[UncleEntity]

Yep, sounds like my garage.

At first look it seem like someone backed into the garage door and mangled the hell out of it but on more careful inspection the roof is being barely held up by the tracks that the door runs in and is pretty near to giving up the ghost. Was just going to splice the ends of the rafters (like someone did on the other side who knows how many years ago...if it works, it works) and replace the garage door but now its looking like I'll need a whole new roof.

What really worries me is the dodgy wiring strung all across the basement which is a combination of newish wires, old cloth covered wires and liberal applications of electrical tape to splice it all together. Luckily none of the wires seem to be load bearing...

[jedberg]

I had to do a garage roof a few years ago. The previous owner thought it would be a good idea to put a hole in the main crossbeam to attach the garage door opener. As soon as I bought the house I removed the garage door opener and put metal plates on both side of the hole bolted together.

My "fix" held for about 11 years, but apparently it very slowly weakened, creating a small divot on the roof. Which got bigger and bigger with each rain, but since I never go on the garage roof, I didn't notice.

Until during one heavy rain I got a surprise skylight!

So yeah, you probably want to fix that before you get a total collapse like I did.

[hinkley]

The thing I learned when we fixed our old house up for sale, is that in some municipalities you need a building permit to replace a floor that already exists with a new one. In our case water damage was from a claw foot tub drain, which I had fixed but years after the problem started, so it was in the middle of the floor. The contractor ripped it down to the joists and doubled them, which does not it turns out require a permit.

Sounds like your guy had a similar experience.

[bombcar]

Carefully reading the NEC indicates that loads of electrical tape is permitted way more often than you’d think it should …