Home Ownership And You!

Clipdat

That is some serious next-level junk hoarding. Wow.

Tony M

What a day you guys had.

The guy was a true hoarder like me. I've saved stuff till termites ate into them. I'm saving stuff "thinking" I'll use it someday. A true curse of a tinkerer, handyman, or jack of all trades. Sounds like he was a true "jack leg" with some skills but also a short cutter in the biggest way.

I sure wish you had gotten a picture or 5 of those Yellow-Jackets on the exterminator.

I was mowing the field behind my house one summer and I noticed in one area along the loop a couple of bees were acting funny. With each lap, they seem to double in numbers. Well, on the 5th or 7th lap I stopped and saw I did NOT want to drive in that area now. There were about a hundred or so now.
I studied the area and there were 2 holes in the ground. They are about 8 to 10ft. apart. The Yellow Jackets were coming from both holes.

I learned later that Yellow Jackets in the ground most always have 2 holes for entrance and exit security. If one hole gets attacked, they can exit the other one.

My laps of mowing just went from one hole towards the other hole. LOL. I think the whole hive was waiting for me to make that one more lap before I was all-out attacked. I was blessed that day to not get stung one time.

I'm glad the dumster Co. gave you a break. There are some good people still operating businesses that have a heart.

You should have the end in sight of all that can be a hurdle to your nightmares from Capt. Half-**** now.

You have a very nice homestead / estate now it seems.

Jstas

This wasn't hoarding. He literally just dumped trash everywhere. Under the pool deck is the same situation.

Additionally, the pool deck has erosion problems under it. You dig like 6 inches down and you will find the original gravel and weed barrier that bordered the whole pool. He just never did anything to curb the erosion or clean out from under anything.

I'll get pictures of what stuff looks like now because, like the slab between the garages, there was inches of dirt over poured concrete. That's not something that got put there. That's stuff like wind blown leaves never being cleaned out and rotting to compost.

I will say, ever since I cleaned out from under the porch, mosquitoes have been minimal. I can actually enjoy my porch in the warmer weather at dusk.

And it's ok, not nice yet. Needs more work.

Hopefully the tree guys get here next week. I got a $15K quote to get a dozen problem trees removed including one of the stately old oaks in the picture above because it's got heartwood rot and half the tree is dying off and dropping tree sized branches on the firepit area.

Jstas

All the mountains I move in my stupid projects, it's the little details I'm most proud of.

These outlets were a pain in the rear. They had to be at that height because of restrictions behind the wall. But the baseboard is the style that is prevalent throughout the rest of the house. So in order to match it, we went with this baseboard. It really should be about an inch and a half taller but we went with a one piece moulding both for cost and ease of use.

But the contractor had put just blocks of baseboard up and butted the baseboard up against it. It looked ok but not only was it really too deep for the outlets (enclosed porch, original exterior wall) but it just didn't look clean.

So I fixed it.



This isn't the cleanest work but it's the inside of a closet. I tested my idea out here. Now that I know it works the way I wanted it to, I can do the other outlet that's out in the open like this too.

Again, putting the outlets up about 3 inches to clear the baseboard would have been best but...hundred year old house, doesn't always work out.

The reason we can't move them up is because of where the floor joists and foundation walls meet. It would require significantly more work because these outlets are actually wired through the top of the foundation and they were put in wit what seems to have been a jackhammer, conduit and hydraulic cement. To move them meant hours more work and materials. It's far easier to work with trim and make it look prettier.

The biggest issue with the foundation is this is the 100 year old part of the house. It's rubble, mortar and plaster. Not exactly easy to deal with.

BTW, there will be an outlet cover on it, I just gotta shut off that circuit, pull the outlet and install an outlet extender before I can button it up. And the paint will come off the finished floor with some plastic "razor" blades no problem.

Oh, also, the trim on the right is covering the hatch seam. The hatch is for crawlspace access under the laundry room where there wasn't any before. Since there's gas, water, sewer and power under there I told the contractors who helped us that I absolutely needed a hatch. They agreed.

I'll post the rest of the laundry room saga later. It's gonna be loooooooong.

verb

Love this thread! Been following, and have gotten inspiration (and shared your frustration for sure), while on your journey!

pitdogg2

Love the outlet work!

Jstas

Wanted to update this with something.

Still haven't finished the laundry room post(s) 'cause it's a lot. Like alot, alot. Life got real craptacular since the end of August and it's taken much of my focus to get straight. Hopefully things are looking up now and they stay that way. Time will tell, I guess.

Anyway.

I realized that I never finished some of the stories. So here's a few quick hits.

The sewer pipe fix, over a year now since we started with it, it's been good ever since. I still have to fix the auto vent in that bathroom but I might just wait for the remodel to do that and just get all new plumbing soup to nuts.

