'Bye Bye Deposit': Renter Destroys His Cabinets As Reddit Reacts To Terrible DIY

Being a renter isn't always easy. Every month, you pay rent for a place that isn't your own and that you can't really customize. There are often things missing, paint colors you hate, and upgrades you wish you could do. But in order to get that security deposit back at the end of your lease, you've got no choice but to live with what you've got. Unless, of course, you're like this Reddit user who posted about their catastrophic DIY rental upgrade.

The renter decided to install their very own hood fan above the kitchen stove, with the vent system going horizontally through the kitchen cabinets to an exterior wall. "I suggested to our landlord that we install one because we were having mold issues," they wrote in their post. Clearly, the landlord wasn't responsive or quick enough, so they took the matter into their own hands. In the comments, people seemed doubtful about linking a lack of fan to a mold problem. "Boiling water would barely contribute to the mold growth," one person wrote. "So get a dehumidifier, people go for the most complicated solutions," another said. That's true; you can just open a window to increase ventilation. There's no need to destroy cabinets with a DIY range hood upgrade. Also, you can legally ask your landlord to improve certain things in your unit, so there's no need to do all that.

Similarly, my last rental also came with a fanless stove. It never crossed my mind to DIY my own, and seeing these images, I have no regrets. Sure, cracking a window to cook a steak in the middle of Canadian winters was not fun, but I left on good terms with my landlord and with my full deposit back.

For this DIY hood fan, it looks like the renter cut out square openings inside their kitchen cabinets to fit the exhaust system, which is a large metal tube. This means three very large holes in the sides of the cabinets to allow the tube to traverse through. The third hole looks like it connects to the exterior wall of the kitchen, which is where the DIYer likely installed a vent towards the outside. This means that the renter didn't just damage the cabinets; they also drilled a hole into the home's exterior wall.

If you're looking at this project and thinking it's not that bad, consider the implications. "If I were the landlord, I would be serving an eviction notice as this most definitely is a no-no in every renters' agreement I've ever signed," one Reddit user noted. "I'd be suing him for damages as well as for a professional to fix this," another one added. Depending on where you live, landlords can, indeed, sue renters when walls are damaged and a security deposit isn't enough for the repairs. It's best not to risk it and stick to rental-friendly DIYs that won't jeopardize your deposit.

But hey, it could have been worse. The renter said they originally wanted to set up the vent in the roof, but worried about creating leaks. Whether that was a better idea is also debatable. "Going through the roof is the easy option," one user wrote. "All he's done is destroy the shelves, drastically reduce storage space, and made the mold problem worse." This is because this DIY, without a proper duct designed specifically to work horizontally, will likely result in moisture not being pushed out properly.