How about venting main stack INSIDE attic not thru the roof. Or lowering the bedroom doorways and just lopping the top4-5 inches off the top of all the 5 panel wood doors that went to them. Wallpapering over drywall without priming it, so when I went to take off the wallpaper the outer layer of drywall came with it.Just some of the more outrageous ones.

PO:
-glued kitchen type patterened carpet all over the upstairs. We had to scrape all the foam backing off before we could refinish floors
-papered all the bedrooms with 2 kinds of paper each..alternating a strip of one, with a strip of the other all around the room...I kid you not!
-put ceiling tiles over the old plaster ceilings...I have not had the courage to look beneath those yet.
-put cheap tiles all over the oak dining room floor...had to scrape the tarry adhesive up by hand before refinishing
-took out the pocket doors, and opened the walls where they were from one side to make shallow shelves
-put blasted triple track aluminum storms over all the windows
-cut all the sash cords when they blew in insulation
-took all the locks and hardware off the windows

squat diddley.

Our house is a 1940's 1 br cottage. We are the 3rd owners & it's the PO immediately before us that wreaked the most havoc. These people lived there for 5 years & managed to rip out or ruin pretty much anything original to the house. They knew that they weren't going to stay there long term & the husband was a "handyman" so we basically walked into a disaster.

Oh they did the usual like painting over wallpaper (and in the kitchen it was painting over the contact paper lining the cabinets...that was a fun). Taking out original molding & replacing it with scraps of trim, not even full pieces. Yanking out the original doors & replacing them with cheap bifolds (we found some of them in the basement & I'm hoping that we can restore them). Replacing most of the original mullioned windows with cheap vinyl clad ones, tearing out the original counters & cabinets & replacing them with the cheapest , crappiest particleboard they could find...they did leave one run of original cabinets but cut a chunk off of the decorative molding on the base so that the crappy counter's built in backsplash would fit. Ah yes, and trashing all of the original light fixtures in order to replace them with garbage. They also turned half of the 3 seasons room that runs along the side of the house & turned it into a bedroom basically by screwing up some plywood & putting in a couple of windows. I don't know what happened to the original windows. This "bedroom" is unheated & uninsulated.

The original owner is responsible for the hideous vinyl siding but I can't blame her. It was a labor saving kind of thing.

I don't know who to blame for the fact that the toilet has no flange, just rests on top of the waste pipe & is bolted to the (wood) floor. Maybe that was code in the 1940's?

These people were also total slobs & I had to vacuum the stove (no kidding...after I shoveled out most of the ossified crap from underneath the burners) and scrape vomit out of the cabinets.

Jeannieo, what you wrote about historic districts really strikes a chord with me. One of the houses that we looked at before buying this one was a historic house in Croton. The realtor explained that we would be limited in what we could do to it, then we walked inside & discovered that it was totally trashed. The interior had been flat out destroyed by the previous tenants, it was uninhabitable. Walls & floors ripped up, stinking of mildew, brich chimmney in pieces. I still think about the house & wish that we had been in a position to buy it & save it.

Nina

The worst I've found so far, and I haven't even moved in officially yet.....The PO hung ceiling fans from electric boxes that were only held up by the old armor cable wiring.
I knew one was wobbly, so I took it down to find that, no wonder it was wobbly, the box wasn't attached to framing or any kind of brace or anything. Just inserted into the drywall and had two armor cables coming into the box. How they haven't fallen down on someone's head, I don't know....

The PO's were not too bad. I have a 1925 craftsman.

-They cut out some cabinets with a reciprocating saw to put in a dishwasher (not a very straight cut!).
-They also tiled the DW into the cabinets, the only way to take it out is to remove the tiles and or the countertop.
-Of course it won't be hard to remove the countertops, they were never attached to anything.
-the put up a backsplash over layers of: plaster/lathe, tile, vinly, and backerboard (the floor is the same).
-they got rid of a lot of my decorative 1/2x1/2 moldings around the windows becuase they would not fit with the paneling they put up.
-They also left me TONS of crap in the garage after I asked them to clean it out.

The immediate previous owners of our house (a 1940's cottage) didn't do any bad things to the house. In fact, they partly corrected one hideous thing that the owner before them did. He had put in shag carpet during the 70's - over beautiful oak floors. The owners before us had ripped all of it up except in their bedroom & had part of the floors refinished. They hadn't gotten around to the bedroom yet. The carpet in there was chocolate brown shag. We've ripped it up, but haven't refinished the floors yet. I can live with unfinished floors better than that carpet! Also, of course, all the original wood six panel doors were cut off to clear the carpet, so they have a gap now & don't look quite right.

My parents were the POs and gave me the house which means I can't complain *too* much, but there are a couple of things that continue to plague and amuse us. My parents could not decide on how to change things so it all stayed the same. When the appraiser went through the house, he said he'd never seen one of these houses "so,...original." The dark brown kitchen counters, harvest gold stove (with one functional burner) and the amazing rust, brown and straw colored ead flower kitchen linoleum with burn marks on it from when I exploded a ceramic teapot 25 years ago! Dad was also a handy guy with the electrical work. He installed lights in closets, an outlet in the hall for convenient vacuuming. All as far as I can tell on the same circuit which explained why I was having a bit of trouble with the master bedroom. If the fan and bathroom light was on and the TV in the bedroom and I did anything else, the circuit would flip. (always fun when blow drying hair at 5 a.m.) So, I knew we were going to have to do something about that at some point I didn't realize how bad it was until a few things happened. My BF took the blow dryer out to the garage to blow dry the roof liner of his truck (another fun story) and poof the lights went out in my bedroom. The garage is completely on the other side of the house. Then, I was vacuuming in the bedroom and my BF turned on the fan in the front bathroom and poof darkness again. So, our friend, the electrician, came to check things out and turned off the breaker and the lights went out in my roommates bedroom. So, the master bed and bath, hallway, front bathroom, garage and third bedroom are all on that circuit. as far as I can tell, the kitchen, living room and my old bedroom are the *only* rooms with nothing on that circuit.

Myfather also grew up during the depresion, so he's interested in saving things. He had 100's of coffee cans in the garage full of nails, screws etc. And AFAICT he used every possible kind whenever he needed to attach anything to a wall. We went to take a cabinet off the garage wall that had been conveniently attached at just the height for me to lose an eye whenever I tried to go out the door with nothing underneath it to keep you from walking into it. We couuld see the screws holding the pegboard to the back of the cabinet. Under that, were the secret hexhead bolts he actually used to attach the thing or so we thought. Unscrewed the bolts and the cabinet is lose enough to swing around, but still attached to the wall! Under the brace he installed for no apparent reason is the 10 penny nail he initially attached it to the wall with!

Dad was well meaning and penny concious so I can't really fault him and our electrician is going to take care of the rather scary attic nightmare, but the thing that really annoys me is what the builders did. House was built during the crazy early 70's housing boom and the faster the better. When we remodeled the master bedroom, we discovered *no* insulation in the East wall which would explain why our bedroom was so cold, a 2 X 4 as a header over the door and a 6 X 12 as a header over the window, but my favorite piece of work was when we took out the wall between the master bedroom and my old bedroom, none of the ceiling boards were actually attached to the wall. You could look up into the ceiling and see all of them running from the master and the other bedroom and ending right there, but not a nail hole in any of them!

