Bodges, scrimping and Friday afternoon jobs

[robinbanks]

He still kept it but made sure it was plugged in at the mower end before plugging in to the house!

That's insane, when you consider he had all the necessary ingredients to swap the socket and plug over so the extension terminated in a socket, not a plug

5 minutes with a screwdriver worth more than a life?

 

[mattylad]

My 1855 mid terrace in Lancashire was previously owned by Mr & Mrs Bodgit & son.
Everything they did themselves has been bodged, from diagonal wiring hidden in the plaster through to badly supported first floor bedroom floor beams when they removed one of the internal staircases.
Hence every time I need to do some DIY it's a major job & not easy.

One job that needs doing is removing some bathroom tiles and re gluing them down/regrouting, nothing major you'd think until you see that it's actually a second layer of tiles.

I think I'd rather just move house than do any more to this one.

 

[securespark]

With a hand screwdriver, as I always have. Never used a setting tool.

 

[securespark]

How were you tightening them?

With a hand screwdriver, as I always have. Never used a setting tool.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I had an acquaintance, who was a bodger supreme. They certainly destroyed the mould after he came into the world.

He lived alone, in absolutely appalling living conditions, and seemed to think it was normal to live that way. I first came across him, living in a terribly run down hovel of a rented flat. There were no washing facilities in the place, he had begun installing an electric shower, but years later it never got finished.

He was forced out of that, and then rented a tiny one room, ground floor only, shop with no accommodation to it. He tried to actually use it as a shop, but botched putting a floor in, so he could live in the loft space, using 2x2 as joists and pallet wood for a floor.

He got kicked out of that, eventually getting a job in a factory, somehow, as an engineer. There, and earning for probably the first time in his life, he managed to get a mortgage to buy his own place. The place he bought, was an old, redundant primary school, isolated and surrounded by industry. A massive open space inside - think church hall size, ripe for being turned into a barn type, or split into flats - what did he do? He filled it with tat and useless junk, living in a tiny corner, still not having the basics of life, freezing in winter.

 

[SUNRAY]

With a hand screwdriver, as I always have. Never used a setting tool.

There's the problem then.

I used to do it like that but having f****d a few up I splashed out the vast sum of £4.61 plus vat, so so much easier and not a failure since. The difference in simplicity and speed is like chalk and doggy doos

 

[johnny2007]

There's the problem then.

I used to do it like that but having f****d a few up I splashed out the vast sum of £4.61 plus vat, so so much easier and not a failure since. The difference in simplicity and speed is like chalk and doggy doos

You posh b@stard!
Bragging about your crazy wasting of money.
Do you light your cuban cigars with a £50 note???

 

[SUNRAY]

You posh b@stard!
Bragging about your crazy wasting of money.
Do you light your cuban cigars with a £50 note???

Too right
Might if I smoked, but saved on broken intersets ever since

 

[Nope]

The builder of our first home (built 2013) was a real bodge merchant. The back and front lawns were basically a thin layer of soil thrown over all the leftover crap from construction and then seeded. The plastering wasn’t done properly so little bits of plaster kept falling off where joists had been nailed, leaving unsightly holes in the ceiling. The aperture for the built in oven was non standard size so when he fitted the oven he bodged together a box from chipboard, which was screwed in using screws that were so long they bit into the aperture for the drawers right next to the oven. The thermostat was dodgy so we only got heating if we turned it up to about 26 degrees. The showers in both bathrooms started to leak within a year of us moving in, the place was never fitted with proper insulation in the cavity wall so we got mould and mildew on the inside of the walls, and best of all, we had non working showers in both bathrooms (couldn’t adjust the temperature) and the builder’s plumber (who he insisted was one of the best) didn’t know how to fix it until I was getting ready for work one morning and noticed steam coming out of the toilet bowl (yes really!) and he realised the hot and cold water connections upstairs had been reversed.

Builder always made pathetic excuses and empty promises when we contacted him to come and sort out the long list of issues, and eventually stopped answering his phone altogether. We moved in June this year into a house which is 52 years old and by comparison is of much better build quality - it’s nice to not have leaking showers or non-working heating!

 

[securespark]

There's the problem then.

How odd. I've never owned the posh tool, always screwed them up by hand. Been using them years (for as long as I can remember) and these are the first ones that have ever broken.

If I use any more, I shall invest in the posh tool!

 

[Ragnar_AT]

Tiling over tile isn‘t necessarily considered a bodge job. I once volunteered in the renovation of a mid-1980s hostel shower room (church-owned). The old tiles clung to the walls for dear life, removing them would have added weeks to the project so the tile contractor immediately suggested leaving them in place and tiling over them. Six years on the new tiles are still perfectly fine.