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After seeing pics of wiring jobs that look like bird's nests and roofs that seem to be held up by air pressure alone I thought it would be interesting to share the different construction messes we've encountered. For three summers I worked with my uncle who used to be a mason (works with cement, not and old guy who paddles his friends and has a silly belt buckle). During this time I saw a lot of stuff that would make a half-competent building inspector drink himself to death. Ice Foundation: We went to do a job for a lady who was having a new house built. It was a smallish bungalow with a full basement. The problem was that the previous block-layers were lazy and put off her job until late November. She was hoping that the foundation would be finished before mid-fall, but they put things off and started late. Well they prepped the area, leveled the gravel, put in the drainage, and poured the floor, leaving room for a sump pump, and generally doing a good job. They let the floor set up for two days and when they returned there was a layer of ice on the foundation about 1/4 inch thick. "Not a problem!" they told the owner. They just went ahead and laid the blocks on top of the ice and when there was a warm day the next week the blocks settled, cracked all the cement and I don't know how, but one corner actually shifted a little bit. Needless to say the whole block job (11 blocks high I think) was a total waste and we had to come in to fix it. The previous guys had to pay my uncle and my wages and refund the lady the cost of the material. Crummy Cement: Another job we were called in to fix, except this time the cement was bad. We showed up at the job (not knowing what was wrong) and spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out what the problem was. Everything seemed to be straight and level, and rebar was where it should be. Even the doors and windows were all placed correctly. The owner showed up and without saying a word walked over to the basement walkout doorway and kicked one of the blocks on the edge. The whole side of the doorway collapsed with blocks tumbling all over the place. It seems that the guys were cutting corners and used about 5x more sand than they should have. The mortar was more like a sandcastle than cement. We used all the same blocks and the owner spent his time helping us by using a rubber mallet to knock the cement off each and every block. Glass Chimney: Sometimes people get a reputation for not paying the piper. We were doing a job for one guy who had apparently stiffed the blocklayers. My uncle heard about this and half way thought the chimney we were making for him took a pane of glass and stuck it in the brick chimney and continued to lay blocks until we were done. When we were done the guy decided that he would mail him a cheque. That cheque got "lost" in the mail for a whole summer and fall. When winter came around the man calls up my uncle screaming that his chimney doesn't work. There isn't a blockage because he can see straight up through his fireplace, but for some reason every time he tries to start a fire his whole house smokes up. My uncle said he would fix it if he got paid in cash. We arrived (he wanted me to see this) and the guy gave my uncle the money. My uncle walks over to the driveway, finds a nice apple sized stone on the side and climbs up the roof. He then drops the stone down the chimney (breaking the glass pane that was stopping the smoke from escaping) climbs down and we drive away. All the while the guy was cursing at us. Slanty Shanty: Another job we were called in to "fix" was a guy who built his own foundation. We get there and honestly, it looked like some kids were playing with bricks and mud. The cement between rows of blocks would vary from 1/16th of an inch to 3/4 of an inch. Walls bowed in and out, there were 2" gaps in places, and when we set up the transit we could see one corner was 3" higher than another corner. When we told the guy that we'd have to have everything knocked down and start again with new blocks he was furious. He figured we could fix the job by removing the top two rows of blocks and relaying them so that the 3" difference was gone. He was having none of that, so we left. A week later we went back again to a totally cleared basement floor and a huge pile of blocks that he had removed the cement from with a hammer and pneumatic chisel. While we were working for the next 4 days he told us about how great the other two houses were that he built. My eyes hurt from rolling so much. Small Garage: Not so much a crappy building, but more of a customer not having any idea of size and manpower requirements. We get a call from this guy wanting a garage floor to be poured. My uncle asks him how many cars this garage is and he says two. The foundation is already prepped, the forms are already made, all we have to do is show up, pour the cement and level and trowel the floor. My uncle tells him to call the cement company with his exact measurements (length, width, depth of footings, thickness of floor, etc. and they will bring the right amount of cement. We show up to the job site and the first thing I say is "Jesus Christ!". The owner asks, "what's wrong" and my uncle says, "what kind of cars do you drive?". This garage is massive! I'm talking 70 feet by 50 feet. While my uncle is trying to explain that this is not what he envisioned and that the owner wasn't being very accurate with the description of a "two car garage" he replies, "there