We recently bought a beautiful old colonial, built in 1920. We were chatting with the sellers who told us that the exterior woodwork (which you can see in the picture below) had been restored by the owners before them. Someone had taken all of that beautiful detailing off and installed vinyl or aluminum (not sure which) siding! When the siding was taken off, the wood showed "ghosts" of the old trim, so the owners had it restored, one side per year.

I too am concerned with the amount of money that it's going to cost to paint this house every 5 years, but it's almost sacreligious to tear off that gorgeous detail to save money and effort in painting.

Here is a link that might be useful:

other than the obvious shag carpeting and hideous colors my personal favorite of our 1937 house is the wiring.

PO was trying to save $$$ on electric bill so he/she CUT the wire behind the baseboards (so that only half would be on ).......... that's it.... just cut the 220 volt wire and left it there - LIVE -up against the wall. thank goodness we had the place rewired and my contractor found it before we had kids. one stray toy back there and the house would have burned to the ground.

That's nuts, aside from the fire hazzard it's still nuts.

My POs ran the dryer vent about an inch into the attic and left the open end pressed against the insulation. I'm amazed we're still alive. When we bought the place, the seller's real estate agent kept singing the praises of all of the fine work the POs had done. Turns out that her husband was the "handyman" who did everything. Tonight, we start takng down the kitchen cabinets. It shouldn't take too long considering how they're barely attached to the walls. They also went through considerable trouble to hide a severe water problem. The joists were completely rotted through, and the house was sitting on nothing but air in places.

The previous owners of our last house were far worse. They sprayed textured paint on all of the walls, lowered the ceilings with sheetrock, did some really intriguing things in the attic that I think were supposed to be structural, walled over windows, etc. My favorites were removing a fireplace but leaving the chimney in the attic with no support and putting a piece of faux-tile paneling in the shower with nothing but vinyl siding on the outside wall of the house. No insulation, no backer, no nothing. Mounted it right on the studs.

Hey scotland we must've had the same POs...my main stack was venting into the attic...the finished (except for not being insulated!)attic..behind the drywall. the inspector we hired (RE agent recomended of course) was obviously blind as a bat...what a BS racket he had. I have solid wood bedroom doors that all have the top 3-4 inches lopped off to fit the doorways that were lowered (there were a few that were spared that's how I know) I had wallpaper apllied directly to drywall with no primer..try getting that off. yikes!

Two words describe the handywork of my neighbors PO: Dental Floss

Who knew that miracle of waxed thread could:
1. fix a leaky toliet
2. hold hinges on cabinet doors
3. maintain the structural integrity of loose balustrades
4. shorten the lengths of chain in a ceiling light.

Wow! And minty fresh, too!

My circa-1930 Craftsman-esque cottage has been a rental for the last 10 years or so, with nothing but essential maintenance being done, and some low-life druggie tenants according to the neighbours. So most of the stuff below was done before the immediate PO bought the house... his tenants just made it all dirty and worn as well as weird or ugly.

The first thing I did was rip out the main bathroom (which was not original, had been remuddled in stages over the years).

The tub looked as though people had been showering in their hobnailed boots for years. The cupboards built over top of it were so low that even my 5' 0" daughter had to duck to get under the shower head. The tub surround was bulging and who knew what kind of rot was behind it: turns out every time there was a leak, a PO had put a new layer on the wall. I ripped off formica, plywood paneling, vinyl flooring, plywood again, linoleum, and the original "Donna Conna" (soft wood fiberboard) to which the lino had been glued with a sort of tarry stuff. It's now down to the shiplap boards which cover every wall in the place, inside and out. Amazingly, only a few of the boards round the tub were rotted, no studs.

Sink and vanity was just sufferng from being cheap in the first place and careless tenants - burns and paint blobs on the cracked "cultured marble" top, and a damp-rotted, chipped particleboard vanity.

The toilet is several inches from the wall because it's a different size than the original.

All the walls had been paneled in 1/4" plywood, then painted murky pink above chair rail level, and faux-sponged-tiles below that. Joins between plywood panels had been lumpily caulked.

A wall had been built parallel to the bathroom/kitchen wall to install pocket doors to the bathroom and living room. Damp air from the bathroom had collected inside the pocket and grown mould all over the wall. The tracks for the pocket doors were one piece of track from something else, cut in half lengthwise to make 2 tracks.

Removing some of the shiplap around the 2' a 6' tiny bathroom door to plan enlarging it (plenty of space, no idea why it was built that small) reveals some very creative framing. If it's in the way, just cut it and knock it to one side! The shiplap holds everything together anyway!

Original bathroom window had been removed, leaving just a storm window. We found the original in the crawl space - one pane broken, but everything else including hardware is still there.

The bathroom is the only major demolition I have done so far, but there are a few other things which have come to light.

The 2ft-square boxed-in area in the living room (which we opned up out of curiosity just to see what was inside) has a load of non-working elecrical outlets and oval holes in the drywall - looks like it was a ham radio setup at one time. The hole in the ceiling of that alcove started dripping water the other night in a rainstorm - a 2 1/2" pvc pipe was suspended above the hole and ran up through the roof. It has a cap but water was getting in. The roofers coming tomorrow morning to tidy up various other tidbits with the roof will remove it and seal the hole, but for now it has a pie plate under it to catch the drips! It originally linked to a PVC pipe in the living room wall which goes down to the furnace room in the basement below and stops - no connection to anything. My SO thinks it was a vent for a grow-op in the basement. Other clues like the dried up mold around the window frames (previous heavy condensation) and the hooks for drying lines installed in every wall, baseboard and ceiling, suggest that this was a grow house at least once in its checkered career.

The 1970s kitchen carpet has been removed or particleboard-and- vinyled over on the floor itself, but is still on the toekicks of the kitchen cabnets. A deligtful orange and black pattern which must have been eye-popping on the floor!

Most of the electrical has been redone recently enough to be safe, but there are stray wires all over the place (not live) and switches which do nothing.

The living room is entirely walled in plywood paneling, which involved ripping off all the original trim. Even the beams holding up the ceiling and added attic rooms above were paneled. Paneling is currently painted a depressing shade of grey, but originally it was dark, dark wood tone. The wood windows in the front of the house are still intact, except that the ends of the sills were chopped off and they are mostly painted shut or very leaky. All the rear and side windows are single pane metal sliders and freezing cold.

The back deck surface has several layers of plywood (all rotting) and is now *above* the level of the kitchen floor. The saving grace is that it has a fiberglass roof over the first 4ft out from the back of the house, so that part of the deck doesn't get wet and flood the kitchen.

The attic conversion was done with OSB and masonite for the wall surfaces. Held up in places with staples and duct tape. The masonite was painted, but the OSB was varnished. Ewww.

