New guy in another thread mentioned that he had never seen such bad framing as what…
Which kind of led to some discussion including several who have seen worse…
So here’s your chance to share the laughs and ponder the eternal physics question –
“Whatever has been holding that thing up all this time?!!!?”
Go ahead and get started while I look up some pictures to post….
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Replies
I promise I'll get back to ya as soon as I can sit at the other pooter where the "worst of the worst" are residing. Picking what needs to be shown will depend on the competition (G)
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
level of competition and what the prize is, eh? LOLHere is what that looked like once we got to openning it up.
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Just a reminder - Let's not leave the plumbers out of the competition. They need recognition too.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
always amazes me what one plumber a sawzall and hole hawg can accomplish in a short period of time. And still demand rates of $65.00 -$90.00/hr.
Welllllllllllllllllll......................... if you carps would leave a place for our pipes all would be well.
How did you think the waste was going to get away?????
:)
funnel thru the wall just like my old shop.
SOP
in this one, we have a two hundred year old cape built with pegged truss work for the roof originally.
In the seventies, somebody decided they wanted a shed roof dormer let in.
so the main rafter leg going to the beam that was top plate holding it all up was lopped off.
How to hold it up? Why, simply brace back to the collar tie piece.
Oops, that piece has nothing holding it up either - so let's sister a 2x6 onto it and extend that out the outer wall of the dormer, Yeah - that'll work.
This whole piece of art had a sag ranging from 3" to 6"
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where ...
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Sad to say it's in the process of being literally hacked as I type this.
I'm doing drywall in a new commercial building. There is a storage loft built into a huge warehouse. The loft is 8' tall. 9' span w/ 2x8 joists over 2x4 walls. In part of this loft, there will be a restroom. I didn't build it, just rocking there.
In the warehouse will be big forklifts moving big loads around. The current owner knows the loft cant be loaded too heavy ,but my money says sometime in the life of the building someone overloads it.
Here's the hack- the plumber didn't rough in a drain for a water fountain in another part of the building, so he's going to notch in a 2" drain in three walls of the bathroom to go into the sink drain.
I told him not to, but he's one of these guys who always knows better. "I'll put a strap over it"
Unbelievable
I don't have authority here, I just hope the owner throws a fit.
"I'll put a strap over it"That's what SHE said!Just before she found out she was PG
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Sounds like a topic for another thread. :)
I'm researching this and will get back to ya termorra. I think some of my best <worst> photos are pre-digital, so I'm gonna have to go looking in the shoeboxes behind me....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
I ain't even gonna go there. Would take all day.I want to remind you all to let the DIYs participate too. Here is one where a succession of various owners put down about five layers of flooring but never pulled the stool up.Can't we say , " Ooooouee, what's that smell?" boys and girls?
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I think this one has been posted here before, but I just got it again in an email the other day.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12788541/Code-Pictures
warning to dial-uppers - that is a very long download, but well worth while!I haven't seen those before. Thanks for the belly laughs.
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####! :-o
Looks like good engineering to me.Now in pic #2 they added extra roof vent, always a good idea, around t he exhaust vent.And in #5 they had a trap to catch any water that comes in around the vent..
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
Wheeew! none of my work is pictured there!
jt8
lotsa worse things happen to better people than me every day. --Snort
I bought a duplex at foreclosure, real slumlord kind of place. The toilet was plumbed into the tub (yeah, that's raw sewage in there), the squatters then bailed out the tub with a bucket and threw it in the back yard so they could use the shower. Bail out the tub from shower so you could use the crapper. Rinse and repeat.
The decorative xmas lights over the over the tub were held up by the sturdy drop ceiling panels...where is Darwin when you need him?
Enjoy. -Norm
Edited 3/22/2009 8:28 pm ET by VTNorm
Ceiling pic of the bathroom posted above.
You win. That is just plain nasty. Thanks for ruining supper.
I can't compete. Talking to partner, he re-framed a house, exterior walls were out of plumb over 5" in 8'. Floors were out 4" in 8 feet, located in the beaches where apaprently a lot of soil movement takes place!! I kept thinking... a little bit of moisture on the toilet seat and you need to strap yourself in to take a sh1t. He is looking for pics of the job.
