@oldtimer_11 That is a great story. Did the house have indoor plumbing that worked? Being out in the country, I would assume that it had a well, but without electricity, there is no way to run an electric pump to supply the water. I’ll bet the couple selling the house probably installed a toilet, lavatory and tub without any pipes running to them.
An unconnected flush toliet gets used(seen it happen more then once,the Mennonites are a bit different,if they had a well they would have pump to a gravity system tank or a diesel generator running the electric system,I’ve seen pictures of a fancy newer John Deere tractor with steel wheels on it(supposedly owned by the Amish) so each to their own.
One of my moments was in shop class,grabbing the high voltage lead on a Champion spark plug testing machine and pushing the activation button on the machine with the other hand (it seemed like yellow fire was flowing through the back of my eyes)-Kevin
My wife and I moved into a new house 35 years ago in the middle of winter in Northern NJ. The house was heated with a forced air oil burner. I cut a hole in the door to the basement for our two cats and put their litter box down there. They didn’t like going down the basement and I could detect a sulfur smell in the air. Our previous house had a gas furnace so I didn’t think much of it.
About three weeks later we called in a furnace repair tech who informed us that although the furnace vent pipe was fine and properly sealed with furnace cement, the installer had never broken through the tile into the chimney. The furnace was venting directly into the house. It had passed the building department inspection for the Certificate of Occupancy though.
How we survived the carbon monoxide exposure for three weeks, I don’t know.
Very lucky.
That wasn’t the only WTH in that house. I think the subcontractors were Cheech and Chong.
A long time ago (mid 70s?) in between jobs, I worked for a short time for the father of a friend of mine by installing overhead doors, electric operators, etc. Most of what I did was steel commercial buildings but did do a number of residential jobs here and there on new homes. I actually enjoyed doing the commercial jobs but not so much with the residentials.
People might be appalled at some of the stuff done by some of those carpenters; whom I strongly suspect are doctoring the Thermos jug with Black Jack…
As a now deceased farmer and carpenter here used to say; “That’s what trim is for; to cover up all of your mistakes”.
One of the worst was on a new home with a finished ceiling and locating joists for the track hangers was difficult. The right side was easy; the left not so much. Lowering the fold-up stairs I go into the attic and find the joists on the right side running parallel with the horizontal track.
On the left side some were running parallel to the track, others perpendicular, and for some non-Earthly reason one corner of the garage had them running at an angle with the ends cut at 45 degrees.
I shudder to think what else in that home was covered up by sheetrock, paint, and ceiling texture.
That home was not the exception; just one of the worst. Once the insulation is blown in they’ll never know… 
I’ve spent a lot of time painting. Among the painters it is well known that the most common phrase heard from carpenters is “don’t worry, the painters will fix it.” I’m thinking the full progression is that the framers say “don’t worry, the sheetrockers will fix it” and the sheetrockers are saying “don’t worry, the trim guys will fix it” and the trim guys are the ones saying “don’t worry the painters will fix it.” Then, I suppose the painters are saying “don’t worry, no one will ever notice that”
I went out to a home once with 2 9 foot doors and 1 electric operator. The work order stated to install the outermost door and the innermost door was to just be nailed in place with 16D nails and omission of the tracks. So all the way there I’m thinking WTH?
Come to find out the entire construction was botched. The floor on the outermost door was 4" lower than the inner which was even with the kitchen floor and a wall had been constructed between the 2 doors. That inner door was going to become part of the front wall of the house. They knocked out some panels, added glass, sheetrocked it on the inside, and bricked it on the outside. Even funnier, this home was going to be the personal house of the homebuilder; and with one 9 foot garage door.
Some ten years later they went in and knocked all of that out and redid it but every time I pass that house I always get a chuckle out of it while wondering if the current residents have any idea of the story behind their living room wall.
Unfortunately a heck of a lot of people make a heck of a lot of money fixing the mistakes someone else made, under the cover of being a professional. Whether it’s the trades of electricity or plumbing or carpentry, or auto repair, or orthopedic surgery or legal document preparation, there is a huge amount of screwing up going on. Just because you are licensed that does not mean you know how to do what you are supposed to do, or that you are even willing to try. People complain about lawyers making a living suing everyone over crazy stuff, but the truth is both that a lot of crazy stuff gets done every day, and a lot of lawyers make a lot of mistakes as well. Really great, top quality work goes unnoticed, because it is so good it just works as it is supposed to.
Remember, a person with only average ability or average skill has better skills than half the people trying to do the same thing.
