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1958 Ranch Home, Full of Character - First Home, First Major Project

169K views 519 replies 24 participants last post by  Arlo 
#1 · (Edited)
Charming Central California Ranch Home

I've been lurking the site for quite a while. Recently registered to ask a few electrical code questions, and to try to answer a few myself (with mixed success). I've been enthralled reading Coco's story in BC - now up to page 40 - and decided I might like to start showcasing my own project.

I'm a California native, though not to the small Central Valley community where I now own. I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, I've lived on a 36' Kris Kraft on the coast, moved around the Wine Country, survived in Reno, came back to the Sierra Nevada foothills, and then moved off to college in the Bay Area about 10 years ago. I had come full circle.

In 2009, I got married to my girlfriend of 5 years for all the wrong reasons and moved to Oregon to be closer to my wife's family. Much too close. I found myself shortly in North Carolina, staying with a friend. I must say that I'm not very fond of the weather in the Southeast, or the food of the South. Go figure.

I enlisted, was rushed off to Texas, then Mississippi, and by chance was stationed back in the Central Valley of California. It feels good to be home, less than 2 hours from every place I mentioned living when I grew up... though all in different directions.

While I was in North Carolina, I fell in love. I've since dragged her all the way back across the country. We both joke that we've driven the 3,000 mile moving trip for each other. It's been a couple of years now for both of us, and we're ready to give marriage another shot. Wish us luck!

One last thing before we start on the house: when I was growing up, always moving between apartments, rental homes, boats, RVs, campers, etc I set the goal of owning my first home by 25. I'm glad to say that I made it, but just barely, by about seven weeks. :cool:
 
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#454 ·
On the bright side, I finally offloaded the dirt bike in the back yard. I'm fairly certain I've pictured it at one point or another.

It was a 2004 Yamaha TTR250 that has minor seat cracking and needed minor carb work. Traded it for this sweet 1986 Gibson Les Paul Standard (1958 Re-issue) in Sunburst. Shown next to the carpenter's Epiphone Les Paul in... Whey?



Near mint condition. :D
 
#456 ·
A little update for anybody interested.

The city building inspector came by a few days after the fire. After a few "hmmms" and "ahhhs", he determined that replacement like-for-like would be acceptable replacement and that code upgrade would not be required for the structural in that case. If we wanted to re-frame in any way differently, other than adding hangers or nailing cleats, the living room ceiling would need to be taken down and re-framed to current code.

We had the fire investigator out at the insurance company's request (well, really, demand). He took over a week to get out to the house. He took plenty of pictures and concluded that while there was plenty of probable code violations with the junction box... that it was not the source of the fire. He said he was 99% sure that it was electrically caused, but couldn't find the burn pattern to support it as the source. He also pointed out that the black wires which I just naturally assumed were coax were not - the conductor was much too thick, and they traced back to that junction. He submitted a recommendation to the insurance company to bring in an electrical engineer to check it out, and of course, they did.

The electrical engineer took another 10 days or so to come out. He determined that the black single-conductor wires were polyethelene and design for high voltage applications, finding it very odd that they were used at the junction. It was traced back to the 30A dryer plug, which was not used that day. He also found a very loose connection in the junction and posited that ohmic heating caused the black polyethelene in the junction to melt, dripping down the wire and burning like a candle. He suggested that the source was probably about a foot away, where it laid on the drywall.

Another week later, the property was released for repairs. The contractors took a few days to come out, we signed the contract last Wednesday for a four week timeframe with the unstanding with the insurance company that the scope may need to be expanded (via Change Orders) once we start digging in. His guys would start sucking out the insulation on Friday morning before it got hot. It's now late Monday night and I haven't heard a word from him since. Not in such a hurry now that he has his contract signed, it seems. It's pretty obvious he was just trying to burn out the 'cooldown period' quietly and then pencil me in around his other jobs. I'll start calling incessently in the morning... I refuse for my house to become his sidejob.

