Home improvement projects gone wrong

The Coffee Shop
1

We have had a string of problems whenever we’ve upgraded anything in our house. When our washer broke, it was attached to the dryer so we needed new of both. Turned out the hook-up to the water wasnt to spec so we needed a plumber to come in and install new water valves. While here he replaced the hot water shut off valve in the crawl space because the faucet we had was really hard to turn on and off. Several grand total between a plummer and new washer and drier.

Then our water heater died and spewed water all over the crawl space. Replace that and it turned out it wasn’t installed to code so we needed earthquake straps, some sort of release, etc. Costs 2x as much by the end of it. Couple grand, cha ching!

Then we had septic problems. Turned out the pump had died. When we replaced it the installer discovered it had been plugged into a socket inside the crawlspace with an extension cord buried in the ground. Yup, like the kind you plug in your Christmas lights with. So, an electrition had to come out and install a new box up to code, get that inspected, etc. Another couple grand…

The latest is my installation of a new bathroom sink faucet. The one we had was likely original to the house, so low quality, and was leaking like crazy. Perfect opportunity to upgrade! Well, as usual, nothing went smoothly. To sum it up quickly, there was a critical failure of the hose that connected the faucet to the hot water shut off in the wall. So, I had to get a new shut off faucet for the wall. That cascaded into some stupid decisions on my part. You know the kind where you realize a fraction of a second too late that what you are doing is stupid.

I have never seen so much water shoot out of a wall so fast. It was stunning. I was upstairs screaming and the hubby was like WTF?!?! I kept yelling at him to shut off the water! shut off the water! Well, I was soaked. Every towl in the house was soaked and it leaked downstairs into our living room onto the couch.

The whole thing was amazing. My stupid decision paired with crappy quality, rusty parts from the original installation equaled a spectacular water feature in our bathroom. But, good news is that aside from some wet stuff, total cost of the project was $100 including faucet and the new parts to replace the broken/old ones.

Tell me about your home improvement project incidents so I don’t feel like such a dummy.

2

We bought a new house 2 years ago 'cause I was sick of the old one nickle and dimeing us to death. Now our new house is worth $200,000 less than what we owe!!! How’s that for getting farked on a “home improvement”!!!

3

That cascaded into some stupid decisions on my part. You know the kind where you realize a fraction of a second too late that what you are doing is stupid.

I have no idea what that is like…

4

A few years ago, I hired a contractor on some good recommendations. I made the mistake of allowing him to start work before I verified his license. He got through the bathroom renovation and window replacement. All the while, I was bugging him about his license. He had a deposit to re-stucco the outside. Then he didn’t show up and I started looking for him. Found him in county jail on a long list of drug related charges. I filed a complaint with the license board. He still owed me money/work but I decided not to pursue at as it would tie me to him for quite awhile if I ever got him to pay. That was 4 years ago and the house is still half done since I’m having to complete the work myself.

I think about this song when hear these stories: The Gasman Cometh

5

I spent the last three nights cursing myself for agreeing to texture the master bedroom before my wife paints it. I recall it being rather easy and not very messy when I did the hallway and livingroom a few years ago. What a fracking nightmare! I got spray crap all over the house and I was only working in one room, my dogs rubbed against the walls, the whole house reeks, but dammit it looks good! I wonder how long before I get the white gak out of my finder and toenails.

Dave

6

Does your husband know how to fix anything? I have saved at least 15k in 6 years by doing repair jobs myself. If something is more expensive than my time i do it myself. It makes discussing bike expenses a non-event.

7

I’m always the one to take on the smaller home improvement projects because they are “fun”. I’ve installed the dishwasher and stove. I’ve upgraded the lighting fixtures and installed the digital thermostat. But, some things should be done by a homeowner. Septic pump replacements and hot water heater installation are two of those. The only other time I’ve run into problems was when I tripped the house breaker while installed an outside motion detecting light. Apparently I’d shut off the wrong one before starting the project. My husband came tearing out of the house to be sure I wasn’t fried. It was pretty funny.

