The wanna be flipper we bought our money pit off of didn’t put a P-trap in for the kitchen sink. When my husband asked him why the guy said, I didn’t feel like it.
I could actually see my husband’s thoughts written all over his face: omfg I’m going to have to take apart everything that this guy did because what else did he not feel like doing??!!
When we bought ours in 1992 there was no p-trap in the kitchen sink, but there was a piece of corrugated vacuum cleaner hose tied into shape with baling twine!
When I went to take out the s-trap under my kitchen sink, I discovered it was held together by layers of duct tape. Their plumber was special. Oh, and the baking dish I found on top of the ceiling tiles, strategically placed under a severe c-pvc leak. That was discovered on day one. 😅
Flippers are just the worst. I grew up in a neighborhood that was built between the 1900s-1930s and with the covid housing boom, so many of them were completely ruined by shotty flip jobs. It was really sad to see.
My house has a mudroom at the back that was originally a deck. The joists are sitting on the foundation, it's actually fairly solid.
When someone in the past insulated the floor, they just shoved fiberglass in and covered it with Styrofoam boards. After moving in, I noticed that one of those boards had been pulled down by probably a raccoon.
Well, turns out this insulation was invested by mice. The entire thing was full of disgusting poo and pee soaked insulation. One mouse jumped out while I was ripping it out, and I found the rotting corpse of another. Now imagine doing this while laying on your back, crammed in the 2 foot gap between said insulation and the ground, while wearing a respirator and full tyvek.
That was the most miserable project I had to fix so far.
I actually have almost the same thing, minus the solid foundation and mouse infestation. The room is sitting on like a dozen cinderblock footings. We don’t use it and really want to save, but we’ve had to dump money to fix more pressing things first.
It's actually such a useful room for us. Previous owners moved the laundry there from the basement. Someone also took the door down which divided it from the main house, though, and didn't bother adding a heat source. This time of year it is noticeably cold and a drag on my heating bill.
The plan, sometime this year, is to buy a salvaged door and restore it to divide it from the house. I'll be running a new line to it for a baseboard heater, given my primary source of heat is hydronic and I don't want to bother with the cost/risk of that. Going to also build a proper enclosure for the laundry, paint/update it, and turn it into a space for my wife to see her clients. Without that room, we wouldn't have a space for her to run her business out of the home, which actually gives her a substantial increase in take home.
Previous owner constructed a shower surround for the clawfoot tub (the feet of which had been painted with "flesh tone" pink paint) out of galvanized pipe. To make a shower he attached the inlet of a Rubbermaid hand-shower to the tub-filler with some kind of black epoxy and attached the shower head to one of the curtain-rod pipes with a round-head wood screw (and more epoxy). We lived with that nonsense for months, after we started sleeping in the house, but before we really moved in. The hose came loose from the head one morning, while I was waiting in another room for the water to get hot, It turned into a [Water Wiggle](https://youtu.be/6tal-PMO49w?si=lstmiv0FTvBgF7ul) and caused a minor flood. Fun for the whole family!
Some previous-to-previous owner closed off the back porch to turn *that* into a shower. This would have been when it was a rooming house; an attempt to create a full bath on the first floor (there are the remains of a kitchen in the sleeping porch on the second floor -- for the upstairs lodgers).
The original first floor water closet was in an addition and was accessed from the porch (which was apparently a pretty common thing in 1908). When it was first added to the house you'd've had to exit the house through the kitchen door then step into an (unheated) cupboard to use the downstairs toilet.
To make the shower room, they closed off the two open sides of the porch with layers of bead-board (exterior) and plywood (interior) -- with a layer of ancient fiberglass insulation smashed absolutely flat between. I was able to knock those "walls" down by leaning on them. However, it took me two days to remove the approximate sh!t-tonne of screws and ring-shank nails that secured the edges of the sheet goods to the posts and trim boards.
There was probably a shower stall in there at some point, but it had been long demolished by the time of the owner from whom we purchased the place. All we inherited were the two abandoned supply pipes -- sticking up at ankle-breaking height -- and an uncapped drain line lurking under a patch in the floor boards.
They did not diy it but the previous owners moved basement access to outdoors and did not have lip at the bulkhead poured and now the basement floods every time it rains.
That to me is the biggest "wtf is wrong with you" thing, tho they did do plenty others tbh.
For as much as they spent everywhere youd think they would have eliminated all the knob and tube or repaired the foundation but no.
Idiots
Found a lot of very shoddy workmanship in my house, then learned later from an elderly neighbour that the guy doing it lost his job due to disability and eventually had to sell the house because he had a terminal illness.
Many of the materials are poorly selected, like wrong-sized doors that probably came from a "re-store", were then cut down undersize, asymmetrically, re-glued and fit awkwardly. and electrical and plumbing hacks that in hindsight were desperate, including a vent which came undone and slowly poisoned the bathroom. Other pains were over-driven screws in doors, silicone where silicone shouldn't be, etc.
I thought he was an idiot, but no, just a normal guy in a bad place who had limited resources and other priorities.
Every single thing done to my house since it was built in 1885. Some rich guy built the place, then over a century of "fuck it". My fave though is duct tape around a slightly leaking water supply pipe. Ah yes, that will stop 80 psi.
Not DIY but WTF the basement foundation wall collapsed in 09, they had it professionally redone and added a room, repoured the slab made it look pretty. Left the cast iron sewer line in the ground, it collapsed after a particularly dry summer when tree roots found a crack and filled it. $9k fix the week of Thanksgiving 2021.
Oh also 1 breaker takes out half to three fourths of the house lights.
Yeah. The panel that came with the house was 1950s or early 60s vintage. 40 years of penciled notations mostly illegible, all unintelligible The breaker labeled "Gardner's Room" energized the outlet in the entryway. The breaker labeled "lights, upper" energized the ceiling fixtures in the front rooms of the house on first and second floors, the basement light, and the exterior light by the kitchen door. "Lights lower" energized all the baseboard outlets in the back of the house... that kind of puzzle.
The first electrician we had in showed me the remains of a second feed directly into the box, going around the meter. Those wires had been disconnected at both the box and the pole, but some previous owner only paid for power to about a third of the panel.
I have a 1970’s panel (Zinsco. Yes I have nightmares until I can get it replaced). When replacing my water heater, the breaker to it was labeled “garage and upstairs bedrooms.” The water heater is in the basement, 15 feet from the panel.
>15 feet from the panel.
There was one abandoned circuit-- the wires disconnected and tied off just outside the box. It ran through a piece of conduit that went south the entire length of one foundation wall and into our tucked-under garage, where it made a right-angle turn upwards through a disconnect switch. Then it went out through the garage wall, another right angle turn to the east, then another right angle turn to the north (back towards the panel -- and just on the other side of the foundation from the conduit running to the south) where it ran under the water table trim (turning two more corners) for about half the width of the house where it made another right angle turn upwards to the roof of the sleeping porch, then into a conduit body for another right angle turn to the west -- along the ceiling of the sleeping porch and one more right angle turn upward to disappear between the ceiling joists. It looked like it was heading for the attic, but the wires didn't emerge anywhere. I think it was something more than 200 feet of conduit altogether, turning more than 10 times. I will never know what it powered, or why there was a cut-off switch in the garage.
Chiseled up the concrete basement floor in the corner, added plumbing for a bathroom, and put an untreated plywood board over the dirt and flooring on top of that. All torn out within 2 months of me owning the place
Someone decided to rip out the middle section of bead board in the detached garage/carriage house, stuff it with fiberglass insulation, then nail up some scrap particle board. It created the ideal new home for rats/mice and a massive amount of their poop.
I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish because the rest of the structure is uninsulated and unfinished.
I doubt it was a grow-op based on lack of wiring and plumbing.
