...and sometimes they just leave you scratching your head

[MatBirch]

You hear people talking about the good old days, and old school craftsmanship, and so on.
Then you find stuff that really makes you wonder.
Today I opened a wall in my home. This was once an exterior wall added during a remodel sometime in the 30s. Sometime in the in the early 80s, it was remodeled again, and became an interior wall, so it was sheetrocked.
You can clearly see the old work and old insulation vs a few pieces of newer lumber.
Where’s the “Old Time Craftsmanship”??

 

[LXCam]

Wonder if that was a Friday or a Monday wall?

 

[PCustoms]

I see a lot of new hackery, not sure how much of that is older.

Also not sure the 1930's were a peak time to splurge on extra framing....

 

[Old Man Roger]

There was a time, not long ago, anyone could build a house how ever they wanted to. Not everyone was a true craftsman.

 

[Boilerhouse]

I recently came across something like that, in a wall, at a cottage, I am renovating. I tore out a hacked up mess and replaced it with 6 full length studs. Ironically, someone went to a lot of effort to do it wrong.

 

[bbbarracuda]

Back in the "good old days", nobody cared how it looked. Only that it not fall down.

 

[PoorUB]

It makes you want to rip it all out and start all over, doesn't it!

A friend of mine was remodeling his home, A smaller craftsman style. He ripped out the walls on the inside and the outside, load bearing walls were not even full length 2x4. Every one had a splice in the middle, every one! It wasn't repairs either, it was all original work. He had great fun. He would support the ceiling and roof above with a temporary wall and carefully rip out all the studs and put in new, the using screws "toe nail" the 1x6 sheeting to the studs. He went around the whole interior of his house and all the outside walls were scabbed together.
He eventually ripped off all the siding and resided the house and he renailed all the 1x6 wall boards to the new studs.

I gave him a bit of **** about it because he had gutted the interior, replaced all the wall studs. The only thing he saved was the exterior wall sheeting, the floors and the ceiling on up. I told him it would have been easier to start over! Plus he and his wife lived in the house during the remodel.

 

[Metal-Marc]

Not bad...

 

[four.cycle]

There was a time, not long ago, anyone could build a house how ever they wanted to. Not everyone was a true craftsman.

My father told me he built four houses in the early 1930s (while he wasn't cooking whisky.)
Soooo glad I never had to live in one of them!

 

[Daniel Dudley]

Around here, a lot of the work seems to have been done by drunken farmers. The old stuff where I grew up in new England was much better. But you also have to figure that when post and beam went to balloon framing, there was no perfected method, so a lot of things were tried. It took some time to get to modern framing details. Then again, when you get to repairs and renovations, some people do as little as possible with whatever they have on hand. And you also have people like my BIL, who hasn't got a clue, but never let that stop him.

I have spent a lot of my life fixing things that other people built improperly. Bad carpentry and rot have kept many carpenters in business. Often one leads to the other. At a certain point, you can look at something and figure it lasted all those years, why change it now. OTOH, I build to my own satisfaction, and it makes sense to me to make something well thought out and pretty to the eye. But you have to figure that everyone builds to his or her own satisfaction, even my brother in law, and you get what you get. Today, building permits are getting pricey, codes are getting more restrictive, and DIY homeowners are doing a lot of work without pulling permits.

In other words, business as usual. The true work of carpentry is to create order out of nothing. Restoration work is creating order out of chaos. I learned a long time ago to take things apart until I got to a point where nothing was offensive. By that time, I usually have a pretty good idea of how I want to put it back together. But there is a lot of stuff that somone can get away with if there is going to be no inspection and you understand good enough. Sometimes I wonder though.

 

[Renegade1LI]

Residential construction from the 30s and 40s especially the lower income stuff can be pretty bad. People in general were very poor and made do with what they had. It wasn’t till after ww2 where the industry started booming, building codes where starting to become to come into play, life in general was getting better. It’s actually pretty sad seeing how a lot of people lived back then.

 

[nadogail]

Back in the day, if It didn’t fall down, It was Good Enough.

 

[PoorUB]

Years ago my mom was getting her house resided and figured she would get the garage done too. She asked me to look over the garage and fix a couple things up, like board up the two rotten windows and put in a new door. My step brother mentioned the header over the garage door had some rot in it. I knew it did but figured it was not that bad, plus there is no load on it. He pushed the issue a bit and I told him if you are going to fix up every thing in a 75 year old garage that was built out of salvaged materials he had a job ahead of him! The whole garage is fairly solid, but like I said, it is all salvaged lumber, and many corners were cut building it. It isn't going to fall down any time soon, but trying to fix it up would be a wasted effort.

