Learning Opportunity
I'm very cack handed and have absolutely no ability at DIY which is odd because my Dad is some sort of DIY guru but after reading these stories I think even I've learned 2 things:

1) Drugs or drink and DIY don't mix

2) Never lose your temper when putting something together, you never know what the results will be but will almost certainly be detrimental to the finished product

So cheers B3ta for teaching me this valuable life lesson.
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 11:53, 4 replies)

She Who Must Be Ignored
Has, horror of horrors, read this thread.

I am under strict instructions to relay how, in her words, I attepted to kill our first born son. To death, to coin a phrase.

Now, being a chronic book addict and packrat, I have accumulated a lot of books, so I need bookcases. When we moved in, the previous owner had left a sort of cupboardy thing wedged between wall and fireplace (and their DIY skills would fill a thread on there own, it took me two years to realise is had been bashed into place not actually attached to the wall in any way, but I digress). On top of this cupboard I slung up a couple of generic DIY store bookcases, which filled the gap nicely and make it look like I have money and had proper built in bookcases done by someone with skill.

All assembled with my normal speed and efficiency, except at some point one of the little sticky-out bits that the shelf rests on had gone AWOL. The cat underwent a body cavity check after the floor and furniture proved sticky-out bit free zones. And so, in the great tradition of laziness and improvisation, I just left it. After all, if you position the books right, everything balances, Ja?

Time Passes.

We breed. (Help help help I have to be responsible and stuff).

Junior grows at a speed unheard of except in science fiction. An appetite like a velociraptor and the energy to match. And what does he like to do? Climb. We ended up with more gates, locks and so forth than a fairly strict prison, but he still crawls for danger like a very large lemming in a romper suit.

Now, Daddy has been left in full command of Junior (ohshit). Quite rare, as naturally I am cack-handed at all things child-related. In fact it has been made quite clear that after the conception (all 2 glorious minutes of it, oops) my role is now chocolate provision, nappy removal services and heavy lifting.

Junior is crawling around with the speed and determination of a gundog on a scent on the search for weapons of baby destruction, but I'm ahead of him for once and the room is free of razor blades, venomous snakes and the like. Aahh, I can relax.

Next moment, clatter thump thud fwump fwumpfwumpfwumpfwumpWAAAAAAAH. Sherpa Junior has ascended the sofa, and attepted to climb the bookcase. That's right, the one with dodgy shelf. Which has tilted, raining books in a tsunami of tatty paperbacks, knocking him to the floor. Luckily the shelf itself missed him, but approximately fifty books didn't, thankfully all paperbacks.

He was not amused. Emergency issue of chocolate buttons was required.

SHE was very not amused.

I mended the shelf.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 11:25, 4 replies)

Electrified bathtub
Oh, how could I have forgotten about this?

I was living in a rather shitty Victorian 2-bedroom house at the time with a (Female) housemate. Me and another friend had spent the day installing a fetching stainless steel bathtub, and were sat downstairs enjoying a beer whilst the previously mentioned housemate went up for a bath.

All of a sudden, we heard a high-pitched scream from upstairs, and the poor woman came flying down the stairs, through the kitchen (stark naked), slipped on the tiles and banged her head on the table, then got up swearing to herself before muttering the immortal words...

"YOU FUCKING PAIR OF CUNTS! THE FUCKING BATH'S GOT LECCY IN IT!"

As it turns out, she had put one foot in the water and one hand on a tap and got a hefty zap.

It later turned out to be a grounding problem elsewhere in the house, so not really a disaster on our part. Didn't stop us pissing ourselves with laughter once we established that she was OK though.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 11:24, Reply)

I once repaired a transistor radio
Aged 7. (Me, not the radio)

By a process of trial and error, I discovered that one of the components (a capacitor, I later learned) was slack and that if I tied it to the battery with an elastic band the radio started working again.

Not a disaster at all, although it did eventually die, probably because the dry joint failed completely.

However, buoyed by my newly discovered skill with electronics, I subsequently went on to 'fix' a couple of other radios in the house. Only they weren't needing fixed, and my twiddlings with the little variable inductors etc meant that the IF was buggered up and they didn't receive any more, or at best had odd whistles and squeaks.

I wasn't too popular with my parents for this.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 11:06, Reply)

DIY Mains...
Hoya!