8

well, you’re not alone.

mine isn’t home improvement (i hate home improvement, actually)

but today i drove off a small cliff and my car was dangling just like something you’d see in a cartoon. i had to call a tow truck to help me, and now my husband won’t speak to me.

ain’t life grand.

9

I’ll let you know if I ever get this damn project done.

http://s5.tinypic.com/21mxb2q.jpg

10

LOL!! Oh my! I’m glad to hear you got out OK!

Yeah, my hubby is pretty annoyed about the flood and was really pissed about the blown fuse because he was right in the middle of a game on Xbox and I killed him or some such thing. I get the subtle “I told you so”. Only, it is more along the lines of, “I didn’t really think we needed to replace the faucet.”

11

Will you post the picture you drew of this one? I loved that!

12

Well, since you asked nicely:

http://s5.tinypic.com/kbxcfq.jpg

Also, before and (not quite) after photos:
http://i39.tinypic.com/sn2q0x.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/2aezg3l.jpg

This was a few weeks ago. Have actually got the plumbing in, and have made good progress on the tiling.

I did spend a long time today in a damp and smelly crawlspace trying to track down what I thought was a leak in the main water valve. Heard water running whenever I had the valve open, but apart from that and some water bubbling up from the dirt in the crawl space, no obvious sign of a leak.

The main valve is buried very deep in a narrow space, drilled out of the ledge on which the house was built. (Old house.) You can’t actually see or reach the valve - it’s turned on and off by means of a long, long connecting rod that emerges from the dirt and comes up to a handle under the kitchen sink. The plumber said he’d never seen anything like it before.

So I used a trowel and dug alongside the pipe and the rod, finally going as deep as my arm (in a hole in the ledge not a whole lot wider than my arm) without uncovering the valve. Decided that I might as well open the valve again, in case the leak was in part of the pipe I’d uncovered. Opened the valve, and after the pipes pressurized, no more running water noise. Huh.

Turns out that you have to open the valve ALL the way in order for it to not leak, way down there in the mud under the house. I’d just been too gentle when I opened it. D’Oh! All that digging in smelly med was totally unnecessary.

13

The drawing is very helpful. We start a master bath suite remodel on Friday. I figure that it will be a friggin miracle if we are not divorced after this. After a big fight about having a couple of friends come help demo out all of the old stuff before the contractor started, I reluctantly (and heatedly) agreed not to have any friends come over to help last weekend. That was the only weekend they could help. Then yesterday, the mrs. asks who I am going to have come over and move all of the furniture out of the second floor? I responded that they guys that were going to help with the demolition are also the moving crew, and since we don’t have a demolition team, we don’t have a moving crew. I’m gonna let her think on that one for a few more days before we carry all of the furniture downstairs by ourselves! And I don’t expect to hear a word about it.

14

what is she doing, launching a bath tub out of the hole, or trying to pull a bathtub through a hole??

15

I did exactly the same thing. Was replacing a toilet upstairs, cut off the shutoff, started to unscrew the supply line and the very old shutoff snapped off in my hand. Water running down the walls downstairs.

Worse the pipe threads had snapped off behind the tile inside a brick wall with some of the shutoff pipe still stuck in the supply line. Called a plumber and he said it would be at least 2 days before he could come and we’d have to rip out the tiled wall.

Went to Lowes in despair and just walked around looking for anything that might get that old pipe remnant out. Luckily the largest EZout they had just fit. Held my breath as I used it and luckily it extracted the pipe. Good thing as I was not eager to explain to my wife why we would have no water for several days.

Adventures in home repair.

16

but today i drove off a small cliff and my car was dangling just like something you’d see in a cartoon. i had to call a tow truck to help me, and now my husband won’t speak to me.

Gadzooks, lady. How in the world did that happen? I hope all is OK.

Bernie

17

We bought a one-story house. We went on vacation, to Mendocino. We loved the brightly-colored Victorians there, took lots of pictures. Then our vacation ended and we went home to our new house.

And so I painted our 1200 sq foot house and detached garaged. I ROLLED them. Why? Because I wanted to get my nose up under every inch and caulk, repair every single flaw. I rolled that sucka.