But I had left the story with a mostly unfished hole in the garden and driveway. Well, I had to get that done too. Problem, though. The frickin' fire inspector came by when the ACs were done and noticed the windows. He asked what I was going to do with them and I pointed to the galvanized wells and said I was going to put them back. He gets all weener happy and starts swinging it around and pulls out his tape measure. Measures the wells. Then he stands up, looks at me and gets all angry like I did something wrong and says "Like hell you are!" I literally said "What the f*#$, dude?" 'cause he went from generally miserable to colossal **** in the blink of an eye. He tells me that the wells are too small and they need to be 36 inches away from the center of the windows and no less than 18 inches away from the sides. I looked at him quizzically and said "First off, you're not here to inspect this. I'm not even sure why you're here for an AC system so I don't know why we are having this conversation. Secondly, YOU cleared this house on the fire inspection when I bought it in 2017 and I KNOW it was YOU because YOU were just as much of an **** then as you are now! So if those wells weren't code then, why did you ok them?"

He just looks at me without saying a word but you could tell the gears were grinding hard. Then he just says "I'm watchin' you, buddy. You put those wells back, I'll know and I'll fine your **** until you fix it." I got inches from his face and told him to go inspect the what he thinks he needs to inspect for the AC systems and get the hell off my property like yesterday." Then, while I'm following him around, I called the NJ building office in Trenton while I was right in front of him and lodged a complaint. That was in, like, March of 2021. That fire inspector was fired in June of 2021.

I went and fixed the window wells anyway. I wanted to make it more pleasing or at least more tidy instead of the trailer park chic it was previously. So I power washed the retaining stones built new wells that met or exceeded code and even trimmed out the windows with vinyl and painted both to match the house colors. The wells are made out of ground contact pressure treated 4x4s and cedar planking. All of it was sealed and then I encased it in FlexSeal. Then I trimmed it out and painted it, stapled a weed barrier to the bottom so they will drain rain water proper and filled them with crushed stone for a base. Everyone keeps telling me how nice they look.

So here's pictures:





I got it done a little late to put plantings in last year so we'll fix that this spring.


The other thing I did was get the backhoe assembled. It's the Horror Fraught deal and I really felt like I was taking a risk on it and it might end up being inadequate for my needs.

I was wrong.

I got it together and tested it out moving and turning the leaf and mulch piles I have.



It worked awesome! The controls are a bit clunky because they are real basic. Pretty much just hydraulic switches. The pump is low on the GPM flow rate so trying to flick more than two levers at a time creates issues. So it's not as smooth to operate. Additionally, because of the low flow rate on the pump, despite the valves being progressive rate, they pump's flow rate means that fine movement is severely lacking. I've read multiple posts on forums and Reddit that people say to replace the 2.7 GPM pump with an Ingersoll Rand until that does 4.5 GPM and the performance improves drastically. That pump is $550, though. So maybe I suffer with this one for a while.

Anyway, I gave it a test to see how much it would handle and was expecting to have to get the winch and a bunch of rigging to get this willow tree out of the lake and probably the backhoe too when it fell in because it couldn't pick up the tree.

Yep.

No.

Wrong!

This thing picked up that tree like it was a toothpick! It also ripped the stump out of the ground with it!

I did not pay the retail price for it. I swung a killer deal and got almost a grand off the regular retain price but even at the regular price, it's worth every penny.

Here's the tree stuff.





I have a video too, hopefully I can post it. If not, I'll figure it out.

Jstas

OK, so hopefully this works.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VAGXQFvirFMcu1NJ7

That should be an album with the video.

This is after the initial pull and you can see the cut end of the tree. I didn't film the first pull because I was afraid of having a problem and not being able to handle it because I was **** with a phone.

What happened was I wrapped the green choker chain around the base of the tree. The tree had not broken fully as it had root rot so it basically leaned over in to the lake. I put the chain around the base and the wrapped it around the bucket teeth. I was just going to pull it up and get tension on it so I could cut the tree off the stump and not lose it in the lake.

Yeah, no, not what happened at all.

I grabbed the levers, curled the bucket to get tension on the chain to set it and get the choke cinch hoop to set down on the log and hold it. Then I said to myself "Well, self, here goes nuthin'!" and pulled the boom up lever.

There was a slight groan as the hydraulic pump loaded up and then a cracking, ripping sound and the entire tree except for one root that was wrapped up with another nearby tree's roots came out of the ground and I was holding it there in stunned disbelief about 3 feet in the air.

The tree guys were there for the "Round 2" I mentioned earlier in the thread and the cutter was on the boom platform and could see over the house and out into the yard. He must have heard the noise because I hear from that direction a "WOOOOO! F*@% YEAH! THAT WAS AWESOME!"

Then I thought to myself "You know, self, I wonder if it'll move it like this?" I told myself to give it a go, what's the worst that could happen?

So the tree was rooted about 4 feet from the bank. It was probably 20-25 feet tall and had been in the drink since August and it was now the end of October. So it was water logged and that was apparent when I was trying to buck it and cut it down.

I went to swing the boom, I started slow to see what it would do. It strained a bit as the pump started moving fluid in a new direction and then it just start to slide it out. So I stopped as it was starting to peel the one root that was left connected up like a zipper. I didn't want that so I cut the root and then cut the stump off.

The video is where I have the stump cut off and the stupid little backhoe picks up the rest of the water logged tree (probably ~5000 pounds in total) and just yanks it out of the water. I set it back down, slip the choker down the trunk, cut off some sections and just walked the tree out of the water about 8 feet at a time.

It took all of an hour and a half to clean the tree up and dig the stump out.

Would have taken me all frickin' day if I didn't have it.

