Epic Home Renovation Fails: What We Learned the Hard Way

From coast to coast, it's the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with certified kitchen designer Eric G. And co host John Dudley, a former contractor and online technology expert.

Delivering real fixes, smart tech and trusted advice.

Remodels, repairs, energy savings, smart homes, diy.

We've got your answers.

It's around the house.

Dive in and get inspired.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. John Dudley.

Good to see you, my friend.

How you doing, brother?

Good to see you coming out of the rabbit hole, out of the design studio there that you've got going on, brother.

The rabbit hole exists continuously in my head.

That's the issue.

Really.

You're not wrong.

I've got the same rabbit hole.

It's just depending which one we're driving, diving down each week.

Right.

You've just been on a consistent one for a few months.

Yeah.

And luckily I've got multi channel brain settings.

So I'm good.

I'm here.

Yeah.

Present and accounted for.

That's what we do today.

We thought we would talk and share a little bit about some of our greatest disasters in home improvement and construction because, like you, we've done our share of them as well.

And all the planning, all the great stuff can all go sideways and it's just depending on the luck of the draw.

And sometimes you get lucky.

Sometimes just like anything, you're not so lucky.

Or at the end at least you go, whoo.

That could have been worse.

True that.

You brought this up earlier.

Okay, let's talk about this today.

And I was trying to think of my greatest errors or mishaps, and I don't think I made any.

Huh.

Nice, nice.

I will.

Let's call somebody out.

The one that you and I both saw, I think.

And we're gonna, we're gonna pick on Vern here and we're just gonna leave Vern.

We're not gonna put Vern in anything here.

But remember when Vern was in that financial office and they were.

Everything was getting done in Tacoma at that financial office.

And he knocked over a pint of stain the day before opening, walked through it, and then walked around the financial firm on their carpet with cabinetry stain on his dress shoe and left footprints everywhere the day before the grand opening.

Nice.

All over the carpets.

But if I had to pick, one of the hardest people to get mad at, it would be Vern.

Absolutely.

You're like, man, you're cute.

Yeah, yeah.

He was Just that guy and he's still around.

We're talking like, he's gone, but yeah, he's just waving.

Talk to him in forever.

But it was one of those things where he knocked it over and it was just like.

Yeah, yeah.

Actually, liquids are bad.

Plenty of liquid mishaps.

Five gallon buckets of paint sprayers pulling out of the bucket.

Yeah.

Liquid.

That happens.

An issue on multiple levels.

Even better with asphalt emulsion coatings and things like that.

You're like, I can imagine that's not.

Coming out of your car of nothing.

Yeah, man.

I saw.

Here's one.

This was actually.

It wasn't even a saw.

I participated in this flight experience.

You've probably done this on a roof.

I was up building my.

The shed had a nice little gust of wind come by because I was trying to get the roof sheathing up and get some tar paper down before the rain came.

So maybe work on the inside stuff.

So I'm up there just with a piece of OSB and the gust comes through from the thunderstorm that you were not expecting.

Yep.

And I tried to recreate the rape leathers flight again.

That picked me up like I had a parachute.

Yeah.

Try it.

I don't know.

And in my construction days, because I was working like a derelict and because I have the metabolism of a squirrel.

Yep.

Try weighing like a buck 29 and having that guy.

You had way more feet than I did.

Oh, dude.

No.

I just let go of this stuff.

But the issue being like, you're hoping it doesn't fly all the way to that car that's down below in front of the apartment complex.

Yeah.

Take out a window on the way down.

I landed on my feet, didn't get hurt, but I put my elbow right on the emblem of the round emblem of the hood of my Mercedes.

And I had to have that fixed because it dented the aluminum hood.

And I had to take it in to get that fixed.

But I wrote it out.

I was like, okay, I'm up here.

Yeah, I'm coming down evenly at the moment.

Yeah.

Which.

Okay, I got a good one.

Okay.

But before that, Johnny, let's hold off.

It's a great time to go.

Let's run out to Red Wing real quick.

Hey, it's Eric G. From around the house.

PPE Personal protective equipment is an optional.

It's your shield against those project dangers.

Tailored to the task.

