Homeowner’s Deck Mysteriously Gets Taken Apart Overnight

A woman’s puzzling deck disassembling caper has gone viral in a trending TikTok video that’s garnered over 2.5 million views on the app, leaving numerous users scratching their heads.

Lizzie Sivitz (@tickytockybb) says that the framework of a partially completed deck her sister was adding to her house seemingly came undone overnight. She detailed the particulars of the befuddling circumstances: “My sister’s having a deck built in her house and this is how the contractor left it, Saturday night with all the supports in place,” Lizzie says, her face superimposed on a green screen capture of her sister’s home and the deck in question.

The next photo that pops up on her TikTok looks like it would be a before image of the work the contractor performed on the deck: there are planks of wood neatly arranged on Lizzie’s sister’s lawn along with other construction materials.

However, she quickly reveals that this wasn’t a “before” picture at all: it’s actually an “after” photo — and there’s no framing for the deck to speak of. Where did the work disappear to?

“He came back a few days later, literally someone had disassembled the deck, and left all the beams there. Contractor works alone. There’s nobody else helping him on this project, someone just came and took apart everything that he built, including a four hundred to five hundred pound beam that they neatly laid, nothing is missing.”

It’s a bizarre situation: it’s not like someone came to disassemble her deck to pilfer the job site materials, which would presumably fetch a pretty penny if sold to another contractor as the cost of building hardware has skyrocketed since 2020.

She closes out her video by asking any folks on the platform if they have any idea as to who could have done this, noting that her sister’s house is in Rhode Island.

Viewers who saw Lizzie’s clip had varying opinions on what could be happening with her sister’s deck: some pointed out that the TikToker is a comedian and uploaded the video as a lark for some internet clout: “She’s a comedian and she’s not responding to any of the messages, so I think this is just Clickbait for engagement”

Another joked: “elf on the shelf,” while someone else seemed to find humor in the strange situation: “Low key that’s hilarious”

But there were folks who had some guesses as to who the culprit(s) could be: “My bet is on HOA or a really bold neighbor”

Someone else posed an intriguing question, “do you.. claim that on insurance?” they asked, wondering if this sort of construction tampering could be covered by a protection plan.

It seems that there are, indeed, insurance plans that do protect job sites from vandalism, so if it can be proven that a job site was vandalized, which, in this case, would presumably be pretty easy to do by asking one simple rhetorical question: why would a contractor take apart a deck they’re building for a client for the end goal of giving themselves more work to do?

Many other commenters simply expressed their interest in hearing any updates from Lizzie about the situation, hoping that TikTok’s almighty algorithm would lead them back to her account with new developments.

Thankfully, Lizzie did speak to the matter further in another clip where she believes the culprit behind the deck disassembly was found: “Our prevailing theory now is the people who delivered the wood that goes on top of the support, like the decking…we think it was those people.”

The TikToker then shows an apologetic text message sent by one of Lizzie’s neighbors who believes a “personal vendetta” was to blame, stating that while they wish they were paying closer attention to her property, they saw someone walk “into the driveway to a vehicle to get something” and they heard people working on the woman’s house.

And since we are in the era of the all-seeing/listening doorbell camera (well, not that all-seeing) and Lizzie’s sister had her home outfitted with one, she was able to hear evidence of the disassembly work in action, which the TikToker showcases in the clip.

Power tools reverberating on the exterior of the house were logged on the doorbell camera’s database: it’s clear that there was someone working on the deck prior to all of the wood/supplies being laid out on the lawn. She also pointed out that on that fateful Tuesday morning, there was someone in a fork lift captured on camera.

However, Lizzie pushes back against the idea of the deck being taken apart as some form of revenge against the contractor or her sister, stating: “We think maybe it was a third-party logistics company that thought they were also supposed to be uninstalling the deck or installing the new decking or something and they just got their orders mixed up.”

Her and her sister’s investigation didn’t end there, however: “We’re gonna check the wood to see if it’s the right order because it looked a little bit dark and like maybe not enough wood but we’re not deck people we don’t know.”

Lizzie also pushed back against another theory several people had in response to her first clip, that she was making the whole thing up for views.

Have you ever seen someone’s home improvement progress mysteriously upended by an unknown force?