The backhoe paid for itself the first time I used. It's far more capable than I gave it credit for. You never see these pop up on the used market because nobody gets rid of them.

pitdogg2

That's a right purty chain.

VR3

dude that back hoe is awesome

mhardy6647

I could use a backhoe to deal with the multiflora rose around here. The USDA (or someone like that) encouraged farmers to plant it in the '50s or '60s as natural fencing. Stuff's probably outlawed under the Geneva convention nowadays. It's horrific.

Backhoes for tractor mounting (at least) are 'spensive and, as @Jstas noted, the supply of used ones is slim, because the folks that have 'em, keep 'em.

Jstas

Rambler Rose, yet another species from China that does nothing here but cause problems. It's on the list of species to eradicate on sight here in NJ along with Tree of Heaven, White Mulberry and the brown marmorated stink bug and the spotted lantern fly. At least the Rambler Rose smells nice. My condolences, though. That's the one thing I don't have here because it doesn't do well in the sandy, acidic soil.

The backhoe was a saga, though.

It's this thing: https://www.harborfreight.com/building-construction/mixers-compactors-backhoe/backhoe/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.html

I tow it with the lawn tractors but it's got a high tongue weight so I gotta brace the hitch plates on them so it doesn't bend them and pop the ball hitch out. Otherwise, it's about 1100-1200 pounds and well within the limits of my stupid lawn tractors. It's not as nice as the tractor mounting ones which are usually double the cost of this thing and you need a specific sized PTO for the tractor mounts too because the tractor mount ones need at least a 4.5 LPH hydraulic pump. So if you have a smaller PTO, you have to upgrade that too and that'll add another grand to the purchase price of the tractor mount one in most cases.

I did a whole bunch of math on comparing the cost of renting one vs buying the HF one and it was looking like renting one would be easier and cheaper if I just kept stuff to the absolute necessity of what I needed to do and not all the extra stuff. Especially since the HF one kept increasing in price.

Then HF offered a deal, get their credit card and you get a 10% off coupon, no restrictions. With that, an Inside Track Club coupon and some rewards points, I got almost $900 off the price. I figured the best part was, I have it, I use it when I want and I don't have to blow a week's worth of vacation and try to kill myself to get in under the deadline. If I get done everything I need to get done and not see a need for it in the future, I can unload it for at least 2/3rds of what I paid for it. So it was just a smarter deal and I waited over 2 years for the deal to pop up again.

But now I have it and the tree stuff proved that it's more than just a digging tool, it can be a crane and handle demolition too. It's not going to lift stuff real high but, high enough to get something in to or out of a pickup truck bed. A lot easier than using an engine crane or ramps or something. I don't think it will bust through concrete, not enough weight behind it. But, if you have busted up concrete already, it will certain scoop up chunks and put them in a truck bed or dumpster or something.

A friend said I should start a side business with it digging trenches for plumbers or electricians. I thought that might be a good idea and wondered what I should call it. He says "Just call it "John's Trenching Service" or something, doesn't have to be fancy." I laughed and said "Yeah, the tagline will be "We'll rip you a new one and you'll like it!"

Jstas

Oh, and the green chain...it's bright green on purpose. One of the younger tree guys asked me why the chain was green. The cutter on the crew is also a national park ranger and works in the off-season here out in Oregon, California and Washington maintaining forests out there. He tells the younger guy "It's green for a reason." Then grabs the chain, chucks it in the woods and says "See? Sticks out like a sore thumb. It's easier to see, easier to find." So that's why it's "purty". I haven't used it much so it's still got most of it's green coating but I use it to skid logs out of hard to reach places with the tractors. I only got it at the end of 2021 so it's still fairly new.

Jstas

So, with the lull in work, I was thinking about what I haven't posted about in this thread yet. So here's the laundry room saga.

The Laundry Room is Captain Halfassery at it's finest..or worst..or however you want to look at it.

When we got the house, it was presented as a workshop/laundry room. It had this godawful yellow paint and this carpet that literally looked like puke mixed with the stuff the janitor used to used to soak it up and clean it up when a kid got sick in grade school. It had these HUGE LG washer and dryer units on pedestals. I ended up moving them out and putting them at the rental property because they were not rated for framed floors and were supposed to be installed on a slab. Whenever they would run, they would shake the entire front of the house. The rental properly has the slab floor. So I moved my Whirlpool Cabrio set to this house and that's what's in the pictures.

So, the laundry room/workshop. It was ugly, floor wasn't level and it smelled like wet dog almost perpetually. It had this weird ledge in it too that I thought was a knee wall made of block. The reason I thought that is because despite Captain Halfass purporting it to be an extension, it was actually the original porch that was enclosed...poorly. Give the age of the house, I figured the porch was a block foundation and the knee wall was the original block porch wall. I expected to find a block wall and windows behind the drywall. We'll get to that, though.

First things first, look at these pictures and see what I got to start with. This was after I emptied it, though and I dismantled the melamine closets that were opposite of the knee wall. They weren't anything special, just, again, poorly built.

So, pictures.