are only going to be two cars in here, the rest of the space is for my metal-working shop and some boats, atv's and snowmobiles. My uncle tries to explain that two people, with two wheel barrows, and one troweling machine are not going to be able to do this in time. Just then The cement truck arrives and tells us that the next two are 10 minutes behind him and the two after that have just left and will arrive in 40 minutes. My uncle tells the owner to call two other cement guys and offer them each $500, and maybe they will drop what they are doing and rush over here to help us out before he has a few thousand dollars of worthless cement and a ruined monster-garage floor. Luckily for him we were able to stay on top of things long enough for one of the guys to arrive with 4 extra men (two with wheel barrows, and two with troweling machines). The floor was saved and the owner had to pay an extra $1200 in labour for that job. Good Wood: I was visiting a cousin down in Southern Ontario when he told me I had to see this. We went over a few lots and saw a house that was in the process of being built. The wood the guy was using looked like it was found in a swamp. It was punky, rotten, worm holes, greyed, warped, and generally horrible stuff with huge variances in dimensions. Seems that the guy was super cheap and was using wood that he had found in a landfill from some condemned houses or something. There were planks that were supposed to be 2x4's, but closer to 1x2" they were so out of spec. One board was so rotten you could pull 3" nails out with your hands, and some of the boards were so warped that they twisted 45 degrees within 8 feet. Needless to say the owner was doing all the work himself as no construction crew would touch materials like that. The next week my cousin emailed me to say that the building inspector showed up, stopped the work, and told the owner that every single piece of wood he had (even the plywood that looked to have been taken from some kid's tree fort) had to be disposed of, and if he wanted to be able to continue work he'd have to show him a pile of new wood from a store or lumber yard. Septic Sump: We were called in to do a quick block job. A guy had a basement that was only 6 feet tall, and decided that he wanted a full basement. He told us that he only needed us to lay two rows on the foundation, and that when we arrived the house will be jacked up. We show up, see the house jacked up with plenty of room to add the additional two rows. We get to work mixing the cement and setting up the transit. About 30 minutes in we notice that something smells like poo poo. My uncle says it's probably the pipe off the septic hookup since the house has been jacked 4 feet in the air. Another 30 minutes pass and we hear a splattery "plopping" sound. We look over to the corner where the sump pump hole is and see a pipe hanging over it with water and poo poo pouring out. Seems that the guy wanted to continue using his toilet, despite it no longer being hooked up to the septic system any more and rigged up a length of eave trough to direct his toilet pipe to the sump pump hole. That poor sump pump must be having nightmares! Power Mad: Finally, this was not witnessed by myself, but a friend told me of a house he saw. One of his friends decided to install his own electrical wiring, switches and outlets. He does all the research, checks the codes, and all that jazz. Apparently if he does it himself a building inspector can pass it, and then an electrician will hook the circuit breaker box to the outside line. Well he's researching, making sure everything is to code and finishes his electrical work. My friend comes over one night to see the work and is looking at all the unfinished walls with the wiring running through them, the light switches installed, the fixtures installed, and the outlets installed. He's looking around and everything is done well, up to code, but something is bothering him. It's hard to tell because there are just stud walls with wires running through them, no insulation or drywall, just studs, switches, fixtures, wires and outlets. . . lots of outlets. "Holy poo poo there are a fuckton of outlets!" Every 4 feet, in every room there is an outlet. The living room, which not too big,is open concept so it only has two walls has a total of 10 outlets in it. One of the bedrooms has 15! Seems that he totally had a brain fart and placed them every 4 feet. I believe the code in Ontario is 6 feet from any doorway and then every 12 feet. So the bedroom should have had 5, not 15. I think my friend said that he removed every other one so the outlets are 8' apart instead of 4. The plus side is that there is certainly no shortage of outlets, and surprisingly 8 feet apart doesn't look crowded since furniture hides most of them. Well that's all I'm able to remember right now, but I'm sure some of your stories will jar lose a few more tales that might be interesting.
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Aug 18, 2011 07:15
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Baronjutter posted:City passed the design and the inspector admired his solution. Although situations like this just make me so frustrated at the often kafka-esq zoning bylaws builders/designers have to go through to get a design approved. My lot is about 50% bigger than most lots due to the street, school yard, and a small park. Luckily I only pay for a regular sized lot. As you can see my lot has 6 corners. Only two are 90 degrees!  My Lot:  Green is the garage, red is the house.
