S/O Kitchen Disasters-Household Disasters

[Seraphia]

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

Don't these people think a little?

Sure they do. They think: "Ughhhh, why is wood and insulation and wallpaper so darn expensive? I know, I'll use this road sign instead!" That's where you wind up with my parents' house, which my father as been slowly bringing up to code for the last 17 years. Seriously - cardboard beer boxes used as shims, unfinished barn wood for framing, four types of pipe to cover three feet of floor, linoleum nailed to uninsulated walls, a shower drain that shot water when the sink clogged... The things he's uncovered when trying to do something simple like put in new carpet have been ridiculous.

On the plus side, he's offered to come look over houses with us when DH and I start home shopping, and I know he'll find every flaw, plus help me fix them when we decide what to buy.

[mmswm]

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

Don't these people think a little?

Sure they do. They think: "Ughhhh, why is wood and insulation and wallpaper so darn expensive? I know, I'll use this road sign instead!" That's where you wind up with my parents' house, which my father as been slowly bringing up to code for the last 17 years. Seriously - cardboard beer boxes used as shims, unfinished barn wood for framing, four types of pipe to cover three feet of floor, linoleum nailed to uninsulated walls, a shower drain that shot water when the sink clogged... The things he's uncovered when trying to do something simple like put in new carpet have been ridiculous.

On the plus side, he's offered to come look over houses with us when DH and I start home shopping, and I know he'll find every flaw, plus help me fix them when we decide what to buy.

I nearly bought a house that would have had major problems that my inspector missed.  There was a problem with my bank at the last minute (they didn't like the structure of my student loans...long story), so the sale fell through.  A friend of mine who was also house shopping, who loved the house immediately jumped on the now available house, with my blessing.  Her inspector found some major issues.  The house was originally built in 1898, so neither of us expected it to be perfect.  What we didn't expect, however, was the owner splicing new wiring into the old system so that when you looked at the surface, it looked like the electrical had been updated.  If you followed the lines down a few inches, the new stuff was spliced into the old wiring, which is illegal and very unsafe.  They'd done something similar with the plumbing.  You have no idea how grateful I was to my bank for screwing things up.  That house would have been a huge money pit.

[ica171]

I really hope when we sell the new owners don't think that we're morons, although sometimes I wonder. I've already told myself that I'm going to have to take out the toilet and reinstall it before we sell*, because I cracked the tile that goes under it so it a) looks like crap and b) wobbles a tiny bit, and only if you know how to make it. It's fine for us, but I wouldn't sell it to someone like that.

*It will probably actually get fixed this spring or summer. The only reason I'm not doing it now is because my daughter's first birthday party is in eleven days and we already don't have a sink or finished tile in there.

[QueenofAllThings]

I have an old house that has had several DIY former owners.  We are in the middle of a kitchen Reno  and have discovered that a) half the kitchen has no subfloor, just a sheet of plywood, and b) holes were cut to install fans, a/c, etc and supporting beams were sawed through.

When we moved in, we discovered -
- wallpaper border stuck on with Elmer's glue;
- board nailed to ceiling of closet, with drippy pipe above it - and a foil pie plate to catch drips;
- bookshelves built in front of windows (no insulation); and
-plastic hooks glued to every surface imaginable

[MissRose]

My mother worked with a neighbor's son-in-law to install hard wood flooring in the house during 1 summer while I was still going to college.  In the living room, they encountered the challenge of removing the carpet and below was some wood.  It was not a pleasant task for 1 main reason: a few years prior our cat would do a #1 in that corner if the litter box was not clean to her standards, which was rectified after she was caught a few times.  Lets say that cat stuff really soaks into the wood, and they had to replace that part of the floor first then lay the wood flooring after.  Whether or not the garbage men who collected the wood scraps placed in the trash from that area were impressed or not with the stench I have no idea!

[Kaora]

At least there was a kaboom!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8rYotiiFP8

I love Marvin!   

This is my dad, the mechanical engineer's, motto.

ETA: I probably provided my own disaster for my parents when I was tiny.

They had just finished painting the walls a nice, neutral white (which they are to this day), so I decided to help them.  By scribbling crayon everywhere.  I later on scribbled stick figures in pencil on the hall wall.

My "art" stood until the invention of the Magic Eraser, thank you.

[Elfmama]

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.

