Homeowner abominations

[AceofSpad3s]

Hello, because fixing up my house right now and finding all types of horrible jobs done by previous homeowners, I felt that it might be nice to make a thread for people to share their experiences with others shoddy work. I don't have any pictures but I will start with a few things.

In back of my garage I have a 10 x 10 workshop that is attached. The person who originally built it put in about 5 supports that go from the bottom of the shop to the ground. These "supports" were cut 2 inches too short on both the top and bottom and did not support anything at all. The person even attached them with like 5 5" nails in each of them, why bother doing all that nailing if you cannot even cut them right? I put in some new supports that actually support it so all is well now

Second is that there is a little small deck that meets my large deck and the door to the garage, today I have been working on jacking it up so it is level and today I tore up some boards and found out that the person who built it did not even bother to put something underneath the frame to hold the damn thing up. Why go through all the effort if you are not going to do it right?

Third is just small touches that morons do. On the second floor, all the laminate flooring was cut incorreclty, the dumbasses also decided to use laminate flooring as trim pieces around doors and on railings!
They even covered up a outlet with the laminate. It is amazing how much effort people put into something and still half *** it.

Sorry if the title isn't catchy or clever but if you got any stories like mine to share, please do!

 

[ddawg16]

You know the routine.....

 

[rdog422]

:I don't work on houses much, but I do have similar experiences. My friend brought her car over because her subwoofer quit working. Further inspection revealed that the car audio place ran an 8 gauge power wire to her amp, and an 18 gauge ground wire. The ground wire looked like it had caught on fire.......

 

[Leaflessshadetree]

Why would someone cut a board 2" short on each end?Wouldn't it be easier to just cut 1 end 4" short?

 

[AceofSpad3s]

Why would someone cut a board 2" short on each end?Wouldn't it be easier to just cut 1 end 4" short?

That is probably how it happened but it was attached both 2 inches from the ground and 2 inches from the floor of the shop. It was not touching anything besides the side for the frame it was nailed to.

 

[Cato]

Why go through all the effort if you are not going to do it right?

We all know guys who think they can fix anything.

 

[Streetbu]

Well the house I'm in has the floor joists 5' on center. Yes you read that correctly. Built in 1957 supposedly. I think they must've used every scrap they could come up with and still ran short. And to top it of they are rough cut 2x6 spanning about 9' and before anyone asks, yes it's like walking on a trampoline. Better yet, have you ever seen vinyl siding run all the way to ground level? Mine does. That would be because the sill plate is about 8" below grade absolute idiots must've built this place. Just saving up to tear it down and build a new place.

 

[The Cobbler]

in this world of no or very little technical in school,s inexpensive tools, DIY shows, easier to work with products, it's going to more & more common. on top of that, people that don't know good work from bad work...

 

[srmofo]

in this world of no or very little technical in school,s inexpensive tools, DIY shows, easier to work with products, it's going to more & more common. on top of that, people that don't know good work from bad work...

Sure they do. New paint and some "nice cabinets" from the home Depot and that total renovation is done.

 

[James-W]

Just saving up to tear it down and build a new place.

The sad part is that this is totally true. Many times you are much better off, time wise and money wise, to just tear it down and start all over.

 

[cowboy73]

My parents' old house had 2X6 floor joists on a 14' span!!!!

 

[CNGsaves]

My old house (built 1988 2x4 walls basic ranch style) had sheetrock for exterior sheeting . . .
. . . . but . . . NO house wrap or tar paper what-so-ever.

Masonite siding and windows rotting out by late ninety's.

It's now the ex-wife's problem !! . .

 

[AceofSpad3s]

You know the routine.....

No can do on the trim upstairs and the supports of the shop, I can get a picture of the deck since I just started working on it today. I can get a picture of the new supports I put in as well as what the old ones looked like, but they are not in there anymore.

 

[AJH]

I don't post much because there's usually already numerous replies on any given topic that have it covered. This, however, is a thread I can contribute to.

