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

[Bakewellisntjustacake]

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 ?

Our house used to have a through lounge and a separate small kitchen. At some point in the past the owners knocked out the side wall of the kitchen and put a stud wall with double glass doors across the lounge so now we have an open kitchen and dining room and separate lounge. I think it's nicer than the original layout.
That is, until we re-did the kitchen as it appeared to have been fitted by a blind orangutan. We found that the stud wall had been put in ON TOP of the original carpet. It's still there, we can't get it out.

@NonShallot - one of my students rentals was a house with a dining room extension into the garden and the former garden doors as slidey doors between the living room and dining room. It was fucking freezing!

Whoever converted my flat did a slightly lazy job, I think. My fridge freezer is in an integral unit which has been wired in such a way that I can't get at the socket to unplug it without taking it apart. It's on the to do list - it's going to be my excuse to give my kitchen a face lift.

Our boiler cupboard has obviously been built around the boiler to never be taken apart again- which would be fine if it hit the minimum space requirement for boiler engineers to play within. DP is competent to take it down & rebuild it but that would be an endless bloody- and unsightly rigmarole as we're trying to get on a boiler cover plan, so it would be checked yearly & they won't even look at it with the cupboard up. We're waiting on the carpenter to redo it so it's not a full on construction job each time.

My parents place, when they bought it, was duly christened Heath Robinson House due to the number of bodges. The top 3:

1. Taking a bath out to find no floor beneath, only ceiling.

2. Nails hammered in the wrong way round- so sharp ends sticking out, of a cupboard built around a sink in what had been a nursery. The baby had been able to touch them once she was big enough to stand in her cot.

3. The paperclips holding up the curtains.

My first house appeared to have a separate (tiny) kitchen and lounge. Because the kitchen was dilapidated the first job was to replace it.

The kitchen fitters came to do their thing, only to discover that there wasn't actually a proper wall between the kitchen and lounge at all. It had been originally fitted as a hatch-type affair, with an aperture running the width of the wall. When the fitters tried to remove the cupboards the whole thing fell apart.

The top cupboards were fitted on a solid bar, but the gap had been fitted with offcuts of various sheets of board and plastered on the lounge side only. The plaster wasn't enough to hold it all together once it was disturbed and there was suddenly a hole in the lounge wall.

One the kitchen was dismantled they built a proper stud and plaster wall so at least I was confident the new kitchen wasn't going anywhere. Since I'd planned bookshelves for the lounge side of that wall it's a good thing the kitchen was changed first!

When I viewed my current house I noticed that the dishwasher and washing machine weren't plugged in to a socket above the worktop so I assumed that there was a socket on the wall next to the dishwasher underneath the worktop.
What we actually found was a double electric socket in the cupboard under the sink right next to the outflow pipe for the washing machine.

My pil in their later years decided to roof over the passage between house and garage. Put metal struts up to hold it. Painted then the same colour as the bricks to blend in. Sadly they were above their height. Considerably below my dhs 6'3" height. Who knocked himself senseless on his first visit there. They were highly upset when he suggested painting the yellow!

I've had a toilet not secured to the floor, joists and floorboards rotting but covered up with plastic sheeting and flooring laid, lack of drainage, fireplaces gaps filled in with expanding foam.

None of this was shit DIY. It was all done to save the money.

We also bought from a policeman and everything has been painted over so we had to chisel off numerous layers of thick paint to get the curtain rails off. Even one smoke detector had been painted over.

This is why I prefer my new build!

We found out when having a new kitchen fitted that our garage (which has its own fuse box) was wired into a single 13 amp plug hidden behind some kitchen units.

After my in laws died we lived into their house to get it up to scratch for sale. FiL was a top notch bodger, so there are plenty to choose from. The one which made us laugh the most was, when trying to sand down a lump in the living room wall, we discovered a snapped off drill bit which he had left in place and filled round to make a large dome in the wall

My previous house had lots of bodged jobs. The lights to the cellar were wired with Christmas tree wire. If you replaced a light fitting and wired it correctly it blew as all the lighting was wired wrong.
The kitchen wall tiles were put on hardboard instead of plastering the walls to level them.
There was lead piping sticking out of the kitchen wall and a maze of criss crossing lead pipes in the loft which meant the hot water took ages to get to the taps.
The previous owner left furniture, which we had agreed to. We had not agreed to the double bed which stank of urine in the main bedroom.

@gardeninggirl68

Jesus Christ is here stories 😱

I work in a DIY store and SELL the items for these bodge jobs. I often recommend they get a qualified tradesmen but I see them at the till with some 'no more nails' and superglue and just know they haven't listened!!

“No more nails” is very useful though. Personally I buy the stronger “Sticks like sh*t” from Screwfix (yes that’s it’s name) - but it’s not for my home it’s for the stage sets I build! Maybe the bloke from Screwfix is judging me every time I go in there…….