Do you pour leftover cooking grease down the drain?  If so, STOP!  In 40 years I've never had a kitchen drain back up.  My waste grease goes into a plastic sour cream tub (once it has cooled!) and when the tub is full, I just snap on the lid and drop it in the trash.

[mbbored]

The last resident of my townhouse was a contractor who got foreclosed on. The place was bought at bank auction by brand-new flippers who quickly realized that they weren't going to make back their investment, so they slapped on some much needed beige paint and new flooring.

However, after moving in I discovered a few presents left for me by the ticked off contractor. Like the fact that most of the vent for the dryer had been yanked out from the wall and then just the connector stuck back in, so I had to cut a hole in the dry wall to reinstall the tubing. Also, all lights and sockets downstairs (fortunately except for the refrigerator and stove) were wired to a single switch in the upstairs bathroom so everything would work or nothing at all. Plus all the phone jacks had been disconnected from behind. The list goes on and on.

[VorFemme]

Moved into a rental house after four strippers and their male roommates moved out.  They painted....

They painted over the phone jacks (we had to have all of them replaced) & some electrical outlets, the phone system had to have the box replaced as it was somewhere in the basement behind paneling and the amount of static on the line indicated that it was badly corroded (might have been something done by a previous owner - no telling now), and they painted over hand done borders done by the owner's wife and got paint on the carpet & ceiling, too.  They broke a glass storm door and pulled the frame & hardware off the side entrance, then hid things under the deck behind the house.  They left a huge, torn open bag of dog food open under the sink & a beach towel in the laundry room (roach food & mildew smells).

And, worst of all, the "real estate agent" didn't bother getting the place cleaned, any repairs done, the yard mowed, the bushes trimmed, or the pool set up to be cared for for three months while it was on the market until we  moved in.....so we found it the way four strippers and their "guys" left it. 

[LilacRosey]

I somehow eneded up with mice a while back and my landlady blamed it on me having a cat. It was pretty bad for a while., LilacRosey

[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.

Do you pour leftover cooking grease down the drain?  If so, STOP!  In 40 years I've never had a kitchen drain back up.  My waste grease goes into a plastic sour cream tub (once it has cooled!) and when the tub is full, I just snap on the lid and drop it in the trash.

Nope, never have. It goes into a separate container then either in the trash, or, when we have dogs, over their food. Or DH will dump it in the yard sometimes, which I hate but doesn't seem to affect anything out there one way or the other. Looking back, it seems like a lot of stuff had been quickly repaired to get the house ready for sale, so I'm going to guess this was an ongoing problem that they did a Band-Aid fix on to get the house sold. They're also cast iron pipes that are 45 years old, so I assume that has something to do with it. That's why we try to use the enzyme stuff instead of Draino or anything like that; if there's a weak spot I don't want it to be affected by chemicals.

[dietcokeofevil]

We've had a lot of problem with the pipes in our laundry room.   They're on an exterior wall and we've had to struggle with them freezing every winter.  A few years ago the burst and we had a big hole cut in the wall to repair it    With it being the laundry room and the washer being in front of the hole, we didn't get around to repairing it until this last summer.  Got the drywall repaired, repainted and everything.  Two weeks ago the pipe burst again. 

[magicdomino]

I somehow eneded up with mice a while back and my landlady blamed it on me having a cat. It was pretty bad for a while., LilacRosey

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?  You have mice, then you get the cat, then you don't have mice anymore.  Unless your cat is like mine, and thinks mice are fun toys, not tasty snacks.  Anyhow, I've never heard of blaming a mice infestation on a cat.

[Ms_Cellany]

Do you pour leftover cooking grease down the drain?  If so, STOP!  In 40 years I've never had a kitchen drain back up.  My waste grease goes into a plastic sour cream tub (once it has cooled!) and when the tub is full, I just snap on the lid and drop it in the trash.

We put a can in the freezer (large tomato can is a good size). You can pour hot grease directly into it, then put back in freezer. Put in trash when full. 

[norrina]

I somehow eneded up with mice a while back and my landlady blamed it on me having a cat. It was pretty bad for a while., LilacRosey

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?  You have mice, then you get the cat, then you don't have mice anymore.  Unless your cat is like mine, and thinks mice are fun toys, not tasty snacks.  Anyhow, I've never heard of blaming a mice infestation on a cat.

Well, mice can be attracted to pet food, if it is not properly stored, but it still seems unlikely that a cat's gonna start inviting the neighborhood mice over for parties.