So, now 5 weeks in the hotel and counting. As good of a rate as AAA gave for insurance, I can now see why. The adjuster almost never returns my calls and takes several days to take actions. They wanted to investigate the hell out of the place in an effort to not pay or to recoup from a third party. The contractors are slow as hell. The hotel booking agency keeps having billing issues with my hotel, the one that they chose for me. The list goes on and on. They're making it really hard for me to want to keep them after all this is done.

On the bright side, I did manage to get out to the range with my newfound free time. Put 100 rounds through a 22 Ruger and another 50 rounds through an M9.

 
#457 ·
So I was sitting at the hotel a few days ago when reality hit me:

Nobody is living at the house. Now is the perfect time to be doing work on it!

I'd managed to keep my fingers off of it for over four weeks. Since I have 6 ceiling fans waiting to be installed (yeah, I know, that's a lot) that I just picked up on sale, I figured I should start there. I picked up 6 new work fan hangers, tooks down the existing dome lights, and prepped for the new boxes.

Again, I realized:

The wife's not living here. This is the perfect time to tear up the kitchen and re-do the flooring before the renovations next spring!

So I did.
 
#458 · (Edited)
I unhooked the range and moved it beside the fridge. Only one base cab was held in, and only by one screw. The counter top lifted right up. The sink plumbing was a matter of spinning a few PVS collars. Easy peasy. The carpenter helped me move the cabinets into the entry/dining room.



Since I've seen the same sheet vinyl flooring for sale still at the big box, I figured it probably doesn't have asbestos. So I tore a little to see what was underneath. Of course, it delaminated from the paper backing.



I pried up a corner of the plywood it was glued to and found... another layer of laminate! In the meantime, I noticed that I had just uncovered several receptacles burried behinds cabinets. Arrrgh. That will have to be dealth with before the reno.



The drywall around the sink is a complete hack job as well.



Somehow, despite being the same thickness, it's recessed back a full 1/8", plus a gap between the two pieces. I don't know why they even bothered taping if they weren't going to mud over it.

 
#459 ·
The first layer was glued to 1/4" plywood and nailed about every 4" along the edge, and every 6" in the field. Literally pounds of nails came out, all about 2½" long.

Here's a better shot of the second layer of vinyl.



The second piece of vinyl was on 3/4" plywood, again with 2½" nails. Slightly better frequency this time at 4" on the edge and 6-9" in the field.

I tried to not peel it wherever possible to keep the dust down. Instead, we'd pry a section up an inch or two, then push it back down. The nail heads would pop, then we'd pry them out and start over. After a while, the whole sheet would come off in one piece. I was surprised that both layers didn't look all that old.

After we dropped it off at the dump, I found a small piece we'd missed. I picked it up and turned my head sidways at it for a few seconds. Underneath the second layer lurked something sinister and rather ugly... this third layer that we hadn't seen.



We had worn respirators just in case we unearthed something like this. I just wish we'd found it before we finished dumping it.

Here were are with a clean subfloor. Looks like 2x8 over 4x8 joists 48" OC.



And a little closer.



Finished the day by making a trip for ¾" engineered tongue-and-groove, ¼" hardibacker, thinset, grout, tons of tile, grout sealer, spacers, etc. Think I'll take tomorrow off from the project.
 
#460 ·
Ended up not taking a day off. Instead, we laid out ¾" StudiFloor. Three sheets at $26/ea. Screwed into place with 2½" coated decking screws with star-drive heads. Still have over half of the box left. Screwed 2" in from each corner, ~8" OC along the edges, and every 12" in the field. The thread I asked for opinions in stated to used 1" (I assume that's 1-1/8"), but I also thought that I was dealing with 2x6 back then, not the 2x8 that I'm happy to have discovered. I figured this would make up for some of the strength while providing adequate deflection and keeping the height difference to a minimum.



I figure at ¾" plus 1½" for the nominal 2x8 TnG, I have just shy of ¼" sticking thru the underside. Haven't crawled in the crawl space yet to verify, though. Will need to verify that I didn't hit any of the grounding retrofit down there before we turn power back on, though I doubt it, as I haven't retrofited the kitchen.

With temperatures already climbing through the 90's and our knees hurting, we called it an early day. Boy is the floor stiff now!
 
