Remodeling Horror Stories

[triplefreak]

Let's hear your remodeling horror stories.

Mine is ongoing. My wife & I bought a fixer-upper 6 years ago, where we now live. The first problem was the foundation had subsided from the sill plate, letting bugs, snakes, and cold air flow thru the basement like a screen door. That's the first thing I fixed. Then, the garage door, a 16' wide jobby disintegrated & we had to replace that. It was a PITA, because we did it ourselves. The instructions were a joke. Basically pictures & no text.
Naturally, my wife being 5'1", and 95 lbs soaking wet, wasn't able to help much with a 100 lb. door section, let alone 4 of them. But, we got thru it together, & saved ourselves about $1K in installation costs.

We had this old pine board paneling up in 3 rooms of our house, & we decided to get rid of it & paint the walls. We found out the previous owners thought themselves carpenters. We took down some paneling & found they had removed the studs in a load bearing wall, and slapped paneling up over the cavity. No wonder the second floor was sagging down into the living room, huh?

So, I rebuilt the wall, and then we found out they had painted over some really old wallpaper. I had to buy some special wallpaper remover to get it off. Then, we found the previous owners had used the wall as a back catch for a dartboard. I had to fill about 850 holes in the wall before I could paint it. What a mess that was.

In the wall they removed the studs from, they had run a piece of lamp cord thru the wall, and wired up a receptacle, but not in a box.
They basically wired the plug, them screwed it to a hole in the paneling itself, using drywall screws.. No electrical box whatsoever, never mind the fact the used lamp cord.
It's a miracle our place didn't burn down.

The more I work on this place, the more I see what's wrong with it.
It's like a never ending nightmare.

So, what's your remodeling horror story?

[TDHofstetter]

They're all pretty horrorrorrific...

Lessee. The Albuquerque house... one wall had a big glob of Romex (actually not Romex, the old fabric-sheathed cable), about six cables, all connected together by twisting the wires together and wrapping the whole glob with friction tape. Not even electrical tape. No box, no wire nuts, no nothin' but friction tape.

The Bradford house... the sheetrock in any one spot might be any of three different thicknesses: 3/8", 1/2", 5/8", and might face either direction. Most of the sheetrock on the walls was small chunks stitched together with joint compound except behind the paneling where it wasn't stitched. Any one stud space had as many as four different kinds of insulation (four within one stud space). Some of the strapping in the upstairs ceiling wasn't nailed or screwed to anything - it was just tucked between the timber joists so it kinda' pinched there. The attic was insulated with R-11 fiberglass... except it wasn't continuous; there were several areas with no insulation at all. Oh, and it goes on from there...

[imahic]

When I bought the place I am in now, there was a shop building already here. It had been enclosed and a family of four living there for a while. The guy put in a bathroom with a tub/shower combo and a toilet. The tub/shower drain just went outside and drained onto the ground. The toilet drained into a septic tank made from a galvanized horse trough about 2 ft in diameter and about 18 inches deep with a plywood top and no lateral lines. He had wiring splices in between the studs with no boxes. He fed one cirucuit with 14 gauge wire from the breaker and had 12 gauge feeding other outlets. He enclosed the breaker panel behind a wall with no access. Needless to say I didn't reuse any of his wiring...lol. I put in a septic tank with lateral lines to replace the galvanized one he had and eliminated the tub/shower.

[woodmannie]

I own a handyman business and do remodeling. Enough said.

Tom

[rrich]

I cronicled the process on the other site. Needless to say, I don't want to re-live the experience.

My problems started when we signed the contract and continued to live in the house. AND we had what was probably the best contractor in the county.

It all starts with, If you can't tell me what you want, how do you expect to tell the contractor what you want. Tears. More fighting until finally there was a slight understanding of what was to be done.

Then it was, I don't like what they're doing, this is wrong, that is wrong, etc. Tell them to fix it. That worked for two or three times. After the third time, I started saying, Stop beating me up. If you don't like it, tell the contractor.

We had the house painted after I put up crown molding. I told her to pick the color and hire a friend who was a painting contractor. I made two decisions in the process, flat paint on the ceiling and touch up the computer room. The painter gave me a piece of base board and I had HD match the white color. He feathered the touch up so well that you can't see the touch up.

[TDHofstetter]

That's hard, Rich. That's REALLY hard.

[tw]

Well.....I was the worker on one of those nightmare projects last winter. I do not know English terminology well enough for telling all details but this is my story:

In late August -08 I was hired by a contractor on an oral contract. My first job was to du a remodeling in a house built in the early 80-ies and recently bought by a young family.

