[Closed] The finest DIY disasters in your house...

Whilst we were moving in to our house, we met the lady who owned the house next door. She was a property developer who had just sold for a profit and whilst we were chatting about the work she had done i had a nagging doubt that she was a bit clueless. The new owners moved in about a couple of weeks after us (they are now good friends) and we got chatting and my doubts were justified. The woman had plumbed the outside tap to the hot water supply and had obviously got confused with the inner workings of the toilet cistern so had left all the bits in the bottom unconnected with the instruction manual. A week later the dining room radiater pipe sprung a leak as she hadnt actually done the nut up, just put it in place so it looked connected!

Surprisingly the half century worth of paint on wallpaper on woodchip etc. wasn't hiding any real DIY disasters. Most of the oddities appear to have been built with the house itself

- Next doors master fuse is in our house (the houses were built as semi-detached)

- 3 phase electric supply despite never being anything other than domestic dwelling

- electric routed across 3 neighbouring gardens to side street, not street in front of the house

All the above discovered when the electricity went out one snowy day. Took them about 4 hours to find the supply

- different height ceilings as different joist depths

- doors jammed into corners so no room for a door frame on one side

- wall between kitchen and pantry ends across a window

Had to question the wisdom of putting 3 feet of reinforced concrete under the old wood framed extension, which the builders had a lovely time with when they build the new one.

Thankfully most of the other issues have been resolved by us renovating almost all of the house now!

We've not been in long so not had a chance to sort most of them yet.

I did have the circular saw out on whilst they were still unloading the removals van as the solid wood flooring in the living room was bowed all over the place (they'd placed furniture on it to keep is down) had to take half an inch off the boards the length of the room.

The kitchen hardwood flooring is coming apart all over the place as it hasnt been glued at all, quite a few boards have been laid straight next to one another so 4 corners meeting at a junction 🙁 It's so frustrating as it's ridiculously expensive flooring laid by a monkey.

Our upstairs landing is on 3 levels, not a lot I can do about that, there's no cavity in the wall in the extension, pretty much going to have to knock that down and start again and do it bigger.

A previous house: I was stripping and refitting the kitchen which involved removing the cooker. I wondered where the wiring went. Ah, behind the skirting board so remove that to find that the tails from the cooker weren't long enough (surprise, surprise) so they had connected an extension with the joint being a 13A rated chocolate block!

When we lived in Wales I rebuilt the bathroom, it was a single story extension to the house. I had plans to simply turn the toilet by 90deg so the bath could be relocated. Taking as much care as I could I tried to chip the old cement from the clay pipe U-bend but failed. I now had to figure out where the next joint in the pipe was so slid the end of the tape measure down the pipe. To find that the installers had obviously bought four lengths of pipe to reach between the toilet and the manhole but actually needed four and a bit so had left gaps between each length of pipe!

Our garage wiring looked old but OK, big switch to isolate it all and a fat wire coming in to the bottom of that. Few lights and sockets running off it. Replaced the light in the utility room through the wall and found the fat wire bodged into the ceiling rose, not even an earth.

Smoke alarm in cellar went off one day, went to investigate, and sure enough it was full of smoke. Old bakelite, cloth and varnish transformer for the doorbell had shorted, overheated and got very smoky. If we hadn't been at home it might well have got quite flamey too. Strange since our doorbell chime takes batteries, and has done all of the 20 years we've been here, and it wasn't new then. Whoever swapped the bell over decades ago just left the old transformer live, we had no idea.

I had loads.

Coin instead of a fuse in a consumer unit

Shockingly badly fitted expensive oak floor (the only tihng i can't fix really). More gap than floor.

Plug sockets wired into the lighting circuit

Random live bit of cable going to the shed, with nothing on the end

Lots of light fittings with dodgy cabling that constantly flipped breakers

Leaking roof

Dodgy wired in under floor heating

Bathroom vanity unit made out of a chest of draws with a sink plonked on top

And loads more I've wiped from my memory!

