My attempt to fix a squeaky floor turned into a minor archaeological dig

Last month, I decided to finally fix a squeaky spot in my living room floor. I watched a video that said to drive screws through the carpet into the subfloor to pull it down tight. Sounded easy. I marked the joist, got my drill, and went for it. The screw went in fine, but when I pulled the drill back, it made this awful crunching sound. I lifted the carpet edge and found I had drilled right through an old, brittle ceramic electrical wire insulator from the 1940s, shattering it into dust. In my experience, you never know what's hiding between your floorboards. I had to stop everything, turn off the power to that room, and carefully replace the damaged section of wiring before I could even think about the squeak again. Has anyone else hit a weird surprise when doing a simple repair like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaronclark3mo ago

I once drilled into a wall and hit a bundle of old phone lines wrapped in cloth. Simple jobs always have the best surprises.

hall.nina3mo ago

My old house is full of those little time capsules... pulled up a floorboard to run a cable and found a 1950s soda bottle tucked in the joist space, label still perfect. The trick that saved me was using a stud finder with a deep scan mode to check for pipes and wires before cutting anything. Even then, I go super slow with the saw once I'm past the surface boards... you can usually feel or hear a change if you hit something solid that isn't wood.

diana202mo ago

Found a stack of old newspapers from the 40s under our kitchen linoleum last year, perfectly dry and the comics were still bright. I mean, who thinks to stash that stuff? My husband almost threw them out but I made him help me flatten them, they're in a folder now. The weird part was a single baby shoe wrapped in one of the pages, like why just one? Old houses are full of stories.