Gloves for rough handling, safety glasses for flying debris.

And ear protection for those roaring saws in dusty spots like drywall sanding.

Slap on an N95 mask to breathe easy, inspect gear for wear.

Replace the beat up stuff and layer up knee pads.

Ease work floor strain and breathable base layers like Red Wings T shirts keep you comfy under it all.

Don't skimp.

A splinter or dust cloud can ruin your day.

From home renovations to job site builds, proper PPE turns risks into routines.

Gear up, stay protected.

Let's keep those hands and eyes safe out there.

This project safety segment is proudly brought to you by Red Wing.

This month, Red Wing is launching their brand new clothing line built for the way you actually work.

Same legendary durability.

You trust in their boots now, in shirts and hoodies that move with you.

Breathe when you sweat and stand up to the real jobs around the house are on the site.

Comfortable enough for all day wear, tough enough to keep you protected.

Check out the new collection@redwingshoes.com or your local Red Wing store today.

Red Wing gear that works as hard as you do.

All right, thanks to Red Wing.

Love you guys.

Thanks for participating and having fun with us here at around the House and keep up the great work out there.

So, Johnny, what did you have on your stories?

Okay.

20 Years old and I'm doing out of town work.

We're up coating the federal building in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's actually super cool.

And help me buy my first house.

Right.

You go up there, you just pull up for three months, work like a pig and save your money.

Yeah.

Live on per diems.

Yeah.

So I'm three stories up on a window with the ladder that's on another roof.

Right.

Hot tire roof.

No, it's Alaska.

It's icy, it's wet, it's cold, it's.

Yeah.

Everything you don't want.

And I've got this 40 foot ladder pitched just right so that by the time I get to the third floor window with a five gallon bucket of paint in my hand.

Yeah.

Ladder does the slide down the bottom, kicks out.

Here's the good news.

Speaking of riding osb, I rode that ladder down three stories with the bucket of paint in my hand.

Shock absorbed when I hit the roof with my knees.

Didn't spill a drop of paint.

Like a cat, dude.

Like a superhero.

Yeah.

But you know something?

I will say this.

There is that moment that you land and you go, I'm okay, I'm not hurting.

And I didn't spill anything.

And then you feel like invincible for just a minute.

I did feel like a rock star.

And I'm still telling the story, what, 30 years later.

So absolutely.

35, 35 Years later.

But that's the thing.

And I've seen those kind of things as well, where it's just like you go, oh, man, how did I get away with that?

I got lucky.

Oh, and I was just going to say the few spills, I fell off a couple of roofs, who hasn't?

But when I look back at the ridiculous dereliction that I would call work ethic or what, my antics, and everybody would just shake their head going, dudley, what are you not fine?

I'm like a squirrel did this.

The countless ridiculousness I got away with versus the actual hits I took.

Yeah, I'm lucky, man.

Man, you and I both.

It's it working in construction, working in that kind of stuff.

You gotta have your nine lives because otherwise you're just out of the game because it happens quick.

When we come back, I want to tell one here that's going to be interesting.

And I tell you, I have one that's a forklift accident, which was solid.

I have somebody else's forklift accident, which was even better.

And then we got a few other ones here.

The one that got close, that was almost a.

One of them was I was close to getting airlifted.

If I was.

If that would have went like it was gonna.

I just got lucky.

I just got lucky.

Hey guys, if you want to get a hold of us, tell us your story, head over to around the house online.com and we'll put that in a future episode as well.

And then one thing too, head over to the around the House.

We've got our closed group over there on Facebook, so just look up around the House Nation.

We're gonna start doing some polls over there and we're gonna have a weekly poll so you'll see it up there.

So go over and ask to be in the group.

As long as you're human, we'll let you in.

And if you got a two month old Facebook account, I don't think you're real.

So that's one way to do it.

You know, if you've been around for a bit, we'll let you in there.

But I'd love to see you so we can have some fun with some polls.

We're going to ask you some good questions and see how smart you guys are out there as well.

Round the house.

We'll be right back.

To change that time.

Make sure you follow us on Facebook and our closed group.

Around the House Nation.

