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Original poster

To ask for the most ridiculous diy you've found in a house

208 replies

Bakewellisntjustacake · 22/08/2021 05:05

This is one of mine..

This is an outside tap that has been fitted onto a water pipe in the basement there is no drainage in the basement so we have to keep a bucket under it as it leaks.

The previous owners couldn't be bothered to either sort out a drain in the basement (understandable as expensive) they also couldn't be bothered to fit an outside tap actually outside so they attached it to a water pipe in the basement and ran the hose out of the window up into the garden and watered the plants like that.

It's not even cut into the plaster board right! Obviously it's on a list as long as my arm to fix.

Anyone else got some 'interesting' diy stories ?

To ask for the most ridiculous diy you've found in a house
OP posts:
Thread gallery
6
ThinWomansBrain · 22/08/2021 05:39

not ridiculous, but very yuk, I still remember it 35 years on
I went to view a flat - wall to wall mirrored wardrobes and mirrored ceiling tiles on the bedroom walls. And a very seedy husband telling me how interesting it made things.
I didn't purchase that one.

CoalCraft · 22/08/2021 05:39

My house is full of unadvisable DIY from the previous owners but the bit that really stands out is the conservatory door that has been fitted upside down!

ThinWomansBrain · 22/08/2021 05:39

*mirrored tiles on the ceiling

Backofthenet20 · 22/08/2021 05:47

We found that our 30 amp fuses were not 30 amp wire but lighter gauge fuses twisted together. We found this out when the fuse box was arcing back on itself and making a burning smell,

Iamnotthe1 · 22/08/2021 05:51

When I bought it, everything in my house was wired in to the electrical system: cupboards, wardrobes, the vanity, mirrors, the greenhouse, etc. If the previous owner could have found a reason to run electrics through something, he did.

It was all diy and quite dangerous. We had to get the entire house rewired.

ThirdElephant · 22/08/2021 05:54

Both upstairs and downstairs hall lights were on one switch downstairs, so you had to have both on or neither. You could turn the landing light off from the upstairs light switch but would need to trek downstairs to turn the hall lights off and then go back upstairs in the dark if you wanted both lights off at bedtime.

Debetswell · 22/08/2021 06:01

My dm asked dh to hang a mirror on a wall that unbeknown to him had a wire behind it.
About a year later dm had work done and apparently my dh was very close to going through the wire.

Hekatestorch · 22/08/2021 06:09

The first house o bought was open plan.

It had boarder paper at the height a dado rail would be at. I hated it. Started to take it off and turns out it was superglue on.

Boobahs · 22/08/2021 06:13

There's a lot of bodge jobs in our house thanks to the previous owners, but when they left they didn't cap off the pipe under the sink that led to the washing machine in the next cupboard, just tied a carrier bag around it. I turned the tap on and it flooded the whole of the cupboard underneath 🙄

BearPear · 22/08/2021 06:16

We bought our last house from a policeman, apparently the blue-light brigade have a reputation for enthusiastic DIY. We found that electrical work was his “specialty”. Every little job we needed doing was always a much bigger job because he’d bodged things and a proper electrician either had to put it all right or leave it entirely.
He’d wired a plug into the bathroom by running it off the immersion heater, that one in particular sticks in my mind.

HollyGrail · 22/08/2021 06:30

We bought a house owned by a sawmill worker - as it seems the owner's work is relevant here - he knocked a hole through the wall and put in a door - didn't put in a lintel - the wall had originally been an outside wall so it could have had dire consequences.

ZombeaArthur · 22/08/2021 06:38

In my Mum’s house the wallpaper was stapled to the wall Hmm

Our house is full of bad DIY jobs, nothing serious, just cheap. Like the bedroom shelving, where each shelf was made from a completely different type of wood, some thick, some thin, some made up of different pieces of wood nailed together. Really attractive Grin

The previous owners also saved money on jobs they outsourced like building a porch which is so small the front door opens out. I can’t begin to describe just how difficult it was to leave the house with a double pushchair on a windy day!

