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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.