My boss had been inspecting the house for them before they bought it and had promised to fix a few small things that were needed before they moved in.

I started working but everything I opened proved to be messed up by the original builder. Nothing was correctly made. The ceiling came crashing down in two rooms and the toilet floor was a complete mess. The customers knew nothing about buildings and my boss never showed up so I did my best to discuss with the customers and find out reasonable solutions for the problems. Ordered the materials needed and worked almost entirely on my own with my own tools.

The kitchen floor was ripped open when i first came there so I adden new joists on top of the concrete slab and put in new insulation and new chipboard. The boss told that the washing basin had leaked a bit but nothing serious. I ordered new insulation despite to boss told me to put the old mold infested glassfiber back.

The bathroom and sauna were all torn out when I first came there but my boss told that everything had been drying for three years so I could just put in new materials.

In September the boss started trying to steal my tools.

All the time my boss was complaining about my slow work and accused me of doing things wrong, but every time I could prove him wrong. He tried to make me sign an agreement that would lower my pay to below legal minimum. I resisted.

In November I got in a terrible argument with the customer. It ended after a week when we found out that the boss had told different stories to all of us all the time.

I kept telling both boss and customers about the faults I found and they told me to fix them.

The boss kept calling all the time telling how to do but we soon realized that he had no plans nor drawings what so ever.

In December I finally convinced the customer that the dripping old waterpipes were not OK despite the boss said they were. He claimed that small dripping leaks meant nothing.
The plumber came and told that never in his career he has seen a worse pipe job.

The boss tried sabotaging my work in order to collect bribes from me.

After christmas I finally after months of arguing with the boss got the pay records that I should have gotten every month. They showed that a part of my pay was unpaid every month. Overtime which I had plenty of was not paid.

In January the boss tried to fool me to tear out asbestos without protection.
Roundabout then the owner came to me with a paper which the boss had told them was unimportant. It was a report made when the mold damage in the floor was mapped by somebody hired by the seller. It indicated mold in the whole kitchen floor. I explained the contents but they told me to finish my job.
A ventilation pipe which I had installed following measurements mede by the boss on one of his rare visits proved to be in the wrong place. He demanded me to pay him in cash for it. After this the boss continuously tried to make me pay him bribes. I resisted.

I styill kept telling about all faults I found and was told to fix them.

In late January I accidentally sprained my right upper arm at work. I went to the doctor and got sick leave. In finland an employer must have a work accident insurance covering the pay for the employee for the sick leave so I left the papers to the boss. When I came back to work he tried to make me pay a weeks pay in cash to him. I resisted.
I did not get any sick-leave-wage. The boss told me that I had been staying at home drinking vodka those weeks and that no papers from the doctor did exist. I am a teetotaller.

I finished the house and moved on to the next one. After some days and a sabotage attempt from my boss my brain broke down and I was burned out and got sick leave again and was fired on "reasons caused by the employee". Those reasons were never given but I called him and asked and he told it was because I did not accept his pay standards. I was working at legal minimum pay for this kind of job.

I got papers from the insurance company showing that the boss had used the papers I got from the doctor and falsified wage receipts to collect my sick-leave-wage from them.

When comparing different receipts and my hour-lists we found out that my boss had made the customers pay for more hours of my work than I had actually worked.

In spring the customers called me and told that the kitchen was smelling of mould.

A mould expert was brought in this winter and he confirmed that all floors are full of mould. The mould had grown upward through the new kitchen floor. The boss knew about the mould that from the beginning but did not tell neither me nor the customer.

Now the young (a little older than me) couple own a house that is full of mould and not healthy to live in. Their tree kids have not yet gotten any serious allergies but for how long.....All their money is spent on the renovation which exceeded the budget with several 100% and they are in deep debth. The house is impossible to sell and hardly worth the cost of a renovation.
They are preparing to sue my boss.

I am unemployed preparing to sue my boss. I get help from the Union lawyer.

We are helping each other out to make the crook pay.

[triplefreak]

Around these parts, if the boss tries to steal your tools, it's grounds for hanging the bastard.

I suggest you get a rather long rope & practice using it. ;D

[tw]

;D

In finland we use the knife

[mapleman]

two words....

STRUCTURAL SHEETROCK

'nuff said

"How on earth did this thing not either fall down, get blown over, cave in with an inch of snow, burn down or otherwise implode??!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

heh,
john

[CajunRider]

Oh brothers!

Where do I begin? You guys know all about my building projects. Each has plenty of challenges.

Bring me a keg of beer and about 3 or 4 crying towels before we start.

Wait.

Mebbe I am a closet masochist and actually enjoy all this.