I'm far from being the most handy guy in the world. FAR from it. But I like doing things myself as much as possible, partly because I want to know how it works so I can fix it, partly because I don't want to pay someone else to do something I can do myself, and increasingly, because I know if I do it, it'll be done right. May take me way longer to get it done, but it'll be right.

The previous owner of my home, and whoever built it, didn't have this same philosophy. Here's the list of stuff I've found, so far ::

  • Guest bathroom doorknob is backwards. That means to shut you the door you have to turn the knob, then close. It also means, even if the door is locked, you can just push on the door from the outside and it'll open. To my own fault however...I still haven't taken the 2mins to fix this.
  • Door going onto the deck started rubbing the door frame a few months ago. When I went to tighten the screws holding the hinges to the door frame I realized there were two screws missing - ON ALL THREE HINGES.
  • While replacing outlets I found one with some ghettofied wiring where someone tacked an additional outlet onto the circuit (for the ground wire they ran a white insulated wire back to the last original outlet on the circuit and attached it to the ground screw, along with the bare copper ground already there, the screw isn't really long enough for two wires to fit under it and was only finger tight). I took that add-on outlet off the circuit (it's under the stairs where they added a wet bar...we're gonna turn it into a closet, eventually).
  • There's a floodlight on the front of the house, the light switch that controls it is in the very back of the living room against the back wall of the house next to the doors that go out onto the deck. There's a handful of switch locations closer to the front of the house, including one right next to the front door.
  • The master bathroom is in one of the back corners of the house. There's three outlets in that room, the one most in the back corner is on the same circuit as the guest room in the opposite front corner of the house. Also, PSA, when changing outlets or switches, always check each one for power before touching anything - don't assume it's off just because by any and all logic is should be off.
  • The window treatment in the bonus room was supported by a 1"x1" piece of wood screwed to the wall above the window, standard single width window (~30" I think?). There was three screws used. Below is a picture of the three screws. This pissed me off so much.





The dining room outlet circuit has a bad neutral wire coming from/going to the breaker. I've got to get under the house to figure out exactly where/why and how to fix it. I haven't been under the house yet, but I'm a little nervous about what I'm going to find...

Anyhow. Thanks for letting me rant.