Edited 3/22/2009 9:36 pm ET by clinkard
Sure you can compete. You are the young fellah who inspired this thread. Just post those picts of yours again, or a link to that thread.This one you mention here reminds me of a beachhouse I worked on that was about 38 x 38'. one foundation wall was off about 4". Thjat was just the beginning.The backwall had a 2" lean out. The rafters were all long splines spices tacked together with two 8d nails, everything else overspanned.The set of stairs were framed with only two tx10 stringers. I came along after a lady had bought it from the bank. They had repoed it from the 'builder'. So I met her on site, and watching her walk up the stairs had me cringing as they bounded 2-3" at each step, and she was only about 160#That builder had done just about everything wrong that could be done wrong. bad load paths, Dormers with flashing at corners turned the wrong way, no needed blocking, subfloor plywood run on the wrong axis of strength.....And he had the place looking spiffy where it faced the street, windows in and siding started, but open gaping holes and no windows at the back.now the good laugh - she asked me to review her engineeers inspection report.It had a page or two of boilerplate, a couple observations about the property in general, and then a statement that the framing work appeared to be sub-par, and needed the attention of a good framing contractor to assess and repair it.my assessment was that if she wanted me to do the work, the first place to start was by tearing it apart and rebuilding it. That is what we did.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Last year I got hired to install fix a botched crown install on a Victorian exterior along the rake and eve fascia. The crown was installed:
Flat (no spring angle)
Upside down
Lap-jointed corners (don't need no stinkin' miters)
Here is a nice job of siding around the old resisters from an abandoned electrical service and the phone line.
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Need to remove a window? Just fill in the vinyl siding like this:
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Edited 3/22/2009 10:31 pm by ptp
I display the same level of aptitude in construction a photo post as those guys did with siding.
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Here is some glorious plumbing work. That capped branch is lower than the main waste that it's branching from. I call it the poop reservoir.
Edited 3/22/2009 10:24 pm by ptp
LMAO, that solves the problem of how to maintain a good growth of bacteria in your septic system
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Some mistakes are pretty easy to fix though.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
RE: upside downYeah, I get hung up on that whole water runs downhill thing. Old boss used to tell guys to think like a drip.
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Other than all that, it was a great job!LOL
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
My latest find!
http://picasaweb.google.com/uknigel/FloorChop?authkey=Gv1sRgCLvEy5aAi5DzvAE&feat=email#5316211365004941122
If this picture actually uploaded, You can see the area of open floor. Three of the six joists had been cut (plumbers). The joists were 2x6 spanning 12'.
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
MSA-
Piffin, Dinosaur and some others can't open those large files like that because of dialup service and the large pics embedded in the post will complicate things greatly.
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Thanks rez, I was surprised the thread got this far with someone adding a high res photofile. I live in fear of the day somebody does a post with an embedded three meg photo...;)
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Sorry Piffin, didnt mean to mess with you. I gotta figure out the resize software.
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
download and install irfanview, open image, go to Image>resize> 720 width maintain aspect ratio checked> save as - new name
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Just out of curiosity. It's only a problem when they are embeded right? As in you see the picture in the thread.
I'm on dialup at the moment. The big files are a pain when they're attached, too. Sometimes I'd really like to see them, but it's a waste of time to try if they're too big. .My best "hack" story was from back when I was young and first married. The XW and I rented a bugalow from a developer. They claimed they had just bought the place and had done a lot of work to it. The place had a small attic. On the stairway to the attic there was a small window. Apparently the window was in bad shape, so they had removed it. (It was maybe 32" wide and 24" tall) After they removed it they put vinyl siding on the house, and went right over the window. No framing, plywood, or insulation of any kind in the window opening. From inside the house you just saw the back of the siding. This was in Joliet, Illinois - Up near Chicago. So it was a bit drafty in the winter.
If I see a large one attached, I just make the decision not to try opening it.but if it were embedded ( opens in the post automatically like you see many here) it would lock my PC up for the time it takes to get it all downloaded, like shoving food down my throat. Might be fine food, but I would not enjoy it in the least.
