From the article: House Horror Tales
If you've ever built, remodeled, or purchased a home, then you know that many things can go wrong. The plumber installed the wrong faucets! The cabinet knobs don't match! Something foul is seeping through the basement floor! Use this page to tell us your house horror tales.
Tell us your tale
Once Bitten
- We bought a beautiful and unique house in the high end of town. We did not get a building inspection because in this end of town people did not let their homes "go." Well...no furnace, fireplace was just a decoration, air condition didn't condition anything and the roof was for show. The beautiful area rugs they left us are still covering the warn out spots on the hardwood floors and we spend more in plastic wrap every winter covering all 27 windows and 5 sliding doors then we do on Christmas... Get a building inspection...it could save your marriage!!!!
- —Guest salena
Old house waking nightmare
- We bought a lovely old farm house with magnificent trees that was built by a Revolutionary War veteran in 1804. We found out that 6 inches+ odd settlement due to naturally wet soil is not curable. New large concrete footers are still settling into mud that goes WAAAY down. The laid-stone foundation is totally transparent to rodents. We hear them in the walls from time to time. We had to trim back the lovely trees to keep red squirrels out. They tore such attic insulation as there was to shreds. The previous owner used bleach to hide the sulfur in the water, which will soon have us replacing all the plumbing. The "new" roof has no sheathing. Shingles are nailed to thin slats and the winter wind often blows water underneath and over them. On and on it goes - I wish I'd never seen the place. All we do is work on it and pour in money.
- —Guest JiminupstateNY
Not for us
- We built our own house. It took much planning and was hard work. That was 23 years ago. We still live in our home, love it, and have enjoyed the low maintenance features. Research and planning is the key, plus enough money and work effort.
- —Guest Marvin McConoughey
Beware of windows!
- I just added 10 windows to my Victorian, mostly on the second floor and for the attic floor. Not a good idea: we spent a fortune adding the windows. When cutting into the walls, my worker almost got electrocuted with electrical wires. One of the teams didn't level two windows from the same wall. So one was higher than the other and slightly tilted to the left. I realized this at the end when they had just finished installing Victorian trim. We had to redo the whole window! On the second floor, we hit a pipe. The water damage put my hardwood floors a bit under the weather. And guess who is cleaning the windows? Each window is double paned, each divided into 15 little windows. Total of windows to clean: 15 x 2 x 10 = 300! I ended up with a real bad lumbago. Beware of too many windows!
- —Guest Petunia S.
Sound of steps...
- I had similar experience in my Mom's house in Meade Hills, Nashville. We would hear steps above our heads while in my bedroom, but the only thing above was the roof and nothing else. We figured maybe some birds or old branches were being moved by the wind. We would look out the windows and nothing was on the roof! And no wind either. A mystery! I could never be there alone. I was too scared. The house has so many windows and is so romantic with an old fashioned flair to it - just the way I like it - and so many good memories. Don't know what to do!
- —Guest Aiisha
Old house horror stories
- My wife and I bought our "dream house" last year, an 1895 Queen Anne style. It was a beauty; everyone in the neighborhood knew it by name. The good feeling last for about a week after we signed the contract. That's when we found out that the soil pipe from the upstairs bathroom was cracked and had been depositing its contents inside the exterior wall. The plumber replaced the pipe for mere money but I was left with the job of cleaning all of the debris out of the inside of the wall. Then, the first time it rained, we discovered that the flashing around that old barn metal roof had the water shedding abilities of a colander. The next surprise was the heating, or lack thereof. For a combination of reasons including the total absense of insulation, 90 year old radiator pipes, inefficient furnace, and kludged design in the first place, we burnt 900 gallons trying to hold 55 degrees in the kitchen in a southern Maryland winter. Still, it's going to be a beautiful house when we're done.
- —Guest Bill
And the list goes on.
- So, here's the list. The builder didn't notify me when we hit rock during excavation, so the house sits too high and my yard is a sky slope. Walls were moved without my approval so they had to be rebuilt after I complained. A heat register had to be moved 3 times because nobody bothered to measure where the kitchen cabinets would go. None of the subcontractors ever "finished" their work. Everyone had to be called back when I pointed out that something was not done. The person fabricating the granite countertop didn't document the request for a granite backsplash and didn't purchase enough to finish the job. Despite an electrical plan, the electrician still got things wrong. I arrived on site one day to see them putting stone veneer on the wrong exterior wall. The construction supervisor was never around, and he never seemed to know what was going on. The final walkthru consisted of his standing in my kitchen listening to me complain about the builder, who was totally absent.
- —10987B
The House of Horrors
- My fiance and I wanted woodwork, two floors, and lots of charm. When you don't have a lot of money to spend, that means fixer upper. We thought we could handle it. Wrong! We've found out: -Hanging anything on plaster/stick walls is a major construction project. -We didn't have central air during the hottest summer on record, even though we both swore the Realtor said we did. -If a seller has ALL blinds closed during the open house, you should look behind them or risk being surprised by rotting windows. -Floors don't buckle over time, it happens in one giant cracking noise at 2am, followed by the popping up of ceramic tile. -A nice, peaceful neighborhood in the winter might be less so in the summer, especially if there is a bus stop at the corner of your yard. -Some owners will make quick fixes such as painting a basement floor to hide flooding issues. -Paint peels off a flooded basement floor very quickly. -Kitchen cabinets can fall if not hung properly. -We love each other, a lot!
- —Guest Tiffini S.
Dreamhouse to Worse Nightmare
- All of our lives my husband and I wanted to buy an old house and restore it. When he died,I needed a house, because he was a minister. I bought this beautiful house that WAS structurally sound. I had to take out a government loan & they said I had to have the piers under the house replaced. The front door stuck a little. The company I hired was supposedly good, but after one year I found out they weren't! I came home from work one day and the skirting on the west side of the porch had popped off. So I called them and they came out and just said it needed leveling again. Liars! So they leveled it, but then I noticed that my floors are splitting, porch roof is caving in, kitchen shakes when you walk. Refused fix it. Contacted a lawyer, too much to take to court, $15,000 in court costs. Being a widow and all savings was used on husbands medical bills, I have nothing to fix this.I have found a good guy but no money, so I am watching house sink into the ground and cry everyday.
- —tatteredone3
Not always!
- There is a lot to be said for doing something yourself. We have built our own first house (1700SF Chalet) and additions to two more (first a glassed-in porch and second a two story kitchen-master bath/bedroom) since then. We take our time, get it right and pay a lot less than others would by conventional contracting. This enables us to live very well for our moderate income level without over extending ourselves. Now that we are in our 50's and our girls are married, we take vacations (usually cruises) twice a year and still pay all the bills every month, plus extra principle on the home mortgage (that we never raided like a piggy bank). All this because we saved so much by building it ourselves! Here and there, we have made a few mistakes, but they were all correctable, as we knew the project intimately and were committed to getting it right. We have always found the city building inspectors to be highly supportive and often very complimentary on the fine quality of work.
- —Terry1312