When I bought my house about 8 months ago, there was a large piece of scrap wood covering a roughly 2ft x 2ft square hole in the back wall of the garage. The previous owner had a boat that was too long to fit in the garage, so he just chopped a hole in the wall for the bow of the boat to stick out. I wasn't too worried about it because the hole was at least closed up at that point, and I plan to put a new exterior on the garage sometime in the near future anyway.

Needless to say, the garage became mouse nesting heaven when the wall was open like that. I sealed the various other holes they were using to get in, waited a couple weeks to minimize any chance of exposure to hantavirus, then cleaned the mouse nests out while wearing a respirator.

I noticed the mouse excrement smell was not improved as much as I had hoped. Then I took a look at all the miscellaneous wood, drywall, siding scraps and other junk they left on top of the rafter ties and found that something bigger than mice was living up there. The turds looked like they were left by a medium-sized dog. I'm thinking raccoon or possum.

 

[AceofSpad3s]

Well the house I'm in has the floor joists 5' on center. Yes you read that correctly. Built in 1957 supposedly. I think they must've used every scrap they could come up with and still ran short. And to top it of they are rough cut 2x6 spanning about 9' and before anyone asks, yes it's like walking on a trampoline. Better yet, have you ever seen vinyl siding run all the way to ground level? Mine does. That would be because the sill plate is about 8" below grade absolute idiots must've built this place. Just saving up to tear it down and build a new place.

I know older houses always tend to have some problems but damn, I cannot believe that they actually did that bad of job. The last three houses I have been in have been 50's ones and the all tend to be built pretty well besides the electrical gremlins, seems like all electricians back then were shitfaced when putting in wiring. My house in Wisconsin was supposedly a sears kit house even though it was built in the '54 if a remember correctly. Seemed like the plugs would fall out of the sockets half of the damn time and stuff would shut off sometimes, besides that it was a nice house.

At least when you build a new place you get to have outlets every 6 feet and have it be really energy efficient and fancy stuff like that.

 

[SilverSS1969]

My parents bought there house back when I was in 8th grade so around 1999. The pervious owner must have thought the view looked so much better from the kitchen/dinning room to the living room if they took the ballast out. Well those ugly ballast where supporting the stacked 2x12 beams to the second floor.

My dad, his friend and I had to jack the beam back up, bolt thru them with steel plate on the outsides and re-install the supports.

 

[CadillacJack]

 

[The Cobbler]

But I have not had any problems with it, it's always been like that !

 

[AceofSpad3s]

I don't post much because there's usually already numerous replies on any given topic that have it covered. This, however, is a thread I can contribute to.

When I bought my house about 8 months ago, there was a large piece of scrap wood covering a roughly 2ft x 2ft square hole in the back wall of the garage. The previous owner had a boat that was too long to fit in the garage, so he just chopped a hole in the wall for the bow of the boat to stick out. I wasn't too worried about it because the hole was at least closed up at that point, and I plan to put a new exterior on the garage sometime in the near future anyway.

Needless to say, the garage became mouse nesting heaven when the wall was open like that. I sealed the various other holes they were using to get in, waited a couple weeks to minimize any chance of exposure to hantavirus, then cleaned the mouse nests out while wearing a respirator.

I noticed the mouse excrement smell was not improved as much as I had hoped. Then I took a look at all the miscellaneous wood, drywall, siding scraps and other junk they left on top of the rafter ties and found that something bigger than mice was living up there. The turds looked like they were left by a medium-sized dog. I'm thinking raccoon or possum.

I am dealing with insulation with mice **** in it and I want to stab the person who thought it was a good idea to put fiberglass insulation in the workshop. There is no heat out there at all and the rest of the garage has no insulation. What is the point!? It is a **** show (literally) I have removed about a 1/3 of it, mostly on the sides of the shop and a few that are in the rafters, and I hate it. I put a halt on doing anymore until I get my garage cleaned up. I also need to be more careful since last time I was in my shorts and a short sleeve with only a dust mask and gloves. I hate having to look in my drink every time I take a sip.