A duct came in under the floors from the outside and connected to the return air duct to the fiurnace. Makeup combusion air, right... but this is an electric furnace. The old duct must date back to a previous (probably oil) furnace.

At the front property line, when I cleared back the vegetation there was a lump of concrete in the way. Lifting it out revealsed a metal drum set into the ground, containing (so far, as well as the concrete block) a bike seat, several plastic toys, and part of a car axle. I say "so far" because at that point I put a patio block on top to stop people falling in and left it to deal with "later".

The back yard, crawl space under the kitchen extension, and under the deck, was full of garbage which the previous occupants had just dumped out there. Many hundreds of rusty nails in the soil, along with broken glass and tin cans. There are two overgrown heaps in the backyard I haven't started on yet. At one place where I was digging for a vegetable bed, there was a group of bricks neatly set about a foot below the soil surface.

A hut at the end of the garden (too big for a doghouse, too small for a shed) was so rotten that I (5'3" and 145lb) pushed it over with one hand, once I'd removed the rotten leaning clothes post which was holding it up. I did have to hit the post once with a sledgehammer.

I guess I should stop now. LOL!

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of the house in

My PO covered the heating registers with lenoleum and carpet in all rooms, and put in gas heaters in all the rooms. when I found out the house was actually centrally heated, I started up the furnace. first 450.00 (in '99) gas bill explained why they would do it. but wow. they also lowered the 11' ceilings to 7'10" in the bedrooms, covering the stamped tin ceilings with 10" square cork tiles in master bedroom, and plain sheetrock in the spare. they also built the kitchen with 30" high countertops, and 46" upper cabinets and the kitchen ceiling is only 84" !!! try cooking in a kitchen with such a low counter, try putting in a dishwasher, then try to put a coffee pot on a counter with only 8" to the cabinets! I could go on and on as well as all of you have, but well ok, there is a nice orchard in the front yard, they planted pompas grass all around it. left unattended for 10 years before I found this "treasure" oh, and above the original clay sewer line the PO planted redtips directly above. they did mention to me, that "occasionally" I would need to have the sewer cleared of roots... every month=occasonally?
I gotta stop now. it's been 6 years, I should be done with it by now right?
John

Seems like a great thread that will never die. The previous owner here: put down laminate flooring without bothering fixing any squaks or thinking about the door frames being now higher than whatever was there before. "Looks like they undercut them with a chainsaw" my renovation guy said. So all those cracks are a bug highway from the crawlspace. Then they replaced the roof to the same standard... you can see new shingles, all crooked along the side,with tarpaper that doesn't come quite to the edge, and a few soft spots. They installed a huge woodburning stove -- 2 inches fromthe wall at the corners. Okay, a brick wall, but it was never inspected. Renters of course "figured it was okay" and used it for years.

Oh, yeah, and the kitchen was painted dark red and a living room entry wall and entry walls dark, dark green. And the bathroom is finished in bare cedar??? HOw hygenic! NOt!

Arg.

reading all theese posts makes me remember more about what I ran into when I first moved in to this "dream" home. the bathroom was an addon to this place it originally did not use one. "outhouse" I suppose. anyway the porch was enclosed sometime in the past (nice slanted floor and all) and the bathroom was built there, right on the slanted porch floor. of course it rotted out, so the owner put down plywood. on top of the rotted floor. of course this rotted, so the home owner put boards on the floor to cover the holes and made "bridges" to the toilet and the tub. when I bought the place, it was being used as a storage building. wall to wall stuff piled to the ceiling. I never saw the bathroom until over a month after closing. ok, now the bathroom framing below and in the walls got ripped out and I reframed the floor and put in concrete and have a pretty nice bathroom.
now, the livingroom has a walled over fireplace, it is about 8' wide and 35'tall. the fireplace is made out of 12-16X24-36" long blocks of GRANITE and strewn all around my property are hundreds of chunks of this granite, the house foundation is perched on huge chunks of this stuff. anyway, the fireplace is leaning about 18" from the wall at the top, and my insurance company threatens to cancel if I don't remove the fireplace, so I put up the scaffold and ladders and rent the chipping hammers and prybars to take down this huge eyesore, and find it is not mortared together, it is built with clay mud. obviously the chipping hammer was a waste of money, the thing falls apart with my hand pressure, the prybars make nice leverage bars. as I get lower and lower I uncover hundreds of ant and bee nests built into the mud. tons of paths where the smoke just vented wherever it felt like it.
anybody want a few giant granite bricks?
two posts to go before the 99 cut off
John

OMG This would be so amusing if it wasn't so tragic!

Our PO cut out peices of the side beams in our carriage house to build the upstairs bathroom-we figured it out when we remodeled the bathroom and came across the petrified-like wood with wooden pegs and square nails still embedded throughout. That, along with one nail for every square inch of wood definitely kept the bathroom structurally sound!!

He also scored the wood on all the 6 panel solid wood doors and applied luan with liquid nails-why???!!!

When we had the roof replaced this past summer, the roofers found SEVEN previouslayers of roofing-including metal-all the way back to the original shake (house circa 1827) YEGADS! You could almost hear the poor house breath a sigh of relief as they pulled all that off!

The dental floss post reminded me that my sister's PO used Kleenex and toothpaste for window caulking.

The house we bought was built in the early 60's. Every single room was paneled, including the closets and the bathrooms. Not a speck of sheetrock anywhere.

My house was built in 1929. The PO's bought it in 1939. They wallpapered every wall, but never removed original in some of the rooms. We have a small bedroom that looks like it has 40's paper under the other 4 layers. Living room has so many layers (5) that the corners are rounded. They added on a mudroom and an additional bedroom to the back of the house, but the floor heights don't match, so they built a 1" ramp in the kitchen to even it up. When DH raised a floor joist under the kitchen, most of the wallpaper started popping off the walls, it was contact paper not wallpaper! Thankfully, they didn't paint over any of the woodwork, we still have the oak trim and a leaded glass front door. but they replaced the wood siding with the cheapest vinyl they could find and of course replaced all the windows when they re-sided!! The kitchen cabinets don't match each other, top ones are fiberboard, bottom ones are plywood and the cabinets in the mudroom off the kitchen are pine. But after reading some of these other stories, I think we got lucky.
Sheree

* Cemented over two beautiful stained glass windows in our 1929 colonial. We've just slowly uncovered one of the windows, and are having a carpenter make a trim to try to match existing chestnut in the room best as possible. This may be my favorite old-house project so far.

* Covered up five other windows, including windows at the front of the house, turning the former sun room into a dark corner.

* Removed the two chestnut pillars between the living and dining rooms to make what's already a very open floor plan "more open." This one may hurt the most. I can't help but to always see that they're missing, and try to imagine what the room must have looked like with them in place(there are visible marks where they met the wood surfaces). A carpenter says we could try to recreate them in oak with a stain to match. I dunno....

I'll say this for them: they never painted the chestnut and fir trim in this house, and while they removed a few things like original French doors and glass doorknobs, they at least put them in the garage. I try to think kindly of them most of the time because it helps me to forgive their transgressions while I live here.

