/diy/ - Do It Yourself

http://failblog.cheezburger.com/thereifixedit

Dude!!!

DON'T Move In With Her
I did same story "to fix her basement"
&
She Killed Me
&
Ate My Brains

Don't Do It

>>537096

OMG...did you died?

Oh christ, the fun never ends. Bought house a few months ago, it's 40-odd years old. First owners treated it like a palace, then the previous owners seem to have been largely devoid of braincells.

Some of the more fun "fixes" I've found include wiring a two light fittings and a socket to the lighting loom, running wires from the lamp fitting to an antique two-pin bakelite switch/plug combo, then into the garage, (and they put enough load on it to cause burning to the wire and plugs), additional sockets butchered onto old wiring, rotten doors on the garage covered in plywood, a window in the garage held up by wizard magic (not actually bedded in or anything, it was just... propped there. With four bricks on top of it). Garden overgrown to the point where we have ash trees growing like weeds. A recessed light fitting cut into a joist. Broken switches on sockets left to arc casually. Doors that have been "upgraded" from the originals that don't fit the frame in any direction. Handles held on with blu-tac instead of screws.

I could go on. Good thing I enjoy DIY, really. The previous owners also started on a modernisation of the property without checking the bank, ripped up floors etc then ran out of money leaving exposed concrete floors in places.

I've lost count of how many old cars I've replaced aftermarket stereos in that had butchered wiring looms. I swear, the "ol' twist-n-tape" method is the only way anyone ever attached wires back in the 80's and 90's.

>>536666

Thank you Satan

>>537202
>not posting the .gif

take this

I saw a light socket that was wired in with UNINSULATED wires. I don't even know how the house hadn't gone up in smoke. Those things were fucking millimetres from touching.

>>537228

Like just regular copper wire? Holy shit!

>>537096

Actually oddly enough yes I literally almost did die. Turned out she was so bat shit crazy that the stress from dealing with her and my regular work almost killed me.

I've finally just about got her trained. I had to start treating her like a small child to get her to act like a normal person.

I've threatened to leave several times when she gets out of hand. Its something she doesn't want to hear as she's basically helpless. Every time the basement floods which it will basically forever as its below the water level when it rains she really shuts the hell up for about a month.

I got a call about a house with high humidity in one of the bedrooms. She complained that she's got a dehumidifier going in there and empties it out several times a day.

I enter the bedroom and immediately see stains coming from the ceiling to the floor. Hmmm. I'm like you think the roof might be leaking?

Oh no she says its only a year old and I had a licensed home inspector up there before I bought the house.

So after some convincing and a bunch of listening to how dumb she is I finally get access to the roof. Around every single protrusion on the roof there is absolutely nothing to keep the water from entering the roof.

I buy a ten dollar can of tar and fix it in about twenty minutes.

This bitch actually worked for NASA at one point. Not even making this up.

>>537255
I knew a guy exactly like that. Dumb as a brick when it came to home repair, but he had his of computer repair biz. I kept telling him his toilet was leaking. He kept replying that the plumber just replaced it and its fine. This went on for like 6 months, until he was sitting on it one day and it went through the floor.

Turns out the plumber didn't put a new wax ring on the toilet when he replaced it.

Landlord that decides to paint over a penny on the floor rather than picking it up.

>>537295
God dammit...

>>537180
I've run into the same. Having to strip them all and rewire them into a proper harness is a pain the dick.

>>537295
why would you be painting the floor

>>537330
doyouevengarage

>>537180
>I swear, the "ol' twist-n-tape" method is the only way anyone ever attached wires back in the 80's and 90's.

Pretty much.

We had a little fire in my high school theater a while ago, in one of the lighting floor pockets.
Two of the plugs in one of those pockets were re-wired to another circuit at some point. I don't remember quite how, but the splices weren't insulated and the wires shorted out.
Oh, I could tell so many horror stories of my high school theater.

>>537133
>dem fire hazards
Jesus Christ.

>>537272
When I was in highschool the valedictorian had her identity stolen from an online scam. She also didn't know how to use her windshield wipers and would call her dad to pick her up when it rained.

I guess there's just different kinds of smart.

>>537314
I would epoxy over a dollar coin just for the entertainment that it would cause when people tried to pick it up.

A customer's father-in-law tried to replace a leaking supply feeding the toiled. He tried to unloosen the supply without backing up the valve and popped the CPCW piping in the wall.

>It was upstairs.
>They didn't know where the main supply valve was at.
>They didn't have a meter key.
>30,000USD in floor and drywall repairs later, they said they >will always call a plumber. Always.

I fixed valve and toilet supply for 250.00. Could have saved them 29,750.00 if they would have called me first!

>>537498
i take it you dont do drywall and flooring? labor on a 30k job must be nice.

>>537502
No, I don't do carpentry work. They don't do my work, I wont do theirs.

A lot of the money went to the water restoration company. Now those guys have a good racket going.

>>537498
Could've easily stopped the leak with plumber's putty.