Around the House.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

Johnny and I are telling some just war stories today of the mistakes we've made in construction, design, remodeling, whatever we're doing out there.

I'll tell you the one I had.

So, Johnny, you know those, you could go to Costco or a Walmart and you get those portable carports, the one with the tarp material and the put together metal pieces.

You can pull your car in there.

Oh yeah, that was a bad one.

So I was living before my radio career of around the house.

I was living in eastern Washington for all the people listening on 610k when I, I was on Birch street in Richland.

We're gonna get really specific here.

I got my 67 GTO sitting in it because I'm building a garage and so I wanted to keep the bad weather off of it.

Well, we get a windstorm coming in and I remember this day because it was my birthday as well.

All of a sudden I look out to see how the wind's doing and I see the carport kind of doing this little bouncing lift thing.

I had screwed it with lags with redheads into the asphalt driveway, which was about 4 inches thick, just making sure it didn't bunt around.

I had sandbags tied around it.

I had everything just to make sure that it would stick there.

Yeah, that didn't work.

So I get out there as it's lifted up a section of asphalt, it's taking it out of the driveway and it's lifting that corner up.

So I'm like, oh, now that it's getting air into it, I'm in trouble.

So I roll the car out, I get up there with my pocket knife and start cutting the things on it.

As I have my hand around it, this 70 mile an hour gust grabs the whole thing, lifts it up.

I let go at about 10ft because I couldn't just let go because I had this open pocket knife in my hand.

So I throw that out into the driveway as I'm letting go.

Nice.

It flips up end over end, lands on the neighbor's roof, touches that and then goes up into the top of the high tension power lines behind the house.

Awesome.

And lands up in there and arcs out.

Wow, that's way better than mine.

I had the same cover over my boat.

I don't know if you remember my old little bay liner, but oh yeah, I do.

At the North 30th street house.

Yeah.

Same story.

Ended up.

Yeah.

Crossing the alley over the fence and plaster in the neighbor's house.

It's like a trampoline with a sail.

Right.

There's just no way the same exact one.

Bought it at Costco.

Yeah.

Pin it all down to the driveway.

Yeah, same still went.

Oh, it was so brutal.

And then I had to call the city because the worst part was the city did the power there.

So it wasn't a separate power company through the city.

And I'm like, hey, man.

Yeah, that's my carport.

It just ripped it out of the ground.

And they came out.

I didn't get charged, which was good.

I didn't really know how that was going to go.

They're like, well, well, you did what you could.

This was just kind of unusual.

And so you put a good effort into fastening it down.

Charged by a gang of neighbors who.

You took the power out.

Yeah, that too.

But there was so much power outage.

It was.

This wasn't.

It was not the only one.

But so.

Oh, yeah, it was brutal.

It was like, okay.

So every time I see somebody going to get one of those, I'm like, no, no, not where you get wind.

But no, I don't want to pick on anybody.

So many people buy them and think, oh, you just stand them up.

This is great.

Right.

And just don't.

I mean, I'll bet half the.

Really you need to put concrete foot even secure them.

Yeah.

Maybe they're just sitting out there.

The weight of it.

Right.

Maybe they just put a.

A rock against it or who knows?

Right.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, no, the wind will never.

This thing's heavy.

The.

The wind will never take.

You know, that's why when you see tent companies coming out with these 3 inch round stakes that they're blasting through into the ground.

Yeah.

To hold up like the big tents for the circus or the car sale or whatever they're doing out in the parking lot.

They're jamming those things in.

There's a reason.

Yeah, there's a reason.

So brutal.

Now, my other favorite one that I saw too, that.

Okay, let me see if I can tell this one here too much without getting too much trouble here, but I'll g rate this one.

I was driving a forklift in this warehouse and I'm trying to drive around all this metal tanks and stuff in it.

As I look back to back up, I go forward, the thing rolls forward, My elbow is out and it gets it pinned between the metal post and the frame of the Forklift behind me.

And then I couldn't reach the reverse on the back part of.

I couldn't reach the reverse.

I had to use my foot to kick it into reverse to get it back.

And oh, if I'd have been going two more miles an hour later, that would have been a.

A life flight situation.