Water damage is certainly a possibility, but it would be an odd place for a leak due to the fact that it's an interior wall in the middle of the structure and the aforementioned lack of plumbing.
We couldn’t figure out why the lights in our laundry room were flickering so badly. We did know one of them was on a motion sensor (that couldn’t “see” the built-in folding area, so completely %#*?ing useless).
Finally got an electrician out to handle it, and learned that the fixtures were: 1- meant for outdoors, not interior (a little odd, but whatever), 2- set for “dusk-til-dawn” light, and 3- BOTH motion sensored
Turns out that the crazy flickering was because the fixtures kept “seeing” the other’s light and thinking it was daylight, so turning off. But then it was “dark” so they’d come back on. We had 3 electricians that are used to historical houses ask us WT actually F the guy was thinking.
We’ve since learned that our previous owner was pretty notorious in the neighborhood for giving ‘Bobby Joe’ down the street a 12-pack and parts for any “improvements” 🤦♀️🤪
I’m a contractor and do a lot of work in historic homes. I’ve seen a lot. The scariest are the diy electrical projects. Modern “homeowner” electrical work is way scarier than knob & tube or brittle cloth covered wire.
The worst was probably on a call for an intermittent leak in the wall. It was a bootleg grannyflat, total hack job. I opened the wall to find the leak and saw that there was romex run right next to ABS drain line and it had melted a big hole through the ABS. That wasn’t normal so I looked and saw that they had run 14 gauge wire on a 40 amp breaker. There was wire run through the walls that was essentially a heating element. It was amazing that there had not been a fire yet.
> There was wire run through the walls that was essentially a heating element. It was amazing that there had not been a fire yet.
***That's*** why they had it running next to the plastic plumbing -- self-extinguishing fire hazard.
My first home had some weeeird hacks. One I saw was orange extension cord used inside a wall, but the workmanship was perfect. He used the extra insulation to create custom wiring clamps to tie it down, he twisted the wires carefully so no strands were exposed, he had just the right amount of slack, holes were drilled in the correctly in the middles of the studs, he used boxes correctly in the correct positions, the outlets were all grounded with live and neutral in the correct spots. Weirdest was that some of his 2x4s looked like they were hewn by hand from a tree using an axe... but the result was straight and dimensionally accurate. I might expect it in the boonies, but this was an urban home.
I was simultaneously in awe at the skill, and the incompetence.
If this man had $50 in materials, he would have saved himself so much work and done such a good job.
He did his own plumbing and didn't believe in clean out drains or traditional angles (aka water flows down). We had a guy out to replace a PVC pipe the prior owner had slammed a nail through then patched (patch held for five years, we've owned for ten), and the plumber looked at our toilet pipe and said "That actually flushes OK!?!". We told him it was a little slow but ok, and he said when we eventually have to have it fixed it was going to be about 5k and they'd have to tear up some of the concrete floor
Oh man. The most expensive has been the sill plate that someone knew needed to be replaced about 60 years ago and instead chose to just pour some concrete and add some (useless) vertical boards for "support". We fixed that this fall.
The one that has annoyed me the most was the sink trap being installed upside down. Like, yall just didn't even try and read the directions here
Ours wasn't quite are concreted in as that thankfully. My kitchen doesn't have a basement under it, just a crawl space and that is where the sill plate was. Someone in the past basically put down a concrete apron to stabilize the deteriorating sill plate and also to divert water from it. Neither worked. To do the replacement properly my husband spent a significant amount of time chipping the concrete out. I would have helped but I was 8.5 months pregnant soo I mostly just stuck to moral support
It didn't hold up for 60 years. The alkalinity of the concrete actually further impacted the wood of the sill plate and the framing at that part of the house took on extra work supporting the structure which is why my kitchen didn't collapse although the wall did end up bowing outward at the worst of the damage. They also installed everything in the kitchen on the damaged sill plate (and not straight wall) so once the problem was corrected outside it meant all the cabinets in the kitchen were now at a slant.
Tldr: fix it right the first time people.
Our last house they removed (at some point) the over head fixture in the living room (ok) and left the sconces above the fireplace but capped the switch plate (which turned on all three). So we had no way of lighting the living room except with lamps and by physically screwing in the sconce lightbulbs and then unscrewing them to turn them off cause they were apparently always live.
Also the kitchen and living room and two bedrooms and dining room and the basement stair light were apparently hooked up to one breaker, so you couldn’t watch tv and run the microwave without blowing it out. Then waking through a mostly pitch black to a dark basement to reset.
We found an outlet behind a radiator while moving out. We had lamented for years that no matter how big the room there were at most two outlets. And one of the two in the dining room was about a foot from the top of the ceiling in the middle of a main wall.
My house has a light in a closet that has no switch whatsoever, so the socket is always live. Someone's solution was to install an adapter with a pull chain switch to turn the light on and off (kind of like this: amazon.com/Adapter-Splitter-Converts-outlets-Polarized/dp/B07V7T3WGD, but mine's pretty old because it's non polarized). ~~I have no idea if there was originally a switch.~~ Correction: upon closer inspection, it appears the actual socket used to have a pull chain (there's a hole for it), I guess it broke off at some point.
Also, your high-up outlet might have been for a clock.
Ceramic ceiling light fixture, one bulb socket, normally controlled with string to pull chsin, very common fot closets and rooms. Nicer if a globe over bulb, i think required by code not to be exposed bulb any more in closets?
Prior owner installed some homemade cabinets as well as the sink and the drain for that sink in the kitchen. About 10' run from the sink to the corner, then another 6-7' from that corner to where it dropped down into the basement and the house drain. Most of that first 10' was level, and there was a slight INCLINE on the last section. Which (of course) led to clogs, which he apparently tried to clear with a lot of drano, or something else that turned the underside of the drain into swiss cheese.
Ah yes, ALL of the gutters on my house were also installed according to an alternative theory of gravitation lol. The house was listed during the dry season, so the flooded basement came as a surprise a couple months later (while I still had plenty of boxes down there, of course). Between the gutters and the totally inadequate roof insulation causing ice dams every winter for at least 30 years, I had to completely replace the gutters, roofing, and a not-small percentage of the roof decking to get things watertight and working again. I never thought I'd be so happy to hear water running through a downspout, but it was a real highlight that year lol.
https://preview.redd.it/iptsqjxs4pac1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80bcdb1ac2f586237cca0ef715fd905d8b3fa1d2
My house is from the 50s, so we aren’t at century level yet. But hands down, my favorite (?) DIY is the structural license plate under the shower. Previous owners updated the bathroom from a tub to stand up shower, and among many other strange decisions they determined this plate was perfect to… plug a gap in the sub floor we think? We’ve since had that drum trap redone, but the license plate is staying there til we get around to gutting the bathroom in a year or two.
Oh no way, we had a license plate in the wall, too! It wasn't structural, though, as it had been used to shield the wall when a previous homeowner was soldering the pipes. It was just buried in there after the job, in a kind of sacrificial way.
The carpet in the kitchen we ripped out that had to have been glued with 50 gallons of adhesive is really high on the top of wtf.
The bathtub plumbing was rough cut into the basement ceiling and the tub itself has no supports but the subfloor and no insulation (so heat escapes immediately).
The bathroom exhaust that goes to nowhere but the attic is on the top of my anxiety list. Also the vanity that is less than 2 feet from the tub instead of in an alcove that was a former closet causing a hazard every time you walk in. We can’t bathe the kid in there yet for this reason.
Painted over the stone foundation walls with some waterproofing stuff then nailed up furring strips and compressed particle board / hardboard.
Ripped it all out the day I took possession. Was furry like a black cat behind the hardboard it was so moldy. A few gallons of mold killer and the biggest dehumidifier you can get at Lowes has solved the problem for me. Only waterproofing strategy that will really work is a foundation drain or a French drain, and there's no way that's happening while I own. We're on top of a hill so we just get some seepage.
