Last month, my father and I started on some remodeling in my house.
The house was a 3br, 1ba brick house - typical for this area when it was built in 1982/1983. I am the 4th owner.
The previous owner was in the house from 2006 to 2010. He is the son of a contractor in Georgia, but he was never able to pass the contractors exam. He is also mentally unstable and has trouble holding jobs if he is off he meds. No, I am not a disgruntled homeowner who is just making this stuff up to slander the PO.
During his 4 years in the house, he did an extensive remodel. The neighbors have been telling me stories of coming over and seeing the house "completely gutted". One of the three bedrooms, the one closest to the master, was split in half by the addition of a new wall. One half is now a walk-in closet for the Master, and the other half was supposed to be a bathroom that was never finished.
I have lived in the house for three years and am finally at a point where I have some time and money to tackle the home repairs and remodeling that was left undone by the PO.
Completing the new Master bathroom was pretty straight forward. Finish the POs uncompleted wall, bring in tub, toilet, and vanity, and plumb. In the process, the sewer line and water lines under the east end of the house were removed and new ones installed.
Then we started on the main house bathroom. (All of the above back-story was just a lead-in so that I could post a photo. lol) The PO had installed a walk in shower, but never installed a door. When I bought the house, I just thought it was another one of his unfinished projects - but it turns out that they were using the shower with no door. When we scraped out the peel-and-stick tile, we found water damage to the underlayment. So we ripped it up. Then we ripped up the top layer of subfloor. The bottom layer at least is still good - though it seems to have been the victim of several failed remodeling attempts.
The home's second owner had the attic remodeled into a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom. The plumbing for the upstairs bath came down through a pipe-chase in a wall in the main bathroom, tying into the plumbing under the house.
The previous owner / master remodeler decided that the sewer and water lines should go on over to the main wall and down. So what did he do? Cut out the upper and lower wall plates, and under the house cut out part of the ledger boards.
Oh... and those pesky studs are also in the way of the new shower, so yank them out also.
Final photo coming up....
When he had finished his masterpiece, and was installing new sheetrock, he had to cover up all the holes in the ceiling where the pipechase used to be. Instead of pulling down a section of drywall and patching... he just added a new layer of drywall to the whole room.
I told my dad we would start back after the holidays. It's going to be a bigger project than I expected.