When I was around five or seven (if memory serves...), I was at my grandparents' and wanted to help them by installing an AC plug in the kitchen.

So, I got my grandfather's set of small screwdrivers (still remember them! :-D ) and properly DRILLED a nice pair of holes in the kitchen's wall! Both holes were of the same diameter (more or less; every work needs a certain tolerance...).
But.
They were just that.
Holes!

C'mon! HOW could I have done all the electrical wiring? I was a kid...
Mind you, I was keen on details. The kitchen's wall being orange (hey! This was a flat built during the 60s!), I put some red pen all around the holes where the plaster had fell off...

Nice and a great memory.

This post is dedicated to both my grands who are dead now.

Be funky

M A D
(MAD Life -The Best Antidote To Happiness, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 10:56, 1 reply)

Since it's Wednesday and this QOTW is progressing with all the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory...
I shall post a tale that is linked, albeit tenuously, to this week's question, but which could not be regarded as distastrous. unless you count the fact that the match in question resulted in a 2-2 draw, when Newcastle should really have won...

***********************************************

A few weeks ago, I took advantage of the fact that there was a Newcastle game on the telly, with a lunchtime kick off, and headed off to the pub to watch it with a mate. It wasn’t a heavy session, I was going to go and have 2-3 pints, then come straight home again – which I did, thinking it wouldn’t be exactly fair on the sweary one if I got utterly spakkered on a Saturday lunchtime. Sure enough and true to my word I was home again not long after 3:30.

However, as is usually the case when having just a couple of lunchtime drinks, a wave of sleepiness came over me. I don’t know why this happens – if I have just the one, I’m fine, and if I carry on drinking through the rest of the afternoon, I’m fine. But 2-3 pints makes me want to sleep for England. On this occasion, I tried to stay conscious, but the sweary one clocked that I was having trouble keeping my eyes open and suggested I have an hours kip. I readily agreed and headed off to the bedroom, asking her to wake me up later – the likelihood being that if she didn’t, I’d sleep for hours, which I didn’t want to do.

An hour and a half later she came and roused me (no, NOT like that), and asked if I’d like a cup of coffee. “Yesh pleashe” I mumbled, still half asleep, but hopeful that an industrial strength caffeine injection would put some life and vitality back into me. I lay there, still drifting in that delightful half asleep fashion, waiting for my steaming mug of hot coffee to wake me from my drowsy stupor. It’s worth mentioning at this point that the sweary one sometimes has a habit of starting something and then completely forgetting what it was she was doing in the first place – if she gets distracted by pretty lights, or sweary junior asks her something, then you can forget all hope of her completing a task within an allotted time frame - a fact she would agree with, I'm sure.

Half an hour later, having drifted in and out of consciousness in five minute cycles, I slung myself out of bed and stomped into the kitchen to make the fucker myself. Two mugs were set up, ready for the boiling of the kettle, so I completed the job, walked into the living room and handed Tourette’s her brew.

“Oh bugger”, she observed, “I came in here, saw that the rugby was getting exciting, and totally forgot what I was doing”…

I still love her to bits, though. But sometimes it’s a good job I’m blessed with an inordinate level of patience.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Wed 9 Apr 2008, 10:48, 11 replies)

I suck at DIY
For three reasons:
1. I'm astonishingly cack-handed.
2. Inanimate objects hate me. Bastards.
3. I have an evil temper.

So trying to put up a shelf was probably a bad idea. Here's how it went.
Mark holes on wall where I wish screws to go. Power drill has other ideas and promptly gouges out great chunks of brickwork. Stuff as much polyfilla into wall as possible.
Insert rawlplugs. Slightly worried by how much free space seesm to be around them. More Polyfilla.
Begin screwing brackets to wall. Goes well. Sort of.
One last screw to go in. Screw doesn't want to know. Electric screwdriver promptly shreds the head of the screw. Lose temper. Stomp downstairs to grab the biggest hammer I can find. Brutally pound screw into wall then hit it a few more times for good measure. Appply paint to cover scars on paintwork.
Spend next two years sleeping right under a largish bit of wood and a few kilos of cassettes, knowing shelf is mainly held up by surface tension and curiosity.
(Big D, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 10:08, 4 replies)

QOTW disasters
Inspired by this week's QOTW, I thought I'd try and fix a noisy extractor fan that ventilates one of the rooms here. Hoping I'd end up with a Laurel-and-Hardy-esque tale of slapstick and farce to share with the schadenfreude-loving QOTW masses, I set about repairing it. But to my utter dismay, I fixed it without any hilarious mishaps or painful injuries, so I have no story to post from that experience.