My house was fixed up by the BIL of the PO. He took from the kitchen to put in a bathroom...leaving no good space in the kitchen for a fridge.

He put in boxes for phones/cable, but didn't actually attach them to anything. I have *one* phone outlet in the entire house!

Other than the bathroom, he didn't do too much structurally to the house (thank goodness!) He had let the pipes freeze twice, according to the neighbors, so I have no idea if there is an actual problem/potential problem with that.

Basically, he did a lot of work in the neighborhood, and no-one is quite happy with what he had done.

Cath

Spray painted the interior of the house white, oversprayed onto the hardwood floors, and carpeted the whole house in light green. Tiled the kitchen counters and fireplace surround in salt and pepper granite tiles. Painted the fireplace brick white. Added an annoying half wall to the kitchen...

I didn't read them all...lol..too many! Lets see...removed all stained glass and leaded glass and installed all new vinyl windows. Covered up back staircase up and down, removing trim and banister in the process. Removed chimney at the point of the roof. Put tub in the cove ceiling part and erected old wood "wall" to put faucet at. Had leaking toilet that they never fixed, just kept adding more wood in the basement to hold up the floor. Removed most original trim in kitchen and bathroom up. Put sheetrock over plaster below kitchen cabs. Left the plaster behind the cabs. Removed and tossed (back) door of pass-thru and paneled over the back to hide the hole. Glued linoleum over maple hardwoods in kitchen with subfloor and vinyl over top. Bought a built in oven. Installed it using an extension cord with an adapter on back in order to plug in (oven was a 3 prong, outlet 2 prong). Fire waiting to happen on that one. Did a texture on 3 rooms over top of wallpaper. Raised 1 set of pocket doors and no one can figure out how...there is no screw to raise or lower. Removed parts of vent coverings in rooms to put down carpet over maple floors. Redid duct in palor and boarded over original duct. Subfloored and carpeted upstairs over wide plank pine floors. Changed the roof on the front of the house where there's a balcony. Cut holes in upstairs bedroom doors to install key locking door knobs. Cut width on 1 bedroom door from 32 to 31, so the door won't latch. Had fire in garage and didn't remove charred wood (or replace with new), still holding the roof in place. Tongue and groove car siding on peaks of garage that is rotted, so they covered it up with 1x8's, 1x6's, 1x4's and 1x2's. And of course installed white vinyl siding with baby blue vinyl in the peaks. That's all I can think of now....

This thread was at once both fun and depressing to read. Thought someone might be interested in our problem and the solution we decided on.

The previous owner built a nice detached 750 sq ft garage on top of a completely inadequate foundation. The foundation was built using a bastardized version of the "slab on grade" method.

They cleared the grass off the site, and that was the extent of the "site prep". There are several pieces of rebar sticking up, and other concrete remains of some earlier structure underneath. They built forms for approx. 3.5-4" thick stem walls, with the inner forms 3.5" lower than the outer. No below-grade footings at all. The area inside the inner forms was filled with river sand [and some garbage and trash, yuck!] to the top of the inner forms. Some sort of minmal effort was made to compact the sand.

No vapor barrier. No rebar or wire mesh.

They poured the stem walls and floor (3.5" thick) in a single pour. No joints were etched to control cracking. The outer form at the back blew out during the pour, and was shored up in an obviously improvised manner, leaving the back outer stemwall leaning out about ten degrees. After it cured they chipped the upper part of this section back to where it was more or less even with its intended line and would shed water, but it looks like hell as you can imagine.

Notice that this method means that the inner wooden forms remain in place buried under the concrete floor.

They then built a fairly decent garage, using manufactured trusses and Masonite-type sheathing.

When we bought it the floor had numerous major, badly displaced cracks, some extending clear through the stemwalls. The outer stem walls have not shifted position signifcantly yet, but it would just be a matter of time.

My wife wants to use this garage as a woodworking shop, and will not be satisfied with any bandaid fix. Were not willing to spend the kind of money it would take to just raze the structure, dig up the foundation, and build fresh-we would never get that kind of money back out when we eventually sell. And thereÂs really nothing seriously wrong with the above-ground structure anyway.

We started out planning to just bust up and repour the floor, but once we got a good look at the inside of the stemwalls, it became clear that we really had no choice but to completely replace the existing foundation.

So thatÂs what IÂve been doing for the last several months, in spare time and weekends. Section by section, I:

Bust up and remove the floor, to make a working area along the wall. A 10 pound sledge hammer makes fairly short work of it. Picking up and hauling the broken rubble is much more work.

Affix a 16Â doubled 2x8 beam to the wall using lag screws into the studs.

Use temporary cinderblock piers, jacks, and 2x8 crossbeams to take the wieght of the wall off the stemwall. I have to cut holes in the sheathing for the crossbeams.

Demolish the concrete stemwall. [Fortunately, I have found a place only a few miles away from the house that will take all the broken concrete I can bring them, free of charge. ItÂs recycled to make aggregate for asphalt production.]

Remove the 2x4 sillplate and the bottom course of sheathing. [ItÂs not in too bad shape, but itÂs in the way.]

Dig a trench underneath the existing garage wall, in the packed clay soil. (And yes, thatÂs every bit as much fun as it sounds like.)

Using Quikrete, mix and pour a proper footing with rebar. I donÂt use forms to do this, I just make sure the hole is as deep and wide as necessary. The clay soil is all the form I need. Each section of footing is tied to the next with rebar, and has rebar sticking out the top to anchor the stemwall. The laser level is especially useful in making sure about the depth.

Set up forms for the stemwall. I have homemade plywood forms I use to do this. To keep a uniform thickness, the inner and outer forms have paired ½" holes drilled at regular intervals. When set up, each gets a 3/8" bolt, 8" long, through the two holes. Between the plywood, at each pair of holes, is sandwiched a 6" long PVC sleeve (ordinary plastic pipe, 1/2" ID), with the bolt through it and a nut on the end of the bolt to hold it in place. [After the concrete is cured, the nut is removed and the bolt pulled out of the PVC sleeve. The sleeve remains as a part of the wall and must be sealed shut.] I know that people who do this for a living will laugh at this method, because it is so labor-intensive, but it works extremely well to keep the wall almost exactly 6" thick and does not require extensive external shoring of the forms, as the bolts tie the two sides together. As long as it is set vertical to begin with, only a couple of light braces are necessary to make sure it does not get shifted out of position. And the trench only has to be a couple of inches wider than the wall and forms.

Use Quikrete to pour the stemwall, using rebar. As with the footing, each section of footing is poured with rebar sticking out the end to eventually tie it in to the next section. Each section is between 10Â to 14Â long, depending on whether a corner is involved.

Replace the sillplate with pressure treated wood. This canÂt be done until after the new wall is poured, as otherwise the sillplate would just about cover the gap at the top of the forms, making it impossible to pour the concrete.

Remove forms, and use shims to get the weight of the wall onto the new stemwall.

Backfill the trench on both sides of the wall, packing the soil tight.

Remove the 2x8 beams and supports, move down the wall to the next section, and start over.