Now, what I did find after I took the cabinets down were these two big pieces of chintzy Japanese made (had Japanese writing on the back) sheets of luan paneling that were just nailed up in these holes. These holes, they were the original front windows on the house. I couldn't figure out why the plaster walls on the other side had these cracks in them that were pretty square. I mean, I had an idea but this just confirmed it. The rest of the paneling was an early version of Hardie board that had a wood grain embossment. Whomever put it up, put up after not removing the old siding on the outside of the house. So, remember that, it's important. Also, this paneling was likely loaded with asbestos fibers and the siding under it was likely lead based paint.







So, the other thing was, the ceiling tiles were the old Armstrong pressboard style with the staple ears on two sides. There was a hole in them where Captain Halfass said there was water damage. When we tore it out, we found no evidence of water damage so it was likely they got damaged by something and fell down at one point. The ceiling board you see are the original porch ceiling. Again, this will be important later.



Also, the wall sconce light you see? That's not the original fixture but it is the original porch light which, at one point, was a gas lantern. I don't know if I got pictures of the pipe for it that was still in the wall but it was connected to the same pipes we found in the parlor and dining room fixture locations and it terminated behind that sconce.

So, it took forever to get to this because, well, Plandemic happened and it was not only hard to find help but supplies as well. This was a colossal under taking and there was some heavy lifting here that I just could not do myself. So we hired a contractor to help with the tear down and structural fixing as well as the heavy finish work. I'll detail that in more posts, there's going to be multiple here.

Also, the octagonal windows at the ends, they would never close right, they we so drafty that on a windy day a facial tissue would flap like a flag in the wind if you held it up and we actually had a bat crawl into the room through one of the windows when the wind outside had popped one open a crack. Captain Halfass had screens for them but they were too pig for the windows. There were tape marks on teh walls around the windows and it wasn't until I got a better look at them during this work that I realized what they were. They were to hold the oversized screens up again the wall to act as screens for the windows.

Speaking of drafts, too, you'll notice that under the window nearest the washer/dryer, there looks to be a bunch of towels and stuff stuffed against the wall. It's not because we are slobs. There was a 3 inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the sheet rock that was about as drafty as it gets for a wall. Those towels are there to plug that draft up. Otherwise, water that was left in the bottom of a wash bucket the winter before, it froze in the 2 hours between me getting done mopping and getting back to emptying out the bucket. That was when we decided we needed to do something because the are water pipes running through there.

Anyway, this was the start of the saga. These pictures were taken like a week before Halloween 2021.

Jstas

So, the last set of pictures were taken on a Sunday.

I had the dumpster delivered that Monday and the guys started work that Wednesday. The first thing we did was tear down the knee wall to see what was behind it.



Nothing. There was nothing behind it. It made no sense why it was there. I had made plans for the room under the guise that the wall would be immovable without considerable expense and time. This changed everything.



So those "bricks"? Yeah, they aren't. What they are is dyed concrete. They were laid up there with concrete over a galvanized metal lathe, like you would for stucco. But it wasn't stucco. I researched this and they did this stuff in the 50's and it was the start of the "technology". So someone in the mid-40's enclosed the porch with windows and framing and blocked out a foundation. There's more to that story but we're not there yet.

Anyway, I realized what this was when we started trying to tear off the framing for the knee wall and the sheetrock above it was pulling away from the wall. So, hammer time! Bust a chunk in a loose spot to see and found this:



That brought us to here.

You see that "brick" there in the middle of two sections of framing? Yeah, that was a support column between the windows that were there. Thankfully, they weren't still there but what was wasn't much better. We took bets on if Captain Halfass had left the windows in place and that would explain the draftiness. I lost the bet and the contractors thought I was being pessimistic. I told them "Let me tell you some stories."

So what did we find that wasn't much better? Well, the holes were framed out with sheathing put over them on the outside. That's fine. But, as you can see in this picture, the insulation did not fill the framed voids completely and there were gaps on either side of the framing that had no insulation at all. Some gaps, while covered by vinyl siding on the outside, had daylight coming in through them.



Additionally, the octagonal windows were put in with no flashing or sealer. The galvanized panels you see are merely nailer boards that were screwed into the window frames and the screwed into the wall from the outside. They were mounted in framing that was enclosing the original enclosing work windows and they had been leaking for a while because we found water damaged sheathing on the outside that we cut out when we replaced the windows.





What got really scary was that behind the washer and dryer was the original porch door. It was framed in but the insulation was a waste of time because it was doing nothing. The water pipes that I was worried about freezing? They were run right through this uninsulated cavity.







Now, the other problem is that the original encloser of the porch, they did not insulate the porch walls. Honestly, that's fine. It was a 3 season porch at worst because of it but all the places there was the "bricks", there was voids behind them so it makes the Captain Halfass insulation job all that more useless.





Yes, we tore every last pieces of the "brick" façade off the walls. Had to so it could be insulated properly. Those pictures were taken to show just how useless Captain Halfass's work to turn it into a utility room were. And I know it was him who did it because he bought the place in like 1995 and all of the sheathing, drywall and other trim had manufacturing date stamps on it of 2002-2003.

The header boards and crown molding on the ceiling were original porch work. They were essentially the lower roof structure and we ended up just using them as our inside line and framing to them to make straight walls. We took off a fascia panel and the crown molding and that was it.

