S/O Kitchen Disasters-Household Disasters

[RebeccainGA]

Our old house (now where DD and her roommates live) was a real horror show sometimes. It was older (1950s) and hadn't really been renovated much since then - no outlets with ground wires, plumbing and wiring in horrible shape, furnace a nightmare, etc. Thankfully, though, most things worked msot of the time, until DP got sick. Thank God I'm handy.

The kitchen sink needed replumbing - the drains were leaking into the wall. We had a family friend, who was a contractor, offer to do it for us, at least the basics, and we would pre-pay for some additional work that needed to be done (she never did the work - her work partner absconded with the money and left her high and dry - so this was the ONLY thing that had a contractor at the root of it). She decided to do it cheaply, and bought flexible, corrugated pipes that have friction fittings for most of the drain work. This may have been fine, except that she didn't count on the friction fittings not working correctly, and that those aren't meant to be used with a garbage disposal. I had to replumb the thing, from scratch, at least a half dozen times, keeping the same parts until I learned better and bought the correct, glued fittings for most of the length (did have to have one flexible section thanks to poor design of the system). MANY evenings of sitting on a upturned bucket, under the sink. I got it fixed for good right before me moved.

The furnace. Ye gods. NOT vented, and so when we replaced it, they had to cut through the roof. Also, hot water heater in same closet had to be replumbed when it was replaced, as the overflow drain was going nowhere (plugged up and capped) and was a major hazard. Let the pros handle that - I wasn't about to tackle that mess.

Funniest one, though, was our waterbed. We had a king sized, hard side, waveless mattress that DP had owned about 20 years. Mattress sprung a leak - we spent two months on the futon in the living room, drying things out, including the wood frame (liner was as old as the mattress!) during one of the most humid and cold falls that our area had seen. We replaced the mattress and liner, and had it for three years of lovely sleep, until we got ready to move. We decided to get rid of the hard side bed and get a soft side, and just kept the headboard to re-use, since it matched the huge dresser we were keeping. For some reason, the siphon pump, the small electric pump, and the venturi siphon (the one you run water into from the sink) wouldn't drain this bed. I learned later it was because of the kind of wave less it was - you HAVE to use a strong pump. So I got a SUPER STRONG pump from Harbor Freight. Which leaked a cup for every gallon it sucked out of the bed, at least. And was half the strength it should be because of the leak, so it took three hours to empty. The entire time, I had to bail water out of the basin I had the pump sitting on, so it wouldn't overflow, and hold towels around other leaky spots. My back hurt so bad by then end I was crying. The floor was drenched, even with all this. Luckily, the kids pulled the carpets out in there - it was a HUGE mess.

I've learned my lesson - we had the new bed delivered, and made sure that the bed can be filled and drained with only a garden hose and the little venturi siphon. *sigh*

[lady_disdain]

Remember the movie The Money Pit? I once lived in a house very similar to that one (and haunted as well, it seems).

It was a gorgeous older house with a huge garden, filled with bromeliads and tall shady trees. However, the previous owner had fallen on hard times and had let maintenance slip or had slapped something together to solve the problem. We kept finding his creative fixes, like the attic wiring, which included a large mass of wires that reminded me of a rubber band ball and the two wires that had been joined together with a plug and socket, hovering suspended over the floor. We ended up doing a lot of renovating (partially with the help of a sleazy contractor who sexually harassed the cleaning lady and called the cops on my father at 3am one night).

Perhaps the most memorable incident was the in house flood. One long weekend, my parents decide everyone needed a break from the house and packed the four of us into the car and off we went to the beach. Three days later, we return to the house, tired and happy. As we enter, we hear rain. But it was a beautiful clear night. And the sounds were coming from inside the house!

The water heater in the loft had cracked, some time in the past. The cheapstake previous owner decided not to replace it but to patch the crack with epoxy. Of course, the epoxy wouldn't hold for ever and it gave up trying on the day we left. Imagine 2 or 3 days of water running out the heater, cascading down the walls, flooding the upstair and saturating the floor, dripping down onto the kitchen. It was quite a sight.