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Aug 19, 2011 01:28
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razz posted:I used to live in a really lovely basement apartment. One day my friend and I were trying to mess with the wiring in the bathroom because something shorted out. We discovered that all of the electricity from the kitchen and the bathroom was being routed from an extension cord just like this: A bed and breakfast burned down last winter because the fridge was plugged into a cheap extension cord like that. For some reason they pulled the fridge out, and used that extension cord to keep it running, then when they pushed it back where it was supposed to go they forgot about the cord. Whole place burned down the very day they went on a vacation.
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Aug 20, 2011 13:37
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poemdexter posted:Holy poo poo, do you have pictures or an newspaper article on that? That had to be a sight to see. I've seen that happen with septic tanks a few times. They dig the hole, install it, tell the owner to fill it with water, owner says they will, (almost never do), then there is a big rain and they have a septic tank sitting on their back lawn.
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Aug 24, 2011 01:09
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yaffle: is the wall some manner of stone/masonry or just crazily erected wood?
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Sep 7, 2011 01:54
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ChaoticSeven posted:My God! That wall is filled with treasure! Let me guess. . . GBS Safe Thread Blue Balls. Right?
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Sep 8, 2011 03:58
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Jaweeeblop posted:I moved to San Antonio awhile back to work at a small AC company. At first I thought my boss was a walking stereotype, Texan/republican/racist. Always saying things like "Why pay for a contractor to do something right when you can get Julio to do it cheaper?" We run into lots of systems that are horribly rigged together so he says this a lot. . . . Like my initial post said, I did a lot of "fixing other people's messes" type jobs with my uncle. This pissed him off as well since a lot of the jobs involving fixing other people's messes (obviously not the ones in the OP) resulted in him making less money than having been the original person to do it, and the owners having to spend more. Some people are just too cheap for their own good. You don't cheap out on a contractor, major appliances, or a lawyer. My cousin in BC has a friend who I think was part of a class action lawsuit. During some manner of building boom in Vancouver during the early 90's or something a bunch of suburbs were made and some of the companies made the houses like that one they did in Arrested Development that Michael and Gob built themselves in a few days that fell apart. 2x4's that were pre-rotted before they even put them into the building. One nail per stud. Floor joists and rafters 2x further apart than code allows, masonry that was essentially cement coloured sand between the blocks, and a host of other such problems. How did they know that their house was one of the affected ones? One of the interior walls fell down. As in fell right over. Seems that the crown molding was the only thing holding it upright. They had it inspected and most of the exterior doors were only held in by 4 screws and some insulation jammed in around them. The attic wasn't properly insulated, resulting in their heating bill being huge, and the wiring was done to save copper. Wires would go diagonally through walls, three rooms would be hooked up together on the same breaker, etc. Basically it was a miracle that the place didn't sink into the ground, fall down, or catch on fire. Ok, just witnessed another instance of things not being up to code. . . in my own house! I just bought a wood furnace a month ago and I'm still waiting on the guy to finish another job so he can start on my duct work. There used to be a furnace in the basement but things have been boarded up and all that. Instead there is a wood stove in my living room. The chimney is one of those double walled metal deals and it stops in the ceiling of my downstairs bathroom against a wall. I cut a hole in the ceiling and found it. . . nestled against a bunch of fibreglass insulation and wooden boards. The sticker on the chimney says. . . Blistex's Chimney posted:Minimum Clearance 2 inch Air Space to Combustible Materials and Building Insulation. So now I'm going to have to go nuts with the contractors saw and a bent coathanger to get rid of all the boards it's in contact with and the insulation nestled around it. Great!
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Sep 11, 2011 02:50
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PromethiumX posted:After the slab and all its stub outs of plumbing and electrical conduit had passed inspection the Wal-Mart appointed overseer of construction comes in the building and goes over to the plumber and says yeah that's nice and all but *flips the plumbers plan 180 degrees* that's how it should be. Sounds like the overseer should have lost his job as well.
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Sep 11, 2011 15:11
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Delta-Wye posted:Why the gently caress is one page backwards? Walmart quality control.
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Sep 11, 2011 20:07
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Holy poo poo! What about the wiring and outlets in the basement? Was is finished, semi-finished or just a hole in the ground? I wouldn't have been going anywhere near that place unless the electric company came over and shut off the power coming from the pole first.
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Sep 12, 2011 00:56
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InstantInfidel posted:And if the room was the size of Texas but the depth didn't change, neither would the pressure. Are you autistic? Seriously! Are you?