Once the footings and stemwalls are finished, we will:

Remove the remaining concrete floor.

Level and compact the sand base.

Put in vapor barrier and install proper rebar reinforcement.

Pour a proper, sufficiently thick concrete floor. We may get a contractor to do this part for us, as it is a big enough job to make it economical. And you only get one shot at finishing concrete, and this is a bit big for us.

I once lived in a house built about 1925. The PO removed three pocket doors from the kitchen and dining room, then took them into the cellar and nailed them together to make a closet! My Dad rescued them while we lived there. We moved out a long time ago. The new owners after us covered over a porch on the second floor. No windows, but you can clearly see the outline of the former porch.

Not too much, thankfully!

Spray painted the whole interior with White (walls and trim), Semigloss paint. Some of which is peeling off, no doubt due to bad prep job.

Some electrical Hazards, but not too bad.

Lack of venting for the basement sink and toilet.

It's very satisfying fixing everything and knowing it's done right!

Fast forward this conversation about 40, 50 or 60 years and wonder what the owner's of our homes will be saying about the previous owners? Maybe something like--"why in the world would anyone want wood floors? What's the deal with these high ceilings--let's lower them. Granite countertops? I want formica!" LOL

In one house we lived in (luckily we rented) the owners did all the work themselves. We kept having problems with the lights and the agent brought in the first ever professional electrican to work on the place, I could hear him exclaiming "oh my god" as he inspected. Turns out that all the metal light fittings were LIVE, they had attached the live wire to them instead of the grounding wire. They removed all the flooring in the place to reveal the wooden floors then didn't bother to remove the glue marks. A new kitchen was installed, quite gorgeous but they didn't bother finishing the tops - chunks of plaster and holes in the ceiling. The whole house was painted one colour and in one bedroom they obviously ran out of paint and left a patchy wall. A piece of broken fibro covering the manhole was the "vent' for the gas water heater. They were so proud of the built in wardrobes in each room - all shoddily buit, one was made from chipboard. We pulled one out because it was falling to bits, replastered and painted that room - it was beautiful. It was a 4 bedroom house and only 2 rooms could be used as the others were damp and mouldy. They have since built a carport which shades the windows of those rooms, they were dark and damp before I shudder to think what they were like before. Those are only a few of many.

The last house I lived in had a linen closet built that had plasterboard shelves. The bathroom laundry was a tack-on a room divided by a wall that started in the middle of a window - one side of the window was plain glass the other was frosted. Because the wall was 3 inches from the glass you could see straight into the bathroom from outside - the window was actually in the shower/bath.

This house was built for us and there were so many issues that the "professional" builder (we used a well known building firm) we were told that we were being overly fussy.
Things like;

Having the openings for downpipes cut into the gutters which meant the downpipe would run down the centre of a window (they did that in 2 spots).

wiring the grounding wire to the incoming GAS pipe

Using a broken brick in the front brick wall and using the grout to fill in the broken corner.

The custom made insect screens are so well fitting that it's impossible to remove them without damage.

Installing kitchen and bathroom cupboards before tiling the floors - in the bathroom they are showing water damage because the cabinents were laminated chipboard - unfinished on the bottom. I'd say that would be the case in the kitchen too.

And when the installer put in the gas water heater he couldn't work out why the gas wouldn't work, the builders said that the account with the gas company was current and that the supply was on. Turns out they forgot to connect the pipe to the mains.

A vent for the cooking exhaust was put outside the kitchen window with the vents aimed at the window. Husband decided it was easy enough to turn around and then found the ventilation hole was simply stabbed with a screwdriver and the venting pipe was folded back so it was venting into the roof.

ok I just read this thread and it's making me nauseous :-) We are uncovering PO nasties here in our 1910 house. Somethings were so bad and the owner failed to disclose, that we have grounds to sue. Trouble is lawyers would eat up the $ we'll need to repair. It makes me want to flee to an new, energy efficient home, but I'm hanging in there.

The house does have charm and is worth fixing right, if it doesn't kill us first :-)

One tip I do have though... If you have access to the abstract at the title company from closing, it is well worth the read. We were able to go back to the original plat of the entire street and it's fascinating to read the deaths, divorces, indebtedness of PO's.

Our property line mysteriously gained 5 ft every time an owner died, and then moved back 5 ft for the next certification of the title. Maybe that explains why 6 inches of my house sits on the neighbors property. Thank god for adverse possession laws.

Also, we were able to track down previous PO's (not the seller) that are still in the area and find out quite a bit of history about the house. Fascinating information in the abstract.

We hope to leave this house to our son, so we are repairing everything with him in mind. That makes it that much more a labor of love, and he is learning what his future house is made of and how to care for it.

If money were no object, what a blast we could all have restoring what were once battleships, until PO's decided to play Bob Vila :-)

This thread was so bittersweet to read!

House #1, purchased 1980: 1860's, historically significant to the area. PO was an architect, who apprarently loved very clean modern lines and materials. The two main horrors were to remove and discard all of the original fireplace mantles (there were three) and have stark white rectangular "mantles" built of (I still can't believe this) wallboard. The second was to take out what a neighbor described as a beautiful huge clawfoot tub and the rest of the (according to the neighbor) beautiful old bathroom fixtures plus the bathroom's original oak t&g wainscotting and put in shiny white tile and a shiny white tub and shiny white sinks on a white formica counter, with a black rubber floor.

House #2, 1894, purchased 1986: The folks I bought it from decorated by their own admission with whatever they could find on the clearance/oops tables, so the dining room had one pink floral wallpaper that didn't quite cover the whole room, so they started a different pink floral wallpaper and carried that into the living room but there wasn't enough to finish there, so they put in a third pink floral wallpaper. And the rest of the house was in their two favorite colors, blue and brown. The original owners, for reasons no one could figure out, replaced the original stairway, but made it narrower and lower. When they died they left a lot of the furniture there that the 2nd owners kept, who left it for me (the 3rd owner). Except no one had bother telling us that the reason why they didn't take it out was that it no longer fit down the stairs, or even out a window.

House #3, early 1960's beach cottage, hand-built by original owner, purchased 1998. Paneling. Every wall in every room, paneling. No wallboard or anything, just paneling on top of firring strips attached to the concrete block. And you can't take down paneling and attach wallboard to firring strips. The bathroom walls, which were a thin compressed fiberboard (imagine, fiberboard in an unventilated bathroom in a humid area of a humid state), had a half-wall of GREEN paneling for a sort of wainscoting look. Plus he apparently had access to odd-lots of tile and tile-faced block, so the laundry room is a random collection of different colored tile on the floor and 2/3 up the wall(with pepto-bismol pink painted fiberboard above that), and the shower is built from a random collection of different colored tile-faced blocks. He didn't even bother trying to make them into a nice pattern or spread the colors out randomly. Just put down the grey ones, then the white ones, then the blue ones, then the pink ones, then the cream ones, then...

