RENOVATING AN OLD HOUSE? YOU’LL NEED A GOOD CHECKLIST

the home three years before, and Dr. Larsen and his wife trusted me. Little did they know, I had no clue how to build the three simple walls needed for the small new bathroom.

By Tim Carter

DNo you want to build a new wall inside your home?

Perhaps you're trying to create a new small space for a home office or hobby room, or maybe you have a bigger appetite and are transforming a dank basement into a finished living space. But you have no idea where to start. I've been there. I've experienced your anxiety.

ot too long ago, I was driving to get an estimate to install a new muffler on my truck. It was just after sunrise and a large sewer project forced me to detour across a street I’d never been on before. As luck would have it, I happened upon an old Victorian house that had seen far better days just as the earlymorning sun was giving her a tender morning kiss. It brought back vivid memories of the first old house I ever bought and renovated.

I survived with the help of a few phone calls to my boss. It was a humbling experience as I discovered you don't know what

You can't always do this in an existing home, especially if the ceilings in the room are finished with drywall or plaster. As you tilt the wall up, it binds against the ceiling. If you're challenged by a finished ceiling, you'll most likely have to install your top and bottom plates, making sure the plates are you don't know. Keep in mind this was decades before the Internet and YouTube. You have no idea what an advantage you now have when you have to educate yourself about how to repair and build things around your home. Count your blessings! plumb in the same plane. You'll then cut each wall stud to fit snugly between the plates and toenail them in place. Drill angled pilot holes in the ends of the wall studs for the nails. Use no less than 3-inch-long 16d sinker nails to connect the wall studs to the plates.

Every now and then it's interesting to go back in time. I clearly remember having to build my first partition wall inside a house. I was a soaking wet-behind-theears carpenter working for a small remodeling company. One of my college professors, Dr. Larsen, had asked me to install a half bathroom in his home. I had no idea what to do, so I told him that my boss could do the job.

If I had known then what I know now after all these years of working in old homes for paying customers, I don’t know if I would have bought it. To be sure, visions of grandeur were dancing in my head – and in my new bride’s as well – much as they did in Mr. Blandings’ head in the old Cary Grant movie.

It’s also important that the house’s framing, or bones, are in great shape with no cracks, wood rot or insect damage. The carpenters of old knew how to keep wood in great shape, and most made prudent use of simple tar paper to keep the structure dry for decades.

Once the simple plans were drawn and the contract signed, I was sent to my professor's house to start the job. I had painted the outside of

I had all sorts of support from my father-in-law, who, although he was a medical doctor, had a passion for real estate investing. But what I lacked was a comprehensive checklist that would have helped me identify possible trouble spots and definite dealbreakers.

Here are a few things that you should think about if you’re about to go all-in on an old house as I did back on that warm spring day:

First and foremost, make sure the house has a great foundation. Just recently, my son was thinking of buying an old house and he sent me a photo of a diagonal crack extending from the corner of a basement window down to the floor. The house was almost 100 years old. The crack was less than 1/16 inch in width, there was no evidence of water seepage and the concrete was not offset.

What I lacked was a comprehensive checklist that would have helped me identify possible trouble spots and definite dealbreakers.

Building a new interior wall in an existing house can be much different from doing it on a new home job site. When we carpenters build a wall for a new home, we typically build it flat on the floor. Once all the studs are nailed to the bottom and top plates, we tilt the wall up and secure it so it doesn't fall over.

Next, carefully assess the mechanical systems. The presence of cast-iron plumbing stacks needn’t worry you, especially if you can see the cast letters XH on the pipe. These letters indicate that pipe is extra heavy and might last for hundreds of years so long as the previous homeowners didn’t put liquid drain cleaners down the pipes.

If you do see cast-iron plumbing vertical pipes, it almost certainly means you’ll have smaller horizontal galvanized pipes that drain sinks, showers and possibly tubs. These pipes will almost always be in poor shape and require replacement.

Don’t underestimate the cost to retrofit your heating and cooling system. Many very old houses simply don’t have the supply and return air registers in the correct locations. My first house had all the supply vents located on the inside of the house. Decades ago HVAC pros discovered it’s best to flood exterior walls with either heated air in the winter and cool air in the summer. That means the return air registers must be across the room on inside walls. I doubt you’ll see this setup on a house built in 1905!

If there is no ceiling, you can tilt the wall up so long as you orient the wall in the same direction as the floor joists above. You simply make sure the top of the wall rises up in between two parallel floor joists. Once the wall is vertical, you can then slide it into position under standard Don't opening you My your it at rough measurements Measure of the where attached the door. measurement. of your much frame the door. be trimming when you want between the top You height just the factory Trust install drywall gap between and the ©2021 Content

If the house was built long before 1967, you can be sure it’s got lead paint both inside and outside. You don’t have to get rid of it, but you most definitely need to understand how to work with it so you don’t get poisoned or poison a loved one. Even scraping exterior lead paint is an issue, as you can contaminate soil you may use for a vegetable garden. Never ever sand lead paint.

Realize that you can match both interior and exterior wood trim if you’ve got a big budget. Oldfashioned lumberyards in your area might have their own mill, or they may know of a local one that can cut new knives that will create matching profiles for all the fancy woodwork inside or outside your home. ©2022 Tim Carter. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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If you're looking to buy or sell a home, look for a Certified Residential Specialist, a CRS.

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