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Here's the old thread dealing with posting pics. 24441.75
Cheers
Thanks Rez. When it comes to computers I "apply vacuum". I still dont know how to resize photos.
Maybe I should get my 11 year old to help me.:>)
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=109207.7
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Edited 3/23/2009 5:54 am ET by junkhound
Got call last night to go look at a house , older lady house, basment wall caved in. We had lot of rain Sunday ( thunderstorm) we still have lot snow around and groun is froze yet.
I go there , look north side house can see lot snow and water is running under and into the house. Inside go down basment. North east corner, wall is caved in, 2 x 4 studs 16" oc, treated plywood inside with 1/2" panling and 5/16 pine wainscot. and that is it! no plywood outside of studs!, no insulation or VB. Mud / dirt up against the studs and inside plywood. I can't believe that this has been like this for maybe 15+ years!
I do the MIKE HOLMES thing "how can some people believe that this was ok ?"
I end up cutting hole into the plywood sleeper floor ( 5/8 ply, on 2x laying on dirt) dig down, put pump and pump incoming water out ( 1 -2 gal. min.) try and stop the mud from coming into the finished room with some lumber.
I tell the client not to sleep in the upstaires because I don't know that the other wall may give way also!
Tell them to contact ther insurance and tell the cleints son he is in for a long night watching the pump . ( He was trying to keep up with water with a 2 gal. shop vac!)
OMG!You definitely have a finalist there. We have to see pictures!
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I don't have any pictures, but two of my all time favorites are:The yahoo who rewired part of his house with lamp cord!!?? An inspection punch list for a house being sold listed two bad receptacles in the family room. When I removed the first one from the box, I saw that it was wired with zip cord - and so was the second one. WTF??!! Since there was no sign of any romex, I went into the 100*+ attic, and pawed around the loose fill insulation and found that the entire room had been wired with zip cord! A 15 minute job replacing a couple of receptacles turned into two days or rewiring. - lolThe first yahoo's idiot cousin who cut away parts of six trusses to create a playroom for his lids in the attic above the kitchen. The kitchen ceiling had sagged ~2" and we had to jack it back up while we rebuilt the trusses. That was another two day job since we were having a heat wave and I refused to stay in the attic after mid-morning.
Yeah, electrical has some good surprises, usually not from th e licensed guys though.I've seen several where wires were tied together inside a wall and black electricians tape wrapping it.And just now got off the phone from explaining the size of the electrical bill to a guy on the latest job. Once I got going on the demo, I found no less than five dead ends that were not dead. Wires going to nowhere for optional maybe a fixture there someday. They were all hot. Took forever to find which circuit two of them were on. Probably an extra thousand bucks to make the house safe again.
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boss, you've probably never seen a truss get field 'modified' have you?LOL
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I honestly haven't seen TOO many cases of badly modified trusses. But a couple come to mind.There was one garage where there wasn't enough room for the GDO and track. So the HO cut the bottom chords out of the trusses, moved them up a foot or so, and nailed them to a couple of the webs. .I got called out to look at a hog building a while back. The trusses were sagging badly, had buckled webs, and in some cases were actually breaking. Turns out the trusses were designed to be set 4' O.C. with no ceiling load. But in reality they were set 8' O.C. WITH a ceiling load. The owner wanted to know how to reinforce the trusses. But they were so far overstressed there was no way to do it. .In another case there was a home with very tall trusses that had been piggybacked. The framer had no put bracing on any of the rather long webs or on the flat top chord of the base truss. A roofer had been called in to re-roof the place and went in the attic for some reason. When he found the webs and flat top chords of the trusses buckled all over hell he called me. Fortunately that was an easy fix..I didn't go out on this one, but heard about it from a guy who was there. A house had a BAD case of truss uplift. The GC was apparently a hack who had no clue what he was doing. His first attempt to fix the problem was to go down in the crawlspace and raise all the beams up by extending the jack posts an inch or so. When that didn't work he went up into the attic with a saw and cut all the webs of the trusses in half. Last I knew that one was involved in a lawsuit..That's all I can think of at the moment...
I recall you having some pics of the hog barn one here awhile back. That was a spaghetti-back barn
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Piffin,
The worst piece of work I've ever seen was some amateur renovations in a 1950's storey-and-a-half.
