[Mrmac204]

This one is new to me. I was out on a quote in a nearby city yesterday (Baseboards/crown/doors etc) and in a ground level room I discovered where a long common nail was sticking out of the sheetrock, into the room about 1 1/2".

I asked the HO about this, he said not to worry the flooring/carpet guys would cut it off before I came along to do the baseboards. Apparently the nail came through the wall when they attached a gate to the side of the house. Huh?? holy cow, I guess that gate isn't gonna move! LOL wish that I could have taken a picture but the HO shadowed me.

I guess that's the odd one for this year for me. So far....

If my bid is successful I will try to get a picture.

 

[sunkist]

Coat hanger??.

 

[ohiohomedoctor]

Oh that's nothing. I have seen:

Swings
A full dom/sub layer
A grow room
A clean room lab in a basement
And a few indulging hippies


Just to name a few..

 

[hdavis]

Did a tear out - drywall over boards. On a humid day it smelled like horse I'd say it was reclaimed boards (and framing members) from a barn used to build an addition 110 years ago. Same thing on a stairway, but that was closed in with a couple of T&G wood doors.run on angle up the stairs.

 

[GO Remodeling]

Oh that's nothing. I have seen:

Swings
A full dom/sub layer
A grow room
A clean room lab in a basement
And a few indulging hippies


Just to name a few..

It's Ohio. That explains a lot. :laughing:

 

[steex]

I did a rental rehab that had some weird partition walls in the basement and some sketchy wiring. I was pretty sure it was a grow room, and then there was a closet sized OSB box in the garage that had a lot of coat hangers and string in it and a few leaves laying in it. I'm guessing that was some kind of drying setup.

The same landlord had another property where I worked a couple times before I refused to go back. The first time I was working in the bathroom and the tenants had left a crack pipe sitting on the back of the toilet. Maybe they were just being polite and thought I might want a hit. They had a bunch of german shepards there that they kept locked in the tiny concrete back yard, except for when one of them had puppies in the living room and ruined the new carpet.

The final straw was one time when me and my partner were there and the cops showed up with a warrant to arrest the woman who lived there. She was carrying on so hard that I don't think they could understand what she was saying, and they were ready to leave. We had to step up and say, hey, we're just a couple of innocent bystanders and this lady has an infant upstairs, and no way are we going to assume responsibility for it. So I guess they had to wait for child protective services or something. All I know is we got out of there and that was the last time I worked on that house.

 

[TNTRenovate]

I couldn't walk through a rental laundry room because there was a huge pile of clothes on the floor and piled up and over a table. When we got the job I realized why they hadn't washed those clothes. Apparently the three rather large dogs considered the pile their personal indoor bathroom. Yes 8 - 33 gallon garbage cans full of clothes and dog crap. It was one of the most disgusting things I have dealt with.

BTW, I did call the property owner and told him of the change order to remove the dog feces clothes pile. He said, what ever you are thinking of charging me, double it.

 

[Spike7]

I got that beat

Bid on a job ( hanging exterior doors, and frames) in a historic part of town.
From the side walk i could smell the stench.
The owner came out , really nice man.he was a classical music composer
we agreed to the price,
he openned the garage , he had a 64 mustang covertible sitting there.
He was obviously a hoarder .
As we talked , i saw a mouse casually walking alond the car top .
As we kept talking , i kept seeing more mice,.
When i came back to the house , the wife told me how they had pet mice. They kept having babies. They got out , and were breeding all over the house over the next couple years. She said there were thoiusands of them now.
These were very nice people
she`d find new born mice in the coffee cups , and bowls in the cupbords
she said her husband would call the exterminator. He didn`t want them to kill the mice , he wanted them to catch them , and find homes for them. No exterminator would agree.
They had gotten into the mustang , and had eaten all the rubber ,in the motor, and all the gaskets , and destroyed most of the interior on this mint conditioned car.
The smelll was so bad , that when i installed the new doors and frames , i had to have a fan blowing at me the whole time.
Never knew what happened to them.

 

[Chad McDade]

About ten years ago I put an addition on a house for an lady in her mid fifties. After the job was finished she asked if I would be interested in doing some interior remodeling on one of her businesses. Well.....it turns out she was a madam - the business was a cathouse. I did the work, it was actually a nice little project and she gave the guys on the job a $1000 bonus for their discretion.

 

[rselectric1]

I've found some seriously crazy things as well.

The funniest incident was on a kitchen remodel and they had some mouth breather type son living in the basement who was about 19 or so. No school, no job, just stayed in the basement and played video games all day and was always pissed off to see us because we woke him up at the ungodly hour of 8 am.

So on about day 2, we were down in his kingdom removing ceiling tiles under the kitchen and he had gone back to sleep. (20 feet away from him)

Out from the ceiling tiles comes bags of pot, a few booze bottles, tons of condoms, and a pipe. One of the bottles broke on the floor and this woke this poor precious up. When he saw what we discovered, he stood their like a deer in the headlights.

