Home improvement nightmare
Pandora's box
The story of our guest bed & bath rooms remodel
November 19, 2015
​​
This is the story of the disasters discovered while remodeling this guest bedroom and bathroom and how we chose to solve mistakes made by previous owners. I call this Pandora's Box.
The original part of our house was built, we believe, around 1880 and has been added on to many times without permits by people who had no idea what they were doing and should have hired a contractor. Everyone should have a basic understanding of how a home is built, even if you hire a contractor. We are not contractors nor is anything implied to be to code or taken as a recommendation for how to remodel a home. I will show some of the problems we have encountered and how we solved them.
All I wanted was to move the bathroom and put a wood floor in the guest bedroom so the room could be used as a home gym when we don't have guests. My husband, wanted to make sure there were no surprises behind the drywall as we have discovered in other parts of the house. This meant removing ALL the drywall and insulation in addition to the tub, toilet and vanity and trim and tile. Not that the fixtures were any great loss.
.
Most structures are built like a house of cards one floor on top of the other. If the weight (load) is not properly transfered to the floor below, the building has no strength. Ancient Romans knew this. The people that added on to this house did not. I'm not sure which surprises me more, the fact that the house has not burned down or that it has not fallen down.
If a second story does not have a way to distribute the weight to the first floor and down to the foundation, the house will settle unevenly which causes floors to buckle, and doors and windows to bind. When an opening such as a window or door is made, a large beam called a header is placed above the opening. This header rests on studs called jack studs. This transfers the weight to the floor and foundation. At least it should. Who ever added on this part of the house, did not know this. If the big bad wolf came to this house, he could easily blow it down.
This is the 5th major remodel we have done on this house since we moved in 20 years ago. I never dreamt we would still be working on this house. Are there more things to get done? Always! Will there be anymore major remodels? No. We will do things like replace windows and doors, and repaint. People ask how did we know how to do this? I must give most of the credit to PBS home shows This Old House and Hometime which we have watched once a week for 30 years. Many thanks to Tom Silva and Dean Johnson! Additionally we have read years worth of magazines from Family Handyman to Fine Homebuilding and Journal of Light Construction. Being married to an engineer helps more than anything. Engineers naturally need to understand how something is made, how it is put together. If you know how it is put together, you can take it apart and vice versa. Any building I go in now and for the rest of my life, I analyse how it is put together. Especially any building that is built with exposed posts and beams. How is that load transferred down? What type of bracing is used? Is that post/beam under shear or in compression? What are the lateral forces? Most women can tell the difference between a designer bag and a knock off at 20 paces. I can't tell who the designer is but I do know how the building was built.