We have finally started our long-awaited complete kitchen gut renovation and it's been interesting so far uncovering things in a 71 year old house:

-I pulled off a bunch of old wallpaper on the side of the kitchen that isn't being gutted to studs and discovered a telephone-shaped patch of original wallpaper underneath a more modern phone jack. The simply painted and papered around this thing, which I imagine looked like this as it's this exact shape patch:



-Old Romex wire that looks like it was dipped in tar?

-Wiring runs that go from basement to attic and stop all along the way: WHY??? Was copper that dear in 1951 that they couldn't wire a room or a zone? It's all over the freaking place!

-We finally figured out why our daughter's room above the kitchen was always cold in the winter and not that cool in the summer. House has forced hot air/central AC but they created the return air ducts in the block wall and one of them was never used above. There's two channels in the block that go from basement to her room above but only one had a vent in the room, the other just stops up there. It appears that when the (early) sheetrock was placed over these channels, it only was maybe 2 inches deep which I'm sure made for very little return air. The contractor is going to use the second one as it was supposed to be but never was for whatever reason

-No jars of silver dollars or old valuable stock certificates were found but they did find an old wooden handled hammer that I'm sure belonged to one of the now long-dead carpenters that built this house

- The wood in there is BEEFY. The 2x4's are actually 2 inches by 4 inches and look like some kind of serious wood and not wimpy soft pine

-Everything is nailed as far as the wood in the walls and ceiling

-If there are screws they are all slotted

The one thing I'm grateful for is the previous owner (who had this house built in 1951 when he was 25 or so and raised a family of 3 kids along with his wife and lived here until age 91 in 2017 when he passed away) NEVER did any DIY work. Everything I see here was done by a professional and there's no weekend warrior hackery or DIY crap in the house.

Anyone here have any good old house renovation stories or uncover anything weird or interesting?

Tearing out some old wallpaper in a 1850's farm house, we found a window in a middle wall. That soon led to a hidden 4'x6' closet with perfect 1800's wallpaper and no entrance except that window. A nearby wood shelf built into the wall could have had a false backing to enter that closet, but that's the only clue we found.

Had a house built in the 1920's; they cut the hardwood floor boards a half inch short of reaching the walls since it would be covered by the three quarter inch molding.
So they saved an inch per board across the rooms.

Back then materials cost more than labor did.

quote:

Originally posted by bryan11:
Tearing out some old wallpaper in a 1850's farm house, we found a window in a middle wall. That soon led to a hidden 4'x6' closet with perfect 1800's wallpaper and no entrance except that window. A nearby wood shelf built into the wall could have had a false backing to enter that closet, but that's the only clue we found.

Cool!

If the wallpaper is green, seal it back off and pretend it never happened.

Call Geraldo. He will make it into a thrilling series!

quote:

Originally posted by WaterburyBob:
Had a house built in the 1920's; they cut the hardwood floor boards a half inch short of reaching the walls since it would be covered by the three quarter inch molding.
So they saved an inch per board across the rooms.

Back then materials cost more than labor did.

The reason that the hardwood floors are short is due to expansion.
My old boss worked on a house where the hardwood floors were directly against the walls which expanded and blew out the outside walls.

I had a telephone like that as a kid. My dad was still paying a rental fee on it in the late 80s!

All I ever find is candy, nuts and old razor blades when I redo bathrooms. The old medicine cabinets had slots in the back to dispose of the razor blades. Right down into the cavity of the wall.
Never any money.

Been in the remodeling business since 1978. I see something new/strange every day.

Even though the wood was much more stable and dense back in the old days, the actual construction practices were still a crap shoot. The difference in a house built 130 years ago for the Bank Owner, compared to the ones built for common folks, was just as pronounced then as they are now. We went through a sweet spot in the late 50s and early 60s, that produced some really well built houses. I have remodeled 130 year old houses that were framed with used lumber. Recently came across one that had the overlap of floor joist at the center beam, extend at least 36” past the beam. The framers apparently didn’t have a saw that day. We cut all those overlaps back to normal measurements with a Sawzall. Within a month, most of the humps in the floor above had settled down to nearly flat. Can’t imagine how many hundreds of people walked on that floor, without ever going into the cellar to look at the joist.

On the spacing of hardwood, the expansion issue is mostly in the width dimension of the flooring. The length of dry flooring does not change much at all during the life of the floor, in comparison to the width of the floor across the grain. The biggest reason for the wide gap at the long measurement, is mostly due to speed of installation. Close cuts would take more trips to the saw. Modern composite flooring can have major issues with expansion in both directions. Heavy furniture can cause separation of joints going lengthwise.