It took 5 days to get all that "brick" off and it was heavy as hell. At this point we had been at this for 2.5 weeks and we were slow going on purpose because we didn't know what we were getting in to. Thankfully, the contractors kept hooking the laundry back up for us for the weekends so we weren't without it.

Hopefully this all fits in one post. On to the next one!

Jstas

So, remember that hole in the ceiling? Yeah, more Captain Halfassery.

Why?

'Cause the original ceiling was sky blue. Except for that one **** square that Captain Halfass painted that sickly yellow.



The only "water" damage was the flaking paint it was due to the fact that he didn't have the dryer vented to the outside properly and the only place that had the peeling paint was the section that was exposed to the humid dryer air in the room. Everything else was solid.



Next we tackled the paneling on the inside wall.

First thing we did was remove the paneling covering the window holes. Behind that paneling was masonite sheets. I don't know why. It wasn't even secure to anything. It fell out when I pulled the luan panels down.



This was when I realized that there was still more demo to do because we found the original siding.



So we started taking down the embossed paneling and this is what we were left with:



No big deal, we didn't take that down as everything underneath was as solid as the day it was built and the paint was actually in really good shape. Not flaking or anything. Awesome.

What wasn't awesome was the electrical that was there and, additionally, we were at the Tuesday the week before Thanksgiving at this point. The contractor had told us he had plans to go visit family in Florida the next week so I was like, it's cool, get me to a point where I can run electrical, make notes and I'll get it roughed out and done for you, ready to go, when we start again.

Problem, though. Once we got the last of the "bricks" down and the plumbing sorted out (removed old junk, plugged lines, etc) we found...BUG DAMAGE! 'Cause why the **** not! Thank the good Lord my buddy Tim was still doing exterminating and I had him come take a look at it all. He treated it all anyway but he said it's old.







That only cost me a cheesesteak and a beer, thankfully. We replaced the really bad parts when we got to framing again.

But at this point, we had finally tore up the carpet and cut an access hole in the floor. This is not the hole we ended up cutting and framing out to make the access hatch in the closet. We did not cut that hole until later because we did not know what we were getting in to but this spot had damaged floor tiles and we could see what we were doing.





That block spot? That was the reason the room smelled like wet dog. It was a moldy pee stain from the dog Captain Halfass use to chain up in the room.



At this point, the dumpster was pretty full and had a bunch of junk from under the porch too 'cause that's what I did the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving of 2021.







Next up, the crawlspace spelunking! Some interesting stuff was under there.

Jstas

So down the hatch we go!

I was honestly being a little girl about this because given how other stuff had gone, I was expecting to crawl down there and find dead animal carcasses. You laugh but, I found dead squirrels and birds in the insulation that I pulled out of the big garage, there was a dead raccoon in the pool house when I tore it down, there was a dead rat snake along with a very much alive rat snake in the loft above the barn, there was multiple dead mice in the basement ceilings, a dead cat and a dead skunk under the porch and I ended up accidentally killing a momma chipmunk and her brood when I ripped the outhouse down. So the fact that we didn't find anything dead under here was the outlier.

What was interesting though was this.



I couldn't figure out why the bricks were there. The house looks like a Sears house and with the front porch enclosed it looks like several other 4-box Craftsman style houses from the turn of the century within the town. But then I crawled around a bit more and realized that the blocks were not holding the porch up.



Those bricks are the original piling built by the original home owner who likely built the house themselves which is why the mortar work is so sloppy. They are holding the porch up. The blocks are just there and were probably done in the 60's when the kitchen extension was put on so that they could put the foundation facing on which was essentially the same thing as the "brick" façade we removed on the inside of the porch just with a different pattern and coloring. That goes around the whole house.

The other problems you can see in that picture are the trap is not a p-trap and not code for the washer. Additionally, it's held up with with a paper coated wire strap. The gray wire dangling is an extension cord. It is an old, 2 prong cord that that's not even polarized and it has a grounded adapter plugged in to it. It went through the foundation wall into the basement and we have no idea what it went to because it wasn't plugged in to anything. The white wire is a 15 amp ROMEX wire going to the washer and dryer. It had a 20 amp outlet on the other end of it where the washer and dryer were plugged in. The old washer and dryer each pulled about 8-8.5 amps. So if they were running both at the same time, he was overdrawing that circuit. Well, the wire because the breaker for that circuit was a 20 amp breaker on a 15 amp line. I am so surprised it never caught on fire.

The only thing that was correct was the gas line and that's probably because South Jersey Gas installed it. We have no idea how they got into that crawl space to do it either.

The other major problem is that you can see the cinder block that was laid on it's side. This created a vent block for the crawlspace. That's fine and all but, as you can see, there's water pipes running through this non-climate controlled space. If you look just above the gasline, you can see a black tape strung along. Know what that is? That heated plumber's tape. It's basically an insulated tape with a copper resistor wire running through it. It heats the pipe up so it doesn't freeze. It's not really allowed anymore because in the 70's and 80's, it was the source of many a house a fire. It's also ineffective at keeping pipes from freezing. It also wasn't plugged in. So it was useless. But hey! He jammed the foam tubing around the pipes in the uninsulated wall so that made everything ok!

I don't know how the house survived Captain Halfass.

