Post your favourite "Muldoons"

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by JillGat

One day I was watering out front and an old man slowed down to peer at our house. I waved him down to ask about his interest and he told me that he grew up in our house, and his dad had built the addition on the back. "Oh, come in and tell me about it and let me show you what we've done!" I said. He obliged.

When we bought the house, the inspector said he couldn't inspect the pipes and everything else under the house because the addition on the back covered the hatch to the crawlspace. I knew this had to be bullshit, but we never could find the access. When I asked the old guy about this, he opened the cabinet under the kitchen sink and showed us how the floor popped up and opened to under the house. Bingo.

He told me that the old rosebush in the back was a "Peace Rose" his mom planted just after WWII. The terracotta cinderblocks the house was built from were manufactured by prisoners in the state prison. All kinds of interesting stuff.

The addition, built in the early 1960s had been a real pain in the neck to us. It was poorly attached to the main house and in fact we could see blue sky where it was cracking away. None of the dimensions were truly square, the windows and doors were oddly non-standard and every fix-it project back there my husband took on created a domino effect of other things that had to be fixed first. A real nightmare.

The old man told us that his father worked tirelessly, non-stop on that addition for months, then, as soon as he finished, he sat down in a chair in the new room he'd built and died. My husband looked at me and mouthed the word, "Good."

Oh, man - I'm probably going to hell for this, but that last sentence made me laugh out loud.

I think I'd get on well with your husband ...

[Nava]

My knowledge of English building vocabulary can not do this justice, but in the 1960s there were a lot of places in Spain built by the people that were going to live in them. Usually, a local priest with his social conscience revved up to HIGH would obtain land or donate some which belonged to his parish; get people who lived in nearby farms/old houses with outhouses, no electricity, no telephone... to form a cooperative; obtain materials from donations (in Spanish we speak of "a monk's dozen" and not a "baker's", because a monk will always beg for more) and toss everything together.

Often the people started out having some knowledge of bricklaying and/or woodwork, but piping? Electrical? Say what?

The flat I own in Spain is a top floor in one of those areas. Specifically, my block of 4 "portales" (each with three floors, 4 flats per floor) was the second one built. The walls are Old House Thick, which makes for very good insulation (I'm sure glad of it when I'm looking at the snow fall outside, you need a bazooka to get a draft in that house). The roof is very well insulated as well. But the wires going from the buzzers at the street door to the actual physical bells in the flats sneaks up inside the wall, to the right of flats A, then goes into flat A, the one for flat A's bell separates, the other three continue into flat B (mine) over the ceilings, then from there to C and D.

When I got in, I needed to get a new wire for the TV antenna in. The antenna guy managed to stick his own wire through the wires for C and D's bells. The electrician I called when C and D complained said there was no effing way the bells wires would be there. Then we looked and yes, they were. He ran one of those electromagnets over the wall and said "I... think I better try to locate the guy who worked in this house." He was able to find the guy and extract, with a lot of patience (the old guy can't draw a wire diagram), schematics of more-or-less where different wires are in each of the five blocks. Apparently they were getting closer and closer to actually being "in code" as the blocks get newer, but there's things like wire moving at head height (the old "electrician" didn't feel like hunkering down) when all the outlets are at ankle height.

I understand the piping is similarly creative, but apparently nobody had the bright idea of placing the wires inside the water pipes. Or maybe they did and the priest was able to disuade them.



My brother works in construction, for the last 3 years as a construction foreman. One of the most common causes of calls to the architect is impossibilities. A very common one is this:
The architect's main draftsman draws the main blueprint, then passes it to other folk to do the electrical, piping and so forth. And you know what? Everybody tries to use the exact same hole in the wall!
So he gets there blueprints which nobody has bothered put on top of each other to verify them, and according to them he has to place the gas pipe, water pipe, fiberoptics and electrical wire all through the same conduit. Riiiiiiite!

[KellyM]

Our house has an addition on the back that was clearly at one time a garage, probably a business garage judging by the number of phone jacks and electrical outlets (not to mention the "No Smoking By Order Of Fire Department" sign we found behind the drywall). There is another room which we think was originally a porch, and then likely the business office. Someone, clearly in the 1970s, had redecorated the room as a den, complete with fake electric fireplace mounted on a wall covered with fake veneer brick. (The fake fireplace was the first thing to go in the house.) But that's not the Muldoon, no, that's just ordinary bad taste.

This room didn't have a door when the fellow who sold the house to us bought it. Because it lacked a door, it didn't qualify as a bedroom. In order to increase the bedroom count in the house (and thus the asking price), he added a door by walling off the entryway to the den, with a very cheap prehung door installed therein. No big deal. However, there was crown molding at the wall-ceiling juncture where this wall was inserted. Rather than cut this out, he chamfered the king studs of the door so as to miss the crown molding. The drywall was also notched to clear the molding. The wall itself was installed entirely with drywall screws (many only into the Masonite paneling); I don't think I found a nail in the entire assembly. The drywall had been neither mudded nor painted. I suspect a hard shove would have popped the entire wall assembly out.