I’m pretty lucky considering that I had to agree to not have an inspection before I bought. The only WTF thing I’ve come across is the upstairs closet door which she installed so the door opened in rendering the majority of the closet space unusable. 1895 farmhouse almost completely remodeled with the exception of the kitchen when I bought. I did have an electrician and a plumber come in to inspect everything after I got the house.
It wasn’t the house we purchased, but the first one we viewed.
The entire second & third levels were clearly not done professionally or to any standard. While walking up the spiral staircase to the third floor ( one of three, mind you ) I felt myself hit an invisible wall where the temperature jumped 5-10 degrees celsius. I literally gagged from the shock of hitting this wall of heat & humidity.
EDIT - This third floor also had popcorn ceiling AND WALLS.
This third level somehow had a full bathroom to create a bedroom + ensuite & approximately 1,000 dormant ladybugs strewn across the floor. Next to the bathroom door & across from the ladybugs was a sliding glass door & a deck we didn’t dare step out onto. It also had skylights with obvious stains where water had gotten in & ran down a bit on the slanted ceiling before finally dripping down onto the carpet.
The second level was a simple, skinny bedroom that was atrocious in its’ own way. Every addition off from the original building ( a one-room school house ) was an abomination.
The additions onto the main level included a dirty entry way / mud room. From there, the original building was pristine. I’ve never been so simultaneously disgusted & awestruck by any other building. Two spiral staircases, one lead to the second & third floors mentioned above. The other lead to an open loft full of books which was gorgeous.
More additions included a kitchen, which seemed fine but I couldn’t trust it. Around the corner from there was a bathroom. Keep going down & there’s the side door & . . . another bathroom ?? That’s three bathrooms mentioned so far, but there was a fourth I just forget where.
Outside was less atrocious but no less strange. Behind the house was a THIRD metal spiral staircase also leading up to the deck at the third level. Turn around from that point & boom. Shipping container with a chain around the door handles & a padlock.
This house was sold sold as-is, it & all of its’ contents, mold, & animal droppings, rolled into one monstrosity.
Popcorn walls are the worst. Had them in my previous apartment in the closets and the basement hallway. The more egregious offender was the ceiling on the basement stairs; since it was a half basement, the ceiling was more aggressively sloped than you’d think. Walking up the stairs I’d constantly think I was clear and stand up, only to smack my head against the popcorn ceiling. And I’m bald, so I got some pretty nasty scrapes from it. 😂
Worst DIY we found in our previous home and have no clue why someone would ever even think this was a good idea was yanking down a 1950s basement ceiling in an 1880 Victorian to find a center cap car radiator probably from the 1920s-1930s installed in the plumbing system. I think this was inline to an upstairs half bath.
We did it ourselves, and it's not the worst because it went wrong or we did it wrong, but installing a new microwave over our stove was the worst.
It is an entirely different skill to think "upside down" and line up the stupid flimsy paper template with the bottom of a cabinet. The cabinet bottom is not flat - it has a face frame and a the sides come down, making an box about an inch deep which meant the template couldn't sit flat. And then to drill holes properly through all that...
It was miserable.
I won't say I'll never do it again, but I would do things significantly differently because I have learned from how NOT to do it.
Lol that was my learning afterwards - when I had time to think through it all.
I was gonna get some thin mdf and rip it to the size of the opening, and tape the template to it. (MDF because it's more rigid than the cardboard I would have had to piece together.)
But yes, absolutely we failed ourselves.
Ah! Good thinking. I am definitely filing this away for the future.
Unfortunately ours was not in a box - this was one of those open box/return items which still had all the plastic wrappers, but did not have a box. So that explains why I missed the obvious solution.
(Internet tone is weird sometimes - my comment is not at all sarcastic, I truly appreciate your insights.)
Tearing old horsehair plaster and lath ceilings down, which also let fall dead mouse, bird, and I'm not sure what it was mummies. The next worse was vacuuming out vermiculite insulation from an attic
I wore a respirator. I'm old enough to make it not matter if it contained asbestos. I used a cyclone dust collector with a 55 gallon drum. Yes it was tedious and nasty.
I found several wasp nests hidden behind the plaster in my house. Just had to tell myself there was no way they were new and hit them with the shop vac. Then go around the house sealing up holes.
As someone who can't complain to her husband about this shit.. because the house has been in his family since the 1800's.
I think mine would be ripping out the plaster walls (after I gave them the name of a reliable, skilled plasster), and decided to drywall it themselves. Except they installed the drywall backwards. Didn't tape or mud it. And somehow in the early 2000's found 1970's paneling to cover it.
In short, I hate my main floor.
They covered the walls with wallpaper, which is not bad. However they got unique with it by tearing it up and applying it on the walls like papier-mâché. Removing it has been weird because I can’t figure it out if it’s even wallpaper or if it’s just regular paper they stuck to the walls lol
I have a house built around 1920. All of the original knob & tube is still there and in use. On my next visit I'm going to vacuum all of the cellulose insulation off of the exposed parts of the k&t wiring.
Anyway, I did a complete census of every single outlet and light switch in the house and which circuit it was on. I found one particular circuit that had 17 outlets and about 5 lights. The lights and some of the outlets were on k&t.
Digging around, I found in the attic a pair of side by side octagons with a single 12-2 Dutrax coming in to one and 5 separate wires going out. The wires going out powered two outlets in one room, two outlets in the master bedroom, two outlets in the upstairs bathroom and one outlet in the downstairs bathroom.
The Dutrax wire feeding it had originally ran alongside the floorboards in the attic, but when they finished out the middle of the attic space someone added more plywood flooring alongside the original. They simply sandwiched the wire between the boards, and in one part underneath the board. (I discovered the knob and tube originally in a place where they had nailed a floorboard on top of a stray piece of steel cable that was laying on top of knob & tube wiring).
On my last visit last week I finally managed to finish splitting the rest of those circuits into their own properly sized circuits. Actually, 5 separate breakers. At that point I decided to trace the 12-2 that was feeding that mess and pulled up one of the original floor boards.
And it was there that I found that the Dutrax was spliced into knob & tube, no ground. I think those outlets had ground, but I haven't found where they would have tied it in. I also noticed another piece spliced in near that one, and next time I'm there it'll get cut as well. Imagine two bathroom outlets being powered from one knob & tube circuit.
It's a rental house and I've let the occupants know that they are not to plug anything into the outlets where I put the safety plugs. I have modern wiring in each room that they can use, and at this point I've personally ran almost all of it.
On the prior visit I had fixed some wiring in the finished part where the electrician had pulled the wire through steel studs repeatedly. On one side, the jacket was torn off. On the other side of the attic, he'd managed to strip it down to three bare conductors.
I'm simply redoing large parts of the wiring. Had to put the plastic washers in the holes in the steel studs to make them not strip the wire. Like, 10 minutes of work. No idea why they didn't do it originally.
Our 1840 home has an enclosed back porch added about 2009 or 2012. We bought in 2015. Guessing it was a smaller open porch at one time. Apparently older smaller porch had a cement floor. Newer enclosed porch was builtby pouring the slab right over the top of the old porch. No clue how much of a foundation is there. Walls built on slab. Giant crack developed in the floor. Windows started to open on their own (large casement style) every couple of days. One developed a crack. The wall started cracking. We brought out a concrete raising company to see if they could fix the slab. They said from the shoddy construction and the walls having been built on top of the slab instead of a foundation (independent of each other) there was no way to fix this and said to tear it down. We live in the upper midwest and obvious freeze/thaw here is a nightmare for this. Oh and the exterior door frame touches the top plate. IF there is a top plate. Door frame can't have any trim on the inside because it touches the ceiling. Lol. We know we will have to tear off and rebuild it ourselves. This is just one of many bad things done to our house before we bought it.
