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 Kilkrazy wrote:
If it's any comfort to people, when I bought my house in Japan, it was built from scratch to plans agreed between the architect and my wife, mainly. Thus everything should have been perfect.

They still managed to feth up and make the window in my study about half the size it wants to be, causing me to need artificial light half the time. It's a real shame because that window is north facing and would have great light for modelling. Also from the outside, the window is clearly too small for the area of wall it's in.

Their reasoning? The opposite neighbours would be able to see through a large window.

What about curtains, eh?

Looks like you need to carefully watch contractors no matter what side of the pond you're on. My distrust of others has resulted in me doing almost everything myself. Why pay for someone else to screw it up? On the other hand a good contractor is worth his weight in gold. Now if I could only find one where I'm at.

You think gak contractors are frustrating as a homeowner try being their competition and losing out on work to them!

I hear horror stories all the time about the big dog plumbing companies in town here. I charge about half their prices and do twice the quality work and don't charge a cent if I don't fix anything.

One I love:

A regular customer of mine asked me to look at an issue that a friend of hers was having. she was a sweet little recently widowed old lady and wasn't getting much hot water pressure to her shower (which was on the oposite end of the house from the garage where the water heater was located). I checked the shower then went to the garage. She said the big companies "plumber" told her it was her water softener that was probably clogging her lines up with salt. Suspicious of that I turned off the valve to the softener system and checked a faucet for pressure. No cold water came out but the hot water ran full pressure. Meaning the water softener WASN'T EVEN HOOKED TO THE HOT SIDE OF THE SYSTEM!
So I took the shower valve apart and cleared some junk clogging the hot side of the cartridge. Fixed! She was very happy and relieved to not need to eliminate the softener system (Which is what the other "Plumber" recommended). Then she showed me the estimate they gave her. Now, taking out this system would involve turning off the water, removing the softener and coupling the water lines back together. Less than an hour's work (for a good plumber at least). Their estimate was for $6,000!!! I asked her what she said to them when presented with that number. With a little smirk she replied "I told them I'd have to talk to my husband first..." LOL

Japanese builders work like billy-oh and take real pride in their jobs. It was the conspiracy between my wife and the idiot architect that spoint my window.

But yes, a lot of UK tradespeople are rubbish bordering on criminal. Sadly for most of us it is only through bitter experience that we learn those lessons.

Another example, in my old flat, I had trouble several times with the old lady who lived above flooding my flat by her laundry machine overflowing. Once it happened literally a couple of days after an expensive piece of rebuilding and redecoration had been done. On another occasion it water damaged a valuable Victorian antique sideboard.

The neighbour had plumbers round several times who had charged her money "to fix" the problem but it always returned after a while.

In the end I looked myself, and discovered that the waste water outflow from the washing machine simply was gradually inching its way up and out of the drain pipe due to the vibration of the machine in action.

It too five minutes to fix this with a well-placed bracket. Thus ending a cycle of damage and false repair that had cost at least a couple of thousand pounds.

 kronk wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Their reasoning? The opposite neighbours would be able to see through a large window.

But how else do you advertise that you're into swinging?

Real live amateur action.

The guy who built my house used all cedar wood inside. Out at the rock garden beside my house he planted Kiwi plants.......every year....I have to cut them down and/or trim the branches shorter.....feel like I'm fighting the squid from 20K under the Sea....then the field mouse shoots out and gives my dogs a run

In my state you have to have a license to do plumbing, but not for anything electrical. A lot of guys that get laid off go into business for themselves. I had some work done (paid by the sellers) when I bought my house. I wasn't impressed. I also had the sellers buy me a home warranty. The blower on the furnace died a month into owning the house, and a tech was sent out. I told him what it was doing, and that I had experienced similar electric motor failures when I was an appliance mechanic. He changed out the part for me and it has run like a champ ever since.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Japanese builders work like billy-oh and take real pride in their jobs. It was the conspiracy between my wife and the idiot architect that spoint my window.

But yes, a lot of UK tradespeople are rubbish bordering on criminal. Sadly for most of us it is only through bitter experience that we learn those lessons.

Another example, in my old flat, I had trouble several times with the old lady who lived above flooding my flat by her laundry machine overflowing. Once it happened literally a couple of days after an expensive piece of rebuilding and redecoration had been done. On another occasion it water damaged a valuable Victorian antique sideboard.

The neighbour had plumbers round several times who had charged her money "to fix" the problem but it always returned after a while.

In the end I looked myself, and discovered that the waste water outflow from the washing machine simply was gradually inching its way up and out of the drain pipe due to the vibration of the machine in action.

It too five minutes to fix this with a well-placed bracket. Thus ending a cycle of damage and false repair that had cost at least a couple of thousand pounds.

I would say the plumbers were assuming the drain was clogging up. Those hoses normally just sit down into the drain pipe so they would have taken it out to clear the drain then replaced it afterwards. Putting it back down far enough where it should be.

Best thing I did though expensive as Heck.....was use metal flex hoses under my house.

50lbs of wires going to and from nowhere and nails not supporting anything, just kinda' jammed into pieces of wood.

A fuse box that looked like it had been built by a 4th grader.

Outlets that looked grounded but had their ground wires go about 3" into the wall and then not attach to anything.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:


Can you explain for a ponti. What am I looking for here?

