Well it looks like the VW is once again on hold… doh. My mother-in-law decided that she wants to finally remodel our bathroom (we rent from her) which we’ve been wanting her to do for a while now… so as soon as she gave the ok, I went to town. As with any old house, we found quite a few slightly disturbing hidden “treasures”. Apparently when they put in the upstairs they cut 3 support beams and distributed the load to a new wall that was by no means constructed well enough to be a load supporting wall (the end board was about 1 1/2" short of the floor and just nailed into the baseboard, and the other boards were basically pieced together. The wiring up to the lights is in front of the studs in a nice gap in the drywall. Luckily there is new wiring to a GFCI outlet that I can tag off of to run a new switch then to 2 new lights that I can install properly through each stud. We are then going to rebrace the new load wall and open up the opening to help expand the room. It should be nice when its done, but will not be easy-going.
Pics:
Old setup with nasty pink/black tiles
Removed the drop down ceiling to find this… yes, that ceiling is being held up with duck tape and yes there is a live wiring just hanging out.
The load wall that will be resupported and opened up.
Removed all the tiles… most of them by hand (they were that loose)
Do work. Decided to have the wife pick up a hard-hat b/c I knew that ceiling was going to end up just coming down in one piece… and it did, with a very large piece coming down on my head… thank god for the hard-hat.
Trying to carefully remove the ceiling around the live wire
Yup, it mostly fell in one piece and this is what the outcome was.
starting to break down the load wall
Ceiling just about down
The load supporting wall… not constructed very well.
My ventilation system.
Tiles removed from the front wall.
This is to code right??? lol
Yea…
The outlet from which I will be getting my new power. This wiring is all properly done thankfully.
jesus, where to even start… a drop ceiling in a shower… REALLY??? I am scared as fuck of that wiring too BTW. I suppose you guys are really lucky that place hasn’t burned or collapsed already!
what else is on that outlet you plan to pull power from? Are you doing this to code?
The load is going to be distrubuted onto a double 2x6 header with double 2x4’s against the one wall and double or triple 2x4s right where the short wall at the back of the shower/tub is… then normal framing behind the shower/tub wall.
We think the drop down ceiling was to hide the previous damage for the sale to my mother-in-law. I did not like the wiring myself either… hence why it is being changed… lol. The wire that is in the ceiling will be pulled from the breaker box and all the way back through so that I can properly route it above/through the ceiling joists then re-route it back down to the breaker. The GFCI outlet is on a circuit by itself so there should be no issue putting 2 lights onto it. Everything I will be doing will be to code… I dont play around when it comes to code/safety… lol.
Damn skippy… I’m not that nice of a person to remodel an entire bathroom out of my own pocket… lol
the real sad part is that when the house was built, that wiring was most likely completely legal (not really all that much in terms of “code” back then… lol)
I also own an old home and did a lot of re-modeling. I found all sorts of suprises like you did. In my attic when I first started working on it, I found LIVE knob and tube wiring. That’s scary shit!
they did the drop cieling to add the bathroom plumbing for the upstairs bath.
Gut it completly leaving no old sheetrock and fix your framing issues, new 10-2 wire ran correctly in the room and back to the panel box leaving no old shit . Do your vent work right. vaporlock, 5/8 greenboard. Take your time mudding, 3 even coats, use the fiberglass tape, not the paper shit. Who knows what you will find when you get into the plumbing
Honestly, i would probably do a drop cieling again since you have plumbling above it.
haha that’s a good way of describing it. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it and then I said there’s absolutely no way it could still be live… I pulled the chain on the light and it lit up!
above the drop ceiling was the main ceiling that was just falling down. The plumbing is above the ceiling joists. What they did is that they raised the floor in the upstairs bathroom to fit the plumbing above our downstairs ceiling. I can easily put up a new ceiling with just the moisture sheetrock. You really think we need 10-2 wiring for just one GFCI and 2 small lights??? The draw should be very minimal. The lights themselves (if using 100w bulbs) will only be approx. 1.5 amps. That leaves 13.5 amps on the 15amp breaker. I believe the outlet is wired with 14-2 (white casing) which is rated at the same amperage as the breaker so it should be safe. The issue is money… and as much as we want to make it safe, we also dont want to be ripping every wall out to upgrade wiring that is perfectly fine for the application. There is nothing else on that circuit at all. I traced the line all the way back to the breaker.
Well the wall is going up tomorrow then the bathroom is partially on hold. I decided to trace some wiring yesterday and found some quite disturbing results. When she bought the house she had an inspection done and the guy found only 1 live knob and tube wire which he said wasnt connected to anything, just that it was never disconnected from the box. Well apparently he was completely wrong. Whoever had the house before us apparently replaced some of the wiring and then daisy-chained most of the old knob and tube wiring into a single 15 amp breaker!!! So there were at least 6 outlets (not a single one had a ground… not even to the casing) and at least 6 or 7 lights all on a single 15 amp breaker… all of which were through knob and tube wiring. So needless to say I now have to completely rewire half the house. Luckily it looks like all of the outlets drop straight to the basement from the outlet so with any luck, I should be able to fish the new wiring from the basement to the pre-existing hole from the outlet without having to pull any walls apart… and I really hope thats the case. Its going to be a ton more work, but in the end it will bring the entire house up to code and safe. It will mostly be 14-2 with some 12-2 here and there where there will likely be heavier draw. While I am rewiring everything, I will also be disconnecting everything from the breaker box, re-running it in the basement to clean it up, and labeling everything so that the next owner will not have to go through the same shit I am.