We had planned to merely replace the door with a nicer one and refinish the drywall, but when we realized what he'd done we knew there was no option but to rehang the door. We ended up ripping out the entire wall and rebuilding it. Fortunately it's only a 40 inch opening. A nice side benefit is that the new door doesn't self-close the way the old one did.

[Cherry2000]

When I bought the charming little 1935 building that is now my office, there were all kinds of lovely things that the previous tenant had done for presumably cosmetic purposes as well as "renovations"

He had installed crown molding in the main areas. Unfortunately, upside down, and glued flat to the wall. Niiiice...

Jetted tub he installed in the bathroom was also interesting. Had just plugged it into a regular 110 outlet (by monkeying with the plug), and had actually melted the outlet/box in the wall. He had installed some actually very nice tile in there, but never caulked between the tub and the tile on the wall, so you can imagine what that was like. Oh yeah...and greenboard? What's that?

The kicker though is when I was working on the place, and was washing my hands in the bathroom sink. The running water did not sound right at all. And the growing puddle at my feet didn't feel right. Looked under the sink, and the plumbing was attached to...nothing.

I asked my inspector why he hadn't called that little problem out, and he told me that the day he was there they had people over doing work in there, and he couldn't get under that one sink, but never would have expected something like that

The stories about this place would take me all day to type up.

[Sparky812]

My house if full of "Muldoons", I have alraedy described one in another thread.
This month's mess started with mice, ended with rebuilding an exterior wall and relocating a heating duct, wiring, phone lines, etc.
In short, we had mice, I trapped them all them found where they were getting in. It seems there used to a milk door that someone had widened (probably for firewood) in the back wall adjoined to a storage cabinet outside.
I had to tear it all out and discovered:
1.) No insulation or vapory barrier, obviously
2.) While widening the opening they destroyed alot of the exterior brick and severed several brick ties.
3.) Concealed within the outside cabinet they ran an uninsulated heating duct as well as phone lines and wiring.
4.) To widen the opening they cut away the king and jack studs from the adjacent window! It is an exterior load supporting wall so the weight of the second floor and roof is basically being held up by the window!

I ended up gutting the whole plaster wall down to the exterior brick. I had to shore up the brick then jack up the window lintel and restud. Then I added rigid foam, R-20 batt insulation and vapour barrier. I firred out the wall and relocated the heating duct, wiring etc, to the warm side. This resulted in having to rearrange ductwork then my breaker panel and phone system.

I'm down to the drywalling now but I'm out of time before Christmas.

My wife is convinced we've bought the Money Pit.

[bdgr]

I just bought an historic house built around 1910 or so. This place has seen a lot of neglect, but I got it cheap and am gradually getting it ready to occupy...a few of the things that I've had to deal with

the plumbing...sheesh...

the drain for the house was run on the outside of the house, with much of vents (also on the outside) held togeather with duct tape....When we got into the plumbing in the upstairs (and only) bathroom we found it was pvc held togeather with duct tape as well.....mind you they taped it togeather and put down floor over it.

The house had 11 foot cielings. Some rocket scientist decided to lower these all to 7 foot.....even thoght the windows and transoms between the rooms were all higher than that....so the 1/4 inch drywall drop cieling was run right across windows and transoms and 90 year old ceder mouldings. All of that had to come out.

When we got the cielings all down, we found that they had re-wired part of the house by running wires across the droped cieling...in order to get etween roms they hacked their way throught the walls above the cieling. The walls were 3/4 inch thick ceder plank originally covered by wallpaper, except in the kitchen where it was ceder tounge and groove bead board.

The city had required them to get rid of all the cloth covered and knob and post wiring....so they did....all that was visible. When we got the floor pulled up in the kitchen we found sparking burned cloth covered wiring everywhere.

There was a wall heater upstairs that was supposed to be run off of 220, but they ran it off of two lines of 110 in phase with each outer, rather than out of phase. It didn't work, to say the least. We tore that out.

Someone tried to convert the dining room to a bedroom at one point by adding a half assed closet. To do so they cut the edge off of the mill work around the door.

It's been an interesting project. everything in the house originally was ceder, but much clearer than anything you can get now...including the flooring which was ceder planks where the individual floor board ran 16 feet of more in some places. it must have been something when it was new.

Oh, and the porch....it originally had a covered front porch with ornate columns. I know this because the neighbor told us she saw someone pull into the yard years ago, tie a chain around them, and drag them off causing the porch to colapse.

[gotpasswords]

Originally Posted by Sparky812

4.) To widen the opening they cut away the king and jack studs from the adjacent window! It is an exterior load supporting wall so the weight of the second floor and roof is basically being held up by the window!

