I had a mobile home and we had to remove some decorations from the ceiling, not realizing that was what was holding the ceiling up, the whole living room ceiling collapsed.
I tried to remove popcorn ceilings on
a 2000 sq ft house in North Dallas suburbs. Got partially done & realized how overwhelming it was & hired a contractor to finish.
Have done my share of rental rehabs, make ready’s & prep for sales though!
It is the most invasive of all home improvements, 2nd to maybe termites which I dealt with too!
I’ve got a funny one. Funny now but I was mad. Took on my first flip last year. Had 3 bathrooms. I also had a porta-poty outside and asked crews to use that. Anyway this shmuck I found online installed 2 toilets. No water on one, no toilet seat on the other.
So, I came to the house to check on the job with the crew gone. Someone left me a nice (and huge and stinky) “present” 💩in the toilet that had a seat, but no running water 🤦🏼♂️
Turns out large bottles of draino can work wonders...
Anyway that flip had a lot of headache stories. But this was the crappiest of them all....
haha some of these are making me laugh. I'm sure as usual funny now and NOT funny at the time!
My friend got some free flooring from somewhere somehow and thought he would hire a guy to help him level out the floor. It was only a one bedroom so it wasn't a big space. The guy he hired supposedly knew what he was doing, but did NOT work quickly enough to spread the levelling stuff out... so now he's got new floors but it's all creaky in some places and sloping in others. Sometimes getting free stuff ends up costing you more in the end!
Most of the subcontractors I had pick up stuff from the projects. I have one guy tiling the bathroom. I gave him 3 tunes of silicone to go around the bathtube. In fact, I knew that it should take less than 1 tube, but I just gave him a box with tubes. He did part of the bathtube and said that he did not have enough of the silicone. Homedepo has a very eased policy on returns. The guys bring everything they can there. Another day the contractor have left his tool box in the house. I am a lover of tools, and I wanted to see what kind of tools he has. I did not have any intention taking them, just to see what he uses. I know, I am a girl, but I am still crazy of tools and renovations... I found 7 tools of mine in the box. I don't consider this as a failure, I never said anything to these guys, as otherwise they will not do their cheap but quality work for me. And by the way, if your contractor buys things for you, be sure he takes 1/3 of the stuff at very least. It does not matter if he is cheap or expensive. On another note, many of the subcontractors are more disrespectful to women than they are to man. I have to be twice harder on them than my husband.
Mine was on my primary residence. I decided to install floors myself and...... MAJOR FAIL and waste of time! It pays to know your limits and ask for help lol.
Stephen Herbert my best advice to you regarding an out of state flip, is to not do it. That’s not really helpful for you but hopefully next time you either don’t do it or you’ve got someone on the ground. Do you have anyone there now?
Not a huge deal, but my mudd and tape hire that should take 4 days ended up taking 3 weeks. And it "only" took 3 weeks because I bugged and called the guy enough that he would show up at 4 pm and work until 10 pm when I called. And I was living there at the time, so at 10 pm we had to kick him out so we could go to bed. His boss did take 50% off the agreed upon price because the boss admitted he wasn't keeping track of the guy either. The guy actually did good work, when he showed up.
I bought a house years ago that had a ton of termite damage. We remodeled the house, fixed it up, had it treated for termites, and then made it into one of my best rentals...but of course the story doesn't end there.
We treated the wood but the chemical today used isn't like it was years ago. And I made the mistake of not following up consistently on annual treatments/termite inspections.
Years go by and upon a normal township inspection, the inspectors found there were active termites in there. REALLY Active.
So active I had to evacuate the place and rebuild it again! It was so bad that contractors didn't even want to go in to give me an estimate because it was so dangerous. So I was really in a tight spot.
I couldn't sell it in the condition it was in, I couldn't give it back to the bank, and I could hardly find a contractor to even help with an estimate. I really didn't have any good options.
Luckily I managed to find an engineer to redesign it (this time with steel beams) but after all was said and done I was out about $60K. The worst part was, I lost a really good tenant over the hassle.
The irony is, today it's one of my best properties again! Now I just have to remember to keep checking for termite damage :)
Is that a plywood driveway? I've always wanted one of those!!!