The outside plug wasn't earthed. Meaning if I had cut through the wire while strimming the garden my child might have been left fatherless.

Not in a house but a climbing hut: old style consumer unit bypassed with wires to a standard 13A switch by the door so they could turn everything on and off without the inconvenience of two paces across the entrance. Even if you removed every fuse, everything was live!

My dad had some problems with a crackly phone line.

I traced the extension wire from the front bedroom, snaking around doorways through the hallway to a back bedroom, where it went outside through an air brick, up the back of the house, in again through the eaves, across the floor of the attic, back out the eaves at the front of the house, down the front, then in through another air brick to the lounge to a second extension cable that finally lead to to the master socket!

No idea why it was so crackly, especially since the routing around the doors meant the cable got pinched every time they were closed!

Plastering done by flicking it at the wall, with a spoon, from 10 feet away.

One million layers of vinyl wallpaper that wouldn't steam off so had to be pocked off in 5p sized bits for weeks on end.

Loft conversion electrics bypassing consumer unit

All the doors open the wrong way (into the room not the wall, not an easy fix as the light switches are all on the room side wall!

Ceramic kitchen tiles are laid over the old hardwood parquet.

Other than that its not been too bad, mostly its just been lazy diy rather than horrific.

Not my house but a friend had one where there were some sockets fitted into the side of a larder cupboard (a crappy standard kitchen unit one not a proper larder) in the kitchen. All sounds fine until you opened the larder cupboard and found the exposed back on the sockets covered only by one of those thin a4 plastic document folders designed to hold a single sheet of paper!

Our house has plenty. Previous owners partner was a bodger builder.

All the doors open the wrong way (into the room not the wall, not an easy fix as the light switches are all on the room side wall!

Yeap got that one, in some rooms but not others strangely.

Doors the wrong way is pretty normal in older houses as that used to be considered the right way, especially into bedrooms

leaky roofs ive had in every house ive owned.

wiring with no earth, just adds to the excitement. especially as it all looks like its new with the brand new consumer unit and earth tucked in the back.

drain not plumbed properly meaning we got attacked by slugs one weekend!

light in the cellar that i had no idea what was going on with. however if you pressed the wires all the lights would go off downstairs but not the cellar!

cowboy plasterers (my next door neighbor) who when i asked if he thought the chimney breast being 20deg out of plumb was acceptable just said yes and walked away.

Doors that way is deliberate - it's to give you time to do your trousers up.

Too many to list. Best was person who had knock out the chimney in the bed room but left the stuff above it. No steel, not even a bit of wood. Just plaster board over it. Bricks were just hanging there.

Same house the entire gas systems was “condemned” and disconnected when the gas man came to check the boiler (which I thought looked wrong as burned a bit yellow).

A friend lived in a house that had a light in the kitchen that couldn't be turned off. - not because the switch didn't work but because there was no switch.

Ceramic kitchen tiles are laid over the old hardwood parquet.

another friend lived in a house where hardwood flooring had been installed without removing the previous carpet and underlay. It had then been waxed and polished to an incredible shine leading to a floor that was extraordinary slippy but also disconcertingly spongey.

the tails from the cooker weren’t long enough (surprise, surprise) so they had connected an extension with the joint being a 13A rated chocolate block!

At least your cooker could feasibly run off a 13A choc block!

Our extension (utility room) had the washing machine, dishwasher, fridge freezer, sockets and light all running off a single spur tapped into the ring main with, you guessed it, a choc block.

Like others the previous tenant was a serial bodger, he also built that extension which took roughly an hour and a half for a few guys with a couple of breaker bars and club hammers to demolish. In fairness they only used the hammers to get the job done quicker, a lot of it was literally kicked down.

We have a corner of the wall in the newly plastered living room that is about 50mm further out than the rest. No bloody idea. Plasterer didn't seem too concerned. We were just sick of tradesmen so it's gonna stay, some other poor bastard can scratch their head over that one.

