What was your worst home renovation fail!?!

Rehabbing & House Flipping

8yFollow

What was your worst home renovation fail!?!

Hilary C.Pro Member

Sr. Director of Customer Service · Evergreen, CO · Member since 2014 · 79 posts · 63 votes

Hey BiggerPockets family!

We'd love to see (or hear) about your worst home renovation fails, and how you were able to fix them :)

Sometimes you learn the most from someone else's mistakes --- and sometimes you just need a good laugh!

Bonus points for pictures! :)

12 Reply

1,023 views

Most Popular Reply

Ron Hall

Investor · Joplin, MO · Member since 2015 · 76 posts · 78 votes

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.

36 Reply

See this reply in the discussion

115 Replies

Jump to latestLatest

Sort by

Account Closed
Real Estate Agent · Cleveland, OH · Member since 2019 · 359 posts · 295 votes
7y
I was renovating a bathroom in a 100 yr old house first time ever at 21. Dont ask me why the floor was removed (with no subfloor) and I was trying to hang up drywall??? anyway, i fell through the floor to the kitchen and had to spend more money in patching all that and fixing the floor. fun times lol.
3 Reply
Pat L.
Rental Property Investor · Upstate, NY · Member since 2012 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes
7y
Originally posted by @Account Closed:

I was renovating a bathroom in a 100 yr old house first time ever at 21. Dont ask me why the floor was removed (with no subfloor) and I was trying to hang up drywall??? anyway, i fell through the floor to the kitchen and had to spend more money in patching all that and fixing the floor. fun times lol.
Oh the memories!!!...we had removed the classic 24x24inch cast iron old cold air return vents from the floor in the hallway to paint them. GF at the time then put newspaper over the hole???
Friends arrived to see the progress of our rehab & their little ankle snapper dog ran straight for the newspaper (probably to use it) & fell into the 12inch deep cold air return. Poor thing refused to enter the hallway after that.
1 Reply
Michael Kiley
Real Estate Agent · Cleveland, OH · Member since 2017 · 184 posts · 253 votes
7y
Both of mine involves a 5-gallon bucket of paint...
Once I came down a ladder and stepped right into it...paint up to my knee!
Another time, I had to dump it over my girlfriends head to get her to stop telling me how to do my job...it worked by the way
0 Reply
Pat L.
Rental Property Investor · Upstate, NY · Member since 2012 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes
7y
Originally posted by @Michael Kiley:

Both of mine involves a 5-gallon bucket of paint...
Once I came down a ladder and stepped right into it...paint up to my knee!
Another time, I had to dump it over my girlfriends head to get her to stop telling me how to do my job...it worked by the way
That reminds me of my buddy whose wife wanted the cedar shiplap stained grey. The stain was $165/5 gallon bucket. SO not being stupid we lifted it up onto the scaffolding to make it easy to pour into smaller containers as we hand brushed it on into the grain. It was a Hot day, so the beer cooler was also conveniently on the platform. Yep after too many beers he tripped over the cooler & dropped the 3/4 full 5gallon 12 feet to the NOT GREY stamped cement patio.
Then before 'she who rules' got home he decided to power wash the paint off the patio into her prized English garden. I left but for him it was a VERY bad night that ran into the following week.
1 Reply
Anthoney Hanks
Real Estate Broker · Forney, TX · Member since 2019 · 1k+ posts · 399 votes
7y
So far it has to be trying to save money with someone who says they can do the work. I was thinking I was benefiting both of us. He needed to work and I needed the help. Instead of bid the work out to others, I let him do the work. Usually took longer and cost more. But he was was always down on his luck and I was trying to help. We actually had to do some major rework after I got rid of him and his crew.
Second thing was not listening to my wife. She kept tell me to tear down half the house because it was in bad shape. But I was dragging my feet hoping I was going to be able to savage it. In the end, I tore it all down and lost 2 month on the work.
1 Reply
Rob B.
Chicago, IL · Member since 2018 · 546 posts · 227 votes
7y
I know a family friend who has a bad habit of hiring friends who happen to also be "professionals" within their trade. He recently renovated the upstairs of a SFH and it is one of those situations where you really have to be mindful of the financial undertaking of a major renovation.
Always be wary of a "shortcut;" usually it ends up costing you in the end -- things like cutting corners for contractor pricing or going with a cheaper item (cheaply made), or hiring one person who kinda-sorta knows what they're doing when painting rather than a dedicated paint team, etc.

