After having the shower screen replaced, I noticed a tile was lifting next to the door. pulled it off to reveal a rotting hole in the timber.
Turns out the shower was lined with plaster instead of cement sheeting.
Luckily the insurance came to the party.
House was originally owned by the builder.

floorboards grooved out for the centralheating pipes in a veryposh house in skipton

how didI find them , with gripper nails when fitting the carpets.

Sent to strip up old flooring in a pub in keighley. 14 layers of vynil each with its own subfloor of hardboard later we came to the rotten floorboards and joists
what was a two day job turned into a four week refurb for the pub. brewery not happy and tried to blame us for not going over the top of what was down .

There were quite a few. This was funny though.
They decided to make the toilet en suite. So they knocked out a hole for the door. The hole was too big for any door! so they bought saloon style swing doors, well at least they filled the gap… sort of. As the didn’t go floor ceiling height. Nice if you wanted a sit down. And the hinges were some massive hydraulic industrial jobs that wouldn’t look out of place on a hanger.
The old existing door? They took the handles and architrave off and just wall papered over it.

Wiring in my house is pretty scatty, think it was a Friday afternoon job. We’ve got one downstairs light joined to all the upstairs lights, same with some of the plug sockets. Also found a cut down screw in one of the fuse sockets in the kitchen. Satisfying to be slowly sorting things out though, at least the next owner will have fewer surprises (hopefully none!).

This was my ring main after I dug it out of the debris under the bedroom floor. It was the only ring, supplying the whole house including the kitchen.

The previous owner had lived here donkeys years, and his son was a qualified sparky.

The cooker feed was run upstairs via a chimney void, under the floors, then into the kitchen from the top corner and diagonally down behind the plaster to a cooker switch. The cooker switch controlled two more double sockets and another cooker switch on the other side of the kitchen. The house had a gas cooker…

Oh, and we had two wall lamps, the flex was chased into the walls, then the ends came out the bottom to 3 pin plugs.

No earth on any of the electrics.

We knew our place had a few “small jobs” needing when we moved in, but found so many horrors it was untrue.

A blind lady had lived in it for 30 plus years until a young couple moved in before us, they stayed there 6 months and ripped out the extra electrics the blind lady had for her shower and door bell/ light etc, they simply cut the wire at the wall and put a piece of electrical tape over the hole and tiled or painted over it, so we found 16 instances of a live wire sticking from wall.

The tiles in the kitchen had been stuck on with No More Nails, so when they were being removed great chunks of the wall came with them.

The kitchen units were ones that had been reclaimed from another house, they had just attacked them to the wall with shelving brackets and i pulled two of the units off the walls with just my fingers.

My personal favourite was where the bath was about 4 inches shy of reaching the wall, they had plugged the gap with newspapers and somehow managed to tile over that.

Big double garage with it’s own little switch and fuse box I’d been using for years, turns out it was only connected to a rose on the downstairs lights circuit.

I have a battery powered doorbell, so why was a 1950s transformer in the cellar still live, with 1980s PVC wiring to it? No idea, but it isn’t any more since it spontaneously combusted a couple of months ago when the insulation finally broke down, luckily we were in to catch it otherwise the whole house would have gone up, 999 job and teams of firefighters in full BA heading down the cellar. Very distinctive smell, burning bakelite.

Haha i had the wall lamps plastered in and 3 pin plugs on end . They didnt even survive round 1

Ding ding round 2

Surface mount boxes off – 1950s round back boxes still present no gromets – yay

Some of the back boxes he has caved in pulled wires across sharp edges , put new boxes in next tooand plastered over the lot since he was plastering it would have actually been easier to do it right and take all the crap out. Orange flex used in places as well . Wires wrapped round pipes – pipe doing nowt. Will get another load to scrappys yet

Im ripping it all out and replastering again …. Good job am getting better at it got almost every room to do now !

Previous house, carrying out sprucing up on a first floor extention decided i wanted some new sockets moved, cut into a return from a wall (plasterboard) lifted board and run cable put hand in hole felt cold metal??? Opend up hole and hey presto an acro prop boxed in either side holding a steel the props had bin welded to the bottom of the steel and the props just placed onto floorboards, big repair bil house sold!!!!! Countless taps piped up incorrectly ie hot through cold etc

floorboards grooved out for the centralheating pipes in a veryposh house in skipton

Yep, I’ve seen this plenty of times! 😉

Belter loving the acro props phil , some people are just wired up different

Wonder what the hire co said

Also wtf pipes connected wrong – there is simply no excuse these people should be banned from thinking

A shower switch screwed in to the bathroom ceiling, only the screws were screwed in to the wire. No wonder it kept shorting 😯

And as another one i’ve seen already, the Mains on switch was reversed…

I thought mine was a comedy of bodged-up-ness but it can’t compete with some of the ones you lot have had. 😛

Helping a mate do some rewiring. Paranoia kicks in so we turn off the fuse box and make sure that the fuses are removed/tripped (we’d had a few beers the night before and we’re feeling hangover paranoid).

Back up stairs mate starts to undo a junction box and then flies across the room. Yep definitely still live wiring and fortunately still live him.

Back to fuseboxes, all off. tracing wiring shows that the plugs for the main bedroom were running off the neighbour’s ring.

Funnily enough i found out who fitted the props as i used to work for the hire company he also hired a welder and nail gun, he was a builder apparently ;/

Mate moved into his very nice new house. 6 months later one of the bedroom walls was getting very damp and mouldy.

Turned out that the shower extract fan vented direct into the attic, condensed, ran down the roof interior to said bedroom wall.

Our 1st house, owned by you guessed it, a builder! The shower was always a bit weird, massive temperature swings. when I came to replace the bathroom the water wouldn’t turn off to the shower despite turning off the stopcock, I discovered that the shower was plumbed into the central heating pipes. Perfect.