Now, remember the tall shady trees? Yup, little sunlight reached parts of the house. Brick likes to hold water. Mold loves damp, dark places. In two days, we had a magnificent mold colony: orange, blue, red, yellow and black. There was one that glowed faintly in the dark. Fun times.

[otterwoman]

Remember the movie The Money Pit? I once lived in a house very similar to that one (and haunted as well, it seems).

It was a gorgeous older house with a huge garden, filled with bromeliads and tall shady trees. However, the previous owner had fallen on hard times and had let maintenance slip or had slapped something together to solve the problem. We kept finding his creative fixes, like the attic wiring, which included a large mass of wires that reminded me of a rubber band ball and the two wires that had been joined together with a plug and socket, hovering suspended over the floor. We ended up doing a lot of renovating (partially with the help of a sleazy contractor who sexually harassed the cleaning lady and called the cops on my father at 3am one night).

Perhaps the most memorable incident was the in house flood. One long weekend, my parents decide everyone needed a break from the house and packed the four of us into the car and off we went to the beach. Three days later, we return to the house, tired and happy. As we enter, we hear rain. But it was a beautiful clear night. And the sounds were coming from inside the house!

The water heater in the loft had cracked, some time in the past. The cheapstake previous owner decided not to replace it but to patch the crack with epoxy. Of course, the epoxy wouldn't hold for ever and it gave up trying on the day we left. Imagine 2 or 3 days of water running out the heater, cascading down the walls, flooding the upstair and saturating the floor, dripping down onto the kitchen. It was quite a sight.

Now, remember the tall shady trees? Yup, little sunlight reached parts of the house. Brick likes to hold water. Mold loves damp, dark places. In two days, we had a magnificent mold colony: orange, blue, red, yellow and black. There was one that glowed faintly in the dark. Fun times.

Gasoline and a match. The perfect fix.

[snowfire]

Yikes, lady disdain.  That is just plain scary about the electrical.  I sometimes wonder just what on earth these idiots are thinking when they do some of these stupid "fixes".  I just saw one on TV where someone had cut the head off an extension cord and twisted the ends together with the existing knob & tube wiring, then plastered over the whole mess.  How many kinds of wrong can you find there?

Many years ago my IL's had just bought a house in our city as they were planning to move up here.  They had brought some furniture up but went back down to their city to get their house on the market.  It just happened that winter was one of the coldest in the last 100 years in our area.  Normal winter temps are about 25 - 35 during the day and 15 - 25 at night.  That winter the temps were about 0 for a high and -25 for lows. 

One night DH and I went over to IL's house as it was supposed to get record cold.  We were going to turn on a trickle of water so that the pipes wouldn't freeze.  When we got to the house we couldn't open the front door.  It would unlock but we couldn't get it to budge.  We went around to the kitchen door and saw about 2 inches thick ice on the windows in the kitchen and that door was stuck as well.  We could also hear water running.  In an unoccupied house, this is Not A Good Thing!

We went back to the front door and forced it open.  The place was dripping with humidity, the wallpaper in the stairway to the second floor was dangling in strips.  We went into the kitchen and there was water running down one of the kitchen walls.  I looked downstairs to the basement and saw the shop vac go floating by as the water in the basement was about 4 feet deep.  There was no heat in the house since the furnace and water heater were in the basement and currently doing the backstroke.  I was concerned about the electricity so I grabbed a broom and opened the main breaker panel, which was in the stairwell, over the water.  I used the wooden handled broom to kill the main breaker.  DH found the water shutoff for the house and stopped Old Faithful, which was a water line in the 2nd floor bathroom which had broken.  We quickly drove over to my Mom's house which was about a mile away. (Pre-cell phone days.)  DH got on the phone trying to find someone with a pumper truck to pump out the basement.  We were afraid that if we didn't get the water out of the basement it would freeze into the world's biggest ice cube and blow the foundation out. 

We finally found someone with a pumper truck which wasn't frozen up and he met us over at the house.  I started a fire in the fireplace as DH and the truckdriver took turns manning the hose on the truck and coming over to the fireplace to thaw out.  I even went and got a load of wood from my Mom's house when I had burned all the wood at IL's.  I think that they pumped something like 5000 gallons of water out of the basement.  It would have been worse if the drain for the washer hadn't been in the basement.  Water had been going out that.  (No, there wasn't a floor drain.  Don't know why.)

