Home Improvement and terrible experiences thread

Installed a compression tee on my water line under the house for my new sprinkler system, which I was also installing myself.

Didn't install the tee correctly and it blew apart during the day. When I came home, there was about 6" water under the house. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had been away on vacation or something similar.

These days, I ask someone to just stop by and make sure my house hasn't burned down or something when I'm vacation. My imagination gets away from me sometimes.
 
In August I spent a bunch of money have the main water line into my house replaced and at the same time I also had some old plumbing the basement upgraded. On the Labour Day long weekend my drains backed up and that required a few thousands dollars of additional plumbing work. Luckily the flooding in my basement was minor, it was mostly the cost to fix it that hurt after having spent a bunch of money in August.
 
Zer said:
Left the lights on in my cellar and about 6 months later I found I had a spider infestation down there. Figured I could deal with that shit by turning the lights off, but then my basement flooded and killed my furnace. Had to wade through the floodwater (Full of dead spiders) and cobwebs to fix my sump pump. Shit was manly. Had to buy a new furnace though, and the guy told me my water heater's probably going to cop it sooner rather than later too
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LOL - Don't mess around with the water heater. They have cathodic protection to prevents internal corrosion for 5-10 years, depending on your water.

After that, the tank starts rusting and the bottom may randomly drop out one day. :eek:

My parents are paranoid about such things and has passed that along to me.
 
I noticed the vent was gone on my fascia board and birds were flying in and out. got out my ladder and climbed up with hanger to pull out the nest. As i start pulling out dry nesting material it keeps coming for 5 mins, then the hanger gets stuck, so i pull, still stuck, so i pull harder thinking it stuck on truss beam or something. ZAP! i feel the shock go down my arm, lucky i didnt fall off ladder. I give a little yell and let go, now i got a metal hanger stuck on a live wire sitting in dry nest tinder. I fly down that ladder and run to main and turn it off. Now im pissed and not sure what to do.Theres no attic access. I have to go to living room and cut a 2foot hole in ceiling dry wall to access area. The nest is HUGE! about 3 feet square, no way i would have got it all out through small vent hole. Sure enough the hanger is stuck in wire. i have to splice the wire put in a box to protect it, clean out all the nest and repair dry wall. I was pissed, put up new stainless screens all around the rest of house and go on a myna bird shooting spree.

For those worried abut water bursts (which ive had) go replace all your lines with stainless burst lines or better yet they have new ones with a valve at end that shuts water off if a burst occurs. I replaced all my toilets/sinks/washer/dishwasher with these type hoses. I go on vacation with more piece of mind.
 
Recently had a water hose rupture in our front garden and somehow conveniently sprayed directly through our barely cracked open front window. Went on for about an hour before I noticed. Had about an inch of water in my living room.
 
I know a product called gutter glove helped me out alot on my home. My friend recommended it to me.
 
A few years ago our village redid the sewers in our neighborhood. Ever since we've had major flooding issues in our area. We've flooded several times, one of those times it took out our water heater and the control panel on our furnace. We had to have the walls ripped out and we maxed out our homeowners flood insurance which covered like 10K in damages. That was about half of what it ended up costing us.

We've also had several tree limb falling issues. But, we've actually been fortunate about where they've landed as we could have taken a lot more damage than we did in every case. We finally had to have 2 large trees removed this past year after a large portion of one fell on my neighbors back porch.
 
I'm currently in year 1.75 of converting my garage into living space.

Poured a new slab to level the garage with the house, removed the garage door and built a wall in its place, put a new window in, took out the door between the house and the garage and made it an archway, and ran wiring last summer.

Insulated the walls last winter, but I bought insulation with no paper vapor barrier. So I had to put up plastic over the insulation.

Hooked up the electric, put up 90% of the drywall, and put more insulation in the roof of the attic this summer.

I still have to figure out a new heating/cooling system for the house. I want to get rid of the oil burner and get an HVAC system.

I'm quite handy, but I am lazy.
 
FightIrish said:
Dude you fucked that drywall up bad. Why not cut it square along the studs so you could patch it?
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i discovered the leak at about 1130pm on a friday night when my kids were in bed and i was whacked out on cold medicine. by that point i had about a liter of water gushing behind the wall a minute. i chose to rip the dry wall to see where the hole was. when i found it i shut the main i repaired the dry wall in 15 minutes with a sheet i bought at home depot as well.
 
You mean sparky came over to your house and you guys bonded over electrical troubleshooting?

#jealous
 
I'm living in a rented house, and every time something fucks up it makes me want to own a house less and less.
 
My downstairs restroom had poop backflowing into a bathtub once. I thought it was a curse or something.
 
I had a neighbor claim he had a right of way across my property shortly after I bought my house. My real estate attorney was clueless. I hired a surveyor ($2500 thirteen years ago) who not only disproved my neighbor's claim but proved I in fact had a right of way across his.

People are scumbags.

My real estate attorney had the great timing to die before I could sue her for the cost of the surveyor.
 
Building is the worst experience. Outside of that I'll go with anything involving water leaking into the house.
 
Termites... no real damage, just some base boards. That was easy enough as I had a termite inspection/repair contract through my bank (insurance as termites are pretty much par for the course out here.)

Hurricane Irene ripped my roof off a few years ago, got that replaced and the company fucked up bad... screwed me as hard as they could every step of the way. Long, miserable story short, they didn't install the flashing around my chimney properly and I ended up with a huge leak and had to have the interior ceiling take down and replaced... and of course have the flashing repaired. My homeowners insurance, USAA, were studs and hooked me up with enough money to repair it, minus the deductible, and right now they have my shitty roofer in court working on getting my deductible back.
 
Good job. It's a good feeling when you know you can fix anything and everything that can go wrong in your house.
 
Have had it just over 1 year, this is the only real bad thing to happen.

Was in my shower, with a lady (who isn't someone I'm dating, someone new) having fun when I realize my bathroom is flooding. I wanted to finish having fun but I couldn't stop thinking about this damn water sitting on my floor.

Get out, the shower water was flooded all over, so I used the plunger it went down. A little later flush the toilet, (ironically 3 days before I had put the blue water stuff in the top and I literally thought this while doing it 'how could this possibly be bad? I don't see it').

So now blue water is coming out of the bottom of the toilet, it runs to the end of my bathroom to WHITE carpet, also runs under the wall to my hallway, also WHITE carpet.

Call a plumber, they showed up 2 hours later on Labor day weekend (fucking awesome) fix it, was a main line clog just a quick rotor clean & they checked my line for tree roots (none).

only ended up costing me $99 and 2 blue stains, luckily I want to get rid of this hideous carpet anyway, but for now there are 2 rugs set over the stains :p
 
Bought my first house in February this year. The only issue I've had was one of the boards in the oven busted and the bake and broil wouldn't heat up. Home warranty covered it and I just had to pay the service fee, which was 50 dollars if I remember correctly.
 
We've been in our home (first one we've ever purchased) about two years and I had a leaky shower. I looked at it on youtube and found out how to replace the valves myself. Super cheap, but the grout around the shower keeps cracking and coming off. I'm thinking "Screw it", removing the grout and just caulking the bottom crack/seam with silicon.
 
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