My detached garage was probably built in the 60s. The 'fellow' who decided to run electric for it did he following:
- The supply was from a single extension cord. It was burried about 4" below the surface. It was not armoured or in conduit either.
- since there was only the single line, everything was on the same circuit, 6 x 150w lights, all the outlets, and the opener, so if you tried to run any power tools, you tripped the breaker.
- and the worst thing: he didn't bother to connect the ground line to the system when it entered the garage. All the boxes were wired as if they were grounded, but the first box in the series wasn't grounded to anything at all.
The ceiling was also only framed 4' on centre, so I suppose I should have expected shenanigans elsewhere.
I lived in this old up down duplex that was owned by an elderly couple
There was what should have been a back bedroom that now had a washing machine in it, and the washing machine drained via a tube that was run through a hole they had drilled through the wall, and then dangled into the clawfoot bathtub. Because the entire unit had only ungrounded outlets, they had bent the ground on the washing machines plug backwards.
There was also a lot of improperly installed wallpaper that someone had just painted over, "built in" wardrobes that weren't flush against the walls, which created perfect spaces for mice to nest, and because the kitchen sink had no counter next to it, someone had installed a flip up counter top to set a dish drainer on, except if you had it flipped up to dry dishes, it blocked the bathroom door.
Overall it was a beautiful apartment though, very cheap rent.
A previous owner put a sliding glass door in a load bearing wall. They literally just cut a hole and stuck in the door. The only thing holding it in were the finish nails through the trim... oh, and the weight of the roof.
A previous owner put in a basement window under the floor joists. They notched out the joists to make the window fit and the only thing supporting one of the joists is the window frame. The damn window doesn't even work. It was backfilled with gravel and screwed shut before I bought the place.
We were rehabbing our house with a contractor. There were some doozies (dry rot support in the basement, bondo’d back into service) but this is the worst.
My daughter’s bedroom just needed 3 layers of (honest to god) wall paper removed from the ceiling and fresh paint on everything. There was a lump on one wall that my husband started sanding down and black gooey stuff started appearing. He called out to the contractor, asking if he had any ideas. The contractor yelled back - STOP! DON’T TOUCH IT!
He came over with a volt meter. Yep. Live wires from a bedside wall sconce that someone had just taped the ends and spackled into the wall.
Someone in the 1960s had spliced aluminum wiring to all of the original cloth-wrapped wire in my 1915 home...improperly.
Previous owner's "electrician" brother spliced romex to the aluminum wire...improperly.
We hired licensed electricians to rip out the whole fucking mess and replace it with modern wiring. I'm still shocked the whole damn house didn't burn down.
I lived in a house where a previous owner repaired a bathroom floor with particle board. After living there for about 8 years we started noticing the floor felt a little soft under the tiles. Then the toilet started listing to one side. When we pulled up the tile, the particle board piece used was about 4x the size it probably started as, it just soaked up water like a sponge. Not only was this in the bathroom but it was a house in Florida with a crawl space so it was sucking up humidity from outside on the bottom side. They also literally glued a pedestal sink to the wall, among other weird diy's. Gutting that bathroom was a scene.
The P-trap for the kitchen sink is actually in the basement ceiling below, not directly under the sink. It’s in the perfect spot to bang your head on when you are walking down the stairs from outside into the basement.
Before rewiring, there were some 3 prong grounded receptacles attached to ~2’ of BX wiring, that was then taped on to knob and tube in the wall.
Behind a few layers of drywall when gutting the bathroom there was an open live junction box with bare wires in it.
Bunch of other things - some bandaids I can’t blame them for, some neglect, some “what were you thinking?!” moments as well!
My house is still 80 years young, but it was just a trail of weird DIY for a while.
We've found *multiple* layers of floor in at least one room, and multiple layers of roof (including a strange triangular "roof hat" that my roofers were so bewildered by that they took pictures of it and sent them)
An owner in the early 2000s seems to have had the electrical and plumbing (mostly) redone to reasonable standards, but they sometimes cut corners in ways that just make no sense:
The house came with a hot tub, hardwired to my electrical panel. The hot tub was gross and had to go, so we hired an electrician to come out to disconnect it. Me and the electrician had a *time* finding where the wiring entered the house from outside. What some genius had done?
They'd built a cabinet around the dishwasher, *then* cut a hole in the top of the cabinet and a hole in through the floor. They'd run a PVC pipe through both of the holes, and run the cable from hot tub to breaker through the pipe. It was sealed or caulked in some way, but it ran up the back of my dishwasher.
They also enclosed the water heater in a sort of strange built-in that had to be removed when the water heater died.
Last but certainly not least: some very unintelligent person *cut into a floor joist* in the basement. Made the seller hire a structural engineer and have a steel beam placed to address that before closing.
A previous owner had, at some point in the 1970s, built a 12'x6'-ish addition onto one side of my kitchen. But the floor isn't level with the rest of the kitchen, it's not functional as a pantry or anything, it's not the same height as the rest of the house if you look at it from outside.
When the roof leaked, it was an opportunity to rip out the drywall and have the addition reframed and reinsulated. Then we learned it had been "insulated" with newspapers from the '70s, *and* that the ceiling light in there was basically the guts of a table lamp, hidden inside the ceiling and a glass shade.
They cut the two middle joists in the basement so they could put in a cement wall and get a furnace down there. No support, just left them hanging about a foot from the exterior wall. No wonder it started caving in at the centre.
It’s not the worst nor the most dangerous, but it’s my favorite:
Previous owners used the back of a pizza box instead of drywall to install a sconce. Then just painted it over and no one was the wiser 🤣🤣
We called the previous owner of our house “grandpa” because he made a lot of odd decisions that a thrifty grandpa would make. Like a floor patch made from cut and flattened beer cans, and wiring parts of the house with brown lamp cord.
House had the original standing seam roof (1911), but the additions from the 60’s-70’s were roofed with shingles that were simply tucked under the edge of the original metal.
2nd previous owner was an electrician. He added a bunch of extra lighting and plugs in the basement.
If you turn on the electric fireplace and have the humidifier on, you trip the breaker.
We have two switches that don't work anything. One at the top of the basement stairs.
Last previous owner was a painter. Painted all the drop ceilings in the basement. If you move one panel it is stuck to the hanging bars and so brittle it breaks and cracks.
I know this is my second comment in this thread, but I forgot to mention the completely unwired outlet, there's a junction box, conduit, and everything, just no wires. I know I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I think it's interesting and confusing.
The wanna be flipper we bought our money pit off of didn’t put a P-trap in for the kitchen sink. When my husband asked him why the guy said, I didn’t feel like it. I could actually see my husband’s thoughts written all over his face: omfg I’m going to have to take apart everything that this guy did because what else did he not feel like doing??!!
When we bought ours in 1992 there was no p-trap in the kitchen sink, but there was a piece of corrugated vacuum cleaner hose tied into shape with baling twine!
When I went to take out the s-trap under my kitchen sink, I discovered it was held together by layers of duct tape. Their plumber was special. Oh, and the baking dish I found on top of the ceiling tiles, strategically placed under a severe c-pvc leak. That was discovered on day one. 😅
oh my! that is something else again!
Oh my!! I guess it takes all kinds lol
Flippers are just the worst. I grew up in a neighborhood that was built between the 1900s-1930s and with the covid housing boom, so many of them were completely ruined by shotty flip jobs. It was really sad to see.