So, other fun stuff found down there:
- milk glass hurricane lamp with brass fittings
- pewter child's tea set
- a dozen or so decorated terracotta tiles
- a tin measuring cup
- no dead anything

The rest of the pictures show a crawl space that's in surprisingly good shape for being 95 years old.


























So, the porch floor was bouncy and it was really hard to get pictures that showed the problem but area of the floor under where the improper washer and dryer were, it had all vibrated loose. You could jamb a prybar in under the floor boards and the joists and pry them apart with ease. That was likely due to the excessive weight and vibration.

The joists were 60 inches apart too. But, it was a porch floor and the floor boards for the original porch were 3/4 inch tongue and groove douglas fir. When the porch was enclosed, there was plywood sheathing put down with underlayment and then those ugly reddish-brown linoleum tiles. So the floor was pretty solid just flexed a lot. I'll get to what we did in the next post but you can see what we were dealing with.

The last thing we did was frame out a new, level ceiling that brought the ceiling down to the same level as the porch ceiling framing structure.






This was where we were the Thursday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Friday morning the contractor came back and we took measurements for materials and we marked out where outlets and fixtures were going to be going.

Jstas

So I'm going to stop there for now 'cause we're not even half way through and I gotta find some more pictures I'm missing before I can continue. At this point, though, we were a month in and we just kept find new fun every time we took something apart. Work progressed fairly rapidly after this despite the Christmas holiday being in the mix.

Jstas

OK, so, the floor was where we picked up again after the Thanksgiving break. What we did previous for the electrical was we fixed those outlets that were near the floor on the inside wall. We also fixed the outlet for the washer/dryer and took the wall sconce off the wall. We ran a second line to the ceiling for recessed lighting in the ceiling and wired in a second switch so you didn't have to turn on all the pot lights if you were just going to swap laundry. We ran a few outlets on the outside wall too in preparation for some cabinetry. The only thing we did not do was run the electrical under the floor to feed the stuff on the opposite wall. I don't have pictures of the electrical work 'cause who cares about wires? Besides it was rough in work anyway so we could get drywall up.

Anyway, the floor. So when we cut the hole in the floor we saw what the floor was made up of. It didn't creak at all despite the flexing and since the tongue and groove was so thick it was pretty much structural. It was the length between the stringers that was making the porch bouncy.

In the pictures you can see a footing poured around the perimeter that the block is stacked on. They even left the forms in place after they poured it. So we took 2x6's and where ever we didn't have adequate space to set the 2x6 stringers on the inner foundation wall or the block wall, we secured 2x6's to the masonry walls and set them on the edge of the poured foundation.



All the other stringers that could be rested on the foundation sills were blocked into sistered pairs like ladders, jacked in to place and then nailed to the existing floor structure.



The center one, because it was on some sketchy brick and they didn't want to risk having lateral flex we dug a 4 foot hole, gravel in the bottom and a 24" square form at the top and poured that super quick setting concrete in there. Then a bolt to secure the post to the form and the post was stood up and the center sistered sleeper beam was secured to that while it rested on the brick pillar and the original foundation wall. It was secured to the existing floor structure.





There's 3 sleeper beams under the porch floor now.



The porch floor no longer flexes.

Jstas

The next day was a nice day outside so we worked on replacing the windows. We just got pre-hung Pella windows with a mullion pattern that matches the other windows on the house. Just standard white vinyl sashes, nothing fancy.

We started taking down the siding and found that the same fake brick that was on the inside was also on the outside. Given that the house was originally white, this fake brick façade seemed kinda out of place. But it was covered up with siding now and to revert it all back and put windows back in to get a porch and a front door back was going to be too expensive. Especially since Captain Halfass had let the front of the house get so overgrown.



So there was OSB sheets secured into the old window holes on the framing that was put there. Then there was furring strip strapping to secure the siding to. The white stuff is styrofoam backing insulation pieces from the siding backing used to space out the furring strip.

We pulled the siding down piece by piece until we got enough exposed to get the OSB out, frame and sheath the window holes correctly and get the new windows mounted. The siding was really brittle and if I hadn't found all the extra under the porch, we would have had a hard time getting this fixed. Probably would have had to reside the entire section and then it would have just looked stupid.



So we found water damage at both windows. I didn't get pictures of it because I was busy with work and by the time I got back to it, they had already cut it out and threw it in the trash pile. I should have grabbed pictures but it just wasn't in the cards and we were working against the weather and daylight. But, in this photo, you can see water damage on the inner window that didn't have an octagonal window in it. The upper right corner is rotted and black. The framing and OSB under both octagonal windows was the same and the reason the one facing the driveway didn't close right is because the lower mounting ears weren't secure to anything except the rotted OSB that was stuck to them with rusty screws.



We found the leaking siding section, replaced that piece of OSB, put the furring strip back up and fixed that hole too before putting the siding back up and repairing the broken siding that was causing the issue. Oh, also, that must have been an old piece of OSB Captain Halfass had lying around because it had the 4/28/97 manufacture date on it and everything else was 2002-2003 dates.

By the end of the day, we had two new windows in and no more drafts.



Next up was sealing and insulating and finishing the plumbing and electrical runs.