And I just got lucky.

You know how that background sometimes cuts off your arm?

Now you.

Yes, that.

But yeah, that would have been Eric.

G. That would have been me.

Yep.

That would have been the end of that.

And then now when I was working for Eagle Hardware, now for people out there, Eagle Hardware was in the Pacific Northwest and then the west Coast.

It eventually got bought out by Lowe's.

But it was a kind of a high end home improvement store.

Polished floors, looking good.

There was a kid, it was in Spokane, Washington, that was outside, in the outside garden area.

And you know the big steel racking that's up there that they put all the bagged concrete and blocks and everything on while he was whipping around out there, didn't pay attention and kicked out the bottom of one of the legs.

And he dropped 40 foot of bag goods and concrete block one morning before the store opened into the garden department.

Yeah.

And so that was what, 24ft tall.

Just collapsed it over like, it just.

Fell right over so bad, dude.

Oh.

They sent me up there to help manage it for a day to get the kids started up and help show him how to put the.

Because they didn't fire him.

Then they showed him how they brought in the new racking because it just all bent up.

He had to get in there, cut it all out.

Yeah.

Showed him how to set the new racking.

They had another guy come in and help that, and I had to come in and help with that too.

Showed him how to set it legally because I'd been setting up stores and got it up there.

And then he had to hand stack all the bags that weren't broken onto pallets, shrink wrap them.

Took him like 10.

It didn't give him a day off until he was done.

And then the manager was so mad at him because I guess he'd gotten into trouble a few times before.

Day was done, everything was swept up, cleaned up.

All right.

All right, thanks.

It's been.

Yep.

It's been nice working with you.

They let him go.

And I was like, that was cold.

That's kind of justice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's what happens.

Welcome to retail.

But that's what happens.

Clean up your mess and get out.

And get out.

Yeah.

So I was like, oh.

And the kid was like, hey, do you think I'm gonna have my job?

I'm like, well, you're here still, so there's 50 chance.

Yeah.

But yeah, they got it.

And I saw that stuff all the time.

We had one another, another Home Depot story.

I was in Home Depot one time and this was in the Tacoma area.

You know that one over there in Fur Crest, huh?

Yeah.

You know that one way?

Yeah.

So I was in there.

Kid was grabbing a, a one of the big fridges.

And I think this instance was actually why they started roping off the aisles after this.

Huh.

He had a side by side 36 inch refrigerator up there on a pallet that wasn't shrink wrapped it.

And he caught the pallet pulling it off.

Oh, dude.

And that thing toppled off the top rack, landed down on the ground.

Barrel rolled end over end basically through the kitchen department.

Scraped a lady's elbow as she dodged out of the way.

And the, the plastic banding on the end of it just gave her a little road rash on her elbow as it went by her and took out a carpet rack display over in the carpet department.

So it went 35ft and I was in the kitchen department and I just ducked down behind the desks.

That was when I was working for him years ago.

Earthquake mode.

Yeah, I just, I saw it coming.

I'm like, oh no, I'm.

I'm down.

So I.

Because I was there when we built the store.

So I knew that that was a steel thing over that.

I'm like, I'm under here and happy.

It did.

It just went through, but screamed, everybody get out of the way.

And the lady got out of the way.

But she would have been not good.

Oh, dude.

Seriously, if you ever wonder why they put that, the rack cage over the top of forklifts.

That's why.

Let's go out to break before we run out of time here.

Let's run out to break.

We'll come back.

I know you've got some stories.

I've got one here that I've told once before.

But let's put it this way.

It was an explosive type one that was good and not so good.

It was a heck of a mess.

We'll talk about that just as soon as around the House returns.

Welcome back to the around the house show.

Hey, if you want to find out more about us, head over to the website aroundthehouse online.com.

And in the last week or so, if you heard us talking about.

I was talking about all the smart Home stuff, the lawnmowers or robot stuff.

Take a look over our website.

It's up there in the store.

So you know the products I was talking about.

You can find it over there@aroundthehouseonline.com.

Well, Johnny and I are sitting here telling stories about construction, remodeling, even out in the job site.

Just errors that we've learned some lessons for.