Our last rented house was a nightmare. One of the doors fell off because it was hung wrong and not screwed properly. We had a huge cupboard in the kitchen that was hard to shut. I shut it one day and a piece of wood above the door fell off and hit me on the head (it was glued not screwed).
Perhaps best of all the landlord hired a friend of his to do some work in the bathroom. Builder informed us the lights in the bathroom were illegal and unsafe for bathroom use and he'd told the landlord that before. Even worse the landlord had installed it himself when he wasn't an electrician.
Funnily enough ww moved out a month later.

@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.

My DF did drill through a wire. It had been run horizontally between two power points, which is a no no. They should always come down vertically.
The drill flew out of his hands. He fell backwards, and all his hair stood on end like it does in a cartoon.
He was very lucky.

When I replaced the gas hob, the old one had been plumber in using garden hose, like the poster upthread.
The electric oven was plugged straight into a normal plug socket! It wasn't a modern one which you can do either.
Started to redecorate, to find layer upon layer of wallpaper. The previous owners hadn't bothered to strip the old wallpaper off, just slapped some new over the old, it was like trying to get through thick cardboard!
Taking out a stone fireplace around the coal fire, revealed that the stone had wads of scrunched up newspaper behind them.
A double plug socket in the dining room which was wired exclusively into a plug socket on the other side of the wall. They had removed the socket in the kitchen, drilled through the wall, then using wire from an extension lead, had wired up a double plug socket before attaching them to the wall.
The same had been done to install a plug socket outside. It wasn't even an external socket, just a standard indoor one.
A strip light in the garage which worked via an extension lead, plugged into the aforementioned socket.
Went to replace the lino in the kitchen and utility room and found it glued to the concrete floors.
Years later, that lino is still there but with floor tiles covering it.

When we first moved into our house, we couldn’t find the light switch for the bathroom. For two days we bumbled around with a torch until DD found it inside the fitted wardrobe in her bedroom. So if we needed the loo in the middle of the night, we had to creep across the landing into DD’s room, open the wardrobe, switch the light on, creep back out again and into the bathroom. Then repeat the process in reverse once we had done what we needed to do in the bathroom.

We were also left a full A4 sheet of instructions on how to flush the toilet. Failure to follow said instructions to the letter resulted in the pipes emitting a high pitched squeal as the cistern refilled.

@Watto1 how many different ways are there to flush a toilet?

Wow some of these are insane

Our kitchen island is help up by a rolled up magazine wedged against the support post.... Previous owners work but we've never changed it!

We have a switch in the bedroom but no idea what it controls, it has a live side so connected to something!
Waiting for electrician to come and check it out.
We have two sets of lights that work but are no help in giving illumination, the bulbs merely glow if turned on.

@ThatSunnyCorner

After my in laws died we lived into their house to get it up to scratch for sale. FiL was a top notch bodger, so there are plenty to choose from. The one which made us laugh the most was, when trying to sand down a lump in the living room wall, we discovered a snapped off drill bit which he had left in place and filled round to make a large dome in the wall

Clearly a right pain to sort out but I do admire his approach with the drill bit!

@LadyFannyButton You’d be surprised! It was something along the lines of - press flush handle down firmly, hold for 6.5 seconds, release, press handle down again for 3.2 seconds but gently this time, release, return to bathroom after 10 minutes and lift handle upwards. Replacing that loo was the first thing we did!

First house I lived in with ex was a load of bodge jobs.

1. Victorian house, and kitchen had been extended into the old coal house and outdoor toilet, creating a bathroom at the end of the downstairs. After our furniture had been put upstairs into the back bedroom (above the kitchen), my dad (a builder) had discovered that the extended bit didn't have a proper crossbeam, and he rushed to get some acro jacks to hold up the ceiling till he could put a proper beam in. The previous owner had simply used a couple bitss of wood that weren't eveen bedded into the wall properly. Whole lot could have come down any time.

1. Live wire cut off and bedded into plaster halfway down the wall in the dining room. I'm still surprised all these years later that one of us didn't get electrocuted. -Should have been him, would have saved me no end of abuse from him.

1. "Panelling" on the kitchen wall, made up of offcuts of laminated board, with bamboo strips nailed over the joins. Turns out there were lots of wires to the sockets just stuffed behind the panelling any old way. Good job that was all ripped off as one of the first jobs, before anything was done to the wiring.

1. Front room was just yucky brown from smoking, which was obvious from the clean white shapes left after things taken down off the walls.

There were more bodge jobs, lots more.

This is also the skirting board by the front door I'm not fixing it till we get it damp proofed which is next on the list!

The house we're in now had been owned by an older man, who according to the neighbours "was keen on DIY and always working on it", the reality was he had removed every single original feature and replaced with some odd stuff.

1. Panelled bathroom door removed and replaced with a not so very frosted glass door.
2. Instead of getting an electrician to fit a proper light in the bedroom, had simply run a cable out of a socket and fixed it to the wall, so a bare bulb just nailed to the wall.
3. Carpet laid on top of carpet, front room was 5 layers, took MANY trips to the dump to clear it.
4. Fitted wardrobes in the bedroom lovingly pointed out as a feature by the estate agent, were merely slatted doors fixed across the not very deep alcoves. Soooooo 8in deep wardrobes.......with a rail (for ties?) Inside.

I'd quite like a new build next.