Three hours to trace a single dead outlet in a 1950s house

Went to swap out a two-prong outlet for a customer last Tuesday. Pulled the old one, no power. Fine, flipped the breaker. Still nothing. Checked every outlet in the room, all dead. Spent the next three hours crawling through a dirt crawlspace full of spider webs and knob and tube wiring that someone had buried under blown-in insulation. Found the junction box hidden behind a fake wall panel in the basement. Someone had just twisted the hot wire off and left it hanging. All because they didn't want to pay to rerun the circuit. Has anyone else found hack jobs that took way longer to undo than the actual fix would have been?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela431d ago

Is three hours really that bad for an old house...?

wendy_park761d ago

Three hours is basically a race car pit stop compared to how long my first old house project took me. I spent a solid 6 hours just trying to get a single stuck window sash to budge and ended up sitting on my floor crying over a rusty nail. Now I just budget triple time for everything and call it a win if I finish before dark. Old houses have a way of humbling you real fast.