Oh, our main fuse is two doors down as well under her kitchen worktop.

Still on my voyage of discovery...

House used to be two properties, smaller rented out.  With 2 old consumer units.  Turns out the lights and sockets in the main houses master were wired into the rentals unit....so glad I checked the lights were definitely dead when I thought I had isolated them...

Laminate laid in kitchen/conservatory, bits spongy in one place.  Turns out floor was never levelled and the spongy bit is an old outside drain that is still actually live.  Stuffed with soaking wet and stinky loft insulation...

Garage sockets wired off the upstairs circuit

Wall lights removed and wall papered over still live

Kitchen and bathroom done in the last 4 years but old plumbing left so Brown water and particales when first running the hot water knacking one tap already.

Bit of scaffold pole used for an old toilet cistern over flow.  God knows where it drained too.

Bit concerned about where the dishwasher drains to...wouldn't surprise me if it is just under the suspended floor.

Massive holes left in the outside cavity where stuff had been moved, filled with wasps nests

I think a bathroom extractor that just extracts to a flat roof cavity.

Boiler flue that for some reason is the length of the house (13m) rather than straight up.  Supported by a single builders band....

This is the stuff I've found

Ring main that I found under the floor in our bedroom...

Also, the cooker feed ran diagonally down the kitchen wall, to a cooker switch that was a master switch for everything in the kitchen, and then another cooker wire went across the kitchen to another cooker switch.

The couples son was a sparkie...apparently...

Oh, and there was a 2 inch hole through a joist in the landing where all the upstairs electrics was fed through.  There was a nice blackened screw holding a split floorboard, driven straight through the entire bunch.  Only twigged when I was trying to pull some slack and nothing would move 🙂

Kitchen ring main with junction boxes considered too posh so cable  bare ends were just twiddled together and insulated with masking tape!

I forgot our last Sheffield house. Previous owners had been in since 1932(!). The carpets were laid over old carpet, over old carpet. Thing is, they hadn't moved the wardrobes in the bedroom - just cut the carpet around them.....

strange smell of drains in our house when we first moved in, just put it down to been empty and shut up for 2 1/2 yrs went not long after we moved in. Took floor boards up doing work found 2 4"drain pipes not connected to anything apart from manholes outside , hence drain smell, just with open doors and windows the smell never got noticed.

2 different types of plastic waste pipes attempted to be melted together rather than buy a connector.

and still going.

Three class 1 light fittings not earthed.

Cables chased in the wall at 10° angle from the sockets. Both ran proud of the plaster where they fed into the ceiling, but completely covered by multiple layers of textured and painted wallpaper. Discovered the first one with a wallpaper scraper. Luckily it was coax, another was a spurred socket.

Another spurred socket covered by a blank cover. Cable was run horizontally, buried in plaster above skirting height from a socket halfway across the room, and was still live inside metal knockout box just wrapped in insulation. All hidden behind a radiator. The brown plug and screw holding the bottom of the radiator was literally touching the outer insulation of the live cable.

Radiator pipes (copper) in the conservatory buried under the screed and tiles, and evidently not wrapped or protected from the concrete. They burst soon after we had a combi installed.

Front room had a fitted carpet when we moved in-- or so we thought. It was strips of unfastened carpet all around the walls, with a (rather nice) rug placed on top, just about overlapping the edges. The concrete floor beneath was nicely painted in blood red floor paint. Classy.

Bathtub mounted directly onto joists, not boards. Not much of a gradient to help drain the water.

Double glazing units are all the correct width, but vertically challenged. The shortfall is filled with a weird mortar/ glassfibre mix, hidden behind a UPVC cover poorly mounted with mastic. And Oh God- the mastic. It's seemingly everywhere, as was the expanded polystyrene tiles and wallpaper stuff. Horrifically dangerous stuff that was the first thing to go when we moved in.

Leaky roof with rags placed into place to absorb the water.