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Sep 17, 2011 20:36
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Typically inspectors will just make sure that the foundation is ok, then maybe show up during the building process, then they might do a walk around after it's done. Unless it's a large city they pretty much know all the contractors and the quality of their work. Where I'm from they're more of a scout to look for people building without permits instead of making contractors rip things apart then start over. I'm also from a smallish Northern Ontario area so a contractor doing a crappy job or two usually means they get a reputation pretty fast and don't do much business. The inspectors also know of them so they make a point of showing up fairly often to make sure they're not screwing someone over or building a deathtrap.
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Sep 23, 2011 23:29
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Well I have a new crappy construction tale. . . In my own house! I've been doing some minor renovations during the past year (first year in my house). And I've refinished all the hardwood floors, built some oak stairs, bought a furnace, going to have the duct work installed this weekend and the next, replaced 3 windows (need to do another 7) and have started repainting the trim and will move on to the walls next. While taping and painting the trim I noticed that one piece of trim was rotten. It's against a plate glass window, and the trim on the inside and outside holds it in place. I removed the piece of trim and noticed the wood was rotten under it. The sill was rotten and I'm guessing a bit of wood in the wall as well. It turns out that the outside of the sill is actually slanted inwards. Meaning any water that hits the sill or the windows is directed towards the house and sits against the trim and gradually seems under the window into the wall. I've caulked the trim and window, and will be replacing it next year (planning to replace the wood siding with some foil covered insulation foam and some nice siding, while replacing all the remaining windows that need to go. What kind of idiot would make a sill, and then have it slanted inwards? Ugghh! It's not as band as a snuff container holding electrical wires or a stack of books holding up a foundation pillar, but it still drives me nuts and means that I can't paint the walls in that room as I'm probably going to have to rip a significant part of that wall out to repair the water damaged wood.
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Sep 24, 2011 04:51
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Or a contractor who tries to skim some money and installs horizontal sliding windows as vertical sliders.
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Sep 25, 2011 01:59
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:Or a contractor that uses food coloring and water in a bug sprayer to spray cheap rough-sawn 2x4s green so the inspector doesn't notice he's not using pressure-treated exterior-grade wood on framing outside. Ffffffffffffff... Ok, that's a new one.
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Sep 27, 2011 02:50
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The contractor could have sprayed it with a real reserving solution (similar to the that green PT solution). Or he could have stained it or. . . so many options if you're already spraying it.
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Sep 27, 2011 19:53
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Just heard about this one last night. A friend of mine still works for Rona delivering building materials (I did this for two summers years ago). He said that this one job they were delivering to had a house with a 55 foot engineered beam* that ran down the middle of the place so that it only required one support in the middle. This think cost ~$2500 and they delivered it with a big note pasted to it for the crew putting it up. Note: posted:"MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE!" Do I even need to finish this story? Anyway, they measure, once, measure again, everyone in the crew measures and then they mark the beam where it needs to be cut, and nobody wants to do it. At this point my friend should have been on the road for 15 minutes heading back, but he just had to see this through. Finally the head contractor steps forward and takes his skill saw and "ZIIIIIPPPP" it's cut! There is a small cheer from the crew and my friend applauds. They hoist it up, slid it in the one slot they cut out of the block, and "SHIIIIIT!" Exactly one 10" block width short! They had no idea how that happened, and that crew had to eat that $2500 themselves. The worst part was that they could have inserted it into the one notch, and had it overhang the other side since the mason actually left a perfect gap rather than cut a block on the other side and figured he's just parge over whatever space was left. * this engineered bean was basically sandwiched chipboard with a slotted 2x6" on the top and bottom holding it all together.
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Oct 18, 2011 15:49
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Just got home from work an hour ago and was excited to see what the contractor did in my basement with regards to installing the duct work. The work he did looks great. . . just one problem. He was loving chain-smoking in my house all day and it smells like an ashtray! Tomorrow he's going to find a note that politely explains that I don't wish him to smoke in my home, then when the job is done he's going to find a bill for dry cleaning every suit and dress in my house. Luckily I have not bough a new sofa set yet, so small miracles! Honestly, who smokes in another person's house! Especially without asking. Every single window in the house was closed, since it was October, so I get to enjoy every single particle floating in the air and adhering to everything I own. I'd airing out right now, and I have about 20 scented candles going at the moment, but all I can smell is loving cigarette smoke. After the cost of materials I don't think he's going to be making any kind of profit whatsoever.