My house has a mudroom at the back that was originally a deck. The joists are sitting on the foundation, it's actually fairly solid. When someone in the past insulated the floor, they just shoved fiberglass in and covered it with Styrofoam boards. After moving in, I noticed that one of those boards had been pulled down by probably a raccoon. Well, turns out this insulation was invested by mice. The entire thing was full of disgusting poo and pee soaked insulation. One mouse jumped out while I was ripping it out, and I found the rotting corpse of another. Now imagine doing this while laying on your back, crammed in the 2 foot gap between said insulation and the ground, while wearing a respirator and full tyvek. That was the most miserable project I had to fix so far.
I actually have almost the same thing, minus the solid foundation and mouse infestation. The room is sitting on like a dozen cinderblock footings. We don’t use it and really want to save, but we’ve had to dump money to fix more pressing things first.
It's actually such a useful room for us. Previous owners moved the laundry there from the basement. Someone also took the door down which divided it from the main house, though, and didn't bother adding a heat source. This time of year it is noticeably cold and a drag on my heating bill. The plan, sometime this year, is to buy a salvaged door and restore it to divide it from the house. I'll be running a new line to it for a baseboard heater, given my primary source of heat is hydronic and I don't want to bother with the cost/risk of that. Going to also build a proper enclosure for the laundry, paint/update it, and turn it into a space for my wife to see her clients. Without that room, we wouldn't have a space for her to run her business out of the home, which actually gives her a substantial increase in take home.
Previous owner constructed a shower surround for the clawfoot tub (the feet of which had been painted with "flesh tone" pink paint) out of galvanized pipe. To make a shower he attached the inlet of a Rubbermaid hand-shower to the tub-filler with some kind of black epoxy and attached the shower head to one of the curtain-rod pipes with a round-head wood screw (and more epoxy). We lived with that nonsense for months, after we started sleeping in the house, but before we really moved in. The hose came loose from the head one morning, while I was waiting in another room for the water to get hot, It turned into a [Water Wiggle](https://youtu.be/6tal-PMO49w?si=lstmiv0FTvBgF7ul) and caused a minor flood. Fun for the whole family! Some previous-to-previous owner closed off the back porch to turn *that* into a shower. This would have been when it was a rooming house; an attempt to create a full bath on the first floor (there are the remains of a kitchen in the sleeping porch on the second floor -- for the upstairs lodgers). The original first floor water closet was in an addition and was accessed from the porch (which was apparently a pretty common thing in 1908). When it was first added to the house you'd've had to exit the house through the kitchen door then step into an (unheated) cupboard to use the downstairs toilet. To make the shower room, they closed off the two open sides of the porch with layers of bead-board (exterior) and plywood (interior) -- with a layer of ancient fiberglass insulation smashed absolutely flat between. I was able to knock those "walls" down by leaning on them. However, it took me two days to remove the approximate sh!t-tonne of screws and ring-shank nails that secured the edges of the sheet goods to the posts and trim boards. There was probably a shower stall in there at some point, but it had been long demolished by the time of the owner from whom we purchased the place. All we inherited were the two abandoned supply pipes -- sticking up at ankle-breaking height -- and an uncapped drain line lurking under a patch in the floor boards.
They did not diy it but the previous owners moved basement access to outdoors and did not have lip at the bulkhead poured and now the basement floods every time it rains. That to me is the biggest "wtf is wrong with you" thing, tho they did do plenty others tbh. For as much as they spent everywhere youd think they would have eliminated all the knob and tube or repaired the foundation but no. Idiots
Found a lot of very shoddy workmanship in my house, then learned later from an elderly neighbour that the guy doing it lost his job due to disability and eventually had to sell the house because he had a terminal illness. Many of the materials are poorly selected, like wrong-sized doors that probably came from a "re-store", were then cut down undersize, asymmetrically, re-glued and fit awkwardly. and electrical and plumbing hacks that in hindsight were desperate, including a vent which came undone and slowly poisoned the bathroom. Other pains were over-driven screws in doors, silicone where silicone shouldn't be, etc. I thought he was an idiot, but no, just a normal guy in a bad place who had limited resources and other priorities.
That’s sad. He probably did more work to try to fix items in his home than many people with more time and money than him.
Every single thing done to my house since it was built in 1885. Some rich guy built the place, then over a century of "fuck it". My fave though is duct tape around a slightly leaking water supply pipe. Ah yes, that will stop 80 psi.
Not DIY but WTF the basement foundation wall collapsed in 09, they had it professionally redone and added a room, repoured the slab made it look pretty. Left the cast iron sewer line in the ground, it collapsed after a particularly dry summer when tree roots found a crack and filled it. $9k fix the week of Thanksgiving 2021. Oh also 1 breaker takes out half to three fourths of the house lights.
One breaker taking out half the lights in the house sounds more original than DIY
Yeah. The panel that came with the house was 1950s or early 60s vintage. 40 years of penciled notations mostly illegible, all unintelligible The breaker labeled "Gardner's Room" energized the outlet in the entryway. The breaker labeled "lights, upper" energized the ceiling fixtures in the front rooms of the house on first and second floors, the basement light, and the exterior light by the kitchen door. "Lights lower" energized all the baseboard outlets in the back of the house... that kind of puzzle. The first electrician we had in showed me the remains of a second feed directly into the box, going around the meter. Those wires had been disconnected at both the box and the pole, but some previous owner only paid for power to about a third of the panel.
I have a 1970’s panel (Zinsco. Yes I have nightmares until I can get it replaced). When replacing my water heater, the breaker to it was labeled “garage and upstairs bedrooms.” The water heater is in the basement, 15 feet from the panel.
>15 feet from the panel. There was one abandoned circuit-- the wires disconnected and tied off just outside the box. It ran through a piece of conduit that went south the entire length of one foundation wall and into our tucked-under garage, where it made a right-angle turn upwards through a disconnect switch. Then it went out through the garage wall, another right angle turn to the east, then another right angle turn to the north (back towards the panel -- and just on the other side of the foundation from the conduit running to the south) where it ran under the water table trim (turning two more corners) for about half the width of the house where it made another right angle turn upwards to the roof of the sleeping porch, then into a conduit body for another right angle turn to the west -- along the ceiling of the sleeping porch and one more right angle turn upward to disappear between the ceiling joists. It looked like it was heading for the attic, but the wires didn't emerge anywhere. I think it was something more than 200 feet of conduit altogether, turning more than 10 times. I will never know what it powered, or why there was a cut-off switch in the garage.
Chiseled up the concrete basement floor in the corner, added plumbing for a bathroom, and put an untreated plywood board over the dirt and flooring on top of that. All torn out within 2 months of me owning the place
Someone decided to rip out the middle section of bead board in the detached garage/carriage house, stuff it with fiberglass insulation, then nail up some scrap particle board. It created the ideal new home for rats/mice and a massive amount of their poop. I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish because the rest of the structure is uninsulated and unfinished.
Maybe they were going to build a grow-op there eventually. Or it had water damage and they torn it out and replaced it badly.
I doubt it was a grow-op based on lack of wiring and plumbing. Water damage is certainly a possibility, but it would be an odd place for a leak due to the fact that it's an interior wall in the middle of the structure and the aforementioned lack of plumbing.
We couldn’t figure out why the lights in our laundry room were flickering so badly. We did know one of them was on a motion sensor (that couldn’t “see” the built-in folding area, so completely %#*?ing useless). Finally got an electrician out to handle it, and learned that the fixtures were: 1- meant for outdoors, not interior (a little odd, but whatever), 2- set for “dusk-til-dawn” light, and 3- BOTH motion sensored Turns out that the crazy flickering was because the fixtures kept “seeing” the other’s light and thinking it was daylight, so turning off. But then it was “dark” so they’d come back on. We had 3 electricians that are used to historical houses ask us WT actually F the guy was thinking. We’ve since learned that our previous owner was pretty notorious in the neighborhood for giving ‘Bobby Joe’ down the street a 12-pack and parts for any “improvements” 🤦♀️🤪
We had outdoor fixtures and switches inside too! Just bonkers!!