@LewisCannon
It sounds like your house was “Up in smoke”
Wasn’t that a Cheech and Chong movie?
LOL
@LewisCannon I spent some time in Nigeria where building codes are rather absent. One of the local businessmen was building his dream house, but should have spent more time inspecting the work. In this tropical country buildigns are made of brick or concrete blocks and piping is usually hiddent in the walls.
Our new homeowner was happy, until after a few months he started seeing water come through the walls at the CORNERS. He had the plaster stripped away and discovered that the plumbing contractor either did not have 90 degree elbows and/or did not know how to bent copper pipe. Instead he had connected the ends with bicycle tubes clamped around the pipe ends and covered up his handiwork.
On a personal note, we had a new home built in 1972, and it had a “powder room” off the main front door lobby. Since this room had no window that could open, the code required a fan, which the builder forgot to put in. Unfortunately, at this stage the only place left to vent an exhaust fan to was through the soffit over the front door!!!
The kids were told never to use the powder room when we were expecting company!!
I think bicycle tubes on the plumbing is up there for an award of some sort… 
A few more, home related:
A coworker that used to manage apartments told me of a resident complaining that every time he plugged something into his bathroom outlet, the lights would flicker. Upon pulling the outlet out of the box, he found the wires were wrapped around the screws, but the screws hadn’t been tightened. Then a week later, a similar complaint in another apartment–again, an outlet with wires wrapped but loose terminal screws. With an uneasy feeling dawning, he and the maintenance guy pulled some more out and every one they found had wires wrapped but hadn’t been tightened. And not just one apartment, but throughout one of the buildings. Apparently there was a “team” of electricians working on it and one person’s job was to set everything up, while another person was supposed to finish the job–apprentice or just an idiot, who knows. But apparently most of the outlets in the building were operating like that for over 10 years, amazingly without any serious problems.
Another one was at my mother’s house, the house I grew up in, built in 1963. My dear old mom was using the kitchen sink when suddenly water pressure dropped and she heard a water rushing sound coming from under the floor. A plumber was called and he discovered that the main water pipe for the house was jammed in place but had never been sweat soldered. It managed to hold up for about 35 years before it came apart.
And a favorite story I read about but didn’t experience: A computer tech was called to a home to help an elderly gentleman with the complaint that every time someone flushed the toilet, his computer would reboot. The tech arrived on site and with some disbelief, confirmed that indeed, every time the toilet was flushed, the PC would indeed reboot. After some detective work, it was determined that the PC had a failing power supply. The house got its water from a well, and when the toilet was flushed, the well pump would kick in to replenish the supply, dropping the available voltage in the house somewhat during the inrush to the pump motor. The marginal power supply couldn’t deal with this, so as a result, the computer would consistently reboot. I’m assuming the same thing would happen if any water enough to deplete the holding tank was used.
I know of an entire condo complex of multiple three story buildings wherein the builder vented the cloths dryer vents, as well as the bathroom vents, into the wall cavities.
During the building boom of the '80s, millions of people who could swing hammers suddenly called themselves builders and built a whole lot of junk. You’d think a condo complex of 5 three story buildings would have been designed and overseen by an architectural engineer, the plans thoroughly reviewed and approved by a building/planning commission, only licensed contractors with good records would be used, and the building inspector would be competent and checking every step of the way. Ha! What a fool I be! What a naïve fool!!!
A few more construction related incidents from my brief door days.
A shop building with a 12 foot wide door and the concrete had a 3 and 1/2 inch drop from one side to the other in that 12 foot span. The door panels have to remain level. The owner said to install it anyway and he would straighten out the concrete later…
Farmer ordered two 12 wide X 14 high doors for a farm building. During the several months of time delay on the building he changed his mind and decided on 14 wide X 12 high without notifying the door company. That presented a problem after a 125 miles one-way drive and discovering the doors were 2 feet narrower and 2 feet taller than the openings…
Carpenter started cursing me for not showing up to a house until afternoon. Told him I was delayed at another house because of shoddy carpenter work on the door opening. He stomped off cursing to do other work. First step for me was to tape measure the opening for the 16 foot door and discover that the opening was 16 feet 4 inches wide.
No go on the door so I just had to throw that in his face by asking who the drunk was that couldn’t read blueprints and framed it up. More cursing, insisted it was my job to reframe it, and he called my boss after I left him hanging. My boss told him to stuff it. When I showed up a few days later the opening had been reframed and the carpenter abruptly left right before I arrived due to a “family emergency…”.