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Oct 19, 2011 00:01
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fist4jesus posted:Last week I removed a lovely 80s plaster arch. The 1970's and 80's were a low point in decorative construction. I know hindsight is 20-20, but really, who thought that those looked good? The only thing that was worse was the "compartment" style in the late 50's and 1960's when every house built had a million walls so that you couldn't walk more than 10 feet without hitting one. My uncle rennovated a house 5 years ago (which he just sold for 2x what he bought it for) and it was a mess. It was a typical 1000 square foot, 2 bedroom bungalo with so many walls that heating it required 2x as much energy as it should have.  Keep in mind that this was a small house, and the living room had just enough room for a sofa, one chair, a tiny coffee table and the TV. The dining room was downright claustrophobic, and the kitchen had a horrible "choke point" where the fridge door nearly touched the wall that divided it from the dining room. When everything was opened up he found that the heat in each room was about 5x more consistant. Before you'd walk from one "roomlette" to the other and the temperature would rise or fall ~5 degrees C because air couldn't circulate properly. He also removed a ton of light fixtures because the millions of walls were no longer blocking the light. My aunt was worried that it would look like one big room, but was surprised how you can have "perceived walls" or transition points that separate rooms by just changing the flooring type, or having the ceiling change height by an inch or two. Wall colours having a subtle change with trim dividing them also helps with this perception of "another room" when really it's just one open space. I don't think you can really go wrong with an open concept house, but I have seen it taken too far the other way. On house of a co-worker was just one giant open cavern on the first floor with the entrance, kitchen, dining room, living room, office, and even LAUNDRY ROOM being all visible to each other with the exception of a few strategically placed support columns scattered throughout. After a few years of living like that they bought some of those folding changing walls, and even broke down an had a contractor build a wall to make the laundry area a room. p.s. does anyone know a good free program that will let you replicate your floor plan? Maybe a home design program that will even let you see the inside of your house? I remember our school had a kick rear end one that let you step inside the house you designed and pan your view in a 3d environment, allowing you to choose colours for the walls, and flooring types.
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Oct 23, 2011 16:02
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Neutrino posted:If you use your kitchen to COOK then an open concept can lead to problems. I've seen too many new condos with open concept kitchens that have no ventilation or windows. Good luck trying to impress your dinner guests when you are having a fish fry. Don't they have exhaust hoods over their stove tops? Or are they "cheap" condos, as in ones that are expensive, but they have cut corners on things you wouldn't notice until you moved in? Baronjutter posted:I live in a city with a lot of old people, quite a retirement city, and they still build in that compartment style as that's what old people apparently want. It's a weird generational thing but they rather have 3 tiny barely usable rooms than one big one. Kitchen, living room, and dining room HAVE to be separate. In their minds more rooms = higher class and cooking is not a social thing you involve guests in. Now that you mention it, one of the last jobs that I delivered to when working for Rona was a cottage for a retired couple. I was dropping off some insulation and drywall (not load bearing drywall), and when I was inside I noticed that there seemed to be stud walls everywhere. They were in the process of wiring it, so you could still see the full length of the cottage because the drywall had not been put up yet (because I had just delivered it, try and keep up). Oh, I found a blueprint of the floorplan. 
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Oct 25, 2011 13:56
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Iskariot posted:You have to stop posting that. I'm sitter here giggling like an idiot whenever I read it. Do you have any suggestions on what type of insulation I should be using on my stairs? They are very cold and drafty! What's the required R level for interior stairs to meet code? (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 25, 2011 14:21
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Iskariot posted:Stop it! Please! My coworkers are giving me funny looks. Ok, ok, I'll stop. I have a question about house proportions? Should an addition to an existing structure be 3x or 4x larger than the existing structure? Also how much of the addition should be dedicated to garage space? 80 or 90%? I don't want my house looking silly.
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Oct 25, 2011 14:48
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ibpooks posted:You laugh! My (dickhead) neighbor just build a 50' x 70' garage/barn on his 63' wide city lot right behind the 860 square foot house. So yeah, the garage is 4x the size of the house; and now instead of seeing a field with deer and woodland creatures and poo poo out my back window, I can see about 50 square of brown shingles. He apparently went to the code office and determined what the minimum setbacks were for all his lot lines and sized the garage to that, essentially a "maximize button" for the waaaaay out-of-place structure. Also he has obviously-used bedsheets hanging in the front windows instead of curtains: priorities? If only the foreclosure crisis was a little more targeted. Shiiiiiiiit! We are going to need some photos of this asap! What does he do in that garage? Is it a business or does he own an airplane? Is he starting his own storage facility?