The story about the hidden 4x6 closet is pretty interesting. How did you not notice that missing space within your floor plan?

My sister and brother in law bought an old house to flip . Built in the 30's . They brought me in to do the electrical . There was still old knob and tube wiring in service . I told them I would wire any new work but I refused to touch the existing K&T . I didn't want that headache .

House was built in 1927 and 1928 by my great grandfather.
You can see what is possibly the original wood floor, the green flower floor (likely put down in 1961 as all the newspaper that was between the wood and flower flowering was the Cincinnati Post from 1960 nearly perfectly preserved). Granny thinks the top layer was put down in the 80s and then I did the luxury vinyl plank last year.




Original ceiling had multiple coats of paint. Ended up sanding it and it looked really good so just left it.


And always when talking about the multiple stages of the renovation have to give a big thanks to our forum buddy MattW for helping me redo the awesome yellow bathroom.



Let’s not forget the wiring!!!

quote:

....Even though the wood was much more stable and dense back in the old days, the actual construction practices were still a crap shoot. The difference in a house built 130 years ago for the Bank Owner, compared to the ones built for common folks, was just as pronounced then as they are now....

Exactly. I have an old 2-story (common folk) house on the property that was built in the 1800's. It's been "renovated" to an extent over the years but I found how it was constructed was interesting; stone foundation, outside walls from foundation to the rafters on the second floor, were vertical 1 1/4" thick chestnut boards each varying between 12"- 16" wide. (Lord knows what an 18' long 1 1/4" x 14" oak plank would cost now if you could even find them?). For the inside of the "outside wall" they simply ran the same size boards horizontal, so a 2 1/2" thick solid wood wall. The interior walls on the second floor have not been covered over which looks pretty cool IMO.

Oh yes the wiring is a hodge podge affair with 3 old breaker boxes.

I had to have a bit of a cackle at the comment 'old house', when I read that it was seventy-one years old.

At least a quarter of the houses in our village were built in the 1800's, some in the 1700's, and a couple in the 1600's, including our pub [1634].

Them's 'old'.

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:
I had to have a bit of a cackle at the comment 'old house', when I read that it was seventy-one years old.

At least a quarter of the houses in our village were built in the 1800's, some in the 1700's, and a couple in the 1600's, including our pub [1634].

Them's 'old'.

Yeah, I have to hold myself back when I hear somebody complaining that their studs aren't 16" on center, or a corner isn't square.

Our house was built in 1877, and was one of only four houses that weren't destroyed by a fire that swept through the village in 1941. It had the electric updated, and the main beam replaced with a steel I-beam by the previous owner before he decided that fixing up an old house wasn't for him.

We got it dirt cheap, and gutted & restored every room, as close to original as practical, one at a time. We tried to salvage original trim, interior doors, hardware, etc where we could; and picked up what we couldn't at yard sales, and auctions.

It was hard work, dirty, and time consuming, because my wife & I did everything ourselves, but it was worth it.

I don't know how old my house is. There's a portion of cement in the basement the IIRD the date 1944 on it. But looking at the old deeds, there one that say 1922. Though that might have just been for the property. Either way, it's a little Cape Cod that was someone from the city's summer get away house.

Years back I was re-shingling the roof and stripped it down to the wood. The outer roof wasn't plywood sheathing like a more modern house, but 3/4 to 1" thick, by 6 inch wide planks. Many of them were painted, but not painted all the way. Painted end to end, but only 3/4 or more of the way across. This puzzled me for a while, then it hit me. They were painted that way because they had been clapboards on the side of a house. Obviously a much older house that was torn down. Yes, my house is built out of scraps. How reassuring.

An update and a really good one:

Our daughter's room above the kitchen has ALWAYS been cold in the winter and warm in the summer. Easily 5-10 degrees difference from every other bedroom. HVAC installer who installed the new Lennox system to replace a 30 year old Trane thought it was a damper issue. My Dad (retired commercial HVAC) thought maybe her register was on the very end of a run. The airflow was always very weak coming out of the register.

It turns out that they ran ducting in the basement under the kitchen floor, then up the inside of a broom closet (now demolished) and over then over again then up and in the baseboard register in her room was this huge pocket INTO the floor. None of it made any damn sense! The contractor told me each time you go 90 degrees you cut your airflow and there were like 5 90's in that run up to her room.

He took that mess out and connected from the basement straight up to her room along a section that he can frame in to conceal it. The airflow is now as strong as the other rooms. YES!