Wow! Living in the house while renovating really sucks. Not just because of all of the hideous dust, but I can look at all of the frightening issues all of the time. This post is just going to be highlighting the horrible things people do to houses.
Tying in knob and tube to ANYTHING is wrong:
Letting your stairs float from the second floor to the main floor. As a general rule in houses: Most things, especially stairs, need structural support. I'm not sure why this one seems to be forgotten so often. The entire weight of my stairs is being supported by the stringer, and not tied into much else. Take a look:
And most recently, someone (not us, I assure you!) installed potlights the WRONG way. I don't know all of the technical terminology for this, but there is supposed to be a plastic ring that protects the wire where it goes into the fixture (heaven knows I heard this spoken about enough, right Bryan?). Here is what you shouldn't do:
And here is my favourite:
This is not a load-bearing wall. However, it doesn't mean you should take any scrap of wood lying around and stick them together and call it a wall. This is pure craziness. This wall is why I need to apologize to my husband - Christopher, I am sorry for all of those times I nagged and criticized you for not being able to find a stud. I take back any nasty comment about the number of holes you put in the wall trying to hang anything up. Now I understand why and I am sorry I ever thought it was you (at least for most circumstances).
And last but not least, it is great what you can find buried in old walls. We found these stashed in the joist bay of the basement:
I'm hoping the birthday card from "Mom" that accompanied it came from a different present and just got caught up in the stash. It would be kind of odd if this person's Mom was giving him porn for his birthday, wouldn't it?
All this to say, this is definitely not the worst house I've seen, which is slightly comforting. Keep in mind the houses I have seen have had to be bad enough to make it onto television so they were pretty bad. So really, maybe mine is horrible and I'm just de-sensitized? I'm going to go with not that bad and trust what my wonderful contractors Todd and Scott are saying.
Tune in next time to hear what Paul, my electrician, has to say. And I promise to start posting some pretty pictures. I'll make next post my "Inspiration" post. Until then, take care!