>>537505

I don't think you know what plumber's putty is.. friend. It has the consistency of old play-doh and is used more as a gasket than an external sealer.

>>537330
The corner where the wall meets the floor. Obviously a very sloppy job and no masking tape had been used.

>>537480
strange. i once had a doctor that lived near me ask if he could charge some of his batteries(like in his cell phone,laptop, etc) with a welder.

anyway.
>last year
>summer
>neighbour asks me to inspect his plumbing in new house he bought
>basement
>whoever did it didint use fittings to connect to the house sewer. instead, to transition from vertical to horz, they cut a hole in the pipe and shoved the drains in.

>>537592

90% of contractors are lazy fucks that do whatever is easiest/cheapest. The other 10% do it right, make fun of the 90%, and take pride in their work. The 90% supply quite a bit of business for the 10%.

I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass but it's gotta be relatively close.

>>537596
>90% of contractors are lazy fucks that do whatever is easiest/cheapest.

that's partly true because some contractors are assholes, but the main reason is that 99% of customers want the job done for 1/2 of what it should really cost.

>>537133
>A recessed light fitting cut into a joist

>>537769
I had a whole house fan that was oriented the wrong way so they cut TWO joists completely in half to place it. House inspector didn't even note it.

>>537800

What the fuck

>>537800
>House inspector didn't even note it.

What the inspector there when you were there? If so, then the health inspector must have liked you. That's normally how it goes.

I had a whole house fan installed in a rental unit we owned at the request of a tenant. He paid for half so I figured couldn't hurt right? Two story condo built in the 60's with shit insulation so the upper floor would get hot as fuck in the summer. He made all the arrangements and used a friends company to do the install. I had my misgivings so I told him strait up that if they fucked it up he would be on the hook for any extra costs. He agreed.

The story I got was my tenant showed his friend where he wanted it (main hallway, second floor, between all the bedrooms) and gave him the key to the unit so they could install it when he was at work. He comes home and doesn't see the fan. Calls his buddy up and asks what happened. Buddy says his team installed it without him 'cause he had some business shit he needed to take care of but that they swear everything went fine. Tenant calls me and his buddy over and we all take a look. Buddy calls his teamleader and tells him to get here ASAP. We think he put it into the wrong unit. He shows up, swears this is the place he installed it. He says I'll get my ladder and check. Wut.

He shows up with this huge fucking extension ladder. Sets it up and climbs up onto the roof of the unit. Yells down "Yeah man, its right here." The dumbass cut a hole in the roof and installed it there. At first I think, well, he probably got an attic fan instead of a house fan and thats what the instructions said to do. Nope, its a house fan. He installed it backward so the gravity operated louvers are opened up permanently and everything. He cut right through a joist and didn't install any blocking either, roof was already sagging trying to hold up the huge fan.

So teamleader gets his ass fired and Buddy & Tenant helped pay for my condo's new roof. I paid for most of it since it was on its last legs anyway, but several grand was knocked off the price, so thats nice. Tenant still lives there and the fan (properly installed) still works good.

>>537614
My dad used to do carpet and was amazed at the shit people do for "cheap"

>women wants massive room to have carpet
>calls in my dad and a few other people
>Too expensive
>Dad gets a call a month later asking if he can give her an estimate on something
>They completely butchered the carpet install
>Dad laughs in womens face and tells her he doesn't fix other peoples mistakes since it's not his fault she went cheap.

>>537832
My dad used to be a carpet layer as well.

>got called up to fix a job because there was a black line running down the middle
>sounds weird, carpet seemed fine when layed
>go to check it out
>see black line
>run finger across it
>its a shadow from the window

fuuuuark

>be me, working on a HO's house basement refurbishing
>few days into job I find my cordless power tools are no longer working
>can't figure it out
>later ask Home Owners about the wiring in basement.
>"Oh we wanted to save some money so we did the wiring in the basement ourselves" they told me.
>I go down and start taking cover plates off the outlets.
>EVERY outlet is polarity reversed, white wire to black side and black wire to white side.
>Not a problem for things like lamps, BIG PROBLEM for things with transformers... Like my tools
>Over $1000 damage to replace the Bosch, Dewalt or Makita cordless tool chargers and some of the batteries.

All muh RAGE!

>>537813
Wait. Why did the tenant have to pay at all? If I understand you right, they indicated the ceiling inside their unit was the desired location. They didn't tell the handyman to put it on the roof.

> Not a problem for things like lamps, BIG PROBLEM for things with transformers... Like my tools

this is complete and utter horseshit. there is no physical or electrical basis for chargers or batteries being damaged by reversal of the AC line. Over-voltage, or under-voltage: maybe; polarity: never.

>>536666

as a person more likely to hire someone than do household fixes diy - how do I detect a legit handyman?

>>537972
>>537972
I neglected to add...
The electricity the HO's did was also all 14 gauge wire on 30 AMP breaker.

I called in an electricians company I know and trust and they agreed that "Yep, this is what killed your tools".