#461 ·
Went out to dinner with a friend who won't be working with us any more due to a volunteer assignment. We'll still see him, but much less often, and only outside of work. After a few tall beers, I decided to sleep in. The next morning, the carpenter got up early and cut down the hardibacker while I snoozed.

I spent the entire morning screwing it all down. I was going to apply thinset to the ply using a ¼"x¼" notched trowel, but I decided not to. I tried to read all that I could about why it should be thinsetted down and the three reasons that stuck out at me were:
  1. To "cushion" the tiles from deflection.
  2. To even out any voids in the substrate and provide a flat surface.
  3. Because the tile manufacturers say so.

I don't buy #1 because I found many posts that say cement board and thinset barely affect deflection. I don't buy #3 because I don't expect any manufacturer to actually stand by their warranty these days, instead using these types of "proper installation" clauses to squirm their way out of them. And as much as I wanted #2 to be applicable in this case, I couldn't find any uneveness using my 4' level or 8' straightedge. This is literally the flattest floor I've ever seen, with less than 1/8" of slope in one direction over 10'4".

If the tiles crack or fail due to deflection, I'll happily eat my crow. I just don't think it's going to happen, in my amateur opinion.



Just after I finshied sinking almost 400 1½" coated cement board pan-head screws flush with the board, I decided that I didn't want to proceed with tile yet. As you can tell from the above picture, I wanted to know what was going on in the walls, electrically anyway. This fire has made me a little paranoid, and drywall is a lot easier to re-hang than fire damage is to un-do. I pulled down the first 4' the next morning.



Other than lacking mechanical protection, staples and stackers, there's not a whole lot of terrible stuff going on with the electrical. I think I'll be moving all of the existing outlets to counter-level, even out their spacing, replace the short runs of romex, and be done with it. But look... an abandoned... flue? No idea what that thing is, but it vents out of the roof.



Here we see the back of the tub. To the right, a doorway that was closed off really poorly. That will be rectified.

Interior walls are going to get bats of R0, while the apparently uninsulted exterior wall is getting the highest R-value I can cram into 2x4 framing (probably R-15).

Just after cleanup, I decided I want to take the drywall all the way down for that. So, upper cabs came down on one wall, I crammed the freezer full of food. We're preparing to take down the other cabs and the rest of the drywall Soon (tm).

The insulation guys came this morning and removed all of the attic insulation. I don't think they started until almost 9am, so I'm stur it was probably closing in on 150F (65C) before they finished. Tsk, tsk. I told them they could start prep as early as 5am as long as they didn't spin up the huge vacuum until 7am, but they didn't.

I certainly don't feel bad about it.
 
#464 ·
Lots of progress since last post! I'll try to put up pictures tonight.

Electrician came to repair burnt electrical while I was wiring. He suggested I replace the home runs to get a ground. I traced them back, but most continue down a wall cavity in other rooms. Abandoned everything I could safely, capping them off in new junctions with lids. Pulled 6 new circuits for the kitchen and one for lighting in other rooms. That took two days.

Completed rough in to code on all the new circuits. Another day there. Added nailing surface to the bottom plate. Researched plumbing, and about to start plumbing the rest of the items now (on a shopping trip currently). Also picking up insulation and drywall while we're out. Bought some of the backsplash materials the other night... we'll see how crazy the wife makes the design.
 
#465 ·
So much has happened in the past... week and something.

After the shopping trip, we started tee'ing off the hot and cold lines to run toward the refrigerator and dishwasher. About 10 pieces of galvy in, I received a phone call. Out of the blue, the city building inspector decided to call me. As it turns out, after about 6 weeks in the hotel, the contractor still hadn't submitted plans to the city. Once he did, the city was quick to notice that the house had never had a single permit pulled in its 55-year history. The inspector zeroed in on the garage conversion, which is very common on my street (only 3 blocks long, and 15 similar conversions) but ultimately unpermitted. Locked the brakes; we capped off the stubouts off the tees and stopped work on the kitchen until everything was sorted out.