I ended up gutting the whole plaster wall down to the exterior brick. I had to shore up the brick then jack up the window lintel and restud. Then I added rigid foam, R-20 batt insulation and vapour barrier. I firred out the wall and relocated the heating duct, wiring etc, to the warm side. This resulted in having to rearrange ductwork then my breaker panel and phone system.

What? You don't trust structural glass?

[gardentraveler]

Don't know how I missed this thread earlier.

I live in an 800 sq foot 1929 ranch. The basic construction is sound and previous owners had done nice things like replaced windows and installed central air.

The immediately previous owners had a friend do some of the wiring. The inspector was OK with it except that one of the switches in the basement didn't have a cover. The wires themselves are somewhat artistically distributed along the basement ceiling (it's unfinished, so you can see the beams and the hardwood floor that is under the carpet that I've finally started to rip up). Eventually, I'm having the whole thing re-wired because the circuits need to be distributed better and I probably need a couple more of them.

The true muldoons in this house seem to be in the bathroom, where they blocked off the window and installed a one-piece surround at some point. When they installed the fixtures in the shower, they used some type of glue to attach the shower head.

They also glued the hinges to the under-sink cabinet. It added an extra dimension of fun when I went to paint it. (I've applied paint liberally as all cabinets were dark imitation walnut with some of the ugliest hardware I've ever seen.)

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Hmmm..
1)Electrical outlets directly below the only place to put a towel rack in the tiny downstairs bathroom.
2)Failure to complete the outside brick wall. Left a big hole, stuffed it with insulation, & screwed a grill over it.
3)Insanely orange wall paint in the living room.
4)Odd living room layout, that doesn't really leave any good place to put a TV.

[vison]

There was a coal delivery company in Vancouver owned by the Morrow family. "Phone to Morrow for your fuel today" said their radio ad and that was what passed for excitement on Brown Road in South Surrey when I was a kid.

My brother-in-law has been working for 15 years renovating the house he and my sister live in. He has done an A-1 job, everything perfect. Having finished the upstairs, he tackled the basement. He discovered that the previous owner had cut through most of the mid-house load-bearing wall and that the entire upper floor was more or less being held up by a 4 by 4 created from two 2 by 4s nailed together. He said he actually got chills up and down his spine as he removed sheet after sheet of drywall and found they were nailed only to a strip of wood along the floor and a 2 by 4 tacked to the ceiling. No one has ever figured out why the original bearing studs were cut out.

Anyway, it's all fixed nicely now. He also had horror stories about the wiring, but I don't know enough about wiring to repeat them.

[bdgr]

woohoo...more fun today. We found out that the downstairs living room light was knob and tube stuff, which connected to something upstairs. we started exploring and found a small "room"...kind of a dead space under the eaves" that had been walled off since the house was built. we cut a hole and found there was a stack of about 40 or so post cards sitting there in the middle of this dead space, the newest having a postmark of 1910. the oldest about 1905. We started looking into a way into the attic and finally had to cut a hole through the ceder plank cieling. turns out there were two entrances to the attic...both had been sheetrocked over.

we finally tracked down the source of the knob and tube wiring and found that while the 2nd floor was fed by a couple of romex wires those wires were tied directly into the knob and tube stuff. Luckily I have an electrician who will work for barter. The entire 2nd floor will have to be rewired.

[panache45]

My family moved into my house in 1958, when I was 13. The former owner had supposedly been an engineer, and had a unique sense of "home improvement." I remember my father discovering that one of the dining room receptacles wasn't working, so he opened it up, only to discover that it was wired with a simple lamp cord, which disappeared into a hole in the floor. The cord emerged in the basement, and was plugged into an extension cord, which was plugged into another extension cord, which was plugged into a ceiling light/outlet over the basement sink.

To this day, more than 50 years later, I'm still encountering bizarre things that can be traced back to the original owner . . . like the fact that the light over the kitchen sink is on the same circuit as the ceiling fan in my bedroom, in an entirely different part of the house.

[Bites When Provoked]

My father is one of those guys who considers himself an expert in all things he has no training for. When my folks moved into their first owned house, he decided he'd fix the wiring. No, he's not an electrician.

(Before anyone dies of heart failure, he did EVENTUALLY get the house rewired. Eventually.)

However, for at least five years (thinking on it, it actually could have been a lot longer; you kind of get used to it after a while) we had the following:

• He'd pulled out part of the door frame in the lounge room to get to where the wiring was for the lounge room lights. He didn't put it back on, and he left unshielded wires just hanging there. In reaching for the switch in the dark you had a very good chance of putting your hands on live wires. I electro-shocked myself regularly until after about six months or so I got really, really good at guessing where the light was vs where the wires were.
• The laundry room was wired to the lights circuit. When the washing machine inevitably overloaded the circuit and tripped it out, we'd lose all lighting to the house.
• To fix the problem of that pesky overloading fuse, my father replaced the offending fuse with a nail.

How I survived my childhood is still a matter of horrified speculation for me.