A shed roof extension had been added on the back early in its life. Its rafters went from the new outer wall to a point somewhere around the middle of the original rafters.
Sometime in the 80's, Joe HO desides to open up the back half of the house into one room. He removed the original back wall, which was holding up the original rafters, various partition walls, windows and doors.
He replaced the original back wall with two beams made of two 2 x 8's each spanning about 14'. These beams rested on blocking nailed between the studs at the outside. Where they met in the middle, they rested on a turned cedar post which had a minimum diameter of about 2 1/2". This cedar post was sitting on top of a homebuilt kitchen cabinet.
This little post on the cabinet was carrying the load of about 200 sf of floor above plus about 400 sf of roof.
And, just to make it worse still, in the basement underneath this marvel was......................nothing! He had moved his carrying beam inward from the original basement wall.
With all the windows and doors moved here and there, the back half of the house had not one single intact stud going from bottom plate to top plate. Every one was pieced. (We don't know about the front half of the house.)
Sometimes it's a relief to start on a job knowing you don't have to try to save anything.
Ron
That leaves me jaw-dropping speechless!except that it does remind me of a house I added onto back in 1970something...it had been built in the depression right next to a sawmill, then moved into town and set on a foundation later.Except for roof rafters, every piece of framing lumber was end cuts. Studs stacked from 2-3 pieces vertically with no sisters. Sheathing longest was 4' I found this out when I stripped the one wall to make the doorway joining to the addition. So I had to revamp my frame and truss plan for safe loading.
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I thought of one other situation from last year. Got a call from a lumberyard that I do business with. They told me a guy was remodeling a house and needed a beam. The situation was over their heads, so they wanted me to have a look. I got directions and went out to find an older 2 story house that was parttially gutted. In the middle of the house was a new ~14' opening in the bearing wall that supported the 2nd floor and part of the roof. The only header in the opening was a single 11 7/8" I-joist. As you might guess, the I-joist was sagging badly....
Liberalism, at its heart, is: low expectations, pessimism, an assumption that ordinary people are helpless. All of American history proves that false. Every American family proves that false. [Rush Limbaugh]
You mean the live wires were just left hot and unboxed in a wall?
Si Senior
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I was stripping wall paper in a house which supposedly been rewired from old knob and tube which was supposed to be disconnected. Steamed some paper. Stubbed my putty knife on something. An old outlet had been wallpapered over. Still connected to the knob and tube which was still live. Neat 1920's style outlet though.
Last summer, I helped my SIL replace all of the ivory colored switches and outlets in their 50's era home with the white Decra. Every kitchen outlet was a home run GFCI instead of a GFCI followed by normal outlets. I called my electrician buddy who told me that it was kosher - but whoever did it had way more money than sense. - lolWe also replaced all of the baseboards and found a run of flex conduit cable that had been notched into the studs - with no nail plates. Thank the gods that they live close to Lowes.They also had an outlet that just wouldn't work. I finally decided that someone had cut it dead somewhere in the attic at some point. I had my electrician buddy run some can lights in the hall and he also got that receptacle working. When I asked why it hadn't been working, he just said that I didn't really want to know. - lol
I was hired years ago by a national builder who built smaller frame homes on your lot. They had a crew start a house but abandon it partially finished, or so the story went. We stopped by their office, loaded up with nails and took off for the 40 mile drive. Got to the job site to find 24 pilings in the ground with joists and plywood in place. The pilings had been set by hand and were in the ground maybe 4 feet. No two pilings in either direction were in the same line. The entire mess was almost 2 feet out of square at the ground so they had leaned a corner pile out diagonally 18 inches or so to make the floor somewhat square. It was actually about 9 inches out of square and sloped 6 inches in one direction and about 4 inches in the other. The 8" X 8" piles had been notched for the girders but the notches were cut too deep and too low. The plywood was 1/2" and had been nailed at the corners only. It had rained so that the plywood was so swollen that we couldn't force it down. We loaded up and came back to town and later I went by the builder's office to tell them that the job was a tear down. The super insisted that all we needed to do was jack a few of the piles and throw some Sakrete around them. I told him he'd have to get someone else to do the work and left with their 400 pounds of nails in the back of my truck.