Despite being on a 20% hillside, the rear of house is now below the level of the rear garden due to 'landscaping', thus the garden drains into the house at times of heavy rainfall if I don't keep the gullies clear.

A 'lawn' with so many shrubs that it takes two days to properly trim the grass. This now pretty much dealt with by way of an ongoing scorched earth policy.I have learnt to loathe shrubs.

And 'Gentleman's Art Appreciation' mags stuffed into many and various cavities in the blockwork in the shed. Carole from Cannock is an exceptionally flexible young lady!

We thought the radiator in the bathroom needed bleeding when we moved in (it was always stone cold, regardless of the heating setting). Took a little while before we noticed the pipes coming out of the floor and the bottom of the radiator were capped and then lined up very carefully. From the front you wouldn't notice unless you were looking for it.

Random switches are my favourite- we had one mounted on a ceiling beam that despite some effort on my part, going round the house while turning it on and off, didn't appear to do anything.

Finally, whoever built the shed must have spent a fortune in materials- shed was nearly 3x4m, all the structure was done in 2x4 or larger and it had a four pitch tiled roof. And then all that weight had been put on a pile of breeze blocks at each corner and a couple more in the middle. No wonder the whole thing was collapsing under its own weight.

Fortunately the only disasters in our house were from neglect rather than ineptitude. Apart from the lawnmower...

They left behind a 240v lawnmower which was old but bigger than what I’d bought. Noted that the cable had been joined at the mower end with a cable mounted normal 3 pin plug and socket, didn’t like it but carried on. It was only the day where I got the cable wrapped around a tree, split the cable at the plug and socket to untangle it, that I realised the 3 pin plug end causing a strong buzzing sensation in my hand was the live end! Promptly ‘decommsioned’ the whole mower whilst cursing the previous owner...

A friend lived in a house that had a light in the kitchen that couldn’t be turned off. – not because the switch didn’t work but because there was no switch.

Is your friend named Morrissey?

couple in my folks old house - a fireplace that only had a piece of hardboard between the back of the inset and the corridor the other side of the wall.  Nice and safe if they had lit a fire.  Bathroom radiator plumbed into the return pipe work so hardly got warm.  and of course the mystery light switch that did nothing

No drain from the utility sink not picked up by survey

wiring for bathroom lights melted and almost took the house down in flames

persistent leaks from glass roof in extension

decking supports rotted through as water fell directly onto it

ive just started...

Oh ok then a few more.

Very expensive Italian bathroom suites with cisterns hidden in the walls. With no accesstoany plumbing

One developed a leak and took down a wall,had to replace the wall and toilet with one with an external cistern

leaking shower trap meant a whole lathe and plaster cieling had to come down for repair

the last owners had expensive taste in fittings but no idea how to fit them!

our insurance premiums are huge!

Previous owner was a gas engineer as his day job so you think a newly fitted boiler and flue would be fine? Nope, first heavy rain we had the hallway flooded, got a roofer out and nope it’s your gas flue. Turned out he fitted the wrong degree and type of tile to the roof. As it rained water built up behind the flue and then poured in the house. To combat this he had fitted layers and layers of flashing, turned out it gave way after they moved. Not great! Still finding other stuff like the radiators all at odd angles,    bathroom when we retiled not a single wall is straight, and no insulation in the extension, I could go on....

A friend moved in to her new home to find a free, new and very large washing machine left in the utility room

At some point the previous owner decided to make a utility room in the kitchen, and obviously hadn't bothered to move either the washing machine out or plan a suitable doorway before starting with the stud walls and plasterboard 🙂

Two days after moving into our house ,knock on the door - it's the Water board/Environment Agency checking for drain misconnections - blue dye down the sink and a few minutes later we were given an enforcement notice for having a kitchen wastewater going into a rainwater drain which goes to a nearby brook/nature reserve. 🙁

I also had to rewire as it was like spookyb's . Gits.