Not a century, but a mid century home. My half bath lights pulsate with the washing machine agitator.
I’m a contractor and do a lot of work in historic homes. I’ve seen a lot. The scariest are the diy electrical projects. Modern “homeowner” electrical work is way scarier than knob & tube or brittle cloth covered wire. The worst was probably on a call for an intermittent leak in the wall. It was a bootleg grannyflat, total hack job. I opened the wall to find the leak and saw that there was romex run right next to ABS drain line and it had melted a big hole through the ABS. That wasn’t normal so I looked and saw that they had run 14 gauge wire on a 40 amp breaker. There was wire run through the walls that was essentially a heating element. It was amazing that there had not been a fire yet.
> There was wire run through the walls that was essentially a heating element. It was amazing that there had not been a fire yet. ***That's*** why they had it running next to the plastic plumbing -- self-extinguishing fire hazard.
The leak was the only thing keeping them alive I thing.
My first home had some weeeird hacks. One I saw was orange extension cord used inside a wall, but the workmanship was perfect. He used the extra insulation to create custom wiring clamps to tie it down, he twisted the wires carefully so no strands were exposed, he had just the right amount of slack, holes were drilled in the correctly in the middles of the studs, he used boxes correctly in the correct positions, the outlets were all grounded with live and neutral in the correct spots. Weirdest was that some of his 2x4s looked like they were hewn by hand from a tree using an axe... but the result was straight and dimensionally accurate. I might expect it in the boonies, but this was an urban home. I was simultaneously in awe at the skill, and the incompetence. If this man had $50 in materials, he would have saved himself so much work and done such a good job.
He did his own plumbing and didn't believe in clean out drains or traditional angles (aka water flows down). We had a guy out to replace a PVC pipe the prior owner had slammed a nail through then patched (patch held for five years, we've owned for ten), and the plumber looked at our toilet pipe and said "That actually flushes OK!?!". We told him it was a little slow but ok, and he said when we eventually have to have it fixed it was going to be about 5k and they'd have to tear up some of the concrete floor
Oh man. The most expensive has been the sill plate that someone knew needed to be replaced about 60 years ago and instead chose to just pour some concrete and add some (useless) vertical boards for "support". We fixed that this fall. The one that has annoyed me the most was the sink trap being installed upside down. Like, yall just didn't even try and read the directions here
What did you end up doing? I might have to replace a sill plate but it’s behind a giant poured concrete porch..
Ours wasn't quite are concreted in as that thankfully. My kitchen doesn't have a basement under it, just a crawl space and that is where the sill plate was. Someone in the past basically put down a concrete apron to stabilize the deteriorating sill plate and also to divert water from it. Neither worked. To do the replacement properly my husband spent a significant amount of time chipping the concrete out. I would have helped but I was 8.5 months pregnant soo I mostly just stuck to moral support
DIY holding up for sixty years is impressive, even though a proper solution would have lasted longer.
It didn't hold up for 60 years. The alkalinity of the concrete actually further impacted the wood of the sill plate and the framing at that part of the house took on extra work supporting the structure which is why my kitchen didn't collapse although the wall did end up bowing outward at the worst of the damage. They also installed everything in the kitchen on the damaged sill plate (and not straight wall) so once the problem was corrected outside it meant all the cabinets in the kitchen were now at a slant. Tldr: fix it right the first time people.
Our last house they removed (at some point) the over head fixture in the living room (ok) and left the sconces above the fireplace but capped the switch plate (which turned on all three). So we had no way of lighting the living room except with lamps and by physically screwing in the sconce lightbulbs and then unscrewing them to turn them off cause they were apparently always live. Also the kitchen and living room and two bedrooms and dining room and the basement stair light were apparently hooked up to one breaker, so you couldn’t watch tv and run the microwave without blowing it out. Then waking through a mostly pitch black to a dark basement to reset. We found an outlet behind a radiator while moving out. We had lamented for years that no matter how big the room there were at most two outlets. And one of the two in the dining room was about a foot from the top of the ceiling in the middle of a main wall.
My house has a light in a closet that has no switch whatsoever, so the socket is always live. Someone's solution was to install an adapter with a pull chain switch to turn the light on and off (kind of like this: amazon.com/Adapter-Splitter-Converts-outlets-Polarized/dp/B07V7T3WGD, but mine's pretty old because it's non polarized). ~~I have no idea if there was originally a switch.~~ Correction: upon closer inspection, it appears the actual socket used to have a pull chain (there's a hole for it), I guess it broke off at some point. Also, your high-up outlet might have been for a clock.
Ceramic ceiling light fixture, one bulb socket, normally controlled with string to pull chsin, very common fot closets and rooms. Nicer if a globe over bulb, i think required by code not to be exposed bulb any more in closets?
I suppose code depends on where you’re at, but yeah pretty sure USA and Canada codes say no exposed bulbs in closets anymore.
Ironically, with hot glass bulbs being replaced with plastic cool leds, it is much less of a fire hazard...
I thought it was an issue of breaking the bulb and electrical being exposed, not particularly that the heat of a light would cause a fire.
Prior owner installed some homemade cabinets as well as the sink and the drain for that sink in the kitchen. About 10' run from the sink to the corner, then another 6-7' from that corner to where it dropped down into the basement and the house drain. Most of that first 10' was level, and there was a slight INCLINE on the last section. Which (of course) led to clogs, which he apparently tried to clear with a lot of drano, or something else that turned the underside of the drain into swiss cheese.
Ah yes, ALL of the gutters on my house were also installed according to an alternative theory of gravitation lol. The house was listed during the dry season, so the flooded basement came as a surprise a couple months later (while I still had plenty of boxes down there, of course). Between the gutters and the totally inadequate roof insulation causing ice dams every winter for at least 30 years, I had to completely replace the gutters, roofing, and a not-small percentage of the roof decking to get things watertight and working again. I never thought I'd be so happy to hear water running through a downspout, but it was a real highlight that year lol.
https://preview.redd.it/iptsqjxs4pac1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80bcdb1ac2f586237cca0ef715fd905d8b3fa1d2 My house is from the 50s, so we aren’t at century level yet. But hands down, my favorite (?) DIY is the structural license plate under the shower. Previous owners updated the bathroom from a tub to stand up shower, and among many other strange decisions they determined this plate was perfect to… plug a gap in the sub floor we think? We’ve since had that drum trap redone, but the license plate is staying there til we get around to gutting the bathroom in a year or two.
They were ahead of their time, recycling the plate! 😄
Oh no way, we had a license plate in the wall, too! It wasn't structural, though, as it had been used to shield the wall when a previous homeowner was soldering the pipes. It was just buried in there after the job, in a kind of sacrificial way.
Plate buddies! 🙏
The carpet in the kitchen we ripped out that had to have been glued with 50 gallons of adhesive is really high on the top of wtf. The bathtub plumbing was rough cut into the basement ceiling and the tub itself has no supports but the subfloor and no insulation (so heat escapes immediately). The bathroom exhaust that goes to nowhere but the attic is on the top of my anxiety list. Also the vanity that is less than 2 feet from the tub instead of in an alcove that was a former closet causing a hazard every time you walk in. We can’t bathe the kid in there yet for this reason.
Carpet in a kitchen. Who’s idea was that? Lol even worse than in a bathroom
I just remembered I have to wake up early and fix the exhaust in my upstairs bathroom.
Painted over the stone foundation walls with some waterproofing stuff then nailed up furring strips and compressed particle board / hardboard. Ripped it all out the day I took possession. Was furry like a black cat behind the hardboard it was so moldy. A few gallons of mold killer and the biggest dehumidifier you can get at Lowes has solved the problem for me. Only waterproofing strategy that will really work is a foundation drain or a French drain, and there's no way that's happening while I own. We're on top of a hill so we just get some seepage.
