Chestershouse, sounds like you have what I have. We took down a raised ceiling too. Ours had 120 or so ugly plastic rectangles that didn't all match. Once down we saw huge ac/heat ducts, uncapped hot electrical wiring, huge open holes that went into the attic, and 8' fluorescent lights. I guess the inspector never looked up. We also found a metal I beam with another wood beam that formed an L shape. They had removed two outside load bearing walls. The wooden beam was resting on ONE 2x4 on one side and bolted to the metal I beam on the other side. 3 out of 4 bolts had sheared off and the last bolt was really bent. That one bent bolt was holding up our roof. I am thinking paying for an inspection before purchase is not worth the money. I can walk around flipping switches on and off! LOL ( I know inspectors do more than that, but not where I live.) By the way, we have a drain in a closet. Used to be for a furnace, but don't know what it was before that. It was on an outside wall. Getting rid of all this "ugly" has been very educational. GW members have been instrumental in helping me. By the way, check out the amount of expensive oak in the ceiling grid. We reused all of it.

Your mess sounds a lot like what my husband and I got ourselves into. But we knew we would eventually gut the entire house when we started, and planned it out in stages. We also planned for about a year before starting. Here is the floor plan we had when we bought the home. This is close to what we have now - the dining room and den were switched, and the layout in the two bathrooms isn't quite as shown. This includes an addition - mostly to add a basement area with an access from inside the house. We started in the fall of 2004 with moving the front door, then rearranging the laundry room and sectioning off for an entry way. Then we put in the patio door and gutted what was the dining room. We also put in a wood burning stove In March of 2005 we started on the addition. Once we had the addition buttoned up and re-roofed most of the house, we got back to work on converting the dining room into the new kitchen. We had to do this as the new bathroom was going where the kitchen had been. The old bathroom had to be removed before we could open up the house to the new addition. Because we knew we would be under construction for quite a while, we just cut the old cabinets and made them fit in the new room. In the late summer of 2005 we started gutting out the old kitchen and building the new bathroom. We had to leave the sink in place until we got the floor opened up so we could run the plumbing for the new sink location - that was not fun. We converted a closet into the entry way into the bathroom. Discovered the whole north wall had rot problem so we rebuilt the part where the bathroom would go Then we finished the new bath and had it working by thanksgiving of 2004. The next step was tearing out the old bathroom and opening up the wall to the new addition. Because of high water table problems, our addition is 2' higher than the existing structure. To make it work we vaulted the ceiling in what had been the old kitchen. First we had to rebuild the rest of the north wall - this was in December of 2005 Spent the rest of the winter working on finishing up the addition and our new dining room. In spring of 2006 we decided it was time to finish the roofing project. This included tearing off two layers of shingles and one of cedar shakes. We build a "cold roof" over the old roof to help with venting and insulation. Once that was done we finished working on the den (what looks like the dining room in the picture. And another wall to fix. This was August of 2006 Since we could not leave things open for the winter, I temporarily resided the rest of the house. We had planned on taking a break, but our son decided to move out a year early (he is in college) and with him gone, we could start on the 2 story part of the house. So in June of 2007 I started gutting that part of the house (My husband does not do demo work well LOL!). The bad part is we had to move everything out of that area into other parts of the house. Our bed is currently in the den - open to the kitchen. By October I had it all gutted and ready to fix up. We both took a week off work and got as much done as we could. This section of the house also had some serious damage. We had to jack up the north wall 3" on one end about about 5" on the other - Once we started we could not quit - got it all back supported around 3am. We rebuilt the east and west wall, put in new floor joists and put in new windows. But this meant taking off the siding I put on the fall before. We didn't have it quite done before we had to go back to work - my husband was working 6.5 hours away at the time. He was not home very much. Once we got the lower level of the exterior walls done, we started on the upper level. We wanted to get this all done before the cold weather started LOL! We finally had the exterior done and I got everything resided (for real this time). Then we got to work on the interior walls. We moved the old, steep stairway and built one that is safe to use. We inset the end wall of the kitchen into the main bedroom to make more room for the fridge and more shelves. We've got it all sheetrocked and will be painting this weekend. I'm excited - I may have a bedroom again before March! We still have the front porch to add. The final thing we will do is finishing up in the kitchen. That will be a winter project when my husband is layed off for the winter. We plan on making our own cabinets, and have been exploring different ideas. We may got with concrete counter tops, but have not decided yet - I still have time! In all this, we hired an excavator to put in the new septic system and dig for the addition basement. We hired the electric company to reroute the incoming electrical power to underground. But everything else we have done ourselves. This was not our first project, but by far our most ambitious. The entire plumbing and electrical in the house has been replaced, and new insulation has been installed. My husband has told me I will need a new husband if I ever want to try something like this again. Cathy

When building custom, to protect both the homeowner and the electrician from surprises insist on the following and make sure it is in the contract that you will do a job site review as follows. Before any wiring is installed the electrician will tack up every receptacle box, switch box, light fixture Jbox, recessed fixture, etc. Mark all built-in cabinet lines on the floor with chalk line accurately. He can spray the chalk with a clear sealer to make them stay put if needed. Then have a job meeting to approve everything and walk each room while comparing to the plans and notes. This helps the homeowner by making sure things you want make it to the walls and ceiling. It is easy to move something misplaced. It is easy to add something missing. It's the best time to figure out how to handle placement conflicts. It's the best time to argue about having a duplex or quad outlet at your desk. You have the chance to see if you need more of something or less. It eliminates change orders to move things already wired. For the electrician it means he now has an approval to wire the boxes as they are and it is now very clear that if something is wrong it is not his fault. It does mean that the homeowner and electrician must have done their homework but this is the entire point. If you are missing info required for this this then you should not have someone installing electrical. Homeowners tend to not understand that a tile decision they may make weeks from now may conflict with the receptacle and switches next to the sink and blame the electrician for them being in the wrong place. Extra wide moldings are also frequently overlooked. You can modify this if you don't have all of the info by doing as many rooms as possible to get the electrician started while waiting for cabinet plans or whatever. The electrician requires cabinet plans, all appliance specifications, heights of sconces, heights of receptacles and switches at counter-tops, molding dimensions if over sized, and a detailed lighting plan.

Forty-three recessed fixtures? Are you putting them in every single room in the house? My late husband grew up in Bedford and I saw the house in which his family lived for 50 years listed for sale a year ago. I was aghast to see pot lights in the entrance hall, the large LR, the DR, the library. They were SO out of place in this lovely old house. It was a house for tables with lamps in the LR and library, and sconces and a chandelier in the DR and scones in the entrance hall I have no problem with pot lights in kitchens and baths - they work very well there, but not in these other rooms. There's a way to cut a BIG dollar amount out of your budget. One could buy some pretty special lamps for far less than that! I have a friend through my dog club whose husband is a contractor and she does the kitchen design. I was shocked at the "average" cost of a kitchen remodel in Westchester - no SubZero or fancy stoves - just "average" and she said they started at about $100,000. I remembered then why we don't live in Westchester County!