On Jul 5, 10:15*am, Kyle wrote:
Two stand out for me.

Back in 1976 (in the days before most people did home inspections as a
part of the buying process), my parents bought a "handyman special"
and it was a treat. There was a window a/c unit in the family room
plugged into an outlet we thought was running 220v. The a/c unit
didn't work, so we went to trace the wire to see what circuit it was
on and discovered they'd daisy-chained a couple of household extension
cords from the breaker box through the crawlspace and up behind the
baseboard radiator, cut off the multi-outlet block at the end of the
second cord and attached a 220 box.

In 2005 my wife and I bought a row house in our neighborhood to fix up
and rent out. In the basement the owner had put up a wall to divide
the back part (workroom, weirdly large powder room) from the front.
He'd used 2x4s to frame the wall, but then instead of putting up
drywall he'd just stapled that corrugated paper brick up - you know,
the type of stuff they used to use in the cheesy fake fireplace
Christmas decorations.

My 'most dangerous' was visiting to repair a TV in an extension built
on back of a small house at end of this street. Next to the graveyard.
It contained two children's bunk beds. The only heat in the cramped,
congested and uninsulated space was an open glowing electric heater,
probably a kilowatt or so. It was fed with a rickety taped up
extension cord that also fed the TV. There was one tiny window that I
don't think even a small child could have exited. I told them the
whole thing was completely unsafe.
Strange thing is that another son afterwards acquired the very small
piece of land no room for anything except a house, and has built the
biggest residence on the street; two people living in (for this area)
a giant of a house. No trees, house occupies most of the land!
Anyway along with all the trees the rest of us have grown, that house
makes a nice windbreak! During some heavy wind a year after it was
built some vinyl siding blew off that house while we were nice and
snug and had no problems!
Anyway back to scraping paint on my low singel storey bungalow!