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ADVICE RATING

4.79 Excellent from 4 votes (192 Visits)

Oops

by Janeybug

(July 2007) (rank 1st)

Re: Worst DIY or Home Improvement Disaster?
Asked by angieh

Question:
What was your worst DIY or Home Improvement disaster?

My Advice:
That, Angieh, is a loaded question. While we never had a huge disaster we did have a lot of mini ones.

When we were getting ready to put the sheet rock up in our guest bathroom we discovered that we had forgotton to run a waterline for the toilet. Lucky for us we found it before the sheet rock when up!
While we were installing our main windows in the great room I noticed that we had installed the wrong window. The two center windows were to be large picture windows and the side four windows had slider openings at the bottom. We put one of the sliders in the center. Oops! These were 6' windows so it was no small feat to change them out.
I forgot that we had radiant infloor heat when I was putting the grout down after tiling our bathroom and entryway. As soon as I poured it out it started to dry and harden! I worked franticly trying to get it up, adding lots of water. I am still grinding it off!
We had a concrete foundation poured and while it looked really smooth and level we discovered a problem late in the game once the framing was done and the subfloor was already in place. There was a slightly raised part under one wall downstairs. Is was a very small difference so it went unnoticed by us as we framed up the house. Now there is a nice hump in the floor of the guest room over that wall. Not an easy thing to fix. We are working on a strategy now. I think we will use floor leveler and feathered tar paper and then a new layer of flooring. It would be easier if we were putting carpet in that room but we are laying bamboo in there.
We were in the middle of our final electrical inspection when the inspector found that we wired a threeway switch wrong. It was for the light in my kitchen. The switch was in the kitchen and another one at the top of the landing in the loft. This was our third try at getting power in the house so we decided that we didn't want them to leave without the coveted sticker so we decided that we didn't need to be able to turn that light on from upstairs and in the kitchen so we removed the wire and made it a single switch while they were there so we could be approved. We did not find out until the pine ceiling and light fixture was up that we removed the wrong wire. So now, to turn on my kitchen light I have to go up to the loft to do it and we have the "switch that does nothing" in the kitchen.
We initially had a port-a-potty on the site of course but as soon as we got water I lobbied for a real toilet and sink on the first floor. We had no real walls yet so we used tarps to make the walls. My father and husband got the toilet installed and I could not wait to get out there the next day to see it. I got there to a steam room. Seems they hooked the hot water up to the toilet.

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ADVICE RATING

4.79 Excellent from 4 votes

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	ParagonRenovations \| Vote: \| January 2008

Re: Oops

This is an EXCELLENT topic to get started!!!

The reason for this being such a good topic to start is most of your professionals are professionals not because they know what to do but more importantly they know what not to do.

I know that may or may not seem like good advice to some of you but the carpenter with 50 years of experience does know what to do but it came with a lot of, " Geez I'll never do that again!" Maybe not worded like that but something along those lines, LOL I have to keep this a family rated site right?

SO it is good to open up and let others know of our faupas so that others will tend to not do the same thing we did. Unfortunatly some don't learn the lessons until they make the mistake themselves.

I know that one time I was working on a pool project at a university and we had scaffolding set up and planks set up on the scaffolding and the tails all interlocked but on the end ones there were ends that were unsupported and I don't know how many times I reminded myself to not NOT step on the unsupported boards and guess what one day I did! Down I went about 7 feet and it wasn't a soft landing either. I jumped up real quick and brushed myself off and looked around to make sure no one saw me. A little tender I was but all the wiser and guess what I WON"T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!

SO, thank you Janey for your topic of wisdom the insight into others errors is invaluable!