Length? I can't think of anything funny to put here.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 9:57, 17 replies)

Disasters? Nah, incidents.
I absent-mindedly used my teeth to strip the insulation from the incoming telephone wire. Cue a rather sharp pain, unforgettable from the roots of all my teeth.

Another time I was scraping the remnants of tile adhesive from my kitchen wall. I'd taken the liberty of removing all the power socket facia and wrapping the live wires in insulting tape. Except one... which I then scraped over with the metal tool. Cue moderate, almost enjoyable pain through most of my body.

Removed a willow tree from the garden (sad to see it go but really, should never have been planted so close to the house). Final root destruction involved trying every power tool in my arsenal. Attempting to demolish it with a drill, fitted with one of those spike and 'flat' wood bits I managed to slip and jam the spike into my thigh while the 'flat' wrapped up in my trousers creating an instant tournique.

Finally, if you lose a scalpel while cutting masking film, for goodness sake find it! and not by kneeling on it. Pulling 3cm of scalpel from behind your kneecap frankly sucks. I bled all the way to the nearest phone, phoned my gran and then fainted. More blood and then a trip to A+E.

Length? Swann Morton No. 11
(lord nose, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 9:02, Reply)

Bright spark
My dad has a few rental properties that he owns but there is one that he dosent have any more.....

A rew years back my parents were woken up one night with a phone call from the fire brigade to inform them that the x street flats were on fire.
Luckily the fire brigade got there quickly and put it out before the whole place was destroyed and everyone got out safley. However serious damage had been done to the rear flat.

Subsiquent investigations revealed that the fire started in a socket at the bottom of the stairs. It was an old house with matchwood and plaster walls so it didnt take much for it to go.

It turns out that the TWUNT of a tenant had decided that he needed a socket at the bottom of the stairs. Did he ask the landlord ? no. did he get an electrician to do the job ? no.
How hard can it be ? just 3 wires to run behind the skirting board to the stairs right?

It may have of been ok if not for the old missmatched wrong sized wires he had found. Correctly terminating the cables so they dont arc is also a fucking good idea.

The first my dad knew of this was when he got the fire report a few days later citing it as the cause. "What socket" he cried upon reading the report.

Next the insurance company refused to pay out as the socket hadnt been installed by a registered electrician. It took a lot of letters and an eventual admission by the former dickhead tenant before they stumped up the cash.

Of course the insurance dosent cover loss of income from the 2 flats( smoke damage to front flat). All this is just 3 months before my dad was due to retire. This stress took a serious toll on his health and he has never really been the same since.

Apologies for lack of humor but this was a disaster for our family with ongoing issues.
I can post some pics if anyone is interested
(welgar, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 8:59, 2 replies)

Sorry. No DIY Stories from me....
I had my handyman gland removed when I was a child and now I am unable to use any tools.

It's a genetic problem apparently.
(Gordon Shumway, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 7:26, Reply)

Digger disaster
Working in France, labouring in a mountain village during the off-season, a mate and I were working on a chalet for a retired RAF pilot. We had a smallish digger to excavate him a car park, and had borrowed a Toyota Hilux ute (like they tried to kill on Top Gear) to cart the spare digger buckets along to the building site.
We hooked the spare bucket up to the digger, with my mate driving the wee thing and me in the ute. Off I drove then...until being brought up short a split second later. My mate hadn't realised I was about to drive away and hadn't lifted the arm - ripping the tailgate of the ute clean off.
We looked at each other sheepishly, before deciding honesty was the best policy and confessing all to the ute's owner. The rest of the job went fine, but every time I saw that busted Hilux cruising around town I felt a pang of guilt.

Cherry popped...
(dhroadie, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 3:58, Reply)

My Mother... Bless Her...
Decided to buy, yep, you guessed it, an Ikea Flat-Pack cabinet.

