I had some super strong magnets for a craft project and used those to find studs. Worked like a charm.

For context it's an indoor window over a bedroom door, single pane and old building

Jesus Christ.

Who just paints over outlets? That doesn't make them stop being electrically active!

I hate to say it but you picked a winner of a condo.

If you lived in Winnipeg at the time, I can almost guarantee that place was built by Qualico homes. Your assessment of their hiring process is spot on, and has not changed one iota, in all these years.

I also live in an old building and the studs are horizontal rather than vertical. Just a thought

I bought a house last year, and in several rooms I could not find studs on any interior walls. Baffling. I'd find screws, but then when I'd drill I'd find no stud behind it. Weirdest thing.

Finally realized somewhere along the way drywall sheets were hung over the old lath and plaster walls, so the studs are far enough back to be undetectable with magnetism. The screws are just kind of random and only sink into the previous wall, not the studs. I've considered pulling off the drywall to see what's actually going on back there (I assume water damage, as many places in the house have water damage), but then I'd have a bunch of drywall to replace, in addition to everything else that needs doing.

It gets better. One of the washers between the strainer basket and the tailpiece for my kitchen (double) sink started to leak, literally a 50 cent part. Tailpieces were soldered into drain pipe rather than using slip joints, slight angle so fitting screwed onto strainer basin damaged the basin’s threads, had to replace strainer basin. Did you know that between the 1960s and the 1990s, there was a change in strainer basins - they now project roughly 1/2” less below the bottom of the sink? Had to replace both strainer basins and crossover pipe because a 50 cent washer was installed in a manner where it couldn’t be replaced.

All the lights and half the outlets are on one circuit. One of the outlets on that circuit is near floor level where the fridge was when I bought the place (from the cabinets, it looks like that space was intended for the fridge - fridges should be on their own circuit). I moved the fridge to what looked like where the ironing board was supposed to be set up (outlet on its own circuit). Previous owner had painted over many switches/outlets, so I was replacing them. Removed fuse from circuit for “old fridge” outlet, was detaching wires from the outlet. Detached one of the wires from the neutral side, there was a spark. The neutral return for another circuit went into one of the silver screws on this outlet and out of the other. Set up a pigtail - both wires and a short one go into a wire nut, short one goes to new outlet, so any future outlet replacement won’t leave a loose live wire.

Metric? Isn't it just 1/5 of 8 feet?

If nothing else works, drill a small, easily filled hole in the drywall near where you want to mount the shelf supports. Bend a wire hanger (remember those?) to a 90° angle and thread it through the hole.

When you rotate the hanger it will hit the stud and you should be able to tell where the stud is with enough precision to attach a shelf mount to it. Or maybe you'll get lucky with the 1st hole...

If you REALLY need to find studs and nothing else works, do this: pull off the baseboard trim and start drilling holes 2" off the floor- high enough to miss the bottom plate but low enough to be covered by the baseboard. Once you hit one, you should be able to measure out the rest.

Oh, true, yeah.

That doesn't sound like a wall but more of a stand off. Like somebody didn't want to back it with plywood but had some random lengths of metal channel 3/4 in wide. That's some wierd "engineering".

that's all that was behind it? That's what is concerning. If I was faking a plywood based wet wall that's how I'd build it, 1 ft centers (In reality I'd use concrete board like a normal person, but not in this bizarro build), but if it's unsupported like you said, that's just crazy. It's a pretend wall.

I've long been of the opinion that builders just make shit up as they go along if you aren't there to police them every day for their bullshit. My sister had her last house constructed and had to have them tear out basically the entire stairwell because of just imbecilic pants on head stupid contstruction that they never would have caught if they hadn't gone through the building with a fine tooth comb almost every close of day.

It only means anything to have even on centers when you build with sheet goods.

Look for nail pops! :)

Strong magnet is what we always use. Drag it around until you find a nail head

These were not metal studs (note that I listed their dimensions). Metal studs that I’ve seen have roughly the same dimensions as a 2x4.

Hit the studs - use a stud finder - essentially impossible to hit a wire. The wires are never between drywall and stud.

Metal studs are still studs, and can be used as support. They aren't quite as good at holding racking weight, but it's better to be near the upright rather than far from it.

They're super common in commercial construction.

“Advanced” framing

Should be nailed to a stud.

When I build my house/recording studio, I’m going with steel studs. It’ll end up outlasting any of the $10M+ homes I worked on a couple years ago. Tragic.

Strong magnet on a string should find any nails or screws attached to the studs.

>19.2 OC main floor joists, 16 OC main floor studs, 24 OC attic joists and roof rafters

My eye is twitching Hard reading this.

Seems like it, and it's perfectly ok if the bulbs are designed with that wiring config in mind

Of course it's more solid, it's built with real building materials. Modern "16 inches on center" bullshit was drafted based on using the cheapest 1 3/4x2 7/8 softass yellow pine available on clearance from Lowes. Modern homes are a fucking travesty, I've worked on so many $750k McMansions and $300k shitbox condos that are going to be falling apart in 7 years it's depressing. My ex-wife and I had a mail order Sears house built in the 50s that was more astonishingly well built than literally any new house I've worked on in the past decade.

And some newer - it's more efficient to use 2x6s on 24" centers vs 2x4s on 16s, in terms of exposure for exterior walls.

But it's also worth knowing older houses took "on center" measurements as more of a suggestion. I insulated the crawlspace in my 120-year old house last year and the joist spacing was interesting, to say the least.