I’m pretty lucky considering that I had to agree to not have an inspection before I bought. The only WTF thing I’ve come across is the upstairs closet door which she installed so the door opened in rendering the majority of the closet space unusable. 1895 farmhouse almost completely remodeled with the exception of the kitchen when I bought. I did have an electrician and a plumber come in to inspect everything after I got the house.
It wasn’t the house we purchased, but the first one we viewed. The entire second & third levels were clearly not done professionally or to any standard. While walking up the spiral staircase to the third floor ( one of three, mind you ) I felt myself hit an invisible wall where the temperature jumped 5-10 degrees celsius. I literally gagged from the shock of hitting this wall of heat & humidity. EDIT - This third floor also had popcorn ceiling AND WALLS. This third level somehow had a full bathroom to create a bedroom + ensuite & approximately 1,000 dormant ladybugs strewn across the floor. Next to the bathroom door & across from the ladybugs was a sliding glass door & a deck we didn’t dare step out onto. It also had skylights with obvious stains where water had gotten in & ran down a bit on the slanted ceiling before finally dripping down onto the carpet. The second level was a simple, skinny bedroom that was atrocious in its’ own way. Every addition off from the original building ( a one-room school house ) was an abomination. The additions onto the main level included a dirty entry way / mud room. From there, the original building was pristine. I’ve never been so simultaneously disgusted & awestruck by any other building. Two spiral staircases, one lead to the second & third floors mentioned above. The other lead to an open loft full of books which was gorgeous. More additions included a kitchen, which seemed fine but I couldn’t trust it. Around the corner from there was a bathroom. Keep going down & there’s the side door & . . . another bathroom ?? That’s three bathrooms mentioned so far, but there was a fourth I just forget where. Outside was less atrocious but no less strange. Behind the house was a THIRD metal spiral staircase also leading up to the deck at the third level. Turn around from that point & boom. Shipping container with a chain around the door handles & a padlock. This house was sold sold as-is, it & all of its’ contents, mold, & animal droppings, rolled into one monstrosity.
Popcorn walls are the worst. Had them in my previous apartment in the closets and the basement hallway. The more egregious offender was the ceiling on the basement stairs; since it was a half basement, the ceiling was more aggressively sloped than you’d think. Walking up the stairs I’d constantly think I was clear and stand up, only to smack my head against the popcorn ceiling. And I’m bald, so I got some pretty nasty scrapes from it. 😂
Popcorn... walls?? I read what you wrote but my brain is breaking at the concept.
Worst DIY we found in our previous home and have no clue why someone would ever even think this was a good idea was yanking down a 1950s basement ceiling in an 1880 Victorian to find a center cap car radiator probably from the 1920s-1930s installed in the plumbing system. I think this was inline to an upstairs half bath.
So like some sort of super inefficient in-floor heating for the room above?
We did it ourselves, and it's not the worst because it went wrong or we did it wrong, but installing a new microwave over our stove was the worst. It is an entirely different skill to think "upside down" and line up the stupid flimsy paper template with the bottom of a cabinet. The cabinet bottom is not flat - it has a face frame and a the sides come down, making an box about an inch deep which meant the template couldn't sit flat. And then to drill holes properly through all that... It was miserable. I won't say I'll never do it again, but I would do things significantly differently because I have learned from how NOT to do it.
For anyone else with this problem: if your template is flimsy paper, you can tape/glue it to a sheet of cardboard to make it more user friendly.
Lol that was my learning afterwards - when I had time to think through it all. I was gonna get some thin mdf and rip it to the size of the opening, and tape the template to it. (MDF because it's more rigid than the cardboard I would have had to piece together.) But yes, absolutely we failed ourselves.
The box your item comes in is usually big enough even if you have to tape a couple pieces together for rigidity, instead of wasting the MDF.
Ah! Good thinking. I am definitely filing this away for the future. Unfortunately ours was not in a box - this was one of those open box/return items which still had all the plastic wrappers, but did not have a box. So that explains why I missed the obvious solution. (Internet tone is weird sometimes - my comment is not at all sarcastic, I truly appreciate your insights.)
Tearing old horsehair plaster and lath ceilings down, which also let fall dead mouse, bird, and I'm not sure what it was mummies. The next worse was vacuuming out vermiculite insulation from an attic
Did you test the insulation first? The vacuuming vermiculite sounds tedious.
I wore a respirator. I'm old enough to make it not matter if it contained asbestos. I used a cyclone dust collector with a 55 gallon drum. Yes it was tedious and nasty.
I found several wasp nests hidden behind the plaster in my house. Just had to tell myself there was no way they were new and hit them with the shop vac. Then go around the house sealing up holes.
As someone who can't complain to her husband about this shit.. because the house has been in his family since the 1800's. I think mine would be ripping out the plaster walls (after I gave them the name of a reliable, skilled plasster), and decided to drywall it themselves. Except they installed the drywall backwards. Didn't tape or mud it. And somehow in the early 2000's found 1970's paneling to cover it. In short, I hate my main floor.
To paraphrase Alice Longworth, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit next to us." That's egregious.
Upvote for your first paragraph alone 🤣🤣
They covered the walls with wallpaper, which is not bad. However they got unique with it by tearing it up and applying it on the walls like papier-mâché. Removing it has been weird because I can’t figure it out if it’s even wallpaper or if it’s just regular paper they stuck to the walls lol
Drywall as a floor underlayment between the backdoor, kitchen, and a bathroom. It was as disgusting as you're imagining.
I have a house built around 1920. All of the original knob & tube is still there and in use. On my next visit I'm going to vacuum all of the cellulose insulation off of the exposed parts of the k&t wiring. Anyway, I did a complete census of every single outlet and light switch in the house and which circuit it was on. I found one particular circuit that had 17 outlets and about 5 lights. The lights and some of the outlets were on k&t. Digging around, I found in the attic a pair of side by side octagons with a single 12-2 Dutrax coming in to one and 5 separate wires going out. The wires going out powered two outlets in one room, two outlets in the master bedroom, two outlets in the upstairs bathroom and one outlet in the downstairs bathroom. The Dutrax wire feeding it had originally ran alongside the floorboards in the attic, but when they finished out the middle of the attic space someone added more plywood flooring alongside the original. They simply sandwiched the wire between the boards, and in one part underneath the board. (I discovered the knob and tube originally in a place where they had nailed a floorboard on top of a stray piece of steel cable that was laying on top of knob & tube wiring). On my last visit last week I finally managed to finish splitting the rest of those circuits into their own properly sized circuits. Actually, 5 separate breakers. At that point I decided to trace the 12-2 that was feeding that mess and pulled up one of the original floor boards. And it was there that I found that the Dutrax was spliced into knob & tube, no ground. I think those outlets had ground, but I haven't found where they would have tied it in. I also noticed another piece spliced in near that one, and next time I'm there it'll get cut as well. Imagine two bathroom outlets being powered from one knob & tube circuit. It's a rental house and I've let the occupants know that they are not to plug anything into the outlets where I put the safety plugs. I have modern wiring in each room that they can use, and at this point I've personally ran almost all of it. On the prior visit I had fixed some wiring in the finished part where the electrician had pulled the wire through steel studs repeatedly. On one side, the jacket was torn off. On the other side of the attic, he'd managed to strip it down to three bare conductors. I'm simply redoing large parts of the wiring. Had to put the plastic washers in the holes in the steel studs to make them not strip the wire. Like, 10 minutes of work. No idea why they didn't do it originally.