 

[Streetbu]

My parents bought there house back when I was in 8th grade so around 1999. The pervious owner must have thought the view looked so much better from the kitchen/dinning room to the living room if they took the ballast out. Well those ugly ballast where supporting the stacked 2x12 beams to the second floor.

My dad, his friend and I had to jack the beam back up, bolt thru them with steel plate on the outsides and re-install the supports.

I fully knew the condition I fht ehouse when I bought it. I've basically been putting lipstick on a pig to get by until we can tear it down and start over. But the location, land, and garage sold me on it. I actually had two houses to choose from in my price range at the time. This was one of the two. The other was the exact opposite. Completely remodeled, well built new siding, roof, electrical, plumbing, flooring, bathrooms new kitchen, insulation etc. Same size lot too. But no garage at all, the land was basically useless without several hundreds yards of fill and drainage pipe as the water from the hill above all came down thru the back yard. Only thing I could think of is the old adage, location location location. We're just a mile out of town, but only have 2 neighbors and corn fields on 2 sides, almost 3. One neighbor next to us, about 250 yards away, and 1 across the street....

 

[AceofSpad3s]

 

[Maticuno]

Ugh, that made my anxiety flare up. Dealing with that in my new house. The previous owner ran a disaster recovery business, and I'm pretty sure he used materials salvaged from flood or fire damaged buildings to make repairs around here and partly build the shop. Completely unboxed Romex splices, a 200 amp main panel being used as the 50 amp sub, reversed and leaking lap joints on the metal shop, free-standing exterior receptacles with open knockouts and no GFI...the list goes on.

A previous home I lived in was my uncle's rental home. It was a homestead home, originally started sometime in the early 1900's. Every wall was comprised of a different material including cinder blocks, railroad ties mortared together, and traditional framing with not a damn thing being spaced evenly or square. The kicker was when I was replacing the back patio door and removed a couple pieces of siding to discover the insulation was old blankets and a sleeping bag.

 

[AceofSpad3s]

:I don't work on houses much, but I do have similar experiences. My friend brought her car over because her subwoofer quit working. Further inspection revealed that the car audio place ran an 8 gauge power wire to her amp, and an 18 gauge ground wire. The ground wire looked like it had caught on fire.......

I got a friend that hooks up all of these lights and horns and stuff to his car for no reason, I think he was going to hook up a ham radio with a antenna to it too, I have no idea why but he does it anyway. I swear he has a death wish since he uses speaker wire for hooking all of this type of stuff up, I think he has even wired stuff directly to the battery using speaker wire. He has been electrocuted a few times because of **** like this.

 

[Farmall 1066]

Old house we had was using bare iron wire on knob insulators all through the attic.
Electrician friend said it used to be pretty common on old houses in this area, when electricity was added to exsisting homes. Said it was telephone or telegraph wire.
Whole damned house was built in 1908 from salvaged lumber from something that had burned. You could see scorch marks all over the wood...but in mismatched patterns.
On really hot days you could still faintly smell smoke!

 

[dgoetz]

Set aside some time

 

[TheEquineFencer]

A couple of box extensions will fix that...

 

[JR 42]

Set aside some time

Mother of God, inspectors write some truly awful one-liners.

JR

 

[Throbbin Rods]

Bought a house built in the early 1950's by the homeowner and his father. Garage lights got turned on from the kitchen, outside lights from the breezeway, and breezeway lights from the garage. pulled off the gang switch cover to take a look, saw electrical tape . Killed the main breaker and pulled the switches out. Romex, but the wires were twisted together and wrapped in electrical tape. Many hours fixing that mess.

 

[bczygan]

That's a very nice new age chandelier. Very decorative! If you could install some little led bulbs on the ends of those yellow thingies, it would be very pretty!

