Mistakes you made that made you go "ah f f saaaaake"

CruelCoin

Hi guys,

When I first got the keys to my house, we ripped it apart and did a heap of work on it, new kitchen, electrics, floors, windows, locks, paint, replaster in places, new heating, etc.

It all went smoothly with one exception. I went to powercity, picked out a clothes drier, then told the localhandymen who were doing the bulk of the work to put a hole in the wall in the utility for the exhaust vent.

I totally forgot I had bought a ****ing condenser drier...

I put a hole in my house for no goddam reason.

Make me feel better about this lads, what did you guys do stupidly around the house?

April 73

I picked the wrong bathroom fitter. A guy who talked the talk but may as well have been an accountant in a pair of overalls for all he knew about bathroom fitting.
He did a terrible job, made a mess out the plumbing & finally walked off the job when he realised he couldn't complete it. Cost me a fortune.
Needless to say he has caused me to swear many, many times.

Earl _of _Sandwich

Rented a new apartment. We spent our first night there. Woke up and tried to have a shower before going to work.
Couldn’t get the shower to work.

Rang the landlady who sent out a plumber.

Plumber simply raised the showerhead up the rail 3 inches to equalize the pressure, water came out.

Felt like such a gobsh1te when the landlady called to explain to me the basics of plumbing.
Thankfully she was sound about it.

Sleepy

I could spend days listing the mistakes the "DIY enthusiast" who owned the house before us got up to... Have made a fair few myself over the past few months too:

Letting Mrs Sleepy engage a carpenter to put in tongue and groove wainscotting in the bathroom. The idiot put it up alright but never primed the wood and charged a fortune for the work. Making it water-resistant has been a nightmare. Primed and painted it all, only to have the paint crack at the joints. Have since filled each groove with ultra flexible caulk but suspect it's a band-aid that'll do for a year or two. Ultimately, I know I'm going to have to end up ripping it all down and doing the job properly myself.

Getting the sitting room re-plastered (back to the brick) and not thinking that it'd be a good idea to replace the fireplace at the same time (even though I had realised it was a good opportunity to brick up the fire place in the kids playroom which also needed replastering). I hate the fireplace in that room and will eventually end up changing it but it would have save me a fortune to get it done at the same time.

Giving the tiler the go-ahead to level and tile the kitchen floor when we discovered there was no gas connection there. I was working off the assumption that I could simply fit a convection hob to the existing wiring, only to be told when we'd fitted most of the kitchen that that convection hobs require higher power levels than the wiring was rated for so it'd be a case of chasing a new line back to the circuit board (through the aforementioned freshly plastered walls) if I wanted one. Ended up having to go with a ceramic hob (which I despise). If I'd been more knowlegeable upfront I'd have had a gas line installed while the floors were all up anyway.

Aye Bosun

When I brought my place my appendix burst the day before the electricians where ready to wire all the sockets. My dad visited me in the hospital and asked where they should put them, I drew a wee map of the house and marked where I wanted them while high as kite on painkillers...needless to say not one is a useful place and I now have to run extension leads everywhere!! I have no memory of the whole thing 😂

Grawns

Altering the kitchen layout on a new build and forgetting to tell the electrician. I really thought the kitchen guys would remind me! I was so wrong. Ffsake!

Baby01032012

quagmire47 wrote: »

Tried to remove a wheel without taking off the hubcap first. Spent 20 mins trying to figure out why none of my tools would fit, what I now realise are, decorative nuts. Easiest job the call out mechanic ever had.

That's pretty amazing alrite... Getting wheel nuts stuck on your house...how did you do that?!

#Posted in Accomodation & property forum

Samuel T. Cogley

I bought a one bed apartment at the top of the last property boom.

/thread :pac:

LirW

When I moved out of my last apartment in Austria before I came to Ireland, I lived in a pretty sweet elevated ground floor apartment in a historic building. The place had a quite old parquet flooring and it obviously was sanded a couple of times, so it was quite thin. Unfortunately when I lived there I caused a stain there and decided to let it sand, so the landlord company wouldn't do it and deduct it from my deposit.
Have to say sanding is ridiculously expensive in Austria, professional companies quoted me around 800 - 900 quid for a room with 29 sqm.
My dad completely refurbished his apartment prior to this and had this polish guy as a handyman in, so he said tell him, he can do anything, he'll do that and do that cheap.
I called him, gave him the details and he said he'll do it cash in hand for 500. I was in a hurry to move out so I handed him the keys mid-week and picked them up on the weekend and paid him (without seeing the work), the apartment was already empty, so no big deal.
But when I went there afterwards and saw what he did... oh boy, that floor was in utter sh#te. I had new tenants lined up, a student couple and they were happy to find a decent affordable place, but I felt so bad for them, because this old, already sh#tty floor was absolutely ruined and the last inspection was quite embarrassing but the lady from the landlord firm didn't give a flying.

catrionanic

My husband yanked the washing machine pipe out, at 11.30pm the night before we were due to move out of our rented property. Huge flood ensued with the water coming out at such pressure that he couldn't put the pipe back in. As t was night time, and I'm generally useless at this stuff, I ran around in a fluster trying to find stopcock. I couldn't. Had to call an out of hours plumber to find the bloody thing outside the house and turn it off, which took him two minutes but cost us £160. And the carpets got soaked but somehow we had our deposit returned to us anyway!

Ciaran_B

Bought a washing machine without measuring it. I assumed they were all the same size and that I could just take the old, broken one out and stick the new one in. Nope, it sticks out a few inches more and now I can't close the door to the utility room loo.