The upside was that IL's got the whole house redone, the downside was that they had to argue everything with the insurance company & the folks that did the restoration did some cheap shortcuts. 

Since it was winter, at least we didn't have to deal with glow in the dark mold. 

[mmswm]

RebeccainGA, your story reminds me of my parents' current house.  They used to live a couple miles from here, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, they jumped on a chance to purchase a house several times larger for a fraction of what it would be worth once it was restored.  So far so good, right?  The house has very sturdy "bones".  It actually sustained very little damage beyond drywall, windows and shingles.  They did take the opportunity to remodel the inside and make in a 6bedroom instead of a 5. 

Anyway, the house was built in the 1960's.  The people who sold it to my parents were the people that built it.  My father (and all the rest of us) rebuilt the house ourselves.  All is going well.  Since we basically re-ran all the plumbing and electric, put in all new walls and a new roof, my father was pretty unconcerned about major repairs cropping up.  Boy was he wrong.

You see, when  house is built on a slab foundation, a small amount of the plumbing is under the slab.  You can't get to it unless you rip up the foundation.  Late 2002/early 2003, we started to notice a weird smell out on the pool deck.  It seemed to be coming from where the kitchen plumbing drained into the larger pipes that ran underneath the slab.  Dad and I cut through the stucco and masonry in the wall on the outside, behind the kitchen sink.  The pipes seemed to be fine, but there was nasty water built up inside the cinder block frame.  We cleaned that up and grabbed the camera snake to inspect the rest of the plumbing.  We found the problem.

The plumbing in the kitchen runs to a joint under the slab where the pipes from the bathroom meet up to merge into a larger output pipe that runs into the septic tank.  The pipes from the kitchen take a bit of a curve under the living room.  Our theory is that before he owned the house, the kitchen sink must have kept backing up.  The old owners poured bottle after bottle after bottle of Draino down the sink.  It just built up in that curve.  A roughly 9 inch section of pipe under the living room floor was completely gone.  Essentially, for the 9ish years my parents had own the house, all the water that was drained from the kitchen and laundry room had just been absorbed into the ground under the foundation around the area of the living room.  Thankfully, Dad had an empty rental and he was able to move my mother my now 20 something sister (they didn't have the current little ones at the time)  into it for a few days while he and I took a jackhammer to the living room floor to dig up and repair the pipe.

[ica171]

RebeccainGA, your story reminds me of my parents' current house.  They used to live a couple miles from here, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, they jumped on a chance to purchase a house several times larger for a fraction of what it would be worth once it was restored.  So far so good, right?  The house has very sturdy "bones".  It actually sustained very little damage beyond drywall, windows and shingles.  They did take the opportunity to remodel the inside and make in a 6bedroom instead of a 5. 

Anyway, the house was built in the 1960's.  The people who sold it to my parents were the people that built it.  My father (and all the rest of us) rebuilt the house ourselves.  All is going well.  Since we basically re-ran all the plumbing and electric, put in all new walls and a new roof, my father was pretty unconcerned about major repairs cropping up.  Boy was he wrong.

You see, when  house is built on a slab foundation, a small amount of the plumbing is under the slab.  You can't get to it unless you rip up the foundation.  Late 2002/early 2003, we started to notice a weird smell out on the pool deck.  It seemed to be coming from where the kitchen plumbing drained into the larger pipes that ran underneath the slab.  Dad and I cut through the stucco and masonry in the wall on the outside, behind the kitchen sink.  The pipes seemed to be fine, but there was nasty water built up inside the cinder block frame.  We cleaned that up and grabbed the camera snake to inspect the rest of the plumbing.  We found the problem.