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Oct 25, 2011 17:47
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How do they afford a house like that? Did the kids start a lemonade stand franchise and corner the market in their town? Also that place is hideous! That steel roof belongs on a barn or someone's garage.
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Oct 30, 2011 23:50
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Similar things happen around my place all the time. Someone has a nice view of a lake, then the person between them and the late builds a huge garage and boom! Nice view of corrugated metal. The worst was when a marina built a massive three story tall, 200 foot long storage building for people who want their boats out of the weather over the winter. There was a ton of complaints and debates, and articles in the paper, but in the end it was their right to do it. Now the landscape for a few KM each way is dominated by this structure. Still better than living in a HOA neighborhood.
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Oct 31, 2011 23:06
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Oh, is this the thread where people were complaining about ugly garages making neighborhoods look bad? Well I think you should all shut your pussy mouthes and behold. . .  . . . the house that's made from a garage! (Click for extra white trash pixels)  Oh, and this is no ordinary garage, not some guy's big garage that he made on a separate lot for his cars and junk. This is a "hey, I need an oil change, a realignment, and check the transmission, because it's acting up in 3rd gear" garage. This was an actual garage dedicated to fixing cars, it had two large bays, hydraulic lifts, and tons of oil and fuel contamination. That kind of garage. . . and now people live inside of it! Don't believe me, check out the faded sign behind the bottom satellite dish. I especially love that they went to the trouble of hanging two dishes, but while on that ladder didn't have the time or required tools to remove the old sign. I don't think I really need to explain anything in this picture! That addition speaks for itself. Also they never bothered to take down the two large metal sign frames. "No, I don't know how this was even possible from a zoning or even health regulation point of view". And yes, people visiting my town ask all the time about the "hillbilly house" right at the intersection of the two main streets, overlooking our beautiful bay. (Click for additional mullet)  Beat that you suburbanites! The only thing I can think of that could come close is if someone let 50 gypsy caravans park in their front yard and they were constantly fighting and screaming to each other while livestock crapped everywhere.
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Nov 2, 2011 01:11
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Sedgr posted:**Stuff** I agree with you that people should be able to do what they want on their property, but that doesn't mean we can't complain about it. Example of world class dickery: There is this small lake 1/2 an hour from my place. Beautiful lake, mostly old people around, and some interesting shaped lots due to two townships colliding in the area. Here is the situation:  The large lot with the brown house has been unchanged for as long as I could remember. A few years ago the guy in the bottom right hand lot moved in and built a house. He had the property surveyed and discovered that the property lines were drawn in the wrong area. The guy with the big lot thought that the corner where their two lots met was his, but it turned out the opposite was true. The new guy has a small lot, under an acre, and the guy with the large lot has almost three. He lost (in his mind) about 5% of his property to this new guy. Honestly, about the size of a bedroom. The new guy builds his house (brown) and then cuts the trees on his (red area) property so he can now see the lake. Next year, the guy with the big property decided to build a garage, a huge garage. Guess where he builds it? Out of all the space he had, he placed it exactly where it would 100% block the new guy's view of the lake. (red square). Should this be illegal? I don't know. If there was a law to prevent dickishness like this, I'm sure the dicks would be the ones using it the most.