 

[rayra]

OP seems to be confusing a Vanderbilt - or Getty - or Hearst mansion - with a shotgun shack. This is the latter.

 

[jack stand]

Back in the "good old days" there were also plenty of DIY'ers, they just didn't have a cute little abbreviated title and a "big box" store every 10 miles.

 

[larry_g]

So your saying that it's only lasted ~ 100 years? and still going? Don't see the problem here.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[brownbagg]

and that why we have building codes

 

[zendriver]

My. last house was a 150yo farm barn and house, not sure the builder even possessed a square. Subsequent remodels were even worse.

The belief that everything was built with "fine craftmanship" is much fantasy.

Deal with it.

 

[Jinks]

There always have, & always will be people who don't know how, or don't care. Some day we will be the "old craftsmen". Every thing you build can or should (your choice) have your name on it. Depends on what kind of "craftsmanship" you want to be remembered for.....

I've purchased two houses in the town I now live in. Both had had remodel work done on them, & both had exterior walls that were interior by the time I purchased them. The first still had a jalousie window between two rooms, the second had a sash window & a six foot sliding glass door!..... I corrected all those things & more, I won't be ashamed to have my name associated with either.

 

[nadogail]

When you are building something you must, by necessity, constantly compromise between the availability of materials and capital.

An example, in today's market is lumber, you can ask for the good stuff or take what you can get and afford. Yesterday I walked out of
Home Depot with a really knotty 2X6, and it was one of there better ones.

 

[Dan in Pasadena]

There have always been guys that didn't have a clue what they were doing but were convinced they did....and no one could tell them anything. It's the same today.

 

[Jlbc212]

So your saying that it's only lasted ~ 100 years? and still going? Don't see the problem here.

lg
no neat sig line

^^^ this ... When I see things like this in old buildings and it hasn't failed yet it can't be too bad.

 

[Walkers]

Nothing about 80’s carpentry was anything except craptastic! Probably one of the worst decades for home building ever. So, built in the depression and remodeled in the 80’s is a recipe for,… well, something.

 

[The Cobbler]

stuff like that happens even now a days. perhaps even more so with the surge in DIY friendly everything ...

 

[CJM8515]

i dread what i will find if i open up my walls. house was built in 69, remodeled a few times. from what the neighbor tells me the house was gutted at some point and they turned a carport into a master bed room. thankfully that has a full foundation under it, cause the 8x8 kitchen bump out is sitting on blocks on the outside. the interior walls arent square, the door frames are iffy. i found they repaired the bathroom floor and put what I think is a plastic or fiberglass tub in it. the joists do appear solid and well done as Ive been in the crawl space. what drives me up a wall is the idiot whom remodeled at one point decided it was to hard to move baseboard heaters so they just put cabinets inthe kitchen (im thinking that wall was originally where the table was) and cut around them and put a bathroom in the master and did literally cut the drywall around it.

Ive seen far far far worse over the years however so I count myself lucky.

Nothing about 80’s carpentry was anything except craptastic! Probably one of the worst decades for home building ever. So, built in the depression and remodeled in the 80’s is a recipe for,… well, something.

my parents and aunt and uncle built houses in the 80's, if not for the old world carpenter they hired Im positive the house woulda fallen down. soo much janky stuff was done then

 

[bbbarracuda]

I was told once by a carpenter, that the difference between a good carpenter and a great one, was the ability to cover up your mistakes. All of them make mistakes.

 

[engineer2]

My house is a Pulte house built in 1992. I'm impressed by the quality of the framing. Rooms are straight and square. I put in hardwood flooring and there was no more than a 1/4" variation in 30 feet. I demolished a linen closet and it was difficult because all the 2x4's were overlapped and interlocked.

 

[jack stand]

But that framing sub contractor was probably replaced by another one that was a penny/sf cheaper in the next round of bidding.
I was there in the 80's and this practice was and still is rampant among large national builders.
You bid to do an "ok" job and that's all they want is ok quality but you better stay on schedule. If you accidentally did a "good" job, you were loosing money.