City ordinance requires a two car garage or two covered spaces of off-street parking. Each must be at least 9'x20', set back 20' or more from the road. As luck would have it, the entire subdivision was built with one car garages and we're set back 30' from the street, less overhang. As such, even if we converted the living room back to a garage, we would still not meet the ordinance requirements. Short of tearing down half the original house, there's no way to comply. The conversion probably pre-dates the ordinace (1991) because of the age of the faux-stone fascade on the front of it, but without permit paperwork, there's no way to prove that.

The city initially refused to issue a permit to repair the fire damage. After pleading our case to the city hall staff several times, they finally relented and allowed for a permit to be pulled for rough-in framing/electrical inspection on the repairs, but no final inspection until the parking issue is resolved. In the meantime, we have to do the run-around with the contracted planning department, which is a private firm about 20 miles away. Fingers crossed for a variance.

Rough-in inspection was this morning. My kitchen passed with flying colors. The contractor's subbed electrician was said to have missed some staples and fasteners on the cans.

Will get the rest of the details tonight. Would love to proceed!
 
#469 ·
Sure hope so. Tons of bumps along the way!

Spent my morning updating documents, cleaning the gutters, and working with the building department.

Hopefully I have a legitimized house when all is sad and done.
 
#470 ·
While I've been waiting on the kitchen rewire permit process to run its course. Rough inspection on Tuesday, which was somewhat dragged out by the holiday weekend and a 8 day permit approval process. We had one dedicated circuit and one shared lighting circuit, all on 50-year-old 14-2 NM on 15A breakers. Now we have three small appliance circuits, a fridge circuit, a dishwasher/dispoal circuit, and a dedicated lighting circuit, all brand new 12-2 NM on 20A breakers. Rough-in is already done. I just need to take a few a few minutes to pull the wires down by the panel and clip one run back to the junction a few feet back in there. Pretty much playing the waiting game to throw on drywall.

While I was waiting, I replaced the surface-mount lighting fixtures in each bedroom. While they looked alright, they just weren't bright enough with two 60-watt equiv CFLs in there behind alabaster glass. At $18 for a pair of them, I'm not feeling bad about tossing them, either -- the smoke had soaked into the insulation on the backside, trappin the smell in the bedrooms. Out came the ancient 3" boxes and blocking, replaced by 75-lb ceiling fan (210-lb light fixture) brace. I tossed the included 4 screws and used eight 1.5" ticos instead leftover from some Stimson hurricane braces I used to tighten the ceiling up with. Replaced all the ratty old wiring between each box.



Up went one of the Crosswinds fans in each bedroom. The nickel Crosswinds with the cherry blades.





Added four Halo H750RICAT 6"/LED/IC/AirTite/Remodel cans and Commercial Electric T91 LED lights to the guest bedroom and the office (6 in the master). Placed them on a CFL/LED dimmer.



 
#471 ·
Lighted up the T91's. Terrible headaches ensued. They would only turn on if the dimmer was above 50% ("pop on"), they had a 1.5 second delay turning on, they would surge something awful when more than 4 were dimmed on a LED/CFL dimmer, and they would flicker while the dimming level was being changed. Bought some incandescent dimmers and they worked better, but couldn't justify $60 in new dimmers just to make over $400 in lights dim properly. Though they did look great full lit. Took them back. Think they were designed for bathrooms where they wouldn't be dimmed because of the damp rating.





Exchanged for T85's. Longer rated life, bigger ballast, etc. Uglier trim, but they work great on the dimmers I had, and took the $60 dimmers off. Got something like $28 back. No dimming issues to speak of yet.







Please excuse the terrible, terrible cell phone pictures.
 
#472 ·
Busy, busy, busy. Let's see, where were we.

Passed my rough electrical on Tuesday with flying colors. Only comments were that I needed to insulate the exterior wall (insulation rolls were already sitting on the floor) and to stub out the sink pipes (pieces on the cart), then send pictures of both. Interesting how those don't have anything to do with eletrical. Was instructed to call for a drywall inspection after screw down and before mud. Here's about where we were as of a few days ago:







Also stubbed out the refrigerator, dishwasher supply, and pot filler faucet.





 
#473 ·
Sink stubbed out.



Six GU24 base lighting cans installed.



Added some mechanical protection.