So proud she was to assemble it all on her own without any help from me, that she called me down to look as she got it up from the floor, the frame assembled. So while I stand there, she goes to fit the first shelf.
She looks puzzled, examines the instructions while holding a peg, and looking at the side of the smooth cabinet. No Holes. She looks at me and asks me what I think, I look at the cabinet and comment that it looks like she's put the sides on upside down!
Sometimes I wondered where I knew all the words I knew. Now I know. It's from her.
( Alex Save a Tree, Eat a Beaver!, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 0:16, 1 reply)

I regularly do it myself
And I have a very powerful tool.

No apologies.
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Wed 9 Apr 2008, 0:00, 1 reply)

DIY disaster averted
Long ago before computers people used to have hobbies. Well allegedly so, my dad assure me this was the case.

He also told me how his friend used to have the unusual childhood hobby of bee keeping. My dad and his mate were round his house one day when his next door neighbour sticks his head over the fence

"excuse me young man, but I understand your good with bees. well there is a wasp's nest in my garage could you do something about it?"

well my dads mate lept at the chance. he rushed into action only to his eleven year old mind realizing that wasps are not bees. for a start they are more aggressive. 'well i better make some smoke to calm them down' thinks he. 'hmm what makes smoke?, well I have some matches here'

after the fire brigade had done their job, the neighbor thought well sod it I'm not having a 11 year old do my roof Ill get a professional to do it. the roofer came round and it was love at first sight. The neighbors wife and the roofer eloped to be as lovers, taking the money to start a new life leaving the roof unfinished.

for want of some tiles and timber a man lost his wife. hows that for a DIY disaster. As far as my dad knows his childhood friend still keeps bees.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 20:05, Reply)

DIY
Well, not mine - I've always been pretty handy, but my mate Richard...

He's a 40 year old solicitor. Very good at his job, earns an obscene amount (his wife earns more)and he has a flat in Baker Street (posh area of London to non-Brits). He's completely useless at the simplest tasks e.g. putting together a tv stand that comprised only 3 pieces and some screws was an impossibility for him, and after less than one minute of holding pieces at different angles, reversing them etc, the pieces were hurled at the wall accompanied by large amounts of swearing. His best was trying to fit an air conditioner.

Two years ago it was a very hot summer, so he bought an air-con. He lives in a listed building, so is not allowed to make a hole in the wall for the exhaust, plus the windows are sealed units. I was initially impressed when he told me that he had looked on the internet (him being a technophobe) and found a site that said a disused chimney could be used as an outlet for the hot exhaust air, but this soon waned as he related the rest of his story.

He said that he realised there might be some soot in the flue when he removed the wooden plate blanking it off, so had placed a tea towel "the size of a woman's handkerchief" on the carpet directly below. Also, since it was so hot, he had removed all of his clothes.

I'm sure you can picture the scene, as he vividly described it, when he removed the wooden cover and several sacks-worth of soot deposited themselves onto him. It took him 2 hours to clean up...and then comes the best bit: "well" he thinks "there can't be any more soot left up there, so I may as well carry on". So after inserting the exhaust hose up the chimney he switched on the air conditioner. This time the soot - assisted by the pressure of the exhaust - took about 4 hours to clean up. As an added bonus, a chimney sweep called at his neighbours flat the next day, so ther must have been a bit of a blowback for them too.

Length - yeah, overly long, but I can't be arsed.
(Fatbloke, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 19:55, 2 replies)

DIY Disaster
In my first flat bought a bunch of IKEA furniture. Mistake.

Despite having engineering genes going back as far as great-grandparents I'm useless with screwdrivers and tend to consider Stanley knives to exist solely for the purposes of cutting myself (by accident, rather than on purpose - am a mentalist, but not that bad).

Accordingly, thinketh a young Edmund, I'll have a shmoke and a couple of beers THEN I'll build 'em.

Yeah.

The chest of drawers despite a hypermanic building phase collapsed in a heap that I considered hilarious when I put something in them.

The wardrobe I ended up batoning (is that the word?) to the wall to give it some structural stability.

For many months afterwards my drawer clothes were in the wardrobe.

Not my finest hour.
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 19:30, 1 reply)

"Single phase won't kill you"
This was the immortal phrase my father in law uttered after being electrocuted.

I came home to find the FIL sitting on the sofa looking bemused.

We'd just finished redecorating the living room, and the last thing was the ceiling light. FIL offered to do it, as it was a bit tricky. He used be an electrician's mate in the steelworks, and he was absolutely top at woodturning, metalwork etc. What could go wrong?

