What is the worst non weather related Damage to your home?

[Spinneret]

holes in the wall

 

[superme80]

The hot water heater leaked into my kid's closet. That was not fun. Also my son ran into the house and put a hole in it.

 

[tvguy]

Dishwasher leaked and ruined the kitchen floor.

 

[Meriweather]

water heater leak from upstairs bedroom down into the downstairs living room while we were on vacation. A mess

 

[BlueStarryHat]

The basement bathroom flooded and did $10,000 in damage. Luckily, we had insurance because the bathroom had to be torn down to the studs and replaced, plus the entire floor of the basement. It's carpeted now.

 

[willowsnn3]

Probably not the worst but was the first thing that popped into my mind.
Shirley, our big English Mastiff has found the perfect spot to scratch her big hiney. The siding on the back of our house by the basement door. Somehow she has rubbed against it so much it is buckling & looks grimey. Thank goodness it is in the back.

 

[leebee]

Frozen pipes burst in the 2nd floor bathroom when we were all at work. There was 4" of water in my husband's tool boxes... in the basement. We ended up with all new walls and ceilings in bathroom, living room, and dining room, and fully refinished floors. It was a mess for a long time, and fortunately insurance covered it (and sometimes I joke that if it hadn't happened, we'd still have those worn, scuffed old floors).

 

[tcufrog]

The valve that opens and closes to regulate the water for a shower broke and we didn't know until we saw mold on the wall behind it. We had to do mold remediation and gut about half of the bathroom including the entire shower. It was a nightmare.

The second worst was a carpenter ant infestation.

 

[luvnwdwgal]

We’ve had a couple inches of water in our basement due to the power being off and the sump pump not running but it’s not a finished basement so didn’t really damage anything. Or maybe the holes in the vinyl siding from stones getting thrown at the house from the lawnmower when my husband mows.

 

[Brett Wyman]

Our kids.

 

[cedricandsophie]

we live in a house built in 1874. The front has pillars with the original Greek style capitals at the top. One of the capitals disintegrated a few years ago from the 100 plus years of rain water damage and fell into pieces. I had to find an architectural firm specializing in restoration…they have worked on st Patrick’s cathedral in NYC for instance…to figure out how to replace. That took months.
They did a mold and painstakingly rebuilt it, all with the required approvals from our local historical society since it’s a historic home. It took months. And they determined they couldn’t exactly replicate it because the original was built with cows blood mixed in with the plaster, I guess to make it stronger! Then of course we had to hire a lift truck to get them up to the top so they could install it. Expensive and time consuming.

 

[nene0182]

Not long after he got his license, my son drove into the garage door. It wasn’t horrible but enough where the entire door needed to be replaced.

 

[Lumpy1106]

termites

 

[mjkacmom]

Flooded finished basement, 4 feet of water and then a power outage so we couldn’t pump it.

 

[bobbiwoz]

Toilet bowl small pipe leaked one night while we slept. This was on second floor, and did damage all the way to basement. Thankfully, we had good insurance, and rate was not significantly raised in following years.

 

[gshanny]

Neighbor drove into our house.
She drove though the back wall of her garage, dodged our pool and this cement thing, but managed to go straight into the bay window. It was August in Ks, so it was miserable hot until it was all fixed.

 

[indimom]

Dishwasher leak.
What made it really, really bad is that our home is over 100 years old and the floors slope in places.
The water was leaking toward the corner of the room under the kitchen cabinets and we were not aware of the leak for a long time. It finally came to our attention when I kept catching an odd "earthy" odor when I would reach into the corner cabinet (situated next to the dishwasher).
When DH and I pulled everything out of that cabinet and used a flashlight, we could see that the back of the cabinet was "swollen" from damp.

In the end, we had to remove the countertop, pull out multiple cabinets, rebuild the two cabinets on either side of the dishwasher, replace the drywall behind the cabinets and dishwasher, replace the flooring in the back corner of the kitchen, replace the dishwasher, and rebuild our kitchen. Insurance determined the issue was a "homeowner maintenance" issue (and not their responsibility) since it had leaked for so long. Thanks State Farm.

 

[princesscinderella]

We had to redo all the sewer pipes under our house as they were cast iron and rusted through like a horseshoe shape where there was no longer a bottom. Unfortunately it’s a problem that plagues the whole neighborhood. It was a big job and we had to re do the bathrooms down to the studs to get the new pipes to toilets and tubs and they had to jackhammer through the floors.

 

[slo]

When attempting to get raccoons out of my attic, the company hired to do this, after unsuccessfully setting traps/cages in the attic, put a bear claw type trap on my roof with hammer & nails (unknowingly to us that they hammered it down). When the raccoon got caught it thrashed so hard that it ruined the roof (unknowingly). The area rotted and eventually let in a ton of water when it rained a lot. We live in a quad level house and the water ran down the walls and ruined the kitchen ceiling (level 2), ruined the family room (level 3) and then ruined the basement (level 4). I had 3 out of 4 levels a complete mess at the same time - very stressful. It was quite the insurance claim. Water damage is horrible!

 

[mrodgers]

We’ve had a couple inches of water in our basement due to the power being off and the sump pump not running but it’s not a finished basement so didn’t really damage anything. Or maybe the holes in the vinyl siding from stones getting thrown at the house from the lawnmower when my husband mows.

I've had the sump stop working twice. Had an old computer in the unfinished basement on a desk that I messed around on and smelled something funny. When I turned around, there was water creeping up to that wall where the desk was and I was sitting.

Then early in the morning I had to get something downstairs. Just got dressed for work, walked down the steps where there was light to the right but I stepped off the landing to the left and... Splash! I stepped down into about 3 inches of water in my socks. My pant legs soaked up the water as well.