I Fix Botched DIY Renovations and the Costliest Mistakes All Involve Water
Home repair professionals and contractors have seen it all, and then some. You name the home issue — from bad roof jobs that give a whole new meaning to sunroofs to sink repairs that turn the bathroom into an aquatic wonderland and even attempts at electrical rewiring — these professionals have seen it. And they're begging you not to attempt it.
Even if you think you can save a few bucks by loading up the home repair channel on YouTube and picking up your hammer, odds are, you're actually doing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars' worth of damage. Think of it this way: DIY can turn into 'OMG' in a moment.
We chatted with Bethany Uribe, mitigation division supervisor at ASAP Restoration, LCC to get the gory stories about the most intense and costly, home repairs her team has had to fix.
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Flower Beds Gone Wrong
When Uribe considered one of the most extreme DIY turned SOS jobs she's ever had to fix, the world's most expensive petunias come to mind.
As Uribe said it, the company recently had a client whose attempts at beautifying their home exterior by adding window box flower beds went awry. The first problem? They used hanging flower boxes, which are designed to, well, hang outside of the home — specifically so you don't have to drill holes into the side of your house to keep them attached.
Well, this client unfortunately didn't get the memo. Yup, they screwed the flower boxes under the windows — right into the side of the house. And with long decking screws, no less. Beyond the most obvious error of even screwing these boxes into the house instead of using the appropriate window box hangers, Uribe said the client didn't caulk the area where the long screws went in. The result: an open invitation to leakage.
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"This ended up causing rainwater and flowerbed water (the other reason they make these hanging models) from watering the plants daily into the side of the home," she said. "Over a short period of time this ended up causing a huge amount of water damage on the inside of the house and that then turned into mold damage and that's when they finally noticed what was happening."
She added that the total repairs involved drying out the water, extracting the drywall, remediating the mold and rebuilding the wall.
"Those flower beds cost nearly $5,000 in repair work. Basically the most expensive petunias ever," she said.
Poor Drainage Solutions
Another truly hair-raising tale of DIY gone disastrous comes from a client who decided to get a little too ambitious with a drainage project. Uribe said that it's not uncommon for people to get over their heads trying to take on property drainage as an easy weekend project.
However, if you don't know much about hydrodynamics or even common-sense DIY drainage solutions, you'll end up racking up more in repair fees than hiring a professional in the first place would have cost you.
That's exactly what this client did when they decided to redirect the water from their downspout through corrugated tubing to a different section of their yard. Uribe said that normally, this type of water transport wouldn't be much of a problem. However, the client's property had slope and gradient issues that resulted in pooling.
"Even that would have been fine except that one of the pools in the yard held quite a lot of water and the lowest rim edge was facing the home. When that edge overflowed, so did the basement and first floor of the home too," she added. "Since the drainage line was essentially now redirecting all of the water landing on the roof and in the backyard all into a pool that channeled it into the home, this DIY gutter fix ended up causing a whole home flood and total gut job."
DIY Mold Remedies
While the common notion is that bleach is the ultimate slayer of mold, that is, in fact, not true. Uribe said that many clients have tried to mitigate the potential of mold after water damage by spraying down damp areas with bleach.
"Since mold can eat bleach for breakfast and have doubled in size by lunch, it's safe to say that most of these DIY mold remedies have gone horribly wrong," she said. "This happens so much in our business that there are too many stories to list here and they'd all blend together."
Uribe added trying to fix water damage in your home on your own can be a catalyst for disaster. You're better off simply calling the experts and if the damage is truly costly, you can make an insurance claim.
"In fact, not doing so can be seen by your insurance company as neglect later on if your home gets completely moldy and at that point, many people are denied coverage for all of the fixes that need to be done because they didn't do the right thing in the beginning," she said.
This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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