When we moved into our DIY renovation project (aka "home") 30 years ago, my nephew was helping me pull new wiring throughout the house. But first we were removing all the old stuff: a mix of knob-and-tube and early early romex sort of stuff which was losing its insulation.
So he's on the second floor looking at three wires poking up at floor level inside the wall. I'm in the basement below him, looking at three wires poking down out of the ceiling. I holler up: "I'm going to pull them out now." I pulled and pullled and they wouldn't budge. Nor could he pull them up. But they had to be the same wires.
We finally opened the wall on the first floor, out of desperation, and there in the middle of that wall is a mass of wires, including the six that we had been trying to pull, plus others, all twisted together and "fastened" with friction tape: no solder, no wirenuts, just friction tape. Lucky the whole place hadn't burned to the ground.
That's JustSoWrong....wunnering if that super had ever seen the jobsite...
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LOL, did your wife post that?If not, we need to exempt you with predjudice....;)
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Nice thread idea! Here's one:
Plumbers are the best! That's for sure.
Just got hired to work around a good one! Beautiful Master Bath, 6-person (but I'm a cuddler, maybe only 4) soaking/jacuzzi tub, glass-brick walk-in 6x8 shower w/ceiling-mount rain shower and telephone spray. Nice!
Tiled-base curb under glass-brick wall continues past end of wall to serve as step-over shower entry, goes on to die into surround of soaking tub, in line with tub drain. So far, so good.
Scene changes to basement below: evidently plumber found floor joist in line with tub drain to be inconvenient. Understandable, but final solution was to cut offending floor joist through and through, and scab on a patch.
New, overlapping scab overlaps by maybe 3” max, IIRC, lagged in place.
My initial reaction was to promise a prompt re-visit with jack post in hand, but then I thought, “I’m not going anywhere near that!” and told client to call the contractor who did the work. We’ll see what he says.
I’ll take a pic to post next time I’m out there.
AitchKay
Wiring fun...
Yes, that is aluminum Romex.
Yes, that is a crimped butt splice used to make a copper to aluminum splice.
There were 3 more like this.
About 1/2 of the house has been gone through and pigtailed with those special Cu-Al wire nuts.
Existing Al circuits have 15A breakers.
Simple job of changing a couple of dimmers, replacing a couple of cans with fixture boxes and some new receptacles turned into a big deal.
Not practical to remove the wiring and replace.
Came across this when I was looking to buy a house to flip a year ago.
Looks like an attempt for a second egress from the third floor.
Watch your step!
Stan had to start somewhere, show use some of your first jobs No one should regard themselve as "God's gift to man." But rather a mere man whos gifts are from God.
Bathroom in a hallway anyone? This is at the top of the stairs from the front entry (you can see the window curtain on the front door at 10 o'clock from the toilet). There were 3 bedrooms off this landing and this beautiful half bath is out in the wide open spaces.
The extension cord snaking across the floor provided electric to the back bedroom.
-Norm
ever hear of the Winchester house?;)
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Is it the house that a crazy old lady kept adding too so ghost would get confused?
Yeah, hidden rooms, stairs that go nowhere....
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I've been in it a couple of times. It was built by Sarah Winchester (heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune) who believed that as long as she kept building, the ghosts of the people killed with Winchester rifles wouldn't harm her. She kept workmen busy for years.That place is flat out weird!! - lol
Edited 3/24/2009 7:45 pm by Dave45
LOLI was thinking the same thing.BruceT
I've got a client who did a bunch of work on his house, particularly vinyl siding. Also added a drop ceiling on the main level. He did a bang-up job. Nicest guy you'd ever wanna meet, but zero DIY skills.
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Don't know how I'm ever gonna sell this dog...
Jason
Wasn't a safety problem but when I bought a 3 yr old house in Miami in '92 the dining room had lights and outlets that wouldn't work. Eventually I found that all were connected to each other but were not fed from the panel anywhere.
Some goodies from redoing the kitchen in my last house...gotta go look for more pics.