 

[jonshonda]

And it's still standing close to 100 years later.

 

[flat350]

My house is a Pulte house built in 1992. I'm impressed by the quality of the framing. Rooms are straight and square. I put in hardwood flooring and there was no more than a 1/4" variation in 30 feet. I demolished a linen closet and it was difficult because of the all the 2x4's were overlapped and interlocked.

Some homes back then were built in R+D Thiels shop, they had jigs for all the walls, trusses were all prefab, came on a truck with a crane. As long as the foundation was square they went up fast . I did plumbing in lot's of homes in the suburbs in the 80', 90's, 00's and there were good framing crews and bad ones. The bad ones didn't last and the good ones would actually in stall backing, move, double, header things for us and the next home they remembered and had it done ahead of time. Stepson has a 1890's home in East Dundee that I helped him with and the **** and garbage in it it amazing, it's good that they don't build them like they use to.

 

[KJ in VT]

Still standing ain't it? Never let perfection become the enemy of good enough. Seriously, you can get away with a lot with old growth lumber than you can't with todays pecker-pole ****. Densities closer to hardwood than open-crown pasture pine. Yes, yes, still has to bear on something...

 

[m6z]

The belief that everything was built with "fine craftmanship" is much fantasy.

this.

 

[FMB4]

A long ago family friend, his brother, and his wife build a small vacation residence on the shore of a lake in WA back in the late '50s (might have been a 'kit' build). The place was well done, as remember, but it had just one issue. This issue was that they didn't vent the crawl space at all. The result was that dry rot made it uninhabitable by the early '80s IIRC.

 

[mervyn]

The house mom lived in down by lake of the ozarks was truly wtf crooked and half assed mostly on the inside. Looked fine from the outside. Dude remodeled the bathroom and said it was a miracle the place hadn’t burned down.

 

[brownbagg]

couple years ago, on a commerical job, High dollar custom house framer, the slab people wasnt thinking and put the seal plate bolts at two feet apart. 2 x6 framing on two feet, each stud fell on anchor bolt. so the high dollar framer notch out for bolts. So every stud only had two inches of meat touching the seal plate. Framer so no problem with this. this was on every exterior wall stud.

all they had to do was cut the anchor bolts and drill and epoxy new one

 

[Will S.]

O.P., there are hacks in every trade, today as well as in 1930. Let's also remember that was during the Great Depression era, and many (most) people were barely able to afford food and fuel to heat their house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

 

[jack stand]

Or change his layout a few inches.

 

[jack stand]

couple years ago, on a commerical job, High dollar custom house framer, the slab people wasnt thinking and put the seal plate bolts at two feet apart. 2 x6 framing on two feet, each stud fell on anchor bolt. so the high dollar framer notch out for bolts. So every stud only had two inches of meat touching the seal plate. Framer so no problem with this. this was on every exterior wall stud.

all they had to do was cut the anchor bolts and drill and epoxy new one

Or adjust his layout by 2 inches.

 

[ycgoat]

I was re- working 277v lights in a federal building, isolated the circuit checked for power hot to ground, and then while demoing I got nailed. Turned out some one had used the neutral to feed the lights next door but brought a different "Hot" circuit in from the hall way so the lights in that the adjacent area were looking for a return path for the current. I completed the path for a few seconds. The adjacent area was an ATF office, sealed up like a jail with no one in, so their lights had to stay off until we could arrange to get in there.

I got the name of the contractor from the Building Superintendent, and then a few years later was asked to disconnect power for a local municipal out door stage only used in the summer (I worked for the schools at that time). I found a free standing panel and meter with a cable coming out of the panel pulled tight for about 15' before it slowly saged and disappeared into the ground, only to come out of the ground the same way as it entered at the outdoor stage area. Turns out it was the same Contractor, who had done the small town "a favor".

 

[PoorUB]

couple years ago, on a commerical job, High dollar custom house framer, the slab people wasnt thinking and put the seal plate bolts at two feet apart. 2 x6 framing on two feet, each stud fell on anchor bolt. so the high dollar framer notch out for bolts. So every stud only had two inches of meat touching the seal plate. Framer so no problem with this. this was on every exterior wall stud.

all they had to do was cut the anchor bolts and drill and epoxy new one

I don't bother with putting in anchor bolts when pouring the concrete. Just set the walls and rill them in afterwards. You get then where you want them, and at the correct height!