Uncovering Poor Workmanship in Your Home

House built in the 90s, it isn't horrible but there are quite a few

From what I learned after I bought the home, it was the GC's first home build and he did a lot of the work himself. While it isn't terrible or dangerous, just not always best practice

Not me, but a friend. Doing a bathroom remod, taking up old tile. They get to the subfloor and instead of plywood or cement board they find fence pickets. They just nailed those to the joists. Good explanation for why he had cracks in all of his grout lines.

I moved into a new house in June. House built in '82. Did a bunch of work to it. All work done when built seems sturdy and well done. Had to triple check everything I had done. Total piece of shite workers who lie, do everything half arse, all defended by multiple contractors. They all suck.

My house is about 40 years old and had been recently updated before we bought it 3 years ago. It looked great when we first viewed it, but after the newness wore off we began to notice how bad everything was.

The previous home owners apparently did all the work themselves which included:
- Wood floors thoughtout most of the home and tile in the bathrooms
- New tile-work on the wall of each bath
- New cabinets, sinks, and granite in kitchen and bathrooms

There is excessive wood filler, grout, and sparkle everywhere. Sinks are not sealed, all of the tile work is uneven and stained, and flooring was laid on top of old linoleum causing access issues. Floors that buckle because they were laid too tight. The counters are nowhere near level and the faucet in one bathroom actually overlaps with the lip of the basin and drips everywhere. Molding just randomly stops in places.

It was only our second house, but crazy how we didn’t notice the lack of finish throughout.

when we were building our current house there were several questionable pieces of wood that were used in various areas. I got with our builder and requested that they be replaced. I also found a leak in the plastic tubing for a sink and again they replaced. Lastly, right before they were to sit the granite down on the island, I had them fricking remove the trash from a worker's lunch that would have been entombed.

Not me, but I know of a worker that took a giant shite in a tub of a home that was being built. The future owners threw a shite fit (pun intended) until the tub was removed and replaced.

Sub contractors can be some nasty individuals.

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The shower had a large bench (previous owners were very obese). 

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Uhh shower benches are awesome, baw. Not just for fatties

Did a renovation on a home built in the 50s. Everything done to it before we got there was cheap or free by a friend. Issues included no headers on the house frame, live wire hanging off the roof and range hooked up to a breaker that was way too much. I don’t fully understand that part but the contractor told us if we had so much as moved the oven the wrong way it could have burned down the whole place before it tripped the breaker.

I once lived in a rental house that looked like it was put together with whatever spare materials were lying around.

The first house we owned, was a new construction and had two things that ended up happening.

When we were doing the final walk-through with the salesman before we closed, we turned on the jacuzzi tub to test it out. Within 30 seconds of turning on the jets, water starts POURING out of the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom, into the bedroom. From the baseboards. Salesman was embarrased and it ended up pushing our closing back 2 days while they got it fixed.

Same house, about 3 years later, an entire circuit stopped working. After an electrician spent about 3 hours at our house, the cause was determined to be: when the house was built, and the electrical wiring was done, one of the staples used to tack the wiring to the studs, the staple actually went through the wire. 3 years I guess of use or whatever shorted out the wire.

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flooring was laid on top of old linoleum

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This can be done, as long as the linoleum was glued down to a sturdy substrate. I did the same thing in my utility room after buying my home.
Utility room had that ugly, trashy arse stick on tile. I figured "no problem, I'll scrape that shite up and lay down tile". Well after removing the stick on tile I learned that it had just been stuck down to linoleum that was glued like a frickin champ to the concrete slab. I panicked. No way in hell did I want to scrape all of that glued own linoleum away. So I did some quick research and it turns out you can lay down ceramic tile on top of it as long as it's glued to a good substrate. Concrete slab is as good a substrate there can be! And believe me, that shite was glued well.
My new tile floor looks great.