The plumbing in the kitchen runs to a joint under the slab where the pipes from the bathroom meet up to merge into a larger output pipe that runs into the septic tank.  The pipes from the kitchen take a bit of a curve under the living room.  Our theory is that before he owned the house, the kitchen sink must have kept backing up.  The old owners poured bottle after bottle after bottle of Draino down the sink.  It just built up in that curve.  A roughly 9 inch section of pipe under the living room floor was completely gone.  Essentially, for the 9ish years my parents had own the house, all the water that was drained from the kitchen and laundry room had just been absorbed into the ground under the foundation around the area of the living room.  Thankfully, Dad had an empty rental and he was able to move my mother my now 20 something sister (they didn't have the current little ones at the time)  into it for a few days while he and I took a jackhammer to the living room floor to dig up and repair the pipe.

Our house isn't on a slab, but I worry about something like this happening here. When we moved in our pipes had nasty sludge built up in them. They were OK for about a year, but after that the kitchen sink started backing up at least once a month. We've cleaned them mechanically as much as we can, but we also use drain cleaner once a month. We use the enzyme cleaner that's not supposed to hurt your pipes. Hopefully that's true.

[mmswm]

RebeccainGA, your story reminds me of my parents' current house.  They used to live a couple miles from here, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, they jumped on a chance to purchase a house several times larger for a fraction of what it would be worth once it was restored.  So far so good, right?  The house has very sturdy "bones".  It actually sustained very little damage beyond drywall, windows and shingles.  They did take the opportunity to remodel the inside and make in a 6bedroom instead of a 5. 

Anyway, the house was built in the 1960's.  The people who sold it to my parents were the people that built it.  My father (and all the rest of us) rebuilt the house ourselves.  All is going well.  Since we basically re-ran all the plumbing and electric, put in all new walls and a new roof, my father was pretty unconcerned about major repairs cropping up.  Boy was he wrong.

You see, when  house is built on a slab foundation, a small amount of the plumbing is under the slab.  You can't get to it unless you rip up the foundation.  Late 2002/early 2003, we started to notice a weird smell out on the pool deck.  It seemed to be coming from where the kitchen plumbing drained into the larger pipes that ran underneath the slab.  Dad and I cut through the stucco and masonry in the wall on the outside, behind the kitchen sink.  The pipes seemed to be fine, but there was nasty water built up inside the cinder block frame.  We cleaned that up and grabbed the camera snake to inspect the rest of the plumbing.  We found the problem.

The plumbing in the kitchen runs to a joint under the slab where the pipes from the bathroom meet up to merge into a larger output pipe that runs into the septic tank.  The pipes from the kitchen take a bit of a curve under the living room.  Our theory is that before he owned the house, the kitchen sink must have kept backing up.  The old owners poured bottle after bottle after bottle of Draino down the sink.  It just built up in that curve.  A roughly 9 inch section of pipe under the living room floor was completely gone.  Essentially, for the 9ish years my parents had own the house, all the water that was drained from the kitchen and laundry room had just been absorbed into the ground under the foundation around the area of the living room.  Thankfully, Dad had an empty rental and he was able to move my mother my now 20 something sister (they didn't have the current little ones at the time)  into it for a few days while he and I took a jackhammer to the living room floor to dig up and repair the pipe.

Our house isn't on a slab, but I worry about something like this happening here. When we moved in our pipes had nasty sludge built up in them. They were OK for about a year, but after that the kitchen sink started backing up at least once a month. We've cleaned them mechanically as much as we can, but we also use drain cleaner once a month. We use the enzyme cleaner that's not supposed to hurt your pipes. Hopefully that's true.

Snakes with camera attachments aren't terribly expensive to rent these days.  It might be worth the cost just for your piece of mind.

[ica171]

RebeccainGA, your story reminds me of my parents' current house.  They used to live a couple miles from here, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, they jumped on a chance to purchase a house several times larger for a fraction of what it would be worth once it was restored.  So far so good, right?  The house has very sturdy "bones".  It actually sustained very little damage beyond drywall, windows and shingles.  They did take the opportunity to remodel the inside and make in a 6bedroom instead of a 5. 

Anyway, the house was built in the 1960's.  The people who sold it to my parents were the people that built it.  My father (and all the rest of us) rebuilt the house ourselves.  All is going well.  Since we basically re-ran all the plumbing and electric, put in all new walls and a new roof, my father was pretty unconcerned about major repairs cropping up.  Boy was he wrong.