50% of lights witches were upside down

Did their hats fall off?

Is your friend named Morrissey?

🙂

Friends daughter bought a house that had been renovated by a "builder". they had plumbed up hot to cold and vise vera...

Found out when the toilet cistern was red hot.

I was going to join this thread - but the examples already make mine look like wee trifles!

Not mine  but a rented house I inspect, hidden inside a central ground floor stud wall is a Acroprop which is effectively holding up the 2 floors above.

In my own house I ordered a replacement UPVC front door and frame from a local window outfit, upon Installation it was found to be 100mm to short in height.

Was cursing the company for there error, but upon double checking my emails realised it was my f***up.

Thankfully father in-law is a bricklayer and a extra course of bricks below sorted it albeit with a bit of step into the house, I claim its deliberate to help prevent flood water coming in(even though we live at the top of a hill).

a kitchen wastewater going into a rainwater drain

I have one of those - the drawings for the house showed it going into the foul drain, and it was only when working out if I could extend the drain to move the washing machine that I discovered the waste was misconnected. That wasn't a DiY error, as it was done by a builder, and should have been inspected by the LA (built in 1988).

Random live wires in the ceiling.

Kitchen power runs off a fuse box which is in a polycarb lean to.

Log burner flue was just placed in the opening.

Joists had slipped in dining room as so much brickwork had been removed to let wires through

Attic room power is the downstairs ring with sockets daisy chained off each other.

New shower grout kept cracking .Turned out that the joists below had rotted and dogged together with a bit of 2x4.

Kitchen rad is parasitic and takes the heat from the dining room rad as it's spured off that.

Wallpaper covering semi plastered wallpaper.

Stopcock leaking for years and rotted the kitchen

Plastered with a "rustic" finish by a blind person.

Very much a 1st world DIY disaster but my dad is still aggrieved by it.

The guy that renovated their current house fitted a built in wine rack down the side of the oven. New kitchen so difficult / expensive to fix.

I pity whoever ends up buying a house we used to rent in Reading. Really nice house but the owner used to live in it and was massive DIY bodger. The best we discovered was that he'd connected the power shower upstairs using thin cable that should have been for a lighting circuit. The fuse was 30A so we kept smelling burning every morning until it got a bit smokey then realised what it was. The cable was run all the through the walls and was charred from beginning to end.

He'd also fitted a car stereo into the bedroom wall and hidden the AC > DC converter somewhere in the wall. Standard halogen downlights above shower. also badly wired in. Electrician who came out to fix shower poked his head into the attic and was not complimentary.

This is one of the best threads in ages. We were going to have a log burner installed and had a local chap come round to price up for us. He looked at the Aga Rembrandt that we had in horror. I explained that the previous owner installed it.

He then listed all the ways it had been badly installed and was a fire risk. Even asked us to promise not to use it again. He then asked if we knew what the previous owner did for a living. “Yes” I said “he was a firefighter” wish I’d taken a photo of the installers face.

I ended up removing the fireplace myself and just have the alcove and plinth as a reading nook for the kids.

We bought a rebuilt place and had a friendly builder go through before sale so our price included contingency but so far:

absolutely no straight walls, even on a new extension

sonky floors

bathroom taps plumbed In back to front

flashing betweeb extension and main house not recessed into stonework causing leak

no drainage on flag patio leading to a temp swimming pool, recessed lights not working

mains gas pipe (copper) laid over 6 stub walls and it wrapped, perforated and resulted in having to dismantle 2 floors to get a new one in

Electrics for outside summer house, garage and outbuildings not earthed. Helpful that one.

Most of it is fixed and now my good lady wants to move again to a flatter site. I’m not sure I can face another round of sh1te workmanship !

Another one from my parents house.  small bungalow that was much extended.  3 consumer units one of which was hidden in the eaves space that you had to crawl thru a hatch to get to

Previous owner had knocked out both mid-wall support pillars in the garage to get the car in... looks like it happened ages ago and we've yet to rebuild it.