No doubt that he got hammered, to use a pun, by the home builder. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy whose vocabulary was limited to every cuss word in the book…
My parents built a house in 1960. Mom had to fight the architect and builder to get her indoor utility room rather than have the washer and dryer in the garage as was typical of the time. Per her insistence, the kitchen and utility room were both wired and plumbed to handle either electric or gas stove and dryer. Fortunately, she went out to the house every day to check on construction progress.
One day she found the kitchen and utility room walls finished nicely but with neither wiring or gas line! Seems the electrician looked at the blueprints and saw gas plumbing and assumed that the electric was in error. The plumber looked at the blueprints, saw the electric and assumed the gas line was in error. Mother looked at the walls and told the foreman the entire fiasco was in error and that she would not accept or pay for the house unless both the wiring and gas lines were properly in place with the walls properly finished without a botch job.
That was just one of many problems encountered building that house. Years later, one day when my poor dad was in the crawl space under the house yet again busy jacking and shimming the floor joists, our next door neighbor came over and asked my brother where Dad was. My brother blithely answered that Dad was under the house praying for the builder’s soul – he wanted it in Hell. (Well, Dad had been using some rather colorful language.)
My parents’ home was built in the late '60s and as we later discovered to our dismay, the exhaust fan from the second floor bathroom was vented into the attic, and there was no return duct on the second floor for the HVAC system.
The lack of an upstairs return duct explained why the central A/C always seemed to be rather ineffective on the top floor, but after my parents paid to have a proper return duct installed, the A/C was much more effective. The bad news–in addition to the cost of installing a return duct after the walls were closed-up–was that they lost a bit of space in their pantry in order to accommodate that return duct.
Friend bought an old farmhouse. After the honeymoon period, he began to notice things. Lights flickering? The ground wires were loosely twisted together by hand and the hot and neutrals were the same way, not even wire nuts!
The whole house was listing to one side, we thought primarily due to a rotted out sill plate. You could be killed by a marble placed on the floor at one side of the hallway Turns out, when they added forced hot water boiler for heat, they pried up the floor boards and chopped 40% of the way through every single floor joist to drop the piping in. It was obvious when viewed from the cellar side (which was free and clear to mount the pipes BELOW each floor joist!!)
VDC, the IRS reference touched on one of my faves of all time- this form required by the paperwork reduction act of 1986… only in govmint…
I had what must have been a clone of your parent’s house. (different house than my gas chamber house)
Same situation with the second floor bathroom fan vented to the attic, and no return for the A/C on the second floor.
What’s more, the thermostat was located on the second floor, so that you could freeze on the first floor and the A/C would never shut off because the thermostat was never satisfied. In winter, the second floor was comfortable but you still froze on the first.
We lost space in two closets getting a proper return installed, and had to replace the furnace to get a large enough air handler (5 ton for a 2500 sq ft house) to make it work.
Since this was in the late eighties, maybe it was the son of the guy who built your parent’s house.
^
I’ll add that the dryer was vented into the garage, so that the cars and everything else in there got covered in lint.
When I first started teaching in 1965 at the university where I was employed until I retired in 2011, the janitor came into my office one night and told me that he wanted to show me the women’s restroom. I really wasn’t that interested in a tour of the women’s bathroom facilities, but he was insistent, so I went downstairs to take a look. The women’s restroom was set up with two stalls. You had to go through one stall to get to the second stall. The building had been an army barracks that had been purchased just after WW II for about $20 and set up as a temporary classroom and office building. Nineteen years later, the building was still in service.
A new building was built to house the science and math area and was built in three phases. My department was the first to move into the new building. I was working in my office when my janitor friend came to the door and wanted me to come watch paneling installed in the next phase being constructed. When I obliged, a “carpenter” was cutting the paneling. He would first saw the paneling and then draw a pencil line along where he had just sawed. I couldn’t figure out the ceremony of drawing the pencil line until the janitor explained it to me. Apparently, the foreman had chewed the man out the day before about not sawing the paneling straight and was to draw a pencil line (the bottom of the panel where it had been sawed was hidden by a cove molding). The man obliged his foreman by drawing the pencil line, but after he had already made the cut.
“Since this was in the late eighties, maybe it was the son of the guy who built your parent’s house.”
@LewisCannon–It just might have been!
My parents’ house was built by the Kelly brothers, who seem to have vanished from NJ not too long after building that small development.
Was the builder of your parents’ home named Kelly, by any chance?