Jstas

I didn't get a ton of pictures of the insulation because...why? It's just insulation. What did end up doing, though, was we sealed from the inside all the gaps in the framing that you could see daylight through with expanding foam and caulking. That alone made a HUGE difference. Before that point, the room would still get a bit chilly and it was easy to work in because it wasn't hot. As soon as we sealed up the drafts after putting the new windows in and not putting up the insulation, the room temp started climbing quickly. So much so we opened the windows up!

So, floor to ceiling insulation, completely filling voids and stuffing small gaps. We even tacked insulation to the ceiling framing and pulled the electrical down through it. We also strapped the entire room to give a true and consistent mounting surface for the drywall.

So here's the strapping all done.





I'll get to the rest of the insulation pictures in a minute 'cause the next thing we did was level the floor.

Since it was an old porch floor, it was pitched for water run off. It was about a 3.5 degree pitch. So what we ended up doing was I built a jig real quick to rip down one side of a 2x4 on a 3.5 degree angle. I must have ripped down a couple dozen 2x4's. Then they ripped them down to the height they needed for the floor to be leveled.

Now the floor was lower than the rest of the house because, well, it was the porch floor. It was part of the house but not part of the house. So while we were doing this, we set the porch floor to the height of the rest of the house so there wasn't a step into and out of the laundry room.

Someone has suggested using floor leveler but I thought that was insane and even the contractor said "Geez....that's a loooooootta **** floor leveler!" Which is why we went with the framed floor instead.

So the angled 2x4's were ripped down at a 3.5 degree pitch and screwed to the floor about 16 inches apart. Then we laid down some of the blue extruded polystyrene foam between the ripped down 2x4's and then sanded 3/4" plywood on top of that glued and screwed to the 2x4's. So this leveled the floor and insulated it while adding rigidity and sound deadening. No squeaks, no vibrations, no nothing. Just solid floor.

You can see what we did here.



The floor was a colossal effort. While two of the contractors were building the floor, I was helping the 3rd cut the plywood and stringers and then carting them in to the house.

Then we got to put all the tools back.





The last thing we did that day was we cut the access hatch in it's permanent position.



We did that and by now it was around noon on the Tuesday of the first week of December and we were rushing because the drywall guys were coming in that Friday to start rocking.

By now, though, the dumpster was about as full as it was going to get and I needed to call and get it picked up before I incurred overage charges. So they picked that up on Wednesday morning and I did my best to make sure it was packed well. The guy actually thanked me for that because so many people shred their equipment. I told him I knew how he felt because I used to work for a trash company and I was the guy who got to climb the rolloffs at the dump to fix the screens. When he dumped the dumpster, he called me up and told me we were 540 pounds over weight but he talked to his boss and told him what we talked about and they waived their overage charges and only charged me the $22 the dump charged them. So that was awesome.



So Wednesday afternoon two of the contractors came, we cleaned up the space and took measurements for the lumber and drywall we were going to need.

The next day they came with all the stuff and we unloaded it. Then we started framing out the closets. It was real simple but it took a day and a half.





Now we're ready for sheetrock.

Jstas

I told the contractors that I would handle painting and not to worry about it. So they left on Friday by lunch time. One of them had a doctor's appointment anyway.

Friday afternoon, one of the sheetrock guys shows up and comes in to look at what's going on, where everything is and to get an idea of what amounts of mix he needed. Then he says "See you tomorrow morning, 7 am." I was like, whoa, you're working on Saturday? He says "Yeah, we work every day of the week, Work is work, pay is pay!" I was ok then. So he says "Here's how this should go. Unless we run into a problem but this is all new construction, there shouldn't be any problems. We'll be here at 7 and we'll hang all the rock. We will tape and mud then. We'll drop a heater in here and we'll go do the next job. We'll come back, probably around 2 or 3 and we'll sand and do a second coat of mud and smooth it all out. Then it'll dry overnight. We'll be back Sundee morning, probably around 10 am 'cause we got another job to start at 7. We'll sand, fix any odd spots and do a finish coat. Then you can primer and paint. And please primer. Don't trust the "all in one" paint." So I was like, cool. See you tomorrow then!

Sure enough, next day they show up and lay down tarps and get to work.

A couple days pass, I left the door shut because the dust was insane. Burned up a box fan trying to blow it all out of one of the windows too. Things went exactly as he described.

This was Sunday afternoon around 3pm.









Monday the contractor shows up, complains about some stuff and I said "So call them and **** at them otherwise, I'll fix it myself." He says nah, I'll get the to do it. So drywall dude comes back grumbling and fixes stuff.

They were sloppy sanders, though and I ended up doing a good deal of touch up myself.

So I told the contractor to give me 3 days to paint. He asked if that was enough time and I was like "Yup." He asked what I was going to do and I said "At least 2 coats of primer, maybe 3, we'll see and then 2 coats of color and then the ceiling. I'll get the primer done on day one, let it dry over night and then color on day two, touch up and the ceiling on the last day.

I did not take pictures of the primer because the entire room was white and the pictures kept washing out.














I was done by lunch on day 3 of painting.

Next up was fixing the plumbing and finishing electrical also, heat!

mhardy6647

well, that looks a bit nicer!