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Nov 2, 2011 18:55
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Speaking of vents. . . this happened a few days ago. My uncle is just about finished renovating his kitchen in his new (to him) house and replaced the range hood with something that sounds less like a Republic XF-84H. Any way he removes it and the venting pipe falls down through the ceiling onto the ceramic stove top. Luckily there was a hammer with a rubber grip laying on top of a newspaper on top of the range, and it absorbed the impact without scratching or cracking the ceramic top. Now he has to crawl into the attic and reattach it to the vent that vents the exhaust outside. He crawls into the crawlspace, through the insulation, and finds the pipe. . . that was apparently just venting everything into the attic. It literally just ended about three feet from the roof. A trip to the hardware store, an exterior vent, another length of pipe, and some heating and cutting of the shingles and plywood and he had a properly vented exhaust fan. Blistex fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 13, 2012 23:50
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Not an Anthem posted:Your diagram about the houses is also terrible because I couldn't tell through 90% of the story which of the two identical brown houses you were talking about and I figured you were trolling. Yah I should have changed the colour of the one, but I figured the description of the brown house on the large lot and the brown house on in the bottom right was sufficient. As for trolling? What? The guy with the big yard was pissed because the new guy with the little lot (bottom right) found where the property line was and cut down 4-6 trees so he could see the lake. Due to retiree-rage, the guy with the big lot uses a transit and math to calculate the exact position and angle to put his garage so that it would completely block the view of the lake for the new guy. Not an Anthem posted:Ugly things exist. Hell, ugly people exist. You don't go around complaining your neighbor is ugly, but you can complain about their ugly garage. Yes, ugly things happen. They're not ideal, but beauty is subjective and a gently caress-off huge garage is pretty awesome once you're inside it. We moved around a bit when I was growing up and the second to last house my parents lived in, the backyard neighbor wanted to build a huge garage. Obviously my mom was irate. The garage was built and I hung out in it- and it was awesome, and his hobby racing/mechanic thing took off. Never bothered us and we were sleeping like 30 feet from it. Didn't ruin any views because its the suburbs and all the terrible houses looked the same. As for complaining, it's the Something Awful forums! That's what we do. We complain here instead of telling everyone who walks past our houses. I don't think anyone is complaining about someone's front door being the wrong shade of white, or a garage being 2' too high, but more along the lines of things that seem to be done out of dickishness or plain old  .
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Apr 7, 2012 01:19
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Papercut posted:I can't stop laughing at this. This is in one of my wife's K-8 schools. Go California public education: Ancient Audio setup?
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May 7, 2012 15:35
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/\ Images not showing up for anyone else?
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Oct 18, 2012 14:59
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Ah! Facebook is blocked at work (school) so that makes sense.
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Oct 19, 2012 16:11
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Here's a new one. My grandparents have been living in their newly built house for about 4 months now and have just gotten the laminate flooring in the basement installed. I go over to take a look and "drat it looks nice"! They're finishing the basement and have it all drywalled, doors hung, laminate laid, and all they have to do is get the trim put in and the ceiling tiles put in (but that can wait until the central vac piping is installed). I'm walking around and notice that there is a 1/8" gap between the drywall and the laminate at one end of the basement and a 1/2" gap at the other end. "Not too bad I guess. The baseboard trim should cover that." I start walking around and feel the floor give out beneath me. The laminate in one spot is hovering nearly an inch off the ground. I move to another spot and the same. I grab a handy 4' level and check it out. The flooring is level, but there are a bunch of dips in the cement under it. Seems that the guy who poured the basement forgot his level, or waited too long to float it and there are a bunch of gaps under different areas of the flooring. Question: What are the odds that these spots are going to cause the laminate joints to fall apart from moving up and down whenever walked on?
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Jan 16, 2013 15:09
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kastein posted:I think his main point was that the cement floor was horribly uneven and the laminate was hanging in space over the dips until someone stood on it, though. Yes. This is the main point, and it seems my fears were justified.
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Jan 17, 2013 05:49
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jackyl posted:Holmes is awesome and I hope this happened, but only after a fifteen minute rant of "how could you do that? What were you thinking?". Also that it was taped and will appear on the Internet one day. The only thing I didn't like about Holmes on Holmes was that a lot of the projects were just stupid rich people. "The contractor put in the wrong Italian marble flooring, I'm so sad!". Stuff like that is neither interesting nor makes you feel sympathetic towards the homeowners. I'd like it if he would help out more first-time home owners or younger couples getting screwed.
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Apr 5, 2013 01:51
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iForge posted:On the plus side, the client has plenty of funds and is adamant about fixing everything and putting things back together properly, so the cost and scope of repairs isn't an issue. Only good news out of that whole mess. I was doing a foundation for an addition on a house with my uncle and when we went into the basement of the actual house it was out of some sort of "contractor got pissed and decided to screw over the owner on purpose" scenario. Basically the walls were really out of whack and the idiot used cedar shims to try and make up for 2" of space within 15' of wall in several places. Naturally they were not up to the task and the house was settling unevenly. To make matters worse, the center supports were not even on rock, or even packed gravel. The 4 central supports had sunk 2-3 inches over the ten years the house had been up and it was so bad that doors were not closing upstairs and the drywall looked like it had been through a sever earthquake. When my uncle brought this up with the guy he explained that the situation was only going to get worse. The owner being a cheapskate, told us that he was going to cut up some 2x6 pt lumber and use jackposts on the joists and the ground. Naturally we insisted that the cash was up-front.