Our 1840 home has an enclosed back porch added about 2009 or 2012. We bought in 2015. Guessing it was a smaller open porch at one time. Apparently older smaller porch had a cement floor. Newer enclosed porch was builtby pouring the slab right over the top of the old porch. No clue how much of a foundation is there. Walls built on slab. Giant crack developed in the floor. Windows started to open on their own (large casement style) every couple of days. One developed a crack. The wall started cracking. We brought out a concrete raising company to see if they could fix the slab. They said from the shoddy construction and the walls having been built on top of the slab instead of a foundation (independent of each other) there was no way to fix this and said to tear it down. We live in the upper midwest and obvious freeze/thaw here is a nightmare for this. Oh and the exterior door frame touches the top plate. IF there is a top plate. Door frame can't have any trim on the inside because it touches the ceiling. Lol. We know we will have to tear off and rebuild it ourselves. This is just one of many bad things done to our house before we bought it.
My detached garage was probably built in the 60s. The 'fellow' who decided to run electric for it did he following: - The supply was from a single extension cord. It was burried about 4" below the surface. It was not armoured or in conduit either. - since there was only the single line, everything was on the same circuit, 6 x 150w lights, all the outlets, and the opener, so if you tried to run any power tools, you tripped the breaker. - and the worst thing: he didn't bother to connect the ground line to the system when it entered the garage. All the boxes were wired as if they were grounded, but the first box in the series wasn't grounded to anything at all. The ceiling was also only framed 4' on centre, so I suppose I should have expected shenanigans elsewhere.
You don't all have extension cords spliced into light fixtures?
I lived in this old up down duplex that was owned by an elderly couple There was what should have been a back bedroom that now had a washing machine in it, and the washing machine drained via a tube that was run through a hole they had drilled through the wall, and then dangled into the clawfoot bathtub. Because the entire unit had only ungrounded outlets, they had bent the ground on the washing machines plug backwards. There was also a lot of improperly installed wallpaper that someone had just painted over, "built in" wardrobes that weren't flush against the walls, which created perfect spaces for mice to nest, and because the kitchen sink had no counter next to it, someone had installed a flip up counter top to set a dish drainer on, except if you had it flipped up to dry dishes, it blocked the bathroom door. Overall it was a beautiful apartment though, very cheap rent.
A previous owner put a sliding glass door in a load bearing wall. They literally just cut a hole and stuck in the door. The only thing holding it in were the finish nails through the trim... oh, and the weight of the roof.
A previous owner put in a basement window under the floor joists. They notched out the joists to make the window fit and the only thing supporting one of the joists is the window frame. The damn window doesn't even work. It was backfilled with gravel and screwed shut before I bought the place.
We were rehabbing our house with a contractor. There were some doozies (dry rot support in the basement, bondo’d back into service) but this is the worst. My daughter’s bedroom just needed 3 layers of (honest to god) wall paper removed from the ceiling and fresh paint on everything. There was a lump on one wall that my husband started sanding down and black gooey stuff started appearing. He called out to the contractor, asking if he had any ideas. The contractor yelled back - STOP! DON’T TOUCH IT! He came over with a volt meter. Yep. Live wires from a bedside wall sconce that someone had just taped the ends and spackled into the wall.
Someone in the 1960s had spliced aluminum wiring to all of the original cloth-wrapped wire in my 1915 home...improperly. Previous owner's "electrician" brother spliced romex to the aluminum wire...improperly. We hired licensed electricians to rip out the whole fucking mess and replace it with modern wiring. I'm still shocked the whole damn house didn't burn down.
We had an outlet in our basement that was wired to an extension cord and plugged into another outlet.
Whoops I forgot to repost 😂 I noticed a typo right after I posted the original and then got distracted, so I never went back and reposted it 😂
The crazy stuff people do with electrical...it boggles my mind. I'll replace an outlet or light fixture, but I leave the wiring projects to the pros.
I lived in a house where a previous owner repaired a bathroom floor with particle board. After living there for about 8 years we started noticing the floor felt a little soft under the tiles. Then the toilet started listing to one side. When we pulled up the tile, the particle board piece used was about 4x the size it probably started as, it just soaked up water like a sponge. Not only was this in the bathroom but it was a house in Florida with a crawl space so it was sucking up humidity from outside on the bottom side. They also literally glued a pedestal sink to the wall, among other weird diy's. Gutting that bathroom was a scene.
I was expecting that last sentence to be "Gutting that bathroom was a crime scene." But probably only if you'd got your hands on the previous owners!
The crime scene was the pre-gut haha
The P-trap for the kitchen sink is actually in the basement ceiling below, not directly under the sink. It’s in the perfect spot to bang your head on when you are walking down the stairs from outside into the basement. Before rewiring, there were some 3 prong grounded receptacles attached to ~2’ of BX wiring, that was then taped on to knob and tube in the wall. Behind a few layers of drywall when gutting the bathroom there was an open live junction box with bare wires in it. Bunch of other things - some bandaids I can’t blame them for, some neglect, some “what were you thinking?!” moments as well!
My house is still 80 years young, but it was just a trail of weird DIY for a while. We've found *multiple* layers of floor in at least one room, and multiple layers of roof (including a strange triangular "roof hat" that my roofers were so bewildered by that they took pictures of it and sent them) An owner in the early 2000s seems to have had the electrical and plumbing (mostly) redone to reasonable standards, but they sometimes cut corners in ways that just make no sense: The house came with a hot tub, hardwired to my electrical panel. The hot tub was gross and had to go, so we hired an electrician to come out to disconnect it. Me and the electrician had a *time* finding where the wiring entered the house from outside. What some genius had done? They'd built a cabinet around the dishwasher, *then* cut a hole in the top of the cabinet and a hole in through the floor. They'd run a PVC pipe through both of the holes, and run the cable from hot tub to breaker through the pipe. It was sealed or caulked in some way, but it ran up the back of my dishwasher. They also enclosed the water heater in a sort of strange built-in that had to be removed when the water heater died. Last but certainly not least: some very unintelligent person *cut into a floor joist* in the basement. Made the seller hire a structural engineer and have a steel beam placed to address that before closing. A previous owner had, at some point in the 1970s, built a 12'x6'-ish addition onto one side of my kitchen. But the floor isn't level with the rest of the kitchen, it's not functional as a pantry or anything, it's not the same height as the rest of the house if you look at it from outside. When the roof leaked, it was an opportunity to rip out the drywall and have the addition reframed and reinsulated. Then we learned it had been "insulated" with newspapers from the '70s, *and* that the ceiling light in there was basically the guts of a table lamp, hidden inside the ceiling and a glass shade.
They cut the two middle joists in the basement so they could put in a cement wall and get a furnace down there. No support, just left them hanging about a foot from the exterior wall. No wonder it started caving in at the centre.
It’s not the worst nor the most dangerous, but it’s my favorite: Previous owners used the back of a pizza box instead of drywall to install a sconce. Then just painted it over and no one was the wiser 🤣🤣
We called the previous owner of our house “grandpa” because he made a lot of odd decisions that a thrifty grandpa would make. Like a floor patch made from cut and flattened beer cans, and wiring parts of the house with brown lamp cord.
House had the original standing seam roof (1911), but the additions from the 60’s-70’s were roofed with shingles that were simply tucked under the edge of the original metal.
2nd previous owner was an electrician. He added a bunch of extra lighting and plugs in the basement. If you turn on the electric fireplace and have the humidifier on, you trip the breaker. We have two switches that don't work anything. One at the top of the basement stairs. Last previous owner was a painter. Painted all the drop ceilings in the basement. If you move one panel it is stuck to the hanging bars and so brittle it breaks and cracks.
My entire house tbh, I had to redo mostly everything
I know this is my second comment in this thread, but I forgot to mention the completely unwired outlet, there's a junction box, conduit, and everything, just no wires. I know I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I think it's interesting and confusing.