The joys of an 80+ year old house..-Page 2: Off-topic discussion forum: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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July 25, 2011 10:20 a.m. Hal Dork

A friend asked me to rewire his small store. Early 1900's building and they lived in an apartment on the second floor. I told him we would tear out the old knob and tube for the store and puit in a new box.

Went down in the basement and pulled all the fuses for the store circuits. Disconnected all the hot wires and what I thought was the neutral (weren't any grounds).

Went upstairs to start removing outlets. And promptly got shocked!! Turns out that there was ONE common neutral for the whole building. One heavy gage BARE copper wire ran thru the whole building and all the neutrals were soldered to it.

Fortunately he had pulled most of the plaster off the walls to remodel so I was able to find the connections and cut them so I could take the rest out. Never did figure out what the wire was that I thought was the neutral and disconnected.
July 25, 2011 10:30 a.m. neon4891 SuperDork

I will feel bad for whoever gets the inlaws 70's ranch. F-I-L has done a lot of work around the place, but despite his best efforts, overal quality is only marginal better than it was before the work.

But if you want to be amazed at low quality, I did demo on our old 1969 doublewide trailer a few years back
July 25, 2011 10:48 a.m. GrantMLS Reader

We started last spring on ours -hoping to have it done before we got married last august.. Every project turned out ugly - think we are just about done - have twins on the way and just need to finish painting thier room and some trim through out the whole house.
July 25, 2011 4:04 p.m. Thinkkker SuperDork

hmmm..... The main center structure of ours is 160ish years old.

Though, the two wings were built in 2002. Now we are redoing some stuff and finishing out the basement.
July 25, 2011 5:43 p.m. Toyman01 SuperDork

East Coast is right, misery does love company. Glad I'm not the only one in this boat. It doesn't seem as bad today as it did yesterday. Of course most of the hard work is done.

My father runs into the same problems. The oldest sections of his house were built in the early 1800s. The living room was finished in horse hair, moss and plaster. Talk about a nasty mess to clean out. Every floor board is a different thickness and adjusted on the bottom of the board so the tops are level. They vary from 1 inch to a little over 2 inches.
July 25, 2011 7:18 p.m. Hal Dork

Toyman01 wrote: My father runs into the same problems. The oldest sections of his house were built in the early 1800s. The living room was finished in horse hair, moss and plaster. Talk about a nasty mess to clean out. Every floor board is a different thickness and adjusted on the bottom of the board so the tops are level. They vary from 1 inch to a little over 2 inches.

My youngest sister-in-law lives in one of those. Two story log house with horsehair plaster on the inside and asbestos shigles on the outside.

Needless to say, I refuse to help them with any home improvement projects.
July 25, 2011 7:56 p.m. BAMF Reader

I'm so lucky. My house was built around 1935, and very little has been done it over the years. A lot of maintenance has been done over the years for it, but nothing really radical or bad has happened.

Our kitchen is the only exception, and in the next couple years I plan to tear it out, combine the breakfast nook into the tiny kitchen for a reasonable size. I'm somewhat scared of what I'll find. We have most of the original finishes in our house, so who knows what's in the walls.

On the plus side, the builder was pretty thoughtful from what I can see. All of the interior load bearing walls consist of the stairwell, which is reinforced on each side by a pair of massive steel I-beams.
July 25, 2011 9:58 p.m. Lesley SuperDork

Ugh, I've grown to hate horsehair, lathe and plaster. Impossible to hang a picture as well – try to bang a nail in and you're rewarded with the sound of bits of plaster falling down within the wall. Fortunately, I've had over 60% of it replaced with drywall.