A recent thread re: damp reminded me of some tanking to the single skin "lean to kitchen" (now demolished) that a previous owner of my house had installed.
They had used cloth potato sacks all around the bottom of the kitchen wall behind the dry lining ... neat, I wish I'd taken a picture.
Other choice work was the woodwork treatment ... pasted newspaper to old oak beams ... or maybe they just liked the effect ... it seemed to keep the buggers in though.
And also a small section of medium density blockwork (say 1 m2) repair (above a window) to a 18" rubble filled wall supported on a small timber lintel nailed to another small one nailed to the nearest rotten floor joist. The lintels had no support at either end. Unsurprisingly it all fell down with a a little "coaxing".
I saw a house where all the lintels were completely rotten, they were all wood, and all were shorter (!) than the width they were pretending to span. So lots of not particularly well supported brickwork there.
Then there was the pubilc restaurant with bell wire dangling over the table supplying the lights on the wall.
On my house, the guy who renovated it from being a plumber's workshop sold it to his daughter.
Daughter complains about damp running along a wall that's partially below ground.
He comes in, sees that it's a huge problem (cost me £2k to put right later on), and then builds a plasterboard partition against the wall. Damp gone! (Well, hidden).
That's a bodge, but the real bodge was that he build the plasterboard partition on top of the carpet. He couldn't even be arsed taking the carpet up to do the work... in HIS OWN DAUGHTER'S HOUSE.
I'm sure there would have been other bodges in the house but, and this is a message for all of us, I later learned the building regulations guy from the council kept a very close eye on him. Because of this, he was forced to do a good job on the important stuff. So remember - the building regs might sound like a pain in the bum sometimes but they can be quite useful in certain circumstances.
I am ashamed to admit that I actually perpetrated this bodge but it was many years ago and I was in a big hurry at the time...
My parents house had a separate toilet and bathroom next to one another upstairs - it wasted an enormous amount of space so we decided to knock them together. We (my father and I) took the joining stud wall down and refitted the bathroom, tiled etc etc. The job was going really well. Then his job moved and it was suddenly a rush to sell up and move. We sold the place quickly and, of course, finishing the bathroom was a clause. I was tasked with turning the spare door that used to go to the toilet into a section of wall. How hard can it be I thought. Just rip the door trim off, nail the door shut, nail some battens off to the recessed side and then nail plaster board over the top. Once skimmed no one will know :o)
Well I ripped off the door trim and nailed the door shut fine. I was feeling really proud of myself :o)
I nailed some battens round the edge of the recessed side of the door. I wanted to make sure my battens wouldn't move so I chose the biggest (bent, 8 times used, rusty) nails we had and started hammering away. After a particularly large swing of the hammer I heard a crash and tinkle from somewhere and assumed someone had dropped something. I later found out that I had managed to knock a wall ornament off a wall down stairs. Parentage was not amused :o|
Anyway that was only a minor set back so I continued. I grabbed the plaster board and nailed it to the flat side of the door and ended up with something that looked like a wall :o). I then went round to the recessed side and nailed some plaster board to that (up to about chest height). It looked good but I was a little concerned about the gap between the plasterboard and the door (about 4 inches). I pushed gently on the board - it flexed. Oh dear. I knew I should have fixed battens across as well as probably a vertical up the middle. Well, it was late, and I had no more plasterboard so taking it down to fit battens wasn't an option. I decided to perform the biggest bodge I have ever done. I went and got some news papers. I took a page at a time, screwed it up and stuffed it down the gap. Page after page after page went down that gap. As it filled up I stuffed them down. Eventually after about 20 newspapers worth I tested the board again. It was rock solid. I could lean on it and it didn't flex (well I don't think it did). I then fitted cross battens to the top half of the door and finished the job properly.
The only problem came when I had to nail the skirting to it. I ended up glueing it. We sold the house like that. I wonder sometimes if it has ever broken and been done properly. I vowed then never to bodge another job.
And as likely by main dealers at 100 quid + an hour.
You jest? My favourite one was cowboys removing some walls in the cellar underneath a restaurant in the Shepherds Bush Road. To extend the number of covers. The entire terrace fell down.
Wasn't there a story (not exactly bodging) where everyone in a terrace knocked walls down for through lounges, and the terrace fell sideways? Or something?
Yup, a friend of mine was tasked to fit a new bathroom for one of his customers. The owner also wanted to know why the existing shower area was always damp.
So after demolishing the existing shower (tiled dry lining), it revealed rather damp walls behind. This was technically speaking in a basement but, on a section at the front of the house that was fully exposed rather than underground. So it was not penetrating dampness.
The first good one was where whoever had built it had simply rendered over a lead pipe with a gate valve on the end. It turns out the valve valve was dripping slowly and hence soaking the wall. (I helped him trace the pipe and found it hidden in a ceiling connected to the incoming water main!).
The other nice one was the previous builder had fitted an extrator fan in the shower. It was mounted on the dry lining, and ducted through the inner course of brickwork. But there was no matching hole in the outer course - so it was simply filling the wall cavity with wet air!
(If you want an example of dodgy electrics, find the thread above about Dr. Drivels garrage CU ;-)
Toilet cistern mounted on an inside wall. One day I wondered where the overfolow pipe went, so I took a look - straight into the wall cavity and stopped there.
As I may have said here before I think one of my favourites was done by my present homes previous owner. The over flow from the bathroom toilet exited the cistern into the outside wall but did not come out on the other side so if the ball c*ck had ever failed it would have overflowed into the cavity. Not to mention the 2.5mm power feed to the electric shower.
In France: the distribution bus bar from a 40A master breaker that was so lightweight that it melted when I put a 26A combined load on three subsidiary circuits. I first became suspicious of the electrics when I had to fix a couple of sockets so that they did not come out of the wall with the plug and also found that one had an earth pin, but no earth wire. However, the consumer unit busbar cross-section was one thing I did not think to check.
Best one I heard of from a long ex G/F was teh place she bought that featured shelving put up by driving small cold chsels into the 9" brick walls.
My old house featured supermarket shopping bags inder teh carpets to stop the sopping wet floorboards from staining te carpet. Workled well for 6 years till I demolished it.
Oh, and the removeable carpet tiles that allowed access to the manhole cover that teh extension had been built over...
..the bit of old leylanddi used to replace a rotten rafter...
My sister is renovating a place that used to be a nightclub and had already been hacked about by uber-bodger and found newspaper in the studwork.
They also found cluedo, full gripfill tubes, small toys and a set of russian dolls... The nutter had previosly owned the place cleary thought the studwork would last 1000 years or something.
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