He didn't bother turning off the lighting circuit. He was on a metal ladder. Wearing leather shoes. The shock threw him 6 feet, and if the sofa hadn't caught him he'd have snapped his neck on the windowsill.

Apparently, they tested single phase in the works by licking a finger and brushing the metal. If it nipped, it was live. Three phase, and the currents that ran the furnaces, you used the proper kit.

He lived another 5 years, and died of something else entirely.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 19:26, 2 replies)

Just remembered another one
A few years ago my ex and I bought a house, decided to splurge the profit from our previous house on a shiny new kitchen.

It was all done, plastered and tiled, and looked fucking ace, apart from the rubbish old plastic wall sockets just above the worktop.

So I went off to B&Q and bought some lovely new brushed stainless steel sockets.

Brought them home, unwrapped them, and carefully unscrewed one of the old ones from the wall. Pulling it slowly out, I saw that it was only a case of unscrewing 2* wires and screwing them into the new socket.

At this point, I guess you're all thinking that I started unscrewing one and gave myself a comedy electric shock. Nope! I killed the fuse at the consumer unit (just for the sockets, I needed the lights on) and removed one of the old sockets, fitted a new one, then screwed it all back together and turned the power back on.

Then I plugged the kettle in to make sure the sockets worked, which they did.

I continued in this fashion, killing the power and replacing the socket, then turning it back on and testing my work, until I got to the last socket, which I'd left to last as it was the awkward one, right underneath a glass-fronted wall unit full of glasses. This time, I forgot to kill the power again. All was going swimmingly, I'd unscrewed the socket, removed one of the wires, and was busily unscrewing the remaining wire, my head right underneath the wall unit, when my screwdriver simultaneously touched the wire I was unscrewing and the wire I'd already unscrewed.

There was a fucking huge bang, a gigantic spark right in front of my face and the lights went out. I of course nearly shit myself with fright, but unbelievably managed not to twat my head into the wall unit, which would have (a) hurt and (b) probably broken some of the glass therein.

It all ended okay, I went and reset the trip switch, killed the fuse for the sockets again and finished the job, but I had to go and get another screwdriver as I'd melted the blade of the one I started with. Lucky? I'd say so!

*possibly 3, I can't remember
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:46, 2 replies)

My uncle's not very good at DIY
Once he fitted a new tap in his downstairs bathroom.

Disappointingly, he didn't flood the room or spray himself and the walls with mains pressure water, or empty the hot water circuit or anything like that.

No, he turned the water off, removed the old tap, fitted the new tap, tightened it correctly and turned the water back on, all without any problems.

When he tested the new tap to make sure it worked properly though, he found that it had miraculously become live, and gave him a small electric shock every time he touched it.

So what did he do? He went and got my auntie to try the tap too, to see if she got a shock, of course!

She did... =)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:32, Reply)

Pan-galactic gargleblaster
I was a skint student when I turned 21 and couldn't afford a proper party. But I love dressing up and I love fit men in DJs, so I invited all of my loveliest and most beautiful friends round my house for a very sophisticated* black tie cocktail party in my parents' living room.

I had prepared pitchers of several mainstream-type cocktails, but I wanted to offer my guests something special too. Pan-galactic gargleblaster. For the uninitiated, the effect of a pan-galactic gargleblaster is supposed to be "like having your brains smashed out by a piece of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick". So I surmised that a pan-galactic gargleblaster should contain a lot of alcohol and a lot of lemon. This is what went in:

Vodka
Whisky
Brandy
Dark rum
Light rum
Lemon juice
Lemonade
Lots of slices of lemon floating ominously on top

I didn't feel as if my brains had been smashed out by a piece of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick, but I did feel as if my digestive system had been raped.

*May not have been particularly sophisticated, and may also have involved me in my long black evening dress quaffing mojitos whilst bouncing on an orange space hopper
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:31, 8 replies)

The bells, the bells
Last year it was decided that we would have a new bathroom suite. The one that was in was the original one from when the house was built in the early 70's. All went well until i tried to take the bath out. It disconnected fine, but i just couldn't budge it. It didn't help that the walls actually got slightly narrower going away from the bath, and it was a REALLY tight fit anyway.

Either it had been installed by Dwarf Ninja Plumbing Services (and Sons) or the walls were put up after it had been installed.

Time to hit the toolkit.