Expanded the light switch box to a two-gang to make room for the light switch to the dining/pantry area. Did it after the rough in, but don't feel it violates the intent or code of the plans I submitted.



Replaced some staples with cabler stackers in the busier places, which really gave a lot more flexability.

 
#474 ·
Much better shots of the new lighting setups with the real camera back.

Office:



Guest bedroom:



Master bedroom:



All lights are dimmed fully to not overpower the lens. The blue tape is to prevent airflow into the attic until I can get to patching the drywall.
 
#476 ·
Thanks! :)

Hood arrived. With cord attached. Grrr. Not exactly clear instructions on how to hardwire, either.



Almost threw out my plans of hardwiring it and was almost forced to put it on yet another dedicated circuit. Receptacles would have gone here, but then might have been considered "inaccessible" behind the chimney, which is another code violation.



This one beats my old hood in so many ways. Under-cabinet 30" vs chimney 36". Non-vented vs vented. 120 max cfm w/ 2 speed settings vs 760 cfm max w/ 4 speed settings. 1 incandescent bulb vs 2 halogen bulbs. White painted vs stainless. Etc etc.



Thankfully, my inspector is cool with me using the same crimps that the manufacturer used to replace the cord. Emailed him to be sure.

 
#477 ·
Wired up the main panel nice and proper.



Would have stripped back the jackets a little further, but it was pretty hard to get my tools that far back in. Circuits 3a/3b/4a/4b/5a/5b are the new kitchen circuits.



Tried to keep my neutrals and grounds nice and clean.



Clipped off the temp power and tried to clean up the bottom of the panel as much as I could. Success?



About 10 zip ties went on right after the pictures were taken to keep everything neat and organized.
 
#478 ·
Right before the fire, I noticed that the Maple out front was looking a little haggered. An arborist came out, did a drive-by from the road while I was not home, and said it was fine. I asked him to come take a closer look because I was able to pull chunks of bark off with my bare fingers and found ants marching up into it. On second look, he said it looked like it had been heat stressed at one point, likely due to it being a rental property at one point, and that it may or may not be possible to save it. The difference in cost between trimming and removal/grinding was $450 vs $750. Not wanting another homeowners insurance claim or anybody to get hurt, I went with the removal option last week. Fast forward to a few days ago, they finally booked my job. In all fairness, it did save me a $100 trip fee waiting a little bit.

Lined up ours and the neighbors' bins to block off parking, as it happened to be trash day.



It certainly was a tall tree, and was well within reach of 2 houses and at least 5 cars.



Boom operator sizing it up.



Limbing off the small sections first.



Easy to see here why I was worried about the house!



Almost all the way down.

 
#479 ·
Almost gone by this point.



The boom operator said that the center was squishy and had some fungus-ridden wood. Reinforced my decision.



The price included stump grinding about 6" below ground level.



And they left us with a pile of grindings about 2' deep at the center, tapering out to a diameter of 10-12'.



Was curious to see how much I could get in our 92-gallon bin when I got home.



The answer was very little. After filling it, we proceeded to fill another fifteen or so 42-gallon contractor yard bags before striking stump.



Tried to pick-axe on the stump, but it's hard as a rock below ground level. Might have to drill it out, pour in some sodium nitrate, and wait a few months... or years.
 
#480 ·
Today, we got the kitchen totally ready for sheetrock tomorrow.

All of the insulation is in the exterior wall. We put the leftover pieces in the bathroom wall, just in case.



Insulated both hot and cold pipes in polyethylene. Also capped the sink (pictured) and tee'd off for the AAV (not pictured). Dryfit the AAV for now until we know the flood rim level of the new sink and cabs.



Insulated the ice maker supply line, the dishwasher supply line, and the pot filler faucet supply line. Make good use of the elbow and tee pieces they sold pre-made.



Insulated the wall under the sink as well.



Spray foamed all holes in the double top plate and where all of the pipes come up through the floor. Hopefully it prevents rodents from being able to use the large hole where the sink pipes comes up.

Also ran a wire to the chandellier and into the 2-gang switch box pictured previously, then made a 3-hour long materials run.
 
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