Sunmelt. But you can call it Bright Ass Yellow.

With bright blue trim.

A couple days after I finished (it took three weekends), the sun came up one morning while I was returning from a run. The sun came up my friends and as i rounded the corner to my house BAM the blast of light that hit my eyes has me telling stories about it to this very day.

There it was, my bright ass yellow house. I mean it was really something.

Three months later I bought a sprayer with my tail between my legs, 20 gallons of “latte” but we’ll call it tan, and off I went. With dark brown trim, white window/door frames, and a dark red front door. It is easily the best-looking paint job on the street…

…with the brightest coat of primer within 1000 miles.

18

Septic pump replacements and hot water heater installation are two of those.

Hot water heaters are actually pretty simple, especially since they allow for you to use flexible hoses now. You don’t have to hard plumb everything. Septic pumps (and I will assume you mean a pump that sits in a pit and lifts septic material up to a drain pipe so that it can flow down into a field or a septic tank) generally are easy to replace as well. Accessibility and overall nastiness are the barriers there.

I was thinking about your electrical supply issue for your septic pump. It is hard to believe that the original electrician got away with that. WOW! Still, I would venture to say that you paid a hefty premium because it was in your crawl space. Running a dedicated GFCI circuit shouldn’t cost that much in my opinion, unless there are obstacles that I am not understanding.

I haven’t made any serious dunderheaded moves on a project in a long time. I have a policy, if it is a plumbing project…the water gets turned off. Then the first thing I do is install a shutoff. I can almost shut off the water to every room that has water in it without affecting the other rooms. If it is electricity, I turn the power off. I have gone through the whole house and know what circuit every plug, light, switch and appliance is on and have an extensive map from when I built the house. If, by chance, I am not 100% certain the Main gets shut off. I used to do a lot of electrical work with my wife’s uncle and he was fearless about working with electricity.

Bernie

19

what is she doing, launching a bath tub out of the hole, or trying to pull a bathtub through a hole??
She’s belaying the old bathtub down the stairs, after we’d already wrestled it out to the head of the stairs on the dolly. Not shown in the picture are my neighbor and me, steering the dolly down the stairs while very definitely staying on the uphill side of that thing. 300 lbs. of cast steel - can’t smash it up like you can with cast iron, and gravity gives it a very strong preference for going DOWN stairs, not up.

New tub is fiberglass, and I put it in place all by myself - and I don’t even lift weights or anything.

Remaining items on the To Do list before we put the house up for rent again in June or so:
Finish tiling and grout the new shower enclosure.Wall board on back side of that new stud wall.Fit new basebards for the bathroom.
Build and install four big bypass doors to hide the water heater and washer/dryer on the opposite side of the bathroom.Replace furnace (surprisingly cheaper than I’d thought, with a nice tax credit for next year, too).New suspended ceiling in downstairs office - will go for the type that looks like metal ceiling.Refinish hallway floors (will contract this out - the pros have much better floor sanders than can be rented)Bunch o’ painting.

20

If it is electricity, I turn the power off. I have gone through the whole house and know what circuit every plug, light, switch and appliance is on and have an extensive map from when I built the house. If, by chance, I am not 100% certain the Main gets shut off. I used to do a lot of electrical work with my wife’s uncle and he was fearless about working with electricity.

 So you don't have the pleasure of working on houses that are really old, and were wired by people who were ignorant, illiterate, and insane.  Still don't know exactly which breaker does what in lots of cases - labels like "New Outlet" aren't really very helpful.  I also have one circuit that does a lap and a half around the basement before it finally gets where it's going.  Whole thing is made up of short lengths of cable (4-8 feet, with armored cable) going from one junction box to another.  No actual junctions are made inside these boxes, except for one length spliced to another.  WTF?

One of my favorite moments in home improvement was when I was working on the bathroom in my own house. It’s got an old-fashioned recessed medicine cabinet, with a little slot in the back for disposing of old safety razor blades. When I opened up the wall underneath it, I got a shower of old, rusty razor blades. Managed to escape without injury. Slight comfort to know that they’d probably all been there since before HIV existed, I suppose.