You have fine taste sir haha
The lot was small and on a busy road. There was a 2 acre field next to this house on one side and a private road's gravel parking area on the other but the neighbors wouldn't let us use them. The ply wood was thrown down temporarily to provide some traction for trucks and a walking path
I was shamelessly showing a “second date” my rehab project (church hill in Richmond Va) when the floor suddenly collapsed beneath me. The floor gave way but the floor joist in the middle was ..ahem... solid. You can imagine my discomfort... and my dates amusement. For
The record, no 3rd date but the kitchen turned out just fine.
I tried to remove popcorn ceilings on
a 2000 sq ft house in North Dallas suburbs. Got partially done & realized how overwhelming it was & hired a contractor to finish.
Have done my share of rental rehabs, make ready’s & prep for sales though!
It is the most invasive of all home improvements, 2nd to maybe termites which I dealt with too!
Sometimes it is just easier to go over the old sheetrock and save a lot of time-especially if it has been painted many times.
My worst (or maybe just the most frustrating to date) is hiring a Lumber Liquidators contractor to install my LVP flooring and making assumptions about quality of install. Over 2500 sq ft between two properties. Previously I'd done my own floors but I didn't want to take the time to do it and I'd gotten tired of trying to deal with Craigslist and FB "handymen". The price was definitely not cheap but I thought, ahhh, I've got room in the budget for it and that way I don't have to worry about it not being done right. Ha! Part of the fail was on my part. I needed to leave for a trip, was in a hurry, and signed off on the floors without doing proper diligence. Sooo, after the trip, to remind me of my transgression, I got to remove flooring in 5-6 different places and remove 1/4" jamb cutoffs, piles of sawdust and scraps from under the random bulges in the floor. Lesson learned!
Similar to an earlier story. Bought this 1895ish house:
That's what it looked like about three years before I bought it. Looked worse when I got into it. Had been foreclosed. It was amazing to look through the abstract and to see how the people who owned it before it went into foreclosure had borrowed in excess of $75,000 on it. I paid less than $10k for it. Height of the boom and all.
I figured it was a good first, and tore into it. Three layers of pee-stained carpet, 2-3 layers of subfloor, frozen pipes, ruined social life later, was down to the crawlspace and foundation and learned that yes, people did occasionally build a house on a row of fieldstones and mortared brick that was set just right on top of the dirt.
Initially, I figured I would try to jack it, brace and put a post and beam foundation in it, but life got complicated (as it often does) and I had not only no money but no time.
I sold it on contract to someone who took 5+ years to pay it off. She would occasionally creep out of the woodwork to try to get the title, and I would remind her that she owed me money.
She tried getting snarky with me once. Once. Then she paid up. I learned a lot. Wholly recommend.
This isn't something I did, but I just found it in the shower I'm redoing. Some clown thought that a scrap of cardboard would do just fine when there wasn't any drywall left over...no wonder the shower leaked like a sieve.
Dumb stuff I've done: ages ago when I bought my very first house, it needed exterior paint and shingle molding replaced. I had no idea what I was doing and put up interior door trim instead of proper shingle molding...yeah, it didn't last long. My very first tile job was my kitchen floor - used the wrong mortar and had tiles popping up a few months later. Super.
Then there were the subs I hired to install windows who thought it'd be just fine to smoke weed in the house I was rehabbing. Left me seeds and crumbs on my new counters as a present.
We bought a flip in a rougher end of town, not realizing how rough that area was. The house was broke into twice, one of which was the week of closing on Christmas Eve. The first time they broke in, they stole all my husband's tools (was an inside job but we never recovered the tools). Don't ever leave your tools on the job, lesson #1.
The second time was the week of closing during the holidays. Someone broke two windows and smashed the finished ceiling in the basement to steal all the copper piping. Worst part was, we had an alarm system, but wasn't instructed properly on how to arm the motion sensors, so the thief waltzed right past the armed alarm when he left with all our copper. He probably thought it was funny, it was salt in our wounds.
He left via the door, which is what finally initiated the alarm system. This happened at 4 p.m. and Christmas Eve dinner with the family was scheduled at 6 p.m. I live in Ohio, so it was snowing heavily and bitter cold. The windows had to be boarded up and secured against the weather, and Christmas Eve was a little cold by the time we got there.