You see, when  house is built on a slab foundation, a small amount of the plumbing is under the slab.  You can't get to it unless you rip up the foundation.  Late 2002/early 2003, we started to notice a weird smell out on the pool deck.  It seemed to be coming from where the kitchen plumbing drained into the larger pipes that ran underneath the slab.  Dad and I cut through the stucco and masonry in the wall on the outside, behind the kitchen sink.  The pipes seemed to be fine, but there was nasty water built up inside the cinder block frame.  We cleaned that up and grabbed the camera snake to inspect the rest of the plumbing.  We found the problem.

The plumbing in the kitchen runs to a joint under the slab where the pipes from the bathroom meet up to merge into a larger output pipe that runs into the septic tank.  The pipes from the kitchen take a bit of a curve under the living room.  Our theory is that before he owned the house, the kitchen sink must have kept backing up.  The old owners poured bottle after bottle after bottle of Draino down the sink.  It just built up in that curve.  A roughly 9 inch section of pipe under the living room floor was completely gone.  Essentially, for the 9ish years my parents had own the house, all the water that was drained from the kitchen and laundry room had just been absorbed into the ground under the foundation around the area of the living room.  Thankfully, Dad had an empty rental and he was able to move my mother my now 20 something sister (they didn't have the current little ones at the time)  into it for a few days while he and I took a jackhammer to the living room floor to dig up and repair the pipe.

Our house isn't on a slab, but I worry about something like this happening here. When we moved in our pipes had nasty sludge built up in them. They were OK for about a year, but after that the kitchen sink started backing up at least once a month. We've cleaned them mechanically as much as we can, but we also use drain cleaner once a month. We use the enzyme cleaner that's not supposed to hurt your pipes. Hopefully that's true.

Snakes with camera attachments aren't terribly expensive to rent these days.  It might be worth the cost just for your piece of mind.

We've talked about doing that, but I think we're afraid to mess with it while it's not acting up. I think we've got them cleaned pretty far now--our 25 foot snack put in the main cleanout in the basement doesn't catch anything anymore.

I can't believe I forgot this disaster.



That's DH holding a mallet up to an enormous crack in our foundation. We had a very dry summer here and our foundation shifted. Not this much, this is what we found after we removed an old patch the previous owners did. They didn't do it very well, but hopefully the one we did holds better. Anyway, now we know that if there's a drought we need to water our foundation, at least at this house. I still haven't finished patching all the drywall.

[turtleIScream]

I can't believe I forgot this disaster.



That's DH holding a mallet up to an enormous crack in our foundation. We had a very dry summer here and our foundation shifted. Not this much, this is what we found after we removed an old patch the previous owners did. They didn't do it very well, but hopefully the one we did holds better. Anyway, now we know that if there's a drought we need to water our foundation, at least at this house. I still haven't finished patching all the drywall.

This reminds me of our foundation story...

When we were buying our house, we put in an offer contingent on passing inspection. The inspector came and discovered a significant (but reparable) crack in the foundation. We rewrote the offer, lowering our bid price and agreeing to cover the cost of repair. Offer was accepted, contractor was scheduled, and we figured everything was good to go. The next night, one day before the scheduled repair, we had a HUGE thunderstorm, flash flooding in areas, and that crack proved to be disastrous. The whole basement flooded, ruining everything, including the newly installed carpet. Fortunately, the owner was responsible for clean-up fees, but it was a mess!

[ladyknight1]

I have never owned a house, but when we were in our old apartment, we saw the wrong way to re-roof a building. The management company had the roofers lay new tar-paper and shingles over the old roof. This happened twice in the seven years we lived there. The roof became so heavy, two buildings had their roofs cave in!

[lilfox]

We just replaced our roof, and discovered the previous (original) owner had done exactly that with the roof.  Apparently he couldn't afford to replace the rotting out sections below the shingles, so the new roof was put over top.  There were several sections that had leaked over the years, but luckily with little to no resulting damage.  We only ever found one leak, and a recent one at that.