Detail. Go with someone who pays super close attention to detail. Those are the little things that make all the difference when you're taking on a big project like a major home renovation. The last thing you want to have to deal with is spending money to improve the overall value of the property, and then minor aesthetics and details are missed, which add up; ex. painted over light switch plate covers, or stairwell railings which have been painted over several times and never correctly sanded down, etc - gives it a look like it hasn't been done correctly and can decrease the value of the place. Just some of the issues he dealt with when the rehab was finished. @Hilary C.
1 Reply
Frank S.
Specialist · Chicago, IL · Member since 2015 · 870 posts · 345 votes
7y
A few,
Bring separate circuits to the third floor rather than providing a sub-panel and local circuits. That was expensive.
Having drywall guys paid by the hour. At the end of the job, I requested to finish a few details before leaving for the day, their speed increase 4x. Ouch! $$$
Refinishing hardwood floors myself, it was a fun experience, but I didn't save a dime.
1 Reply
Pat L.
Rental Property Investor · Upstate, NY · Member since 2012 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes
6y
GALD this wasn't one of mine!!!
Went to a friends home who recently had a 1/2 bath added on their 1st floor. The waste pipe plumbing was at least a 50ft run of 4" PVC suspended by plastic hangers. The home is a 3000 sq ft ranch so the PVC waste pipe run was very long by necessity.
As we were checking out something in the basement the entire 4" PVC plumbing run collapsed & split apart. The inadequately 8-10ft spaced plastic hangers all snapped & the pics show the pipe down on the floor or suspended by basement storage stuff. The 4" vertical was attached to the toilet flange & was was torn out so all that will need to be replaced. The 2"-4" coupling from the 1/2 bath sink/vanity simply fell apart & had NOT been glued??
I would assume that the 1/4"/foot slope was NOT adhered to & the pipe filled with enough sewerage that the weight finally brought it all down. Most of the lateral pipe you see down is still full of waste.
After having Xmas dinner for 25 people, (ALL using that bathroom), the stench was beyond oppressive & the cleanup will be horrendous. The plumber who did the work (using $10/hr mutts that he left unsupervised) was notified but told them he will get there 'when he can'.
Enjoy the optics....
1 Reply
Marlen Weber
Specialist · Plano, TX · Member since 2020 · 2k+ posts · 861 votes
6y
@Brian Ellis not a bad experience considering the overall cost was low and hey, you learned some as well :)
1 Reply
Brian Ellis
Rental Property Investor · South shore, MA · Member since 2017 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
6y
Originally posted by @Marlen Weber:
@Brian Ellis not a bad experience considering the overall cost was low and hey, you learned some as well :)

Yes, and I’ve had quite a few since then as well!
1 Reply
Account Closed
Flipper/Rehabber · Cincinnati, OH · Member since 2020 · 300 posts · 417 votes
6y
I've learned a lot of what not to do reading through all these posts! I definitely agree with not hiring cheap contractors. We've had some not-so-good experiences with that. However, we actually have a friend (which I know some people say is a no-no) who has done an amazing job. I prefer personally knowing someone if they do a good job (not quite the same sentiment if they do a bad job...).
Our biggest fail so far has been in repairing a deck. Soon after we purchased this house, we realized that the way the deck was attached to the second floor was allowing rain water to seep into the walls of the bedroom one level below. We hired someone to fix it, and that did not turn out well. We purchased a heat sensor to try to figure out where the water was coming in, and then spent hours tearing up the deck where it connected to the house, patching things up ourselves, and then putting it all back together.
We were incredibly relieved when it was all done, and several rainstorms came and went with no additional water damage. A few weeks later though, we were shocked to see just as much water damage in the walls and ceiling after a particularly bad storm. After dozens upon dozens of hours that went to waste, we finally hired someone else, and they did a fantastic job. We've had some bad storms, and still no water damage! We still have to repair some holes in the ceiling and wall of that room where we had to cut out drywall to repair the leaks, but at this point I'm just relieved we've prevented further water damage.
1 Reply
Nicole A.Pro Member
Rental Property Investor · Baltimore County Maryland and Tampa Florida · Member since 2013 · 2k+ posts · 2k+ votes
6y
Wow, I'm thinking through all the renovations and repairs over the years, and I can't think of any horror stories! I am lucky! I've had contractors cut corners, but it was more like attention to detail rather than anything dangerous.
My husband and I did some of our own work on our personal home (which will one day be a rental home), and a few highlights of some WINS!:
- I found a ruby ring on the subfloor where it meets the wall after tearing up some old nasty carpet.
- Our basement used to have a cave-cricket (aka camel cricket) problem. They're such gross bugs. The basement was never visible wet nor smelled musty, but the crickets would especially show up after a good rain. Turns out, the driveway out front had settled in a way that all the rain-water rushed towards the house. We poured a new driveway so that the rain-water flows another direction and never had a SINGLE cave-cricket since! So happy about this it made my top list of renovations. lol
- We never would finish most of our personal home renovations so it was always somewhat of a construction zone. I convinced my husband to let the contracting crew that did our last BRRR renovation to finish up our own house. Then we rent out a couple of extra bedrooms for a year (or 1.5 yrs) to pay back the cost of renovation. Now I get to enjoy a gorgeous, *completely* renovated home.
0 Reply

Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.