We had to find new windows or get these fixed by January 2nd. Everywhere was closed. To say it was a nightmare is putting it lightly. We didn't make any profit on the house but we did gain valuable experiences.
My funniest fail was during a rehab of an empty, vandalized duplex in a bad neighborhood in 2006. It had bullet holes, no outside HVAC unit and the copper plumbing underneath had been liberated. I replaced the windows, put up new siding, re did the interior, replaced the HVAC.
I was ready to go and had the city cut the water back on. Flood city. I forgot to replace the missing plumbing :-)
For me, since I renovated my homes mainly myself, is looking back at what I didn't do.
For example, I renovated a house, rented it, and when I looked at my second house one of my first comments was "I must remove this popcorn ceiling" but in my previous house it didn't even occur to be to remove it.
I compare what I did to my houses and there's this clear evolution in my style and capabilities. While working on House #3 a Directv installer fell through the bedroom ceiling in House #1. House #1 now has a ceiling that matches the look of House #3 (i.e. I used my new texture sprayer and crown molding)
I wish I had used the big wooden baseboards I used in House #3 bought from a home supply company instead of the smaller plastic ones I bought from Home Depot for the other two.
I go into my older 2 houses and want to kick the tenants and contents out for a month so I can modify the houses to match the look and feel I have come to learn.
my NEW 'lets flip a place partner' got a little depressed when a flip we bought was $10K more than his friends POS single story foreclosure buy sitting on wooden piers, (furnace, laundry & hw tank all in the very tiny kitchen) . We are literally a mile apart in an 'A' neighborhood.
Ours is a 600 sq ft larger Cape with a full basement, with a new roof, siding, windows etc etc. 'Cheap flip' guy comes through ours & notices that the roofing & knee walls had all been heavily insulated & covered in 6mil plastic. So he tells my partner that all that all the insulation should be removed because it will cause moisture problems????
More depression sets in for my 'lets flip a place partner' when 'Cheap flip' brags that his contractor can have his up & running for $5k, (we are doing our own work as my partner NEEDS the experience). So 'Cheap flip' takes possession & discovers that the water line had frozen & ruptured under the home. (The flooring has to be removed to get access). We're invited to go through it & I noticed that all the piers are now compromised & sinking/twisted due to the water leak plus all floor joists & plywood flooring appear to be pushed up & swelling due to the flooding. The walls are also compromised as there is severe buckling of the base plates. His quotes for a new water line to the city main are running $12k without any other repairs. This 'cheap flip' is now a complete tear down. But the garage is in excellent shape!!!!
I've never had a really epic failure. But I've cost myself a lot of money over the years because I sometimes can't stop myself from treating an investment house like I'm going to live there.
There are so many things we can do to houses that, yeah, are really nice touches. But if they don't make the house sell faster, or sell for more money, we're just costing ourselves money when we indulge that urge to do them.
One: I was rehabbing a house for a large international client, the day before my walkthrough with a representative, someone stole the entire electrical box and meter. Good thing, they did not take anything else.
My very first project with a hard working homeowner, I hired some terrible brick layers to build a front forch. It was an awful job. They came highly recommended. I fired them and hired some more contractors. Needless to say, it came out of my pocket to make sure the work was done correctly. I lost money, but the client's satisfaction is what was most important.
Since I'm a contractor who cares about my client's bottom line and happiness, sometimes I sacrifice too hard to make them happy. I worked with a client who wanted his family kitchen renovated. I started working with his wife: happy wife happy life. They had a budget of $3500. I showed them what they can get for $3500 and they didnt like it. So we slowly increased budget, scope, materials, time, etc.. As a result the kitchen ran severely over budget. Her taste was more than what they could afford. Fast forward, I have not got paid. My advice: Always have contracts and be skeptical about working with everyone...
@Andrew Syrios after those I was reminded of another BAD rehab. The agent took us through & the toilet was similar to the one you had 3 steps up into a 1/2 bath then the toilet sat another step up. The sink was outside at the base of the first steps & it literally drained out under the back steps near the man door. In the same room it became obvious that the NEW living room was once a garage. The entire garage door & mechanism was still up in the ceiling. But they did cover most of it with new drywall & threw insulation batts up on top of the garage door.
I only wish I had a phone that took pics back in those days.