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Apr 7, 2013 03:52
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You want to see a scary mix of plumbing and electrical work? Go to a washroom in Korea or China! Generally speaking, the toilet, shower head, and washing machine occupy the same room in most middle-class apartments built before 2000 and are all well withing spraying distance of the shower head. My first place in Korea had a built-in shower head and light fixture occupying the same 5x5" area on the wall. My first place in China had the washing machine 3 feet to the right of the shower head. You actually had to lean against it to shower. My second place in Korea had the light fixture on the other side of the room from the shower head, and the washer was behind a sliding glass door, but there was an outlet directly below the shower head, so if you stood under it at the right angle, water would deflect off of you and onto/into the outlet. The first thing I did was buy a tube of silicone and literally covered the entire thing so that you couldn't even see it. My friend in Korea had an apartment where taking wet clothes out of the washing machine would give you a little "tingle" and the tiny 3 gallon electric hot water heater was mounted on the wall outside the bathroom window, exposed to the elements (it was not an exterior unit, not that I think they even make exterior hot water heaters). All of these were 220V as well.
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Apr 29, 2013 15:11
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smackfu posted:For bathrooms, I think it's just called a wet room. It's kind of hip now, you just have half of your bathroom designated as wet, and it is all waterproof, shower style, and then you don't have a shower curtain or door. I don't know of it's actually a good idea but it mixes up the design a bit. Some of the nicer hotel and apartment bathrooms in Korea and China are designed this way. The Shower is usually just around a corner, so there is no need for a curtain or a door. There will be a drain in the shower, and another in the other half of the bathroom. Typically the bathroom is 100% tile, and you keep your towels and stuff outside in a closet just in the hallway, so you can go nuts with a bottle of bleach and the shower head when you want to clean. Being this is the "Crappy construction Thread" I have a related story. My first apartment in Korea was actually a 4 student room turned apartment in the girl's dorm at the high-school I was working at. It was brand new, and they finished my room a week after I moved in. What was scary was that I would be showering, brushing my teeth, or just surfing the net and I would hear a massively loud "crack", almost like a gunshot coming from the bathroom. I could never figure out what it was until one day I came back from work and found that one of the tiles had cracked in half, and fallen off the wall of the bathroom. It seems that (for expediency sake) the contractors had cemented the tiles directly to the cement walls, as in the structural concrete walls that made up the dormitory. As the building was brand new, there was still some settling and compression going on. The tiles didn't compress though, and some of them cracked, some of them fell off, but most of them "popped" their adhesive and stayed in place on the wall due to their neighbors holding them there, but made that very loud "crack" sound I had been hearing. In total about 3 actually came off, and another 3 cracked, so the contractors came back and fixed those. Same contracting company doing a retaining wall outside my apartment. I could see from the 8th floor that they left a massive gap in one spot of the forms, and I actually yelled at them to stop, and ran down. By the time I got down they had already been pouring for about 20 seconds and I had to point out that they were losing a few yards of cement.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but that spill right there is about 5 bathtubs worth, and over the next minute the remainder of the cement in the forms would leak out due to the pressure being too much to plug the 12"x 12" gap they left. Also, that guy sitting there on the forms dropped his cell phone into the mix, but managed to fish it out since it just landed on top and didn't sink.
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May 5, 2013 16:00
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SynthOrange posted:That's an amazing wall/slab alright. How awful was the cleanup? That wall was about 10' tall, and 14" wide I believe. Naturally the gap was at the lowest part of it, and pretty much the entire contents of a cement truck emptied out. It took them the better part of three hours before they gave up shoveling cement and waited until the next day to take the jackhammer to it. By that night it was all gone and they had filled in the gap after some jackhammering. There were 10 guys working for the better part of two days to clean it up.
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May 6, 2013 03:50
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Well I started to drywall the spare bedroom and ran into one of the joys of owning an older house, (84 years young now) rooms that are not square. I started against one wall with a sloped ceiling and once I got it screwed in I noticed that it wasn't square where it meets to ceiling. Went back, took out the square and found that the short wall is off by 1.5" at one side. I'm going to have to rip out the old drywall and put some more strapping in there and put a new sheet on it (3/4 of a sheet to be precise). I'm thining I can just put the strips through the planer until they get down to the appropriate size as I work myself along the wall. Lesson learned, measure everything first, then start cutting and drywalling.
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May 22, 2013 01:52
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