You’d think that with HGTV and the DIY channel, construction failures, bad designs and shoddy workmanship (workpersonship?) would be a thing of the past, but of course, they’re not.
If you’re trying to recover some sense of pride after having not purchased enough paint to do the whole room or having installed a new bathroom door knob with the lock on the outside, take heart from these funny construction failures.
Contents
- 1. No, More to the Right
- 2. World’s Worst Remodel
- 3. Single Glazed
- 4. Elbow Room
- 5. The Short Life of a Semi-Long Bridge
- About the author: Chris Turberville-Tully is a marketing strategist for Vitrine Systems, a glazing maintenance solutions company specializing in glazing refurbishing, condition surveys and reports, high level glass replacements, leak detection and more.
1. No, More to the Right
Any weekend warrior knows that sometimes the hardest part of a job is to coverup all the mistakes that have been made along the way. But at least most of us try. Whoever was charged with installing this call box had obviously already given up. By the way, a particularly nice touch is how the wire to the phone doesn’t line up with either the first attempt or the final installation.
2. World’s Worst Remodel
I’ve seen rural towns that have had beautiful town squares, but at some point in time the city fathers though that increased parking was more important and they’ve ruined these town squares to provide spaces for about a dozen gas guzzlers. Usually the originals are better than what we replace them with and there’s probably no better example than these windows.
3. Single Glazed
Any city that has high rise buildings and the potential for very windy days will occasionally have days when glass starts to rain on the street below and that’s exactly what happened a couple of times to the tallest building in Austin, Texas not long ago. However, falling glass doesn’t induce the chuckles as much as the one, lonely window on the side of this tall apartment building. Is this what inspired A Room With a View?
4. Elbow Room
I’m not saying it’s either right or wrong, but men have long enjoyed an advantage over women when it comes to public toilet facilities. Shall we just say that due to the nature of the beast, a restroom designed for men is able to pack in a lot more of the required equipment than is possible in a woman’s restroom? However, at one building in Nephi, Utah, they seemed to push things together a little too closely. To use these facilities, guys would have to turn sideways and shoot around the corner, so to speak.
5. The Short Life of a Semi-Long Bridge
While it’s not really funny—especially if your tax money funded it—the failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge has to be included in any roundup of construction fails. It gives us all a good wakeup call not to always trust “state-of-the-art engineering.” And, along with the idea of “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” there’s now a very popular museum and monument to this construction failure, so people are, in a way, enjoying the bridge still today.
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So, take these mess-ups to heart. None of your construction failures have gone viral on YouTube yet, have they? And remember the old adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” Or maybe better, the other saying, “Always hire a professional.”