![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:26 • Filed to: This is why we can't have nice things! | ![]() | ![]() |
I’m doing some prep work to get ready for remodeling my kitchen this summer. Today I finished demoing the hilarious joke of a “finished” ceiling below the kitchen, so I can have access for the new electrical that will be needed. The friggin morons hacked away huge chunks of a floor joist, so they could install these shitty florescent lights. Neverind they could have simply turned the fixture 90 degrees and kept them in the joist cavity. No, no, no, better to cut away TWO THIRDS OF A FLOOR JOIST!!!!!!! I can’t wait to rip out all the electrical work done by this fuggin dipshit. It’s a damn miracle my house hasn’t burned the fuck down!
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:42 |
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Purchased a 60 yr old home that was kept in the previous owners family since it was built. The amount of “wait what?” I’ve come across is amazing. This post actually reminded me I have floor joists in the kitchen floor to daughter because they cut away for plumbing.
My goal, and having completed quite a few of them already has been to make sure someone doesn’t come behind me after I sell and say “wtf were they thinking?!”
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:45 |
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Notching the joist would literally be the last thing I would consider, precisely because you are creating MORE WORK. This is a situation where being stupid
and
lazy would have actually helped.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:45 |
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Seriously. I want to know what they were thinking. I want to know why nobody stopped them.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:47 |
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Oh.
Wow.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:49 |
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Yeah, exactly.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:49 |
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Well... that’s about the worst it could be. Good luck on your renovation.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:50 |
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I know, right?!?! Instead they were stupid and ambitious! A terrible combination!
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:52 |
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Oh my. That’s quite silly.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:52 |
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Chainsaw carpentry and mentality.
JFTDC.jpg
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:52 |
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Yeah, I’ll have to sister a new joist next to this one to fix it. Also another one with a big ass crack in it. Gotta remove their hack electrical work first, as it all runs through the joists as well.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:54 |
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I imagine a lot of alcohol was involved.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:54 |
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[screams in engineering]
![]() 06/05/2018 at 22:55 |
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Thanks! I’m almost done drawing the cabinets. I’m building them myself.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:07 |
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You should be highly qualified for that, lol.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:19 |
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It’ll be my biggest such job, so it will be a challenge, but I’m confident in that portion of the job.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:20 |
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I would like to slap them silly.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:20 |
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Appropriate reaction.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:25 |
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Hack electrical where colors are random and code doesn’t matter. “why’s the ground hot!?”
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:30 |
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everytime I see a cut floor joist...even notched.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:34 |
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Pretty much!
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:34 |
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they could have done literally anything else but they did that
just another way that there is proof in the world that stupidity will always win out over basic logic
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:34 |
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It used to be commonplace to ground everything through the plumbing. This is all well and good until you have a short to ground that doesn’t trigger a breaker, and you can’t touch your shower taps.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:36 |
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Its all BX cable, so everything will be black and white, and nothing will mean anything. The light fixture over the sink was screwed directly to the acoustic panels, which were simply nailed to the floor joists.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:37 |
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Yep! That’s about the size of it!
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:39 |
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You got lucky with that one. I find wire nuts leading to j boxes that lead to... I dont know where they lead yet. Light switches that dont do anything are a fun one too.
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:43 |
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Thankfully 120 isn’t enough to put you down but rather a hey how ya doin?
Remember working a site where some wiring had to be redone after an accident. Something got crossed somewhere as I put my hand against a flash box and the bolt connecting the shroud was a prompt 120. Not a fun feeling to the palm of your hand though. (the rest of the box was painted so it was isolated).
![]() 06/05/2018 at 23:59 |
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At the same time, aren’t you glad you found it so you can fix it? And won’t you be taking immense satisfaction in it once it’s right? Yes, you will.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 00:07 |
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That was caused by accounting.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 00:18 |
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Old houses are such fun. I think all of them have been owned by an idiot at some point. Clearly yours was at some point - good luck!
![]() 06/06/2018 at 01:05 |
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Sketchy AF.
Reminds me of this one time (though this wasn’t nearly as bad as doing it to friggin FLOOR JOISTS)... Anyway, I was doing a partial demo that required removing the lower portion of a basement’s wood paneling (flood job).
We set the depth on a circular saw and started cutting, expecting that we would merely be nicking the studs in the process. But lo and behold, as one of the guys was cutting along, the wood paneling suddenly sprung a leak!
Turns out that whomever had finished this basement had notched the studs about 1/2" in order to fit copper plumbing behind the walls. That’s what was leaking. Felt like it took FOREVER to locate the shutoff valve...
![]() 06/06/2018 at 01:29 |
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Hilariously dumb...
![]() 06/06/2018 at 01:51 |
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Impressive as a word works in many ways in this example...except one.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 02:08 |
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So much this! Ours was built in 1930 and wowza!! The amount of DIY homeowner crap is amazingly horrendous, can’t wait to sell it off
![]() 06/06/2018 at 07:28 |
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I can confirm that one. I work for a city water department, and yesterday we were working on a leaking service line (terrible nightmare on its own with a 90+ year old home that was the only one on the street when it got city water).
We found the service line. One of the crew touched it and ZAP. Ended out having to ask the homeowner to shut off the main breaker for their house till we were done.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 07:47 |
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I’m glad I found it, but I’d rather spend my time money and energy on the kitchen remodel, which will be far more satisfying.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 07:48 |
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I found buried junction boxes in the cieling too.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 07:49 |
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Ouch!
![]() 06/06/2018 at 07:50 |
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Ah jeeze!
![]() 06/06/2018 at 08:10 |
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Doing work on my last house, I opened up the wall that had the doorway from the livingroom to the kitchen. the doorway was about 5' wide. When I stripped it down to the studs I found that one of the previous owners had widened the doorway from the standard 30" but all they did was cut the studs and refinish. The header was just hanging there nailed to the floor joists. this was a bearing wall. I code brown’d and wondered how the house was still standing.
06/06/2018 at 08:56 |
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Christ, and I thought the MDF stair treads in my place were sketchy (Five have broken since we bought the place in ‘99).
![]() 06/06/2018 at 09:55 |
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I’ve seen lots of stuff like this. Enough that I was neither surprised, nor did I code drown. I cursed and shook my fist at the gods though. Wood is incredibly strong stuff.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 09:56 |
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Nice!
![]() 06/06/2018 at 13:01 |
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Just scab another two-by over that spot as long as you can make it and spike the daylights out of it with the nail gun. One and done.
![]() 06/06/2018 at 20:10 |
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Mine was in an old kids’ summer camp I worked at when I was 15, where everything was built in the fifties and wired in the sixties, probably by volunteers, possibly from free-cycled equipment. One central fuse panel (with glass fuses) fed each of a half-dozen buildings by aerial circuits, with each building on a single circuit. One of the kitchen appliances buggered up and someone got sick of fuses blowing and shoved a much higher one into the kitchen circuit. Between a new cook who liked to prep breakfast things the night before instead of getting up early, and me being the first weirdo to shower at 11:30 pm that summer, I got to be the lucky one to discover that standing in a puddle on a concrete floor makes for a much better path to ground than the water pipes in the dry sandy soil the camp was sitting on.
![]() 06/12/2018 at 22:27 |
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this is why its so awesome. I do a lot of sketchy shit but this is such an awesome extreme