All the doors open the wrong way (into the room not the wall, not an easy fix as the light switches are all on the room side wall

Yup, same here. Biggest problem is the door frames & jams/stops  are all "worked" out of one piece of wood per side so you can't knock the jam/stop off and turn the door round, so new frames in every single bloody room!!

I don't get this doors opening the wrong way round thing - most houses I have lived in most doors open into the room and away from the corner of the room.

I think the doors opening towards the room is probably a hangover from houses that had domestic staff so there was a moment to "preserve dignity". In smaller houses it will have been a case of copying the higher classes. But ... in the house I grew up in, which looks very grand, the doors open "to the wall", in my mother in law's house, terraced house, they all open to the room.

The outside plug wasn’t earthed. Meaning if I had cut through the wire while strimming the garden my child might have been left fatherless.

Hate to break it to you, but the socket being earthed has no impact on survival rates unless you were mowing the lawn with a toaster. Most outdoor equipment is double insulated, and you rely on an RCD to protect you when you accidentally cut the power cable with your hedge trimmer.

You do use an RCD (or have them fitted to your consumer unit), right?

I have doors that open in different ways, what do I win?

One bedroom door inwards towards the wall.

One bedroom door inwards towards the room,

Kitchen door outwards towards the wall.

Bathroom door inwards towards the wall.

Never even crossed my mind as an issue until I read this thread. As long as they don’t open upwards or downwards what’s the issue?

As long as they don’t open upwards or downwards what’s the issue?

If I understand correctly the issue isn't whether they open in or out, it is whether a door in a corner of a room swings open against the wall (sensible) or swings towards the room leaving you to step around it as you enter (madness).

Can’t you just shut it when you enter? I is confused by it being an issue 😀 genuinely never even noticed it until it was mentioned on here

Not madness - explained in my previous post. A bit of research (I.e. not looking at the first Google result) gives this:

Doors on older buildings in the UK were designed so that domestic servants could open them and speak into a room without being seen or being able to see the room's occupants. I live in an Edwardian house, and all of the doors open that way. This tradition occasionally carries forwards into new builds, but not always, as it uses up valuable room space, and so has fallen out of fashion.

Wow - i feel better about my woes now .. Leaking shower feed encased in wall plastered over / Wooden floor laid on tiles and a bit of hidden damp  is nowt in comparison to this lot .. Im interested on why a lot of thsi was not picked up on survey though ?

Or did you not get one ?

Depends how big your room is I guess. If you are a bit limited on floorspace then it can be awkward to organise furniture to give you enough room to get out of the way to shut it. Basically it just takes out space in the room for no good reason.

Also it is just a bit weird.

I would tell you all the secret treasures the buyers of our place missed on their survey, but it might come back to bite me so I won't 🙂

I did leave some 'helpful' Post It notes around the place to explain some of it. And I left some unfitted spares in the shed with further notes.

I'm interested on why a lot of this was not picked up on survey though?

You are kidding right?

A friend had the full survey done on a house. The surveyor missed the fact that the two storey extension at the back wasn't actually attached to the rest of the house! The one inch gap between the two sets of brickwork might have been a clue. Once the internal wallpaper was removed if you stood in the upstairs room you could put both hands into the gap and move the whole extension outwards by 6 inches!!!

It turned out that the back wall of the extension had been built along the line of a fairly shallow drain which had subsequently collapsed. Guess what else the surveyor didn't spot?

My friend tried to claim against the agents but basically got nowhere as there's so many get-out clauses in the survey contract.

Guttering on the rear of our house used to run downhill, parallel to the ground...

... with the downpipe at the top.

Our house is riddled with comical quirks like that, which would be really funny if there weren't so many of them.

For reference, ours is an old terraced cottage, built around 1850. When people tell you to buy an old house because they're better quality than modern houses, it's nonsense. Ours was clearly built before spirit levels were widely available.