I remember you.

It wasn't a job site.

I remember when you fell face first off the stage at the Central Saloon.

I don't remember that.

You probably don't feet first.

So you landed and nailed the guitar lick on that.

So it was impressive.

I actually do remember that as you say that.

Yeah, I am.

I'm pretty good at the cat like reflex stuff.

Whether it's a ladder or a stage or motorcycle or whatever.

Whatever.

It's fun.

In the story I was just talking about there was.

I had this rental house I was in and I was gonna hang the TV up and I got my really nice stud finder out.

I'm going through.

Yeah, we talked about this.

When I'm going through, I'm like, oh wow.

There's a great double stud right there.

Perfect.

That lines up at 16 on center.

It's right where it needs stud to be.

And then I put the leg into it.

And that was a 3 quarter inch CPVC water line to the top of the stairs.

Johnny was.

It was a nice spring day.

It was moving in the window I had opened up and this was just this little kind of nook that was like a 12 foot nook where this little living area was.

Which was great for watching tv.

Yeah.

The screen was fully in there and it was open.

It launched that screen like 10ft out.

Oh yeah.

It's just boom.

Because it was a half inch lag bolt I was putting in for that TV and a half inch hole underwater pressure.

Boom.

Not a lockout on the floor.

I did not hurt the hardwoods with that.

But the worst part was having to get into that wall and try to fix that cpvc which was a nightmare.

I've done the.

Forgot to sweat the test cap on half inch copper and blown the.

Oh yeah.

100 Yards into the neighbor's house.

Like.

Yeah.

Not to mention that now you got water just gushing everywhere.

That was actually the one time that happened was on that full blown remodel.

So it was just plywood hitting.

I didn't wreck anything, but kind of fun.

Yeah.

I learned a lesson of physics one day because I was building that same garage.

I was telling you about.

And I had my Chevy half ton pickup that I had at the time.

I got in a hurry so I wanted to get going on it.

Delivery truck was a week out, didn't have a trailer.

So I decided to put 16 foot lap siding in my eight foot truck.

Well, a lot of people do that.

It worked.

I got it in there.

But I got on the freeway to go between Kennewick and Richland over there.

Only certain people know what I'm talking about.

I get to about 35 miles an hour and I realize I'm not steering.

Yeah.

Because the wheel is just turning and I'm so far on the back tailgate on the weight.

Those front tires over 30 miles an hour are not on the road.

Oh, man.

And I went, oh, all right, Goranson, you've done it this time.

And had to get down to 25 and hit the flashers because anything over that there was just enough lift.

Oh, man.

And I was like, from then on, I was either having the right gear to do it or I wasn't doing it.

Because I've paid for more delivery since then going, yeah, it's 16 foot stuff.

I don't want to deal with it.

Do you get smarter with that kind of stuff as you have experiences like that?

Whether it's overloading the wooden panel trailer with an entire chimney tear down from a two story house.

I mean, I saw that in a movie once.

Yeah, I think you're in the lunchbox for that one.

Yeah, they.

Yeah, well, yeah, trailers are dangerous.

Speaking of hauling stuff, they're only dangerous if you're.

Well, no, not just like me.

I think everybody pushes the limit, Right.

I've seen.

It's like the guy at Home Depot loading 15 sheets of plywood on top of his Volkswagen Jetta.

And you're like, I don't think that's gonna work, brother.

I saw a unit of OSB on the top of the Jetta.

What?

And I was like, how is that not crushing the top?

Oh, dude, I don't know.

I'll tell you what.

You see a lot of crazy stuff like that.

Refrigerators, whatever.

Like down here in Colombia.

Oh yeah, dude.

You can move a whole house in a taxi.

And I'm like, this is not going to work.

They get it.

I don't know how.

I don't.

They're crazy stuff is like 10ft high and they're just wrapping it with plastic and ropes.

And I say rope lightly.

It's more like twine.

You're like, wine.

It's bailing.

That's my stuff.

You're that.

Yeah.

No, our la.

One of our last moves.

We moved in like a. I don't even know what the car was, but it's like a.

Like a little Subaru wagon.

Like, Brian Row used to have the.