WD40 - didn't help, not even the second 'emergency' can

Duct Tape - wouldn't stick anywhere, as the bath was covered in WD40

The Saw - couldn't even make a start.

That is when i knew i had to use the final item i had in it- the DAD PHONE.

One quick dial later and he imparted the wise advice ' It'll be cast iron. You need to twat it as hard as you can with a sledgehammer to smash it'.

A few minutes later i had my sledgehammer in hand and took his advice......in a room roughly 8' x 6' i hit what was basically an upside down cast iron BELL as hard as i could.

DOOOOIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG

Holy shit - i was deaf. Not only that, but it hadn't even marked it!!!!

Still, there is a limit to how deaf you can be before any more makes no difference. I was nearly at the limit, so i hit it again...and again....and again.

Eventually it cracked, just before i did, and i was able to break it into small bits and take it down the scrapyard. I got about a fair few quid for it, as it weighed 18 stone . No wonder it never seemed to creak when you filled it with water.

Took 3 days before the ringing noise went.
(turtles head is touching cloth poked a dwarf on the forehead at, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:11, 2 replies)

Not Mine But My Dads'
This happened around 1985, in our little Lancashire Cottage, our carpets had been replaced, furniture re-upholstered, and all that was left was for a back-boiler to be put in behind our coal fire.

A plumber was duly engaged and came to do the work. After a couple of days, myself and Mum were ready for the switch-on, and after a few minutes of the virgin pump coming to life, drips of water began to drop from the ceiling of our split-level beamed living room.

The drips soon developed into a small stream of water running through a worrying looking crack in the plaster of the ceiling. Plumber worriedly turns off the pump, and almost immediately, a quarter of the ceiling came crashing down. Plumber looks red-faced and announces that he "must have forgotten to solder a pipe...." Off he goes to get his plastering gear in a fit of apologies.

By the time Dad gets home, Plumber has fixed the pipe, soldered it up and is busy plastering the hole in the ceiling. Mum and myself have cleaned up the best we can. All the furniture has been moved to the front half of the room.

The Plumber advises my Dad that if he was to find any loose floorboards then they need screwing, and not nailing down.

Of course, this goes into one of my Dads' ears and immediately out of the other one.

His work complete, the Plumber / Plasterer packs up and goes home, and my Dad is left to look for loose floorboards. He duly finds one upstairs, at the front of the house, directly above where all the furniture has been moved to. Hammer in hand, he proceeds to secure a floorboard, with a nail he happens to have with him.

A blue flash of light shoots across our little row of cottages, and the neighbours assume that a Thunderstorm is approaching. A burning smell alerts my Dad that perhaps not all is well with his handywork. Consequently he claws the nail out of the floorboard, and is hit in the face with a jet of hot water. Soon afterwards, another quarter of the ceiling upends itself on the now soaking furniture, directly underneath, which is covered already in plaster dust and other assorted crap found between floors of centuries-old cottages.

How he avoided certain death is beyond me, what he'd managed to do was not just pierce a water pipe, but then drive the nail into a mains electricity cable routed underneath the pipe......

First post, apologies for length and unexpected piercing.
(caescarna Hell's Roomba, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:06, Reply)

I love this b3ta QOTW
For the simple fact that due to everyone posting various drinking mixes I can now celebrate my Birthday in STYLE! :D

*EDIT*

Thanks to various B3ta members posting recipies for drink on here my birthday was simply amazing!
Although....my liver didnt seem to agree :(
(Kuja335, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:04, 1 reply)

Laurel & Hardy Style DIY
So I'm helping my pal Jez rehang some doors that have recently been dipped and stripped. All is going well, we make an afternoon of it, pausing after every completed door hanging to roll another spliff, and we're quite getting into it.

We come to the bathroom door, I'm holding it steady as Jez fixes the hinge screws, it all seems straight it looks like we have the right door in the right frame. A quick test to see the door hangs flush, we push the door closed, from the inside of the bathroom, and 'click'. It fits alright, but hold on a sec, did we forget to fix the handle on this inside? Yes, we did.

So there we are, stuck in the bathroom, with a sticky door, no handle to open it, and it's jammed so tight we can't even prise it open with a screwdriver.

After several failed attempts to exctricate ourselves from yet another fine mess, we are eventually rescued by Mrs Jez.

Fin.
(p