Finally, the house we now have under contract, built early 1900's (big T-shaped farmhouse with beautiful Arts & Crafts style wrap-around porch with tapered square columns). PO bought it after the PO to him had a kitchen fire. Applied for it to be rezoned as a boarding house for student from the nearby college where I teach; denied, but bypassed the denial by officially leasing it to one adult supervisor type person who then subleased bedrooms to the individual students. Renovated the house in Cheap Apartment style: Removed all original woodwork except for the stair post and some of the wood floors, and put cheapest possible trim, unevenly stained a dark walnut color, around all windows, doors and on baseboards. Broke up the big spaces on the first floor that gave a circular flow around the center stairway into small rooms to create another bedroom. Ripped out all radiators and installed electric baseboard. Lowered all ceilings with wallboard. Created a huge dining room out of what used to be the huge eat-in kitchen, and enclosed and converted part of the rear porch into a tiny tiny kitchen, mostly walled off from the dining room. Removed all original bathroom fixtures including a clawfoot tub and put in cheap boring tacky whatever. To his credit, the inspections showed that he removed every bit of old wiring and plumbing and brought it fully up to code, he insulated everywhere and put in energy efficient windows, and he put on a decent architectural shingle roof, but still...

Our last house was a horror story of rampant decorating malfunctions. Apparently the POs loved Halloween as the interior of the house was done in orange and black, even the support posts in the basement were covered with orange felt and the laundry tubs were painted orange. Oh and I forgot that every room had a chandelier like the kind of chandelier found in funeral homes. Yep, even the light for the basement stairs, abt 20" wide, was a glistening prism of glass!

There was a large basement closet and the interior was wallpapered with vinyl with cartoon like drawings, again black/orange/yellow, of hippies and then graffiti like sayings such as "Let's get High", "Cool Man" and "Out of Sight". I left the wallpaper as a tribute to the POs.

The entire house was wallpapered and when I removed the wall paper I found out why. One bedroom had 2 walls "caution light yellow" and 2 walls of "kelley green". At night the room glowed like it had one of those yellow bug lights on inside. Another bedroom, I think this was their daughter's room, had 2 walls of "electric blue" and 2 walls of "whore pink". And to top it off, PO had painted all the wide-custom-milled oak trim and the interior of all the solid oak bedroom doors, with some kind of oil based copper metallic paint! He was partial to the metal effect because he also painted all the heat vents the same copper color! Of course we did not discover the metallic effect until I started stripping the woodwork and once you start stripping there is no turning back.

The worst was the interior hallways and ALL, I repeat ALL interior hallways were lined, walls and ceiling, with very dark walnut stained cork. Walking back to the bedrooms was like walking thru a cave. I had to scrape off the cork with a putty knife and this took almost 2 years.

This was a very well built home and we bought it for abt $15,000 over what the POs originally paid and they lived there 15 years. The house was a great deal but now that I look back at just how much sweat we put into that house and it was a good thing we were young and stupid.

Hello, all! My DH and I have a 1920's bungalow/cottage in Massachusetts. I was just pointed to this thread. We found a lot of horrors when we moved in: ugly brown carpet EVERYWHERE, shower doors that had leaked and damaged the bathroom floor.....things with the electrical wires that made professionals scratch their heads and mumble "how did they DO this?" I would answer "the previous owner's husband was very handy." The pros would shudder. This was one of the top ones, and we didn't find it for a while.

We bought the house in 1998, and were told the kitchen was remodeled in 1982. The stove was an old Kenmore "continuous cleaning" type. The light and timer would not work, but the rest of it was okay. It was on a pilot light, so the burners and oven lit when I turned them on. I could have sworn everything had worked during the home inspection, but I figured it was just an old piece of equipment. I gritted my teeth and waited. In a year we were able to afford a new stove.

We pulled the old stove out to install the new one. The electrical cord was dangling through a hole in the wall. There was no outlet. No wonder the timer would not work! We were baffled: How did they plug it in? Where was the outlet? Why the hole? We could not figure it out. Our uncle was helping with the installation, and kept going back and forth into the basement under the kitchen. He noticed the cord dangled through the hole, which was cut next to a support beam for the floor, and into the basement. There were some nails along the beam, and a groove cut or worn into it, but the cord for the stove would not reach that far.

As we all went back and forth, my husband said "There is no outlet down here, I don't get it." Then we looked up. There was an old ceiling fixture in the basement ceiling, over the washer and dryer, just two or three feet from the end of the cord. It was the type that held a single bulb, but had outlets in it on two sides between the bulb and ceiling. I remarked that it looked like a similar fixture we had removed from a bedroom ceiling, and told our uncle about it: when we had viewed the house, the PO had extention cords running from the bedroom fixture to run her alarm clock, bedside lamp, etc. We then realized what they had done. Instead of creating a new outlet behind the stove, the PO had cut a hole in the floor, and then ran an extension cord along the basement ceiling to the basement ceiling fixture. The cord had been tacked along the beam to hold it up, and was removed when the PO moved out.

We put in a new outlet behind the stove.

Emmie

1920's small bungalow. Po -

Buried an extension cord in an exterior wall of a porch. It was plugged in. We didn't know it was there until some rain water was driven into the socket and shorted the circuit. BTW, this didn't blow the breaker - it just started a fire.

Wired the outlets for his kitchen remodel by using very small leftover pieces of wire - like 2 feet long tops. As a sample, one outlet was wired off of another by having a piece of wire from the outlet to a box, a different piece of wire taped to it in the box and run to the next outlet. Two things made this such a work of art - there were at least 6 outlets wired this way and the pieces of wired randomly alternated gauge and material. Copper-Alumnium-copper-aluminum - yep!

Last for this message, he also redid a bathroom using pipe of a size and type not permitted by code. We waited until the tub drain cracked (about 2 years) and then re-did the bathroom. We found he had padded the hall wall out a little bit. He spent hours cutting little lathe boards to all kinds of different depths to pad the drywall over this little left-over bump from the way the wall used to run.

It took us the better part of a day to strip off all the little pieces and pull out all the nails and screws. I took my rasp to the bump and ten minutes later the bump was gone and the wall was perfectly flat.

There's just so much more - we talk about the po as if he still lived here cause in a sense, he still does.

In our case, it's what the PO didn't do - open a single window for 15 years. Yep - locked tight and painted (probably several times) shut. It took a lot of work to get those babies open, but you better believe they've been open a lot since we moved in!

We bought our 1890 Victorian 4 yrs ago. The previous owners had covered up the heartpine floors with carpets, wood floors and linoleum ...in different configurations. We uncovered and had all refinished. We converted the attic to living space but were careful to do so in a way that compliments the house.We have added beautiful storm windows to all the windows and had wooden replacement windows made for 2 rotten ones. We had the ropes and weights restored on 2 but left the rest painted closed as the heating bills even in Al. are horrible. We are currently restoring the kitchen's ceiling to 12 feet. It isn't the original kitchen but we are left with this unfixable location so we will deal with it. The HVAC system is a mess...we had it worked on but they cheated us 4 yrs ago and now we are having to have it redone by the people we should have had the first time. The electric panel boxes ...3 of them are a mess. Our fridge is on with 25 other things !! So we are getting that all redone. I walk through the house late at night and the floors creak and I am sure I can hear the original owner thanking me for loving this house.