245 -No hot shutoff, sprayfoam hell, and tissue-paper strong floor.
dcp_345 -Old doorway(on left)? Just dw it, wallpaper 3x, then panel it! I added the stud in the center... The closed up window next to the door had no insulation or studding in it, and no sheathing under the clapboard outside.
No cookin -Old stove vent? Just beat it into the wall with a hammer and wallpaper it! Oh yeah, then panel it...and tile that. And to think I wondered why the clapboard was bulging on the outside.
50% of the interior(the original house) was finished in shellacced knotty pine. In fact, all of the kitchen/bath cabs were too -not a drawer in the house. Unfortunately, I was only able to restore 1 room of it.
Every part of every room, had 2-4 layers of wallpaper, and 1-2 layers of panelling...most times, alternating! YAAAYYY!
Good to see there are some other posters here that attempt insane things.
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WHAT IS THAT?!Legal Disclaimer: The preceeding comments are for entertainment purposes only and are in no way to be construed as professional advice. The reader of these comments agrees to hold harmless the poster, EJCinc, from any and all claims that EJCinc offered professional advice, ideas, or comments to the reader that may or may not have resulted in the damage, injury, or death to the readers property or person.
um... dead?
Tu stultus esRebuilding my home in Cypress, CAAlso a CRX fanatic!
Look, just send me to my drawer. This whole talking-to-you thing is like double punishment.
If I told ya I'd half to kill ya.
OK, here we have some 2x4 attic floor joists. As you can see, the one on the right is hanging onto that bearing wall by about 3/4." Also, please note the two junction boxes that were buried in the space. Nice.At the opposite end the joists were tagged to the rafters with one or two 20d nails, also just barely touching it. Over a 13' span, most had sagged about two inches.
Edited 3/24/2009 8:56 pm by ptp
The universe has a sense of balance to it.I took apart one circuit that was fed from two diff directions on two different breakers. It went around a large room I could see after pulling the plasterboard off. I plugged shut off the breaker and tested fist recep in line and it was cold, so I started yanking. got halfway around the room and sparks start flying...Called the electricians and they got out the test gear....scratched their heads...yep, dual feed.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I was replacing some underground gas/diesel lines in the Fla. Keys. The tanks, with pumps in the tanks, were halfway between the boat dock dispensers and the car dispensers. (Pumps were 220v and dispensers at the islands were 110v.) When we trenched for the pipes we cut the underground electric that went from the dispensers to the pump switches. I repaired the electric lines and finished the job. I soon received a callback because the 220v breaker would sometimes trip when they operated the dispensers, which would in turn activate the pump motor starters. EVENTUALLY I found that the dispensers were fed from 2 different panels and when both dock and car dispensers were turned on at the same time because of cross-phasing of the 220v circuit the breaker would trip. When I had the dispenser circuit on the same phase the problem was cleared.I worked in the Fla. Keys for 25 years and found some real weird stuff in that time. Bell South routinely sent their screw-up people to work there and most of the trades were filled with the same. In the Keys, work is only a nuisance that exists to supply the $'s to support the fishing and the bars. (I know I'm going to catch someone who wants to know "What's wrong with that?" :)
I have to say, that one made me laugh louder than any other post or picture here so far!
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I have to say, that one made me laugh louder than any other post or picture here so far!
Glad I could be of service. : )
Jason
As a handyman, I don't do big jobs, but this one grew a bit.
HO asked me to drywall space under his stairs. OK, I think, half day tops. Turns out that he had bought a 40" entertainment center with CRT, (before flat screens) and found it took too much space in his tiny condo living room. Then he spied the stairs; closed in underneath, open above.
He borrowed a Sawzall from a neighbor one weekend and set out to open up space under the stairs for his new entertainment center. When he came to the 4x4 post supporting the landing, he decided to expand the opening the other way, toward the steps. When I got there on Monday I found the outer and middle stringers notched to within about 1 1/4" of the tread/riser cut out and the stairs sagging almost an inch.
Since then, I tell people that the best referral for me is a guy with lots of confidence, no skills and access to power tools. :)
This one came off of a diesel engine parts site, they had a bunch of random messed up pictures.
Is that a Greenfield snake? :)BruceT