You think popcorn ceilings are bad, try popcorn walls!
What idiot had the idea of texturing a wall? Forget trying to sand it off. You have to replace drywall.
A couple of years ago, we had a shed in our yard relocated from the bottom of a slope to the top. The move required us to purge the shed of assorted crap, and when it was set in its new location, we put in shelves and a tool rack, plus a light and a plug, and suddenly, we had a very useful garden shed instead of a building full of crap.
I wish we’d done it when we first moved here, or at least within the first few years, but it took 9 years! At least we can enjoy it now!
#86a
If you tear down the hideous wallpaper, the plaster behind it will come down too.
So, this is a long story; I’m not saying it’s acceptable (and I hope the previous owner of my house is residing in that toasty place reserved for enthusiastic but incompetent DIY merchants) but here it is:
These 1930s house foundations are basically a wooden frame on compacted earth; no damp proof course. That means that your oak floor naturally moves a little with the seasons. Come the 1950s and high-status wall to wall carpeting becomes irrestable. However, if you tack the carpet to the sides of the room it doesn’t move the same way as the floor boards underneath do. So, you cut out a large square of floor boards and replace it with some cheap-ass chip board. That way the movement of the remaining wooden floor is offset by the movement of the chipboard, and you can put down wall to wall carpeting without it bubbling up at the end of the season. Or at least that’s how it was explained to me.
Of course, these days people would pay good money for original, solid oak flooring, which could be sanded back to a beautiful state. People like me…
:rolleyes:
I got an organizer drawery thing from my dad when he moved into the old folks home. Full of lovingly organized bits and bobs.
My husband was moving stuff in the garage last week and TIPPED IT OVER.
My house had some of the worst wallpaper horrors. Several of them:
(1) Woven grass wallpaper in the bedroom - that had gotten damp and musty. Removing it took three solid days (nowadays, I’d be tempted to hire someone else to do it). Sneezed grass bits for two days after that.
Woven grass wallpaper is truly the work of the devil! 
That stuff is damn difficult to take off.
(2) They wallpapered the cupboard doors, with wallpaper that totally clashed with the wallpaper in the rooms.
(3) Wallpaper on the ceiling in the bathroom. They wallpapered over the bathroom ceiling vent.
This was just the start of the DIY horrors I gradually discovered.
Possibly the worst was when I had the furnace replaced, when we first moved in. Our house is heated by a boiler. The rads were covered up with neat wooden boxes with brass screens. After replacing the furnace, all the rads had to be bled - and that’s when I discovered there was no way to do it. The neat wooden boxes where built around the rads, and there was no opening to the valves to bleed the rads! They hadn’t been bled since the boxes were built … I had to un-build them. :smack:
#402.
The raccoon that no one told you rented the space under the house requires some serious out smarting. Easier said than done.
Rule #2: Anything you put in a particular spot “for now” when moving in will become that thing’s permanent spot.
Which is why I can never store my Christmas decorations anywhere except the closet under the stairs, or why that pointy plant will forever sit next to the back door.
[QUOTE=Moonshine]
Fast forward to us taking the carpets up, to find out the previous owner had actually found the oak boards old fashioned and had cut them out, leaving a 50cm “ledge” of oak boards all around the room, and filling in the center with chip board.
:smack:
[/QUOTE]
I’ve never seen anyone remove the center section of a floor like that, but installing a perimeter of pretty wood around a boring middle section of pine or fir was pretty common when labor was nearly free and oak or maple was expensive. Today, the labor is expensive and any species of wood costs about as much as another, so there’s little financial incentive to do that now.
Some of my observations:
Within three years, you will own or have needed to borrow a basin wrench.
Until you build up a Norm Abrams-sized set of tools and a collection of odds and ends that would do MacGyver proud, any project will require three trips to the hardware store. First trip is when you buy the widget. Second trip is for the special tool that you don’t already have (See basin wrench, above) Third trip is for some stupid missing screw, sealant, etc. that you forgot to get earlier.
There is no such thing as an easy project. “While you’re at it” are the four most dangerous words you’ll ever hear and the resulting project creep has driven many a man insane and/or bankrupt. ***Especially in the kitchen. ***
Isn’t this the truth. I just went to help someone install a new handle for a toilet, it’s a handle, with one piece of metal and a bolt. It should have taken me 5 minutes to fix, it took 30+ as I had to bend the metal, play with the chain length, and it still doesn’t work just right, for some reason the handle is a bit too tight and doesn’t let the flapper back down every time.
Rule #2 - Every project of any size will grow to maximum proportions.
Latest example - My wife asked that I re-tile the master bath, both shower and floor. Once I got all that pulled out (the shower was wire and plaster directly on the studs) she decided we may as well replace the vanity and toilet, so rip them out. The old plasterboard (not drywall, this is an older house) had been wallpapered and, even if all the old paper did come off the walls would not be smooth enough to paint, so rip out all the plasterboard to be replaced with nice, smooth drywall. The insulation behind the plasterboard was not installed correctly and had mold, so pull it out and replace. Oh, that stud some one put in when they added this room to the house is so warped that new drywall won’t fit over it, plus they used a 1/4 inch thick mending plate in front of the vent pipe, causing it to stick out too far as well. They covered the flaw by burying part of the vanity into the wall. Rip out and replace the stud and swap the mending plate with thin metal strapping I had in the garage. Ceiling damage from a prior roof leak was worse than expected, so we had to rip down the plasterboard there as well and replace with new drywall. What began as a tile project ended up as a full gut and rebuild job.
Next she wants to do the master bedroom. Sigh. I’m keeping the mending plate, though!
If a job goes smoothly, you’ve probably done something wrong.
#128: Any product / tool / device you buy that has the word “miracle” or “revolutionary” on the package will be the biggest money wasting, time wasting, non working, cuss inducing POS ever!
If you work late into the night to get something finished, you’ll discover you need one simple item right after all the hardware stores close and you’ll be forced to wait till the next day.
The #2 most frustrating thing in the world is not being able to finish a task because you don’t have the right tool.
The #1 most frustrating thing in the world is not being able to finish a task because you HAVE the right tool; but you can’t find it.
It happened this past weekend to me when I couldn’t find a simple pair of channel locks that I’ve owned for 20+ years. I had to buy a new pair, I’m still kind of pissed off about it because I know they’re around here somewhere!
I just have to bump in here and say that the best part of the pictures in your post is that the photo-sharing site allows people to buy prints of the pics there. The one from the bathroom looks particularly fetching with a black frame. 
What - you don’t have framed photos of your bathroom to give as holiday gifts???
Indeed. You also have to know what widget you need and whether it even exists.
And there is also the question of whether to pay 20% more to shop nearby or drive 50 miles. And sometimes even when you drive 50 miles they still don’t have the item you need, so you wind up ordering it online for less money anyway, but the cost is more time. I’ve been replacing bad siding on a 10’ exterior wall for about a month now.
You’ll find them when you go to put the new pair up.
Ohh, it exists. No company makes it anymore, or actually ever made it. But some handyman 80 years ago working at a tool’n’die got pissed of one day and made a tool to do it perfectly.
You saw it at a garage sale 3 years ago, picked it up, flipped it over, measured the heft, and thought “I’m not sure what the hell this is, but it sure looks useful, and for a buck twenty five it’s hard to justify passing on it, but then I’d have to talk to the gossipy old biddy over there, so I’ll put it down for now and only get it as well if I find something I need.”