Like, white from the 70s or early 80s or whatever.

And I'm like, guys, look.

I mean, I had a whole drum set.

I'm like, there's no way this is going down.

They're like, oh, we'll get it done.

They did.

I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

I saw that in El Salvador where they were doing sugar cane.

Yeah.

And that sugar cane was stacked up in the back of the semi truck.

Had to have been 18 to 20ft high off the bed of the truck.

And I'm like, power lines.

I guess they knew, but it was just like, okay, here we go.

What's worse is that what these guys will pack onto a motorcycle.

You're like, three, four people.

That's common here.

Thailand, whatever.

You see that a lot.

Chickens, whatever.

But they do.

You see, guys, put it this way.

Rebar.

The other day, just two days ago, I see these guys going down the street, and they don't tie it off or anything.

It's just a guy holding as much rebar as you could possibly put in two hands.

And it's dry.

It's 16 foot long.

Dragging down the street.

These two kids on a motorcycle, Sparks shooting out the back, like, yeah, no problem.

Looks like windows.

Big giant windows.

One guy holding it.

Big, giant TVs.

You're like, dude, what the.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Absolutely insane.

Absolutely insane.

Yeah, I saw that.

El Salvador was my sketchiest ride that I did because we had a.

There was a canyon that you could write to.

Instead of having to climb all the way down through this canyon that was 200ft deep and up the other side and this big, huge walk.

You could ride the cable across it.

An aluminum power line.

So this wasn't meant for someone to be jumping on two wheels.

Orange baling twine onto a pallet.

That's how you rode it across.

Yeah, man.

It's a magic carpet.

It is.

And I'm on that thing going.

I love it.

All right.

That skinny dude had 150 pounds of concrete, Portland cement sitting on this.

I think I'm okay.

But did he just weaken it for me to get on there?

So I had a glove, and I was heading my hand over the top of that thing on the top of it, just going, okay.

I'm here.

Not like it was going to save me.

I was going to have.

It was just going to be a delayed fall because I was.

Yeah.

If you just.

You stuck in the middle 200ft up.

No one was there to help me.

So help.

That was going to be a slow one, but I made it across.

It was just like, oh.

And of course they, when we were on that trip, they were like, don't ride that across.

And you know me, I'll be fine.

That's fine.

Got lucky.

You know how that stuff goes.

I do.

I am the king.

I am the king of ah, to be fine.

Don't do that.

Nah, it's fine.

Do this all the time.

I saw the biggest electrocution hazard that I have seen on a job site where it hadn't happened yet when I was there.

So I was up north of Seattle.

Typical November rain, just dumping inches in a day.

This house was framed.

They were in there doing the interior walls.

Top was.

The top of the roof was sheeted.

No tar paper.

I walk into this place, I can hear the framers because I hear the air compressor going.

I'm walking in to see if I can measure it for kitchens.

I walk in and this million dollar house, there is water going down the steps.

No, because they had built, they had built some railings which had.

You still had your two by fours down.

So it was damming an inch and a half of water up on the top floor.

And because it was tongue and groove, it wasn't coming through.

It was all coming down the steps.

When I step into the floor, I see all the electrical cords, all the extension cords are underwater.

And that's a.

Is that bad?

Yeah.

And there's a kid standing out in his poncho.

Who's the donkey out there?

Basically just right.

The kid that's carrying stuff all day, he's out there putting, pushing the GFCI breaker.

About every 60 to 90 seconds they go power.

Oh, man.

And it comes back up again.

And I'm standing in the water.

I'm like, I'm out of here.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Wow.

And again, let's go out to break.

But I tell you what, that was one of those things that I was just like, oh, I wouldn't want to own that house.

Think how moldy that thing was going to be when it dried out.

Oh, dude.

All right, we'll wrap this conversation up just as soon as around the House returns.

Don't change that dial.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

Your trusted source for everything about your Home.

Hey, before we get back into our little construction stories, Johnny and I were just talking about this little public service announcement out there for you guys on Facebook, social media, because it's happened to me.

You get people trying to hack into your account.

You get the little warning on your Facebook saying that someone's trying to access your account.

