E-Dribble

but when they’re used to build the home that my family lives in, I get a little concerned.

Over the course of too long of a period of time, I’ve been remodeling portions of my home.  I’ve often run into “creative” building practices, but while working in the kitchen, I’ve found some of the most mind boggling things I’ve ever come across in all my years of hitting things with a hammer.

You have to wonder, “How bad can it be?”.  Frankly, I don’t blame you, since I’m prone to exaggeration  if it makes for a good story.

What are you looking at?

1) A header for a load bearing wall.  This wall single-handedly holds up our loft bedroom.  Unfortunately, the header only has one jack stud.  On the pictured side, two nails toe-nailed through the stud hold it in place.  This effectively means that the joists above this header is being supported by the shear strength of two 12 penny nails.

2) A plumbing vent stack for the kitchen.  You are correct if you think that it is not in fact a complete vent stack, but two parts.  It seems they used an under sink fitting to tie the two pipes together and didn’t support the lower half.  Over time, the lower half sagged and the pipes separated.  From that point on, our septic vented into the wall cavity of the kitchen.  Bonus: No insulation.

3) This is an exterior wall cavity.  Note the lack of insulation. I guess they ran out.

Please don’t think that this is the extent of the issues in the kitchen.  Before starting the project, there were five(5) switches in the kitchen alone that didn’t do anything.  The wires had been cut and thrown into the walls over time with no protection, just bare wires tucked into the wall with still active switches.

I’ve done some repair/remodeling in the area for some time and I can state that this is not an isolated occurance.  Not long ago, this was accepted building standards.  This area had little to no enforcement of codes and the builders took advantage of that fact.  I’ve seen roof joists built from 2×4′s, whole houses with no insulation, doors(exterior) held in with only 8d nails through the casing, septic tanks buried under the house and once a whole addition held up with buckets of sand.

I will never purport to be the best at anything.  I do however have a modicum of pride and I believe I would walk in front of a Good Humor truck if I built anything like this.

Regardless of what the accepted practices were at the time,  the guy who built my house should be punished.

I can only hope that he’s living in something that he built.