Jstas

Sorry, the last post a few of the pictures were out of order but I don't feel like fixing it and can't at this point anyway.

After the painting was done, we started working on the rest of the utilities for the room.

First things first, that trap under the floor had to go. You can see here that it's now just a black PVC pipe going straight into the PVC sewer line. The sewer line is also now graded correctly so it won't fill up and have standing water after the trap.

Additionally, you can see the new water supply lines going to the sink and washer. They are PEX now and less susceptible to freezing breaks. You'll also notice a finned pipe with red supply lines. I'll get to that in a second.

Two other things you'll notice in the next few pictures are the rest of the footings and sleep support posts installed. Also, the mylar foundation insulation/vapor barrier. It's there because of that finned pipe. Also, what you can't see is that the foundation vents are sealed up. I'll get to all of this in a second. First, the fixed plumbing.





So there's a reason for the fixed plumbing, we'll cover that in the next post.

For now, the insulation was pinned up and vents filled in because of that finned pipe. That finned pipe is a supply and return for a radiator for the heating system. Captain Halfass never had climate control in the room and with all the drafts, it was a HUGE energy suck on the rest of the house. Can't really climate control a vented crawl space but because there's plumbing going through there, we have to do something.

So we sealed off the crawlspace and insulated and the contractor, who is also a licensed plumber, ran a new water circuit for the room. He added the finned pipe inline because it provides a heat source for the crawl space to keep it from dropping below freezing with all the water running through there. Since it's now climate controlled, we needed to do a vapor barrier and insulation to keep the warm air in the crawlspace from causing condensation on the foundation walls and creating a mold problem.











We ended up with a lot of waste from taking Captain Halfassery apart.



But that was the end of the fixing stuff. Now we were on to the finish work.

VR3

Termites must not be a thing up north

pitdogg2

I really like that reflectix insulation. For all that it is it really reflects heat does a good job as a thermal barrier.

Well termites only in the summer time Trey. I too was wondering why no treated stuff.

VR3

I wouldn't use any wood with ground contact under the crawl personally... Metal post or a masonry pier only for me

Jstas

VR3 wrote: »

Termites must not be a thing up north

VR3 wrote: »

I wouldn't use any wood with ground contact under the crawl personally... Metal post or a masonry pier only for me

Yes, termites are a problem, not as bas as down south but they are a concern. But pressure treating doesn't necessarily mean that bugs won't eat them. Pressure treating is intended to prevent the typical rot and degradation that comes from weather and water. Termites, carpenter bees and carpenter ants will all still go after pressure treated. If you don't think so then when I get to tackling the pool deck, I show you all the bug damage to that stuff and it's all pressure treated.

There's no water problems in the crawl space. It's so dry that we were using respirator masks to keep from inhaling the fine dust that would just hang in the air. The termite damage that was already there is well above grade and there's evidence of old termite tubes on the outside of the house where the damage occurred. There was none inside the crawl space. There's no termites now either. Additionally, all the vegetation that was up against the house and providing the avenue for the bug access is a pile of mulch at the back of the property now.

So if there were water problems, I would agree with you but since there aren't water problems I will disagree with you.

Besides, NJ has codes on where you can use pressure treated wood. If bugs end up becoming a problem, I will treat the area but there weren't even spider webs in the crawl space when we opened it up.

Jstas

For your edification.

https://wooditsreal.com/2017/05/02/what-does-ground-contact-mean/

Ground Contact designation is intended to protect your lumber from rotting in applications that have direct contact with soil (either resting on or installed into the ground) and excess moisture (beyond normal rainfall and watering systems). It’s used in cases where frequent wetting or immersion in fresh water doesn’t allow the lumber to dry. It should also be used in some building scenarios where components, such as deck or dock joists, beams, and ledger boards, would be considered critical to the safety of the structure and difficult to replace.

While the posts reinforce the structure, they are not critical to the structure. Additionally, they are easy to replace. The structure does not have to be torn apart and rebuilt completely to fix them.

The posts are not in a wet environment nor will they be getting wet and staying wet for an extended period. If they do, there are much bigger problems than bugs.

Ground Contact should be used when:

- Wood will come in contact with soil, vegetation, leaf litter, and debris that can hold moisture for extended periods of time.
- You don’t expect good air circulation, especially on the underside and between decking boards.
- Wood components are installed less than six inches above the ground and are supported by treated wood or concrete without a moisture-transferring barrier/break.
- Wood is in direct contact with material that already shows signs of decay.
- Wood gets wet on a very frequent, recurring basis and doesn’t have time to dry adequately.
- You are building in a tropical climate.

The only point of concern is "Wood components are installed less than six inches above the ground and are supported by treated wood or concrete without a moisture-transferring barrier/break." but the wood is sitting on footers. The footers are ground contact, the posts are footer contact. They are less than 6 inches above soil and supported without moisture transferring barrier or break but unless there's ground water incursion, the concrete footers will not be transferring water to the posts. The concrete would have to be in perpetual contact with a water source for capillary action to wick enough water to saturate and rot the posts.

mhardy6647

At least up in New England, termites tend to be found in opposition (so to speak) to carpenter ants. If you have one, you don't have the other (at least, that's what they say up here).
Carpenter ants are pretty common up here.