LoislovesStewie · 22/08/2021 06:53

Not dangerous DIY but silly. I knew someone who bought a house and found out that the previous owners hadn't moved furniture to paint the whole wall but had painted around the furniture. Obviously they had to redecorate anyway, but it made the room look really odd in the meantime.

toomuchfaster · 22/08/2021 07:19

@LoislovesStewie

Not dangerous DIY but silly. I knew someone who bought a house and found out that the previous owners hadn't moved furniture to paint the whole wall but had painted around the furniture. Obviously they had to redecorate anyway, but it made the room look really odd in the meantime.
This appears to be very common from a thread the other day. Old furniture was too heavy and new furniture is too unstable to move regularly.
FOJN · 22/08/2021 07:28

I found a redundant gas pipe carpeted over in my current house and in my first flat the occupants had not just painted around the furniture but everything hanging on the walls too.

FlowerArranger · 22/08/2021 07:38

@Debetswell

My dm asked dh to hang a mirror on a wall that unbeknown to him had a wire behind it. About a year later dm had work done and apparently my dh was very close to going through the wire.
OMG you should never drill into a wall without first checking for live wires with a cables and studs detector! Saved my life once...

People do crazy things with electrics. A (former) friend once told me how they replaced all the socket covers and light switches with new ones and told potential purchasers that they had the house rewired. This probably wouldn't fly today as it's now normal (mandated?) To have an electrical safety certificate when selling a house.

SW1amp · 22/08/2021 07:43

Helping a friend move into a house - an old Victorian terrace with the bathroom off the kitchen

The bathroom was freeeezing but we couldn’t work out how to turn on the radiator that was in there.

Eventually worked it out…

It wasn’t a proper radiator. It was one of those plug in portable ones
With a hole cut into the wall of the bathroom and the plug passed through into the back of a kitchen cupboard and then attached to an extension cable that ran along the back of the kitchen cupboard into a socket next to the kettle 😱😱😱😱

dworky · 22/08/2021 07:50

I once saw a bedroom which had been carpeted by cutting around the double bed.

LittleMissTeacup · 22/08/2021 07:53

Many many odd “bodge-it” jobs in our renovation project house!
One of my favourites is the slow leak from a radiator pipe next to the wall. The previous owners had gorilla glued the split, which didn’t stop water leaking into the wall and actually meant the pipe had to be replaced rather than just soldered. Took us ages to realise we didn’t have some odd raising damp.
Gorilla glue has been a theme in this house - there’s a brick post in the back garden where the bricks have been glued back into place rather than cemented.

CherryBunsAndLollies · 22/08/2021 07:55

Master bedroom had an array of speaker grills all over the ceiling (10-30 cm in diameter). We figured they must have been set up for bedtime raves with full on heavy bass etc. When DP went into the loft space to take apart whatever sound system was worthy of such speakers, there were tiny portable speakers balanced on the speaker grills 😂

cricketmum84 · 22/08/2021 07:56

Not my house but we once spent an entire day watching the neighbours fit a new front door the wrong way round. Then putting it the right way round only to find it didn't fit properly so they bodged it with loads of expanding foam. Then realised it didn't have a letterbox so had to open the window for the postman every morning.

It was like watching the chuckle brothers 😂

smmanf12 · 22/08/2021 08:06

Not so much a bodge, but our first house was painted in wild bright colours - including the ceilings.

The living room was tomato-soup red, the master bedroom was an intense turquoise, their baby’s room was dark indigo with a pink carpet (that ceiling took so much work to paint white!) The other bedroom was bright purple, finished off with a brown carpet. The hall and stairs were an unpleasant dark mushroom/brown colour with swirly maroon carpets. When we’d finished toning down those colours the house felt twice as big.

They were a young couple and this was only 2013 so it was odd they’d gone for such dated, strong colours and general style (they told us they’d decorated most of it when they’d moved in)

ineedaholidayandwine · 22/08/2021 08:11

We have a tv bracket that has not only been bolted to the wall as it should be but they have also used no more nails on it, we're going to have to chisel it off, if lucky fill the holes, if unlucky plaster the space then redecorate

thequeenofsandwich · 22/08/2021 08:13

We bought a “doer upper” which the previous owners had part exchanged for a brand new one , so we never met them...
One of the kitchen “worktops” was in fact an internal door , complete with handle

Jokie · 22/08/2021 08:20

So, one house I lived in was a 2 bed that had been turned into a 3 bed by the previous owners. They decided to make a really weird partition wall and made all of the doors super narrow so you couldn't get anything in/out without breaking it down and/or extreme difficulty.