Not a horror story, but an interesting observation on construction methods of the past, that I was unaware of.

While leveling floors in my crawlspace last summer, I kept noticing that some of the floor joists were covered with a crusty, friable, gray dust. The joists were not damaged, and I could not figure out what this material was. Some kind of preservative? Residue from some insect or pest?

Finally the light bulb came on and I recognized it; concrete dust! My home was built in about 1940. Before they were used as floor joists, this lumber was used as forms for the concrete stemwalls of my house. Once the stemwalls had cured sufficiently, the forms were removed and reused to frame the floor deck.

As far as I know there is nothing wrong with this. It's just something that would never have occurred to me if I had not seen the evidence.

Our gas waterheater is inside a small enclosure inside of a closet !!! I have been posing forum questions asking for adivce on what to replace it with and where to put it. I think we have decided to go with a gas tankless and mount it outside. We are lucky we haven't blown up or been gassed to death. So much for house inspections !!!

Trailrunner, what is your issue with this? Inadequate acces to combustion air for the water heater? Are there vent grills in the closet door(s)?

Most standard water heaters are located in a closet of some kind or other. That has been the situation with every house I have ever lived in, with no problems except that access can sometimes be a challenge for service or adjusting. Some will have a vent pipe from the roof/attic to provide a path for combustion air, though I think this is a fairly recent idea and not common in older installations.

airqual guy... no vents anywhere...I was under the impression from other responses...plumbing especially that there are very strict requirements and after looking at ours it appears to meet none of them except that we have an old leaky house so make-up air is everywhere ! We are tearing out all the walls adjacent to the waterheater enclosure so even if it is a problem it will soon be past tense.

Airqual, my entire garage is made up of the wood used for the concrete forms. I always wondered as well until a buddy of mine who owns a construction company told me what it was.

Most of my PO's were pretty good. I have a 1925 craftsmans with all original patchwork floors and woodwork everywhere, and it is all UNPAINTED!! which is one reason I bought the house. One the other hand, my kitchen floor has like 7 layers of flooring, the last of which is ceramic tile. He did not bother to remove anything when he tiled, he just tile around stuff like the radiator and the dishwasher. So I have to remove the countertop to replace the DW. Fun stuff. He also did not screw down the crappy cormica countertops, they jsut kind of "float" held in by the weight of the sink.

He finished the basement which was great, but he had friends in the permit department of town, so I don't think they ever check anything. All doors in the basment are completely out of square, so no doors close right. And if you look close, the ceiling is at different heights trhoughout, 6'11, 7', 7'1" etc. Fun stuff.

Currently I have a kitchen and two ful baths with oak hardwood floors covered by 5+ layers of flooring. I don't even want to try to remove what is there. The tile was put down with thinset and wire mesh directly on top of lynolyum and other types of flooring.

Where do I begin??? Let me preface this with the fact that I LOVE this house to pieces. We bought it dirt cheap three years ago and there's no way we'd be able to afford a 3100 sq. ft. house normally. My FIL grew up in this house from the 40's on, but it was then sold in the 70's when his parents downsized.

On the exterior, I'm annoyed that the wood siding w/original wood scalloping was replaced in the 50's with the first aluminum siding (in fact, it was a demo house for the Albany area showing off aluminum siding). Also annoyed the green wood shutters are not still on all the way around the house (although we still have a few in a barn).

Luckily, all the hardwood floors are still in pretty good shape and all of the molding downstairs hasn't been painted (upstairs, it's now pretty much all white in the bedrooms, but I *gasp* actually kind of like it painted white--brightens things up!).

Worst part? My husband's grandpa decided to put awful tan "school tile" floors upstairs in the hallways OVER the gorgeous hardwood floors and into one of the bedrooms. We haven't touched them yet, but when we do, I can just tell it is going to be a disaster of large proportions.

Plus, there are about 3-4 layers of wallpaper throughout the house...EVERYWHERE...even on the ceilings...what were these people THINKING!!!!

BUT...someone had the foresight not to paint these built-ins, and I think they did a pretty good job with the restoration job (although, I'm not sure if a true historic rennovator would agree)

Also, the kitchen ceiling was lowered 18 inches in the 50's--the rest of the house has 9.5 ft. ceilings. Why did they do that???

Sarah from Selkirk, NY

we just bought a house built in 1909, POs said that all the electrical had been replaced and that everything was on circuit breakers. Many things started to go wrong just before we closed, like we werent able to go back into the home until a half hour before we were supposed to sign all the closing papers! On this last inspection, we discovered a fuse box on the wall. It had brand new fuses in it. So we had our realtor call the seller's realtor and ask about this fuse box, to which they replied that it was there when they moved in (well, duh) and that it wasnt connected to anything. We went ahead and closed on the house. Well, it turns out that they lied about a couple of things. There are 4 fuses in this box that seem to run all the lights and most of the outlets in the house, and these four fuses then are run over to the circuit breaker but only on one circuit. This became problematic when we blew a lightbulb in the kitchen, replaced it only to have another go, with sparks flying from the fixture. Took down the fixture (after removing the fuse) and discovered knob tube wiring crumbling up into the ceiling. Woo hoo--this was something we had specificly asked about prior to signing and it is very upsetting to find!

I'm still removing wallpaper from the upstairs bedrooms, I dont know which PO to blame the bad taste on as its pretty ugly.

At least the floors are in good condition and now refinished so they should remain that way. Also the woodwork is mostly unpainted and unharmed, and most of the doors have their original hardware. The windows are the original and the storms are falling apart so I dont know what we'll do about that. I dont want to put in vinyl windows, so hopefully new storms will cut down on heating and cooling costs since the area I live in is prone to 30 below zero weather in the winter and 100 above in the summer.

There are lots of other things I could complain about, but I'm mostly upset about the wiring. I didnt even mention the capped off 220 line laying on top of my kitchen cabinates, or that the upstairs is wired via a 3-way switch in the dining room. We'll be calling in an electrition and I contacted the realtor to see what we need to do legally to have the POs pay part of or the entirety of rewiring this place correctly. Its hard to claim ignorance of a fuse box when brand new fuses are in it and are blown when a kitchen light is turned on.

My 'new' old house isn't too bad compared to my last old house. I bought a fixer upper cape cod. It was the filthiest house I had ever seen. Part of the closing agreement was to remove all debris, but they still left a lot.

1. It took my sister and I a week of full time work to clean the empty house and make urgent repairs (like replacing windows that were made from old frames and duct-taped in plexiglass). I spent 4 hours scraping gum from the hardwood floors in one of the bedrooms, several hours scraping the refrigerator clean with a razor blade, way too long cleaning up mouse droppings, a few days washing all the nicotine residue off the floors, walls, and ceilings...
2. The PO "fixed" a hole that someone had kicked in the dining room wayy with a small section of picket fence with plastic flowers glued to it.
3. They glued carpet to stick on tile that was over hardwood floors.
4. I had to replace the electrical "panel" that wasn't even in a box. It was just a hole in the wall covered by a piece of particle board that was screwed into the wall.
The basement had nasty old carpet that mildewy that had been glued to the cement.
5. The original exterior doors were all replaced with cheap particle board hollow core 70s doors.
6. The walls were painted psychiatric hospital green with kelly green woodword. There were Precious Moments murals all over the walls.
7. There were old tired buried in the back yard.
8. The leaking roof was "fixed" with poured on tar and there were 5 layers of singles in some areas of the roof.
9. Leaks in the plumbing were "fixed" with caulk.
10. All the overhead light fixures were removed at one time.

