Home Inspection Nightmares VIII from This Old House

The Home Inspection Nightmares gallery VIII makes me feel better, knowing there are other people who are as incompetent as I am when it comes to home repair.

This batch of photos include:: cat in a urinal, unsafe hot tub balcony, chewing tobacco can as junction box, wasps in the plumbing vent, and more. Link

[#1 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2007 7:54 AM]

Any guesses how long until somebody makes a lolcat out of the urinal pic?

[#2 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2007 8:12 AM]

I've been watching the Canadian television program Holmes on Homes a lot lately. Contractor, Mike Holmes, and his crew specialize in repairing shoddy work botched by previous contractors. They run into a lot of problems like these, although I've never seen anything like that white extension cord wired directly.

[#3 posted by AaronZ , September 19, 2007 8:14 AM]

I love these bits because it makes me feel better about the crap I inherited with my house. The previous owner ran a phone line all the way from upstairs, carefully through the walls and down into the basement phone box - only to connect the wires *to ground*!
(Plus he staped the carpet upstairs to the floor with a staple gun.)

:p

[#4 posted by pork musket , September 19, 2007 8:19 AM]

I feel your pain, Aaronz... my entire sprinkler system was installed with garden hoses. Previous owner just buried garden hoses and connected them to sprinklers. Beware the retiree who he thinks he's a handy-man.

[#5 posted by Ape Lad , September 19, 2007 8:23 AM]

Wow. These never fail to amuse and horrify.
The "ceiling mounted garage door sensors" picture is priceless.

[#6 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator , September 19, 2007 8:33 AM]

Thanks -- I didn't know vol. 8 was up. I get a real sense of wonder from these: "What the hell were they thinking?"

[#7 posted by DaveX , September 19, 2007 9:29 AM]

Wish I had a photo of the guy who framed around some of the windows in my last house-- I guess nails were too simple-- he used roofing tar to slap 'em up! Really makes you wonder...

[#8 posted by Registered User , September 19, 2007 11:45 AM]

Not a real comment. Please delete this one.

[#9 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator , September 19, 2007 12:12 PM]

Well, dang. If they're not real, stop posting them.

[#10 posted by jccalhoun , September 19, 2007 12:33 PM]

The Canadian show Holmes on Homes is basically built around this kind of stuff. He goes in and fixes things after other contractors screw it up. I remember one episode where they found something like 20 junction boxes in the walls of one laundry room.
It's on HGTV in Canada and Discovery Home in the USA.

[#11 posted by Jonah , September 19, 2007 1:49 PM]

This reminds me of some work I did in an old school building. We were remodeling the one of the offices when I noticed that the electrical outlets, rather than being wired into the walls, had their electric cables run along the trim at the base of the walls. These cables were the kind have two insulated copper wires stuck together, so that there is a visible indentation between the wires. On closer inspection, I saw that the cables were attached to the trim with metal tacks. About every 6 inches someone had carefully inserted a tack trough the insulation between the wires.

[#12 posted by butiwasthere , September 19, 2007 2:59 PM]

this really makes me wonder about my own house... im a renter and who knows what cheap quick fixes have been used...