The Authorized Tools Service place put my chargers on their diagnostic computer. The chargers were not only dead, 1 had been smoldering. 5 Batteries were beyond saving, 9 or so others were able to go through the machine at the tool service place and live again.


One a good note the electricians I brought in are friends, and they charged like 30K to fix all the wiring damage cause by the HO's

>>537961

When it came time to make repairs guess what happened? The company refused to pay a dime. The place was unlivable with a hole in the roof and since I told the tenant that it was on him if it fucked up it was basically considered, from the contract and my end, "tenant damage." He still wanted to live there so he ponied up the cash to get shit fixed. I used the money as the down payment on a total roof replacement (paid for the rest over time) and had him back in there in under a week. I don't blame him for what happened or anything but I ain't made of money either. Either way none of us considered this future Darwin Award winner would cut a hole in the roof. I figured there might be some drywall problems at most.

Anyway, he got his money back but he had to go to court to get it. The company, which was owned by his friends dad, Flintheart Glomgold, tried to claim that all of their line employees were "independent contractors", responsible for their own mistakes, insurance, unemployment payments, etc, etc. The judge felt otherwise but it still took the better part of a year for him to get his money back.

Back in 2010 ol' Flintheart ended up in the local news. Apparently his company was collecting withholdings from all of its employees but not actually passing them on to Uncle Sam. He was also running a kickback scheme with some local realtors. He would buy land & build homes, the realtors would dupe homebuyers into paying well more than market value for the places (already inflated cause of the bubble) and they would both line up banks to float the loans. They would split the profits from the inflated loans and the homeowners would be underwater before they even moved in. When the market popped, he had to lay off employees and they tried to collect unemployment insurance... and their was none. Then people defaulted and the banks started really looking at their paperwork. With his schemes pushed into the daylight that was the end of him.

>>537974

Is he licensed (if not, walk away not matter what)? Does he have any complaints with the BBB? Does he have good reviews on Angie's List? Does he have good references from past jobs? Can he take you to any work he has done thats over a year old to show that it has held up? Has he been is business in that area for while (years+, not months)?

>>536666
>be at old house
>call roofer say I need my 8 plastic hail damaged vents replaced
>clearly point out that it's 111 Court Ct not 111 111 Court Dr, 111 Court Cir, or 111 Court Ln all of which exist within blocks.
>come home
>call roofer
>where the f are you?
>we're at 111 Court Ln
tfw they cut seven new holes in the lady's roof because they only found one vent.

then they came and did my roof with red shingles instead of matching my black

if I didn't hate roof work so much...

but I seriously felt bad for the lady who got 7 holes cut in her roof.

I go to this lady's house out in the country, she's complaining of her entire bathroom backing up. It's a new house, out in the sticks, so right away I'm thinking sewage lift pump. I asked her about the septic tank, she said it was pumped recently and they had to have some work done, but it's fine now. The house is a split level with a decent sized crawl space for the utility section of the basement, so I crawl right in there and start looking around. Sure enough, find the sewage pump, it's hot as hell, humming, and not doing a damn thing. I start looking at it, and something isn't right. I follow the vent up... wait... that can't be the vent. I follow the other vent up... wait... that doesn't make sense. Somebody fucked with this, but why?

I pop out of the crawl space and ask her if anyone had worked on the pump recently, she said she had a problem with the sump pump a while ago, but nothing with the sewage pump. I was pretty sure I didn't see a sump pump down there, so I went down and looked again and couldn't find it. I asked her if she had the invoice from the sump pump work, she said no but she had pictures. I start flipping through the pictures, looking at the excavator, trench... wait a minute. I knew exactly what these dumb motherfuckers did.

Jethro McSkoal came over to pump the septic tank, and told her they had a bad drainfield. This part might be true, but they figured the problem was the sump pump discharging groundwater into the septic system. So they disconnected the sump pump and ran it out into the woods. Only problem was, it wasn't a sump pump, it was a sewage pump, and they didn't give the "sump discharge" an indirect waste, or bother with fall, so the 2" PVC runs out the side wall, goes underground, slopes to the woods, then backfalls up to the open discharge. Of course it all froze after dumping a bunch of brown trout out into the woods, then the pump burned out.

>>537483
I super glued a quarter to a stairwell railing once. It was there a year later, probably here to this day.

>>537991

That was a real life Drunk Dan moment.

>>538309

Try varnishing one to the street in front of your house and watch people try to pick it up.

>>537975

I'm not even the other anon and I still call bullshit.

Now perhaps they connected a hot back across a neutral somehow and had some weird 220/240 or out of phase stuff going on, but simply swapping the hot and neutral on an outlet aren't going to do shit to any piece of electronics.

I think it's most likely voltage was floating on the neutral or ground line causing everything to fry.

>>538592

He may have been wrong about the exact cause but its totally possible to have bad electric in a house. I've seen it myself. Many possibly most home fires are caused by faulty electric.

wdwe