They have all had reflective belts photoshopped onto them... Somewhat long running joke in the army that a PT Belt (as they are colloquially known) will save you from anything.

While deployed It was pretty much required to wear a reflective belt. like they won't let you in the chow hall without one on for most FOBS, Cant say about COBS. by the miracle of the reflective Gods, they apparently stop mortars, ambushes, rapes, name calling. Everything bad happens when you don't wear "da belt" according to high ranking people who write the Regs.
Though even if it does make my original point worthless, I freaking loved when people wore them at night on the FOB. Driving a up-armored HMMWV with severely scratched windows, crappy headlights, and the overhead lights near the road, made the glare so horrible It was near impossible to see people on the small roads.

First house we bought, they had installed a dimmer switch in the master bathroom, despite it being a simple 2 pole light because reasons. Our first summer, we had problems with the AC (15+ year old unit in Texas) and the AC guy inspected, charged the system etc. Get a call from our pet sitter the next day saying the AC is making a horrible noise and there is black stuff everywhere. We tell her to shut it off. Turns out, the AC guy left a tool in the blower unit and it tore up 3 of the 4 metal retaining brackets. So we were 1 bracket away from having a spinning fan housing come crashing down from the attic. Needless to say, they fixed all of that at their cost.

Remodeled the master bath and the first tile job didn't bother to level the tiles or use spacers, so it looked like crap. Made 'em do it over. Also, used a bathtub faucet set in the tiled shower, which is fine, but oddly decided to install the pull stopper below the faucet. Which would only serve to block the water line if you used it and probably boot the pressure to damaging levels. So had to have that redone too. Also decided to offset our sinks randomly in the new counter tops. Yet another do over.

Would *not* recommend those idiots.

Current house is considerably newer and no major issues so far. Redoing a pedestal sink in the half bath and found the only anchoring was two bolts through the drywall behind it. Otherwise, just a porcelain sink caulked to a porcelain pedestal, caulked to a tile floor. Super safe and sturdy.

Worst story I have personal knowledge of is a friend who bought a repo and discovered that the former owners left a nice gift. A bag of concrete dumped into the toilets!

Not a "What were they thinking!" moment but my BEST memory of my Ex-wife happened while we lived in an older mobile home many years ago. She was so fat that she FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR! early morning she walked down the hallway and I was half asleep and heard a loud CRASH, THUMP, and then a scream. Only to jump out of bed and knee her in the back of the head while running down the hallway to see what happened. I didn't see her since the only part of her you could see was Chest and up, I assumed the mass of color shirt was just the dirty clothes pile next to the washer.

 conker249 wrote:
Not a "What were they thinking!" moment but my BEST memory of my Ex-wife happened while we lived in an older mobile home many years ago. She was so fat that she FELL THROUGH THE FLOOR! early morning she walked down the hallway and I was half asleep and heard a loud CRASH, THUMP, and then a scream. Only to jump out of bed and knee her in the back of the head while running down the hallway to see what happened. I didn't see her since the only part of her you could see was Chest and up, I assumed the mass of color shirt was just the dirty clothes pile next to the washer.

Here comes the joke thread

I thought it was kinda relavent to the thread. it was weak floor "what were they thinking? making a non supported floor that cant hold 330lbs...."

 jmurph wrote:


Worst story I have personal knowledge of is a friend who bought a repo and discovered that the former owners left a nice gift. A bag of concrete dumped into the toilets!

Yup our house was a repo once upon a time and the previous owners did a similar thing but stuffed clothing and roofing shingles down the drains. That was a fun mess to fix

Oh man, I don't have this kinda time.

Other than nothing in the house that requires two or more screws actually having screws with matching heads, the first and so far worst was when we discovered that the huge, expensive tub in the bathroom didn't actually have the overflow pipe hooked up. It was just…there. Not doing anything, letting the water run out of the tub, through the electrical (tub has jets), and into the kitchen through the light fixture above the sink. One flooded kitchen later, at least we had a good laugh when the wife's uncle showed up at the wedding with a snorkel as a gag gift.

Gotcha all beat.

Until recently, my local council operated a system whereby they would issue "statutory notices" on privately-owned buildings they decided needed to be repaired, then hire a contractor to do said repairs, then force the owners to pay for the work. Naturally this was only supposed to be used in extreme circumstances, and equally naturally the whole thing turned into a huge fething corruption scandal with people at the council, local builders, and local architects all conspiring to invent or needlessly expand works and hand them to their pals.

Our Victorian-era tenement block had some damaged stonework, thanks to the same council in the 1980's insisting the building be cleaned using an acid wash(on sandstone...yeah, and they now insist it's not their fault as that was "the accepted method of the day" ), and the council hit us with a notice and brought in their contractor, who put up scaffolding...and promptly fethed off for 9 months.

After they finally came back, it's taken them 7 bloody years to do a job that was estimated at 18 months - half the work they did was unnecessary(eg, stones that could have been repaired using a scrape & render method that costs almost nothing and can be done in an afternoon by a normal workie were instead replaced with entirely new mason-cut and installed stone blocks), they kept discovering more things that needed to be fixed as they went, and half of the rest was so botched they had to come back and redo it, sometimes more than once. They also managed to cause damage to the building by screwing up people's windows and our roof.

And now the gaks are demanding each flat owner coughs up £30,000 for a job the architect and surveyor we retained insist should have cost us a few hundred quid each for some minor repairs.

Lol. Wow.