 

[Nick Danger]

Bought a house built in the early 1950's by the homeowner and his father. Garage lights got turned on from the kitchen, outside lights from the breezeway, and breezeway lights from the garage. pulled off the gang switch cover to take a look, saw electrical tape . Killed the main breaker and pulled the switches out. Romex, but the wires were twisted together and wrapped in electrical tape. Many hours fixing that mess.

At least they used Romex. The previous owner of my house installed an extra light in the bathroom and wired it with lamp cord. By the time I discovered it, the insulation was cracked every inch or so, and I could see copper through the cracks.

The electric stove was attached to 220V with nothing but electrical tape. I found that when I bought a new stove.

The pipe from the relief valve on the water heater went up and over the tank.

They ran Romex across the door sill and then set the aluminum frame sliding patio door on the cable. The aluminum had penetrated the jacket and was touching the ground wire, but not the hot wire. I discovered it when I replaced the patio door.

 

[lotsoftools]

We looked at a foreclosure once, and it had rock siding. The rock had fallen off in a couple of places and we could see the back of the drywall inside. Then we went into the master bath to see there was no floor. Nothing, not even joists. Just a giant hole into the crawlspace. We passed on that house.

 

[maxpower_hd]

The original part of my house was a cottage at one time. I have found all kinds of stuff. When I added the addition on we found that the back wall of the house where the addition was being added was 2" out of square in two directions from top to bottom. It was shimmed out when they sided over it so you couldn't see it and also shimmed inside when they sheet rocked it. So the 2x4 wall ended up being about 6" thick and still not quite level.

I upgraded the electrical from 60 amp fuses to a 200 amp breaker system with 100 amps for the house and 100 for the addition. However, I still have to get my electrician brother to help reroute/rewire some circuits from the old part of the house. I have cloth wire in one wall of my bathroom. The bathroom, half the kitchen including the microwave, my daughter's bedroom and two outlets in the living room are all on the same circuit. So if you use a hair dryer, the microwave or toaster and a TV the circuit pops out.

Also in the bathroom, the floor tile was popping out and the floor soft in spots so I ripped up the tile and plywood under it to find an old linoleum floor under that, also soft. So I removed that and the plywood under it to find yet another linoleum floor with plywood under it, also soft. So I continued to rip out everything. Some was covered with mold, some rotted. The floor including the sub floor was nearly 4 " thick. I ended up replacing everything. Joists and all. What a mess.

Now I need a roof on that part of the house and I'm afraid, very afraid. It is spongy and I already know I need to get in the attic and brace up the 2x4 rafters that are 2' on center. I'm thinking I am going to sister the 2x4's with 2x6 and add collar ties. I am not rebuilding the roof, I know that much. I would go with the tear down idea first.

 

[Orange65]

My last house had a few. The house was 6" out of square. It started out as a small house that they (the previous owner) added on a full length deck on the back. Then they enclosed the deck to make a dining room and a sun room. Only problem is that they did not take down the railing around the deck- just enclosed it in the wall. Even laced insulation thru the spindles. No insulation in the roof of the addition, either. Nice. Also, they added a sliding glass door between the master bedroom and the deck by cutting out an existing window. Problem is the sliding door was wider than the window so they just cut the opening wider- and never put a wider header in. So the roof was resting on the glass door. I am surprised it opened.

 

[Seppala]

How 'bout an abomination from the day it was built. House footprint is 20x28 with the footing 18 inches below grade, no sill; joists placed directly upon concrete block foundation. Studs anywhere from 14 to 17 inches on center. Roof is a weird 7/12 pitch with 2x4 rafters on accurate 2 foot centers. I live in an area built with many crappy built vacation homes. The irony is that this house was built in 1926 as a year round residence..

 

[reader2580]

One or more of the previous homeowners did so much stupid stuff to my house I can't even remember it all.

Deck built with joists on 24" centers. Posts on slab with no footings. Home inspector didn't even think two of us should be on the deck at same time.

Main bathroom had been gutted due to water damage from roof leaking around chimney. They didn't bother to fix the source of the leak.