My parents had a disaster with their house - brand new construction, almost 25 years ago.  Within a month or so of moving in, one of the master bathroom pipes failed due to a nail puncture that gave way.  This was discovered after the leaked water flooded out the large light fixture directly underneath (one of those boxy fluorescent tube deals popular in the late 80s), which happened to be the central kitchen light.  I have no idea how they managed to remove the light and not spill water everywhere.

[mmswm]

I posted the beginning of this in the "Kids say the funniest things" thread.  My 13yo mixed up the levers for the pool pump and the main water supply to the house, so instead of turning on the pump to top of the water level in the pool, he shut off the water to the house.  His reaction was priceless, like it never dawned on him that different levers might operate different things.  It's still funny, but unfortunately, there was some collateral damage.  When we tried to turn the water back on, the pump pretty much blew up.  We had to cut the breaker to the well pump, and now my father is running to the supply store to get the parts to replace the water pump.  In the meantime, we have no water and have to use a 5 gallon bucket to retrieve water from the pool in order to flush the toilets.  Oh, the joy of a 13yo boy trying to figure out how to be a handyman.

[Lady Snowdon]

I'm waiting to see what happens to cause a total catastrophe in our house one day.  The people who lived here before us did some renovations, and they weren't always done right.  Some of the stuff we caught on inspection and had them fix, and some we're still just finding out about five years in!

-- When the house was inspected, it was found that the electrical wires for the washer and dryer were shoehorned into the electrical box and were almost melted through, since they hadn't been wired properly.  Better yet, for some reason there's insulation in our electrical box, so if they had melted through, it could have started an electrical fire of epic proportion! 

-- Whoever installed the hot water heater installed it with the relief valve on top (at about face height), and never put in a pipe to direct it anywhere else.  Thankfully that was an easy fix!

-- When the basement was finished and insulated, they put the insulation on the wrong side, so our kitchen sink pipes freeze on average of five times per winter.  Or we keep the water running, and have insanely high water bills.  From what we can tell, the layers behind the drywall in the basement go: drywall, insulation, pipes, concrete, instead of drywall, pipes, insulation, concrete. 

-- Someone tried to fix a mold outbreak in one of the bathrooms by putting down a layer of plywood, and then a new layer of linoleum.  As we found out when we pulled the linoleum out, they hadn't even tried to kill the mold before putting the plywood down!  Thankfully this just looked bad and the subfloor was still sound. 

-- A wood shed was put in behind the garage.  Floor directly on the ground, with no concrete slab.  The shed was conveniently situated so that all the water from the garage roof dripped on the shed roof, as it was under the eaves.    In Minnesota, where there's lots of rain and snow, this contributed to rot, very quickly.  The first time we tried to look inside the shed, the door fell off, and the floor had holes in it.  We ended up tearing it down, only to find that it was holding part of our fence up! 

[RebeccainGA]

I'm waiting to see what happens to cause a total catastrophe in our house one day.  The people who lived here before us did some renovations, and they weren't always done right.  Some of the stuff we caught on inspection and had them fix, and some we're still just finding out about five years in!

I think you bought from the people my parents did.

- "Wallpaper" above the cabinets in the kitchen - old contact paper, stuck over the (unwashed) walls.
- Floor tiles in the kitchen? Stolen from the school district (the old owner worked for them in maintenance) and stuck directly to the (unwashed) tile below them - so they started to slide around after the first year
- No insulation behind the paneling in the living room, which was nailed to the studs of the outside wall (so it was, from the outside in, vinyl siding, studs and air space, paneling) which let in every draft, every bug, and dust like crazy.
- Three layers of various vintage roofing material nailed on top of each other, threatening to collapse the whole roof.
- extension cords inside the walls instead of proper wiring - non-UL approved, cheap ones at that
- Half the house, including the kitchen outlets, one bedroom, the hall and the dining room all on ONE breaker.
- Shower in the master bathroom not plumbed to a drain, so the water went out a pipe, took a left turn and then went UNDER THE HOUSE. A house with a wood frame and no concrete foundation. In Florida, land of termites and pests galore.

It took them ten years to uncover all this stuff. I don't know how that house is even standing.

[lady_disdain]

Looks like the guy has been busy, considering he has sold houses to all of us!

Don't these people think a little?