My mums fella decided to ‘spruce’ the kitchen up a few years ago

He painted over the cupboard doors with what looked like gloss paint, tiled the walls, and although he used tile spacers between the corners of each tile he then left in-situ and grouted over them, the majority still visible.

Kitchen and porch floors were tiled, both wonky and no spacers used – probably because they were now stuck in the kitchen wall.

He’s also replaced internal doors that don’t close properly, or at all. The said doors were also painted gloss white with a tin of paint that must have gone off or been faulty as the paint was off white/yellow.

Luckily the old dear got a whole new kitchen fitted by professionals in the summer, although I did suggest that before it was replastered one of the single sockets should be extended to a double. He then decided that yes this was a good idea – after the kitchen had been completed so then chiseled the socket out and patched up the wallpaper.

Oh dear lord weasel lol, its allways the case dads/step dads having a bash at diy and it ends in tears, i thought wiring and plumbing were safe as what diyer would wanna rip a mains board open or open the front of a boiler n have a fettle, but reading these posts wiring seems to be favoured muck ups!!! Iv sin a few minor botches (friday afternoon wanna get paid n go pub) but some above are horrendus!!!! If i hadent have wanted extra sockets id most probably still bin in deathtrap no1 now!!!!

Big phil

Think folk genuinely dont understand wiring – think its just like an extension lead to fit a new cable.

Long as it does trip they assume its fine- can work and be a mega. Fire hazzard on old fuses and breakers. Unlike water which like a baby makes its unhappyness known by leaking that said i found fitting me heating and boiler much less complicated.

I think my fella was just cutting costs using spurs , ive whipped out about 150m of wire and put about 300 back in creating propper loops instead o spurs. – uses half the wire i guess.

Glad i was able to move the mrs out to the parents while we did this as its chaos with wires everywhere .

The plug for my washing machine is in the cupboard directly under the kitchen sink. 😆

Im on a rewire atm with the father in law hes bin a qualified spark and plumber for 30+ years i just chase and pull cable for him and make it look pretty after hes done (bin a dec for 10 years) i dont think im daft but when he starts banging on about phases and the size of the cores etc i switch off (no pun intended) just tell me where to make holes n lift boards and what cable goes to where n im happy, hes a perfectionist all cables must be flat and clipped correctly and evenly, as he keeps telling me your only as good as your last job, as in some cases above if some spark went to fit some new sockets/lights in a job wed done hed be happy that the work was correct and not slag us off, its beggars belief why some people think “oh its behind plaster or under boards whos gonna see it” its pathetic!!!

MrOvershoot off of here used to know a builder by the name of Fred West…

Rich_s – Member

MrOvershoot off of here used to know a builder by the name of Fred West…
Oi your not supposed to tell 😉

OK so I lived in the same street as him from 1988-95 yep that was when they were digging up the bodies!

But Rich I didn’t buy the House of Doom™

Back to fuseboxes, all off. tracing wiring shows that the plugs for the main bedroom were running off the neighbour’s ring.

I’ve had a few wry smiles reading this thread, but that’s absolutely brilliant. I don’t know why I never thought of it myself.

Ooft shower wiring out today – was black charred along its length :s

Could have been a disaster

recently had our bathroom done

knew it was gonna be bad so plasterboard behind tiles being rotten was no surprise

the tiler thought the window was hilarious though, it wasnt actually attached to the wall just held in place by decaying silicone sealant and some pvc window trim directly onto the tiles
the wooden frame was just sitting there with a large gaps at the sides

we are getting the kitchen done this year and i think the back door and window were done at the same time as the bathroom…..

The new down-lighters in the kitchen were flouro strip lights on the bottom of the cabinets with wiring run on top of the wall but behind the cabinets themselves.

This compared to a lot of the others seems pretty mild.. I was thinking of running a couple of the little ikea stip lights off the light circuit in the cooker extract hood not long back 😉

My sister pulled out of buying a house just before Christmas after the survey. The owner’s dad built an extension and ignored the building regs, but best of all was they wanted more room so took out the chimney breasts in the lounger and master bedroom. Trouble was that is where they stopped. They left the chimney itself in place with no support 😯

….And it’s a chest of drawers, OK?

Ah says the guy, you live on <insert development>. How’d you know, says I?

I went to the local hardware store to get a key cut for the back door of my mums house. Show the guy the key and he picks a new key off a hook behind the counter and hands it to me. All 400 or so back doors on the estate were keyed alike. This was 20 odd years after they’d been built and unless folk had got a key cut locally they were unaware.

I’m a sparky, i could probably write a book about some of the life threatening diy jobs i’ve seen. I could prob also go self employed and earn a steady trade just from the people on here!
Most recent but a minor one for me: My mate had a house built for him a couple of years ago. I visited recently and he asked me to replace the inline extract fan in the roof void for the upstairs toilet, the walls and ceiling were getting mouldy now matter how long the fan was on so he thought the fan had broken.
He gave me a new fan and i climbed into the void. Turned out the fan was fitted the wrong way round and was pumping damp cold air into the toilet from outside! The longer the fan was on, the worse he made the problem!

Our outhouse electricity was connected to the main house by way of interior grade 2.5mm twin and earth strung like a washing line running about 60 feet down the garden with no supporting steel cable. Every time something high load was run in the garage the cable sagged. When it got to neck height it had to be replaced (and routed correctly).

Artex ‘removed’ by wallpapering directly on top. That explained why the walls were lumpy but at least it was easy to strip!

The rest was general overkill – 9 120mm frame fixings holding 2×4 to the wall for a TV shelf!

Shower works better too now 🙂

Whoooaaaa all those backdoors??!!

Hora, 13 minutes ago.

That did pass my mind as I typed..