The latest scam that I'm seeing is where they're sending you.

These scammers then send you an email pretending to be Facebook, asking if you changed your email and to sign in and rechange your password.

All you're going to be doing if you respond to that email is giving the bad guys your email and password for that.

So your login.

So don't do that.

If it's not coming right from the app, probably ignore it.

Unless you could prove that it was coming from there.

Don't trust anything when it comes to that because it even had me going.

Oh, nice try, guys.

Most people would have fallen.

Mom, if you're listening, pay attention.

She's.

Yeah, she's actually way hyper nervous about stuff like that.

So she probably.

Oh.

But now she'll be calling us, asking us, going, hey, what about this?

Yeah, it's what it is.

Johnny, what was.

I mean, we had so many crazy things happening when we were working out in the field out there.

Did you have anything out there that you were like, this one is wild.

Did you have anything that, like working on your house?

Let's say, you know, I mean, you had.

That house was super sketchy when you got it.

I mean, trees growing up through stuff.

Yeah, getting.

I'll tell you this.

And luckily nothing bad happened.

It's a little unnerving.

Yeah.

And your nose is about 6 inches from the floor joist.

Yeah, that.

That was sketchy.

And again, like, luckily nothing bad ever happened.

Dude, I've done so much stuff where.

I mean, I had that carriage house, the whole second floor up in the air, like on a couple of beams and jacks and some a little bit of yellow shoring it up.

But there was.

I literally cut all the walls out from under it.

Nice.

How did that not go awry?

Yeah, that was a tall building, too.

That was a tall building.

Yeah, I had one.

Oh, man, I had one.

This one was sketch.

This one was sketch.

I went out to look at Somebody's house because they were having some foundation issues in their basement.

And they had a incorrectly installed kind of French drain system in there at the base of the foundation.

The guy had gone through four or five sump pumps in the last few years.

I'm like, that's weird.

Good ones, like cast iron.

I'm like, what's going on?

So I start looking around.

I get my inspection camera with the little fiber optic that you can go down there and look.

There is no dirt under the walls of the house because water had been draining into the basement into that and carrying the sand away.

So there was a 12 inch by 18 inch void under the perimeter foundation walls.

So the only thing holding up the house up was the middle beam down the middle with the two posts and the tension on the dirt on the foundation.

Yeah.

And he's, hey, I don't want to do here.

I'm like, first off, call an engineer, get a contractor in here.

You're probably going to want to put wall supports up first.

Yeah.

Just.

I was like, you need to get somebody in here now.

Yeah.

If we would had a 2.0 earthquake, that thing would have.

Two things would have happened.

The perimeter house would have instantly sank 12 inches.

Yeah.

And then that center post wouldn't have gone anywhere.

So you would have pushed the middle up 12 inches.

Yeah.

It'll pop that place like a balloon.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

That was the sketchiest one where I'm like, yeah, let's get out of here.

I'm not comfortable in here, man.

Oh man.

The notorious Northwest with dude water deterioration.

Brutal.

You just can't stop.

It's.

Yeah.

I had this development company that had me go up to Issaquah up in Seattle.

Great example.

Hey, we're gonna try to see if we can save this house.

This was a cool mid century house at one point, but they had not done any maintenance on it for probably 20, 25 years.

No one had lived into it.

Right.

So I go walking up to the front door.

I step and there's this.

I didn't realize that the basement was farther out.

So when you walked up to it, you were walking over this deck thing.

It was actually the roof of down below.

So I walk up to the front door and I can feel it going underneath me.

So I jump back.

That drops down like eight inches.

I was ready to go.

I was gonna land in that place.

Just walk into the front door.

We go inside through this side door.

Down below.

There had been so much water damage in this thing that the structural beams in there and posts were like gray and the consistency of your oatmeal breakfast.

Yeah, Powder.

Just.

But it was sopping wet, so I kicked it and the whole like four feet of it crumbled.

Like it was just wet.

Like I dumped my oatmeal on the ground and I'm like, we shouldn't be in here.

We in.

The guy was like, I want to save this.

I want to put somebody, a caretaker to live in this place.

I'm like, put a trailer out front.