Someone added a bay to the kitchen, but it was neither water tight nor supported properly. It was so rotten floor was at an angle. It turns out all the joists underneath were mush. Could not believe it had not collapsed.

Homeowner replaced a window and sliding door in 2003 due to water damage. They couldn't be bothered to varnish the wood interior of the window so the wood was in terrible shape. They also never filled in the gap in the drywall due to window being slightly smaller. (They fixed the siding on the outside.)

Neutral and hots were loose in main panel. They ran a PVC conduit on the outside of the house and up through the attic to an addition instead of fishing wire through the house.

They added Pergo flooring to kitchen, but didn't bother to replace faucet that leaked underneath when used. Leaking faucet ruined flooring.

Railing around stairwell came loose from newel post and they used rope to "fix" it.

I spent $110,000 remodeling the house from top to bottom including new doors, siding, and windows. The only original items are the foundation, walls, drywall, and roof. I am still finishing some minor things months later.

 

[reader2580]

The really ironic thing about my house is the back door had "Shoes Off!!" stenciled on the door yet the door had a 1" gap on the bottom and the carpeting was absolutely gross.

A neighbor had been in the place a year or two previous and he said it was just filthy inside. He said there was no way he would ever remove his shoes. He joked that the shoes off meant you had to remove your shoes when you left the house.

 

[Cairo94507]

I bought a house about 18 months ago and the homeowner told me, "You know, I am quite the handyman". I immediately got nervous. Fortunately I planned on gutting the entire house and remodeling. Every single thing this guy had done, thank God he had not done much, was complete garbage. This is a $2M neighborhood and he and his wife had been in the home for 28 years..... I could not believe the disgusting junk I found and the absolute childish quality of the DIY repairs.

 

[Falcon67]

All the who-ha in this house was done by the original builder and subs. POs hadn't done anything, which is hard to believe.

The house we sold - all that Who-ha was mine over 13 years. We bought them a 2 year home warranty that covered EVERYTHING, just in case.

 

[Dave in Mass]

Prior Owner's Boners.

My first house was a post war 1950 slab in a very dense neighborhood. The original designs had the stoves in a corner near the outside wall. The exhaust fans were in the wall with a pull chain that opened a metal cover on the outside wall and then spun the fan.

In some prior renovation, the stove was moved to an inside wall and replaced with one of those 1960s baby blue counter top stove with twin in-wall ovens, also baby blue. No real issue with the stove or ovens although we eventually upgraded.

But the original fan was another story. I probably should have been concerned that the outside metal flap was still present in a square cut out of the lime green aluminum siding but the inside walls had new sheet rock and plastic brick panels covering where the fan used to be.

A few years after moving in, we did a gut of the kitchen and when I pulled the sheet rock off of that area, I was not happy to see the wall cavity stuffed with newspaper instead of insulation. I was less happy to see the original wiring for the fan still in the wall cut flush and the end wrapped in electrical tape. The piece de' resistance? The wire was still live.

 

[dodgejunkie]

How about NEW home construction abominations?

Bought a newly constructed house in 2002. It was finished, and I had to find a place fast for the kids to start school in Aug. This house was a 3,500 sq. ft. house on a walkout unfinished basement. Never saw it being built.

Every time it rained, every window leaked.

The Master shower surround was leveled and sitting on a piece of drywall. One nail holding it in the framing. Leaked from day one and developed mold between the surround, and the framing.

You could watch the clouds passing in the sky while standing in the attic.

Somebody cut all the flanges off of the windows in a bay window area and tried to resolve the gaps with caulking. The caulking attempt was 2"x2" thick and as long as the window opening. 3 windows, both sides.

House wrap was stopped after ONE (1) row.

From the basement to the top floor the house was out of plumb 2"! I kid you not.

The builder ended up buying it back from us at an adjusted market price.

Keep in mind I did not see this house being constructed. Only saw the "Finished" Product. Looks can be deceiving!


As far as older home issues by the previous owner(s), I'll make a separate post.