We made no comments and kept on working. After that he turned into our "best friend" and followed us around asking if we needed anything, can he get us some coffee, can he get us some snacks, etc. for the rest of the week.

I had no intention of telling on him, but it sure was funny to watch him squirm!:clap:

EDIT

Maybe the above comes in second after remembering one from just a couple months ago.

We were on the walk through with all the subs there and I needed to get into the crawlspace to look at the some things. When I asked her where the crawlspace trap door was, she turned pale.

I went down there and there was 2 beautiful "plants" under a grow light. (Couple was late 50's and all prim and proper)

I yelled back up through the hole that I needed someone to send down some Cheetos and she burst out laughing. Turned out to be one of the best customers of this year.

 

[hdavis]

Guy in a 1 bath apartment decided he could just use the tub / shower for a grow area - didn't need to shower. You couldn't really smell him or the plants, since the cats with no cat box pretty much hit your nostrils first.

Here's a puzzle for you - different place, huge bottle of baby oil and about a pint bottle of Tabasco sauce on the night stand. Any ideas?

 

[rselectric1]

Here's a puzzle for you - different place, huge bottle of baby oil and about a pint bottle of Tabasco sauce on the night stand. Any ideas?

I'm guessing only Rex might be able to answer that.:clap:

Nothing comes to mind for me other than a few raucous ideas.:jester:

Someone PM Rex! If he doesn't know, then the dude is probably just a slob.

 

[CompleteW&D]

Not nearly as funny as the ones already posted, but I went on an appointment one time (and thank GOD I was running a little late).... pulled up to a nice looking little ranch. Nice driveway, meticulous landscaping, well maintained exterior.

The scruffy looking HO invited me inside and I'm absolutely certain, my jaw hit the floor. Every piece of furniture and just about everywhere you looked was covered in "stacks and piles" of books, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, trash bags of who knows what and there had to be 20 ashtrays scattered around, that were mounded with spent cigarette butts. Now, mind you, these were no small ashtrays. They were those metal bowl with a rim type ashtrays that looked like an upside down WWI military Helmut. Each one could easily hold three or four packs of butts (before the mounding!).

He invited me to sit down, and then realized there was no where for me to sit and promptly started pulling trash bags off of a couch and tossing them aside. As he was doing so, hundreds of mice and roaches were skittering away like someone yelling FIRE in a crowded movie theater.

I gulped and said, hey.... obviously, I was late getting here and I've got another appointment which I'll be even later to, so did he mind if we rescheduled for another time? I never did hear back from him, which didn't disappoint me at all. :no:

 

[steex]

I found some pictures that I took in this old lady's basement a few years ago. She had multiple duplicate subscriptions to a bunch of magazines about princesses, and would read one copy, cut up another to make into scrapbooks, and file the other copies away neatly in her basement. There were several rows of shelves like this, with dates going back over ten years. It must have been thousands of magazines.

 

[THW]

About ten years ago I put an addition on a house for an lady in her mid fifties. After the job was finished she asked if I would be interested in doing some interior remodeling on one of her businesses. Well.....it turns out she was a madam - the business was a cathouse. I did the work, it was actually a nice little project and she gave the guys on the job a $1000 bonus for their discretion.

Are you sure that was the only bonus your guys got for their discretion? I bet there could have been lots of undocumented, unbilled change orders that your guys agreed to do...

 

[Chad McDade]

Are you sure that was the only bonus your guys got for their discretion? I bet there could have been lots of undocumented, unbilled change orders that your guys agreed to do...

I'm pretty sure that she billed more per hour for her, um, employees than I did. So if there was any "side work" going on I probably would been given a bill.

 

[EthanB]

When I was working as a painting sub I had a GC bring me over to a nice place he had built a few years before for a middle eastern business man and his "trophy" wife. Everything looked good until the next morning when I showed up and started setting up. The HO let me in as he was leaving for work but neglected to tell me that his wife was passed out on the master bathroom floor covered in vomit, which is where I found her.

The same thing happened on days 2 and 3 when I finally had to call the HO and tell him that if she couldn't pass out in a different bathroom then I wasn't going to be able to finish that part of the job.

She'd be sacked out in there until noon and then come downstairs for some food and ice and head right back the to bedroom. It was the most awkward I have ever felt.

 

[woodchuck2]

I did an electric service for a fella who is now my neighbor who was an extreme shopper. Meaning his whole basement was line with shelves and were all stocked with groceries. This basement was walking into a small store, all with isles and organized shelves all labeled for what went where. He also had several chest freezers, stand up coolers for beverages, etc. Place was neat as a pin, you could eat off the floor and he had no pets. This guys was also a huge Nascar fan. He had thousands of cars in various size all in boxes, trucks, tractor trailers, etc. Anything to do with Nascar. To this day when i drive by and his entry door is open i can see all the cars lining the walls on shelves.