but no vent fan. Soooo when you took a hot steamy bath, the steam would condense on the window and wick down into the wall,and over time you got the problem we had. I had my insurance co. come out and look at it and they told me it was a builder defect, and I would have to contact them. Yeah...that company had been out of business for 20 years! I am not a carpenter but I got some skills at driving nails and carrying stuff, son did a lot and we had a totally new bathroom for a total of $2500, due to son having access to supplies from various work sites. (Helps to have friends in the construction business) I have noticed in the past few years, houses in the area that are being "flipped" have that window removed and a wall installed. Learn from the past or repeat it.
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Re: Renovations. Ugh!

Postby monzabug350 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:54 pm

Think that was a good one? Try this one. Back in 04 I was sitting in den watching the tv and my neighbor looked up and noticed that my overhead fan looked funny. Huh? I noticed the cap that covers the part of the fan was a lot smaller than I remember when it was installed. Got a ladder to take a closer look thinking " is the fan moving UP into the sealing ?" As I was lightly pushing on the sealing ( bad move) all of a sudden 3/4 of the 15x15 sealing came crashing down around me and my neighbor! After the shock, I started to check out what was the cause,and what I found was that when the sealing was installed two layers of sheet rock were used and they measured ! inch thick,and each one had about a hundred 1 and a quarter inch nails holding the panel in place. Sooo..over time, the heat,cold,heat, of the years let the nails work loose and then the weight pulled them down. It took me about a day to clean the mess up,but what the longest time was removing the nails. Lucky for me I have a neighbor who is in the dry wall trade and he came in and redid the sealing to better than new for $500 start to finish. Oh yeah...called my insurance co., and guess what they told me? Yep,contact the builder!!! The same co. This answered my question as to why I had all these cracks in all the rooms in the house. Over the next year I had my drywall neighbor and I replaced all the sealings in the house in return for me maintaining his 3 work vehicles,(you know how construction workers treat trucks) for the next 3 years. Sooo, now I have a new bathroom and sealings and Im waiting for Murphy to strike again. And I am NOT going to ask myself "whats next"
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Re: Renovations. Ugh!

Postby rpoz-29 » Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:05 pm

I loved the ceiling fan story....I'll, (hopefully), never top that! I'm no carpenter either, and I tend to overbuild things. Once I removed the floors from both baths, I started adding braces between the joists, anywhere it looked like it needed to be strengthened. I all but had a grid build by the time I added the 21/32 plywood floor. You could park a bus on it if you could drive it down the hall.
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