I knew there were things to be fixed when I moved in, but I didn't know about the bad repairs. On a positive note, I learned how to make a lot of different kinds of repair and I learned what not to do.

I have owned two old houses. The first one was a craftsman/colonial from 1926. The previous owners had painted over most of the original chestnut woodwork with flat white paint. This woodwork had been in the original untouched finished condition for 70 years before these people got the house. The rest of the woodwork that didn't get that treatment (fireplace mantle, bookcases flanking fireplace, and stair banister and newel post) was painted with Rustoleum high gloss exterior black paint. The brick fireplace was also painted with the Rustoleum. When they painted the walls and trim, they didn't bother to cover the oak floors with mahogany ribbon molding and corner knots since they were installing hot pink wall-to-wall in every room! Yup...hot pink in the livingroom, diningroom, sunroom, up the stairs, in the hall, and all three bedrooms...lovely! They also remodeled the kitchen with pink-hued faux woodgrain cabinets, pink formica counter and pink patterned peel-n-stick vinyl tile flooring. They cut a hole in the wall between the kitchen and a walk-in pantry to recess the refrigerator thereby making the walk-in pantry walk-in no more. The black appliances finished off the look of the pink kitchen. Moving on to the enclosed porch with the original textured glass fanlights and sidelights with the original glass exterior door, they painted over the inside of all the windows (the textured side of the glass) and sided over the exterior of the fanlights and covered the glass of the door with some kind of laminate. They also continued the theme of the kitchen out onto this enclosed porch by laying down the same pink patterned peel-n-stick tile over the porch floor. The PO's before them had panelled over two beautiful stained glass windows above the fireplace on the inside and sided over them on the outside. Fortunately, they left the windows buried in the wall. They also removed and discarded the glass doors that would have been on the bookcases flanking the fireplace as well as installing drop ceilings in the livingroom and bathroom.

We undid all of this nastiness by redoing the kitchen in a style that evoked the feel of a vintage kitchen. Removed all of the pink vinyl floor of the porch and stripped all of the textured glass of the sidelights and fanlights and removed the siding on the outside of the windows. Ripped up all of the hot pink carpet and had all the floors refinished. Restored the stained glass windows to their former glory by removing all of the panelling and siding that was hiding them. We also installed interior framing on these windows to mimic the rest of the moldings. We also spent three years, lovingly, painstakingly and personally stripping and refinishing all of the chestnut molding, banister, mantle and bookcases.

So we decided to sell this past year and move closer to the train station. I was recently visiting a friend in the old neighborhood and the people who we sold the house to saw me and invited me in to see their handiwork. What did they do? You guessed it - painted all of the chestnut woodwork white including the mantle and bookcases! Their reason was that the brown molding just didn't go with the colors they had chosen for the livingroom, sunroom and diningroom - a slate gray/blue color. I wanted to scream at them "if you wanted slate colored walls you should have bought a loft in Chelsea and left my woodwork alone!", but instead I grinned and beared it. It's their house now. I just hope they understand they dropped the value of their investment by about $10,000.

In our new house (1929 tudor), the previous owners had lived here for over 40 years. They had done the usual stuff - black and white vinyl tile over ribonned hardwood floors in the sunroom, foyer and vestibule; linoleum in two bedrooms, panelling in two bedrooms, hideous wallpaper in bathrooms and kitchen (including the ceilings). We are slowly correcting these issues. But they did leave us with three bathrooms with all original tile and fixtures, all original 6-panel doors, all original windows, all original light fixtures, the original beautiful deep green marble fireplace surround, the gracefully curved archways between all the rooms on the first floor, the original stucco and cedar shake siding, original shutters and iron railings on the outside, and all the original woodwork, albeit painted woodwork. And that's the way its going to stay.

* Posted by wellim on
Mon, Sep 27, 04 at 10:38
>Wow, In a way I'm lucky.
>What did the PO's do to my house: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

You ARE lucky. As I struggle to stay ahead of the deterioration to keep my 150+ years-old farm house from falling down, 50% of the "restoration" I have done the last 25 years has been to repair or correct damage done by previous owners' feeble attempts to "renovate."

Things were a little eccentric:
Phone outlets in EVERY room, including the bathrooms, unfinished basement and, just for fun, one stuck on the side of an open shelf in the upstairs hall.
There are so many wires for phones that when the repair guy came when there was a problem, he just did the best he could with the junction box and decided to "just back away slowly" (tongue in cheek, of course).

Bedroom wired for sound, including recessed speakers in the ceiling (presumably, this used to be a home theatre, complete with white wall-to-wall shag). Volume control is built into same box as the dimmer switch for the ceiling light. Video cable in four rooms AND the unfinished basement.

Hot water faucet OUTSIDE the house. (for washing cars?)

None of the downstairs window, except kitchen, can be opened. Inspector said that was just because the windows are cheaper - I thought they were afraid of burglars! Had to put in air conditioning to keep things livable.

Some very peculiar shelves built INTO the basement wall (like medicine cabinets, but made of wood and 6 foot wide) and painted bright, super shiny red)

I've sold the house and now wonder if the buyers will think that *I* had something to do with these oddities....

They had the a/c company use flex duct after there was a flood under the house, to replace all the hard pipe...they wanted to save money. Then we let the same company come back as that was who our then contractor used and they replaced this stuff ...but....they put so many "y"s and turns etc that it is totally useless. There are deadends and no insulation in places. We were stupid not to learn more . We are now using the company we should have used the first time and didn't because our contractor said they were too expensive!! SO it has cost us all this extra in heating and airconditioning bills and now replacement of the "cheap" job that replaced the "cheap" job !!! Argggg...I know more about a/c than I EVER wanted to know.

We also did fairly well in our little 3/2 1940 house here in NC. It was a rental for the last 20 years, and the PO's handyman was there one day when we were looking at it, and we mentioned that we were going to rip up the (cheap thin $1/sf grey carpet) in the whole house. Handyman objected: "But I just put that in!" I made a deal with him that if he removed all the carpet, padding, tack strips, and nails, that he could have all of the new pad and carpet. He weas thrilled, and we were we! It was amazing not to have to remove 1200 sf of carpet and tack strips while I was on crutches! We refinished our heart pine floors, which had very little damage, and are still so pleased.

Other than that, we really just had bad linoleum in the dining room, only 1 grounded duplex outlet in the whole house, and lame paint jobs on the exterior and the porch.

I have loved reading these stories! In fact, it took me almost all day at work. :)