There's no one can live in this building.

We shouldn't be in here.

Someone even walk into the front door was going to get killed.

And you find that so much.

Right.

Just inspecting houses you're going to buy, inspecting projects.

People think, oh, no, everything's fine.

You poke one.

One post or one beam, you're like, okay, I'm not poking that anymore because it's completely rotten.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we had the, I mean, arcana beach house out there.

When we took that, those panes of glass out, because it was single pane big, huge mid century floor to ceiling panels.

We took those out and I had my grabo suction tools so we could pull those out.

And be careful with them.

You probably haven't seen those since you've been here, but they're a machine that basically has a vacuum pump in it and it'll grab a hold of plywood, glass, whatever else.

Not like big suction cups.

Yeah.

But it's battery powered, which is cool because it's always adding suction.

It's not like the ones you had to pump up for glass.

Right.

Or these are actually.

So they're really good for that.

So we pull it out and I'm like, I think.

And the video is up on our YouTube, but I was like, I think the glass is holding this up, so we need to be careful.

So we built up a interior wall to carry it.

And it was the brick mold and the glass.

Because the header, as soon as I pulled the brick mold off, the header falls, dropped.

I mean, it fell.

It hit the ground in three pieces.

It was done.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

It was done.

So those are the things when you're working on old houses you got to be really careful for.

Because, man, that was a roof I didn't want to get on.

And the glass was holding it up.

I have popped the shower door.

And by popped.

Yeah.

They explode.

Oh, I got scars you can't see from my tattoos from that when I was carrying one.

And it popped.

Yeah, I. Yeah, I saw a sighting guy do about $4,000 damage to a shower because the.

They had done a niche in the shower.

Recessed niche in the tile.

Yeah.

Came in.

The sighting guy was using longer nails.

Ah.

No.

Hit the back of the tile.

Tile exploded out on a tub shower.

Dropped the glass into the shower because the tile shards came out, hit the side of the glass that dropped down.

The shards ruined the bathtub.

So they had to take the whole bathtub and shower out and get a new glass door in from the sighting gun blasting through.

I hope somebody looked at him and said, hey man, nice shot.

Nice shot.

Yeah.

Holy smokes.

What are the odds?

What are the odds?

That's a weird one.

That's a lottery nail.

Come on.

Yeah.

To kill that much with one nail.

Wow.

Yeah.

You think about it?

I think what happened was the.

It was recessed and he was not hitting the studs.

It was between the studs.

Right.

He was just going.

Got off by a half an inch.

Went through.

It was probably the title shootout.

Then the door sore.

Then wrecked the top.

Wow.

Dude.

Yeah.

One nail.

One nail.

Life change.

One nail.

One nail.

Profit versus loss.

Yeah.

Brutal.

Yeah.

Boom.

Just absolutely brutal.

My brother had one.

This was a disaster painting company.

Right.

Yeah.

And paid a company because he's.

I don't want to get up on the 40 foot extension ladder to paint the soffits in the trim up top.

That's a fun thing.

As you get smarter and older we.

Here's the problem.

He had a green decorative shingled roof on that that had been discontinued for 10 years.

Painter gets up there, doesn't mask anything off and there is white overspray on the roof.

What's the painter do?

Gets up there with a grinder and a wire wheel and starts to take it off the roof and takes all the stuff off the roof.

Now the insurance company gets involved and guess what?

He gets a brand new roof on his three story house.

And they had to come in and do all of it because they didn't make that shingle anymore.

Oh man.

And they did so much damage that the.

Even the insurance inspector went, no, we can't fix this.

I'll tell you what.

If you're gonna be a painter, you better get good and learn all the tricks.

Yes.

And this guy.

I've washed my fair share cars or had somebody wash them.

I've had to clean plenty of roofs and windows and all that.

Yeah.

Paint is insidious and you can mask and you can.

But I'll tell you what, man.

Especially heavier viscosity carries further.

You get the right wind, you don't even know it, and you're painting the car three blocks down.

Oh, yeah, maybe not three blocks, but, you know.

But you're three houses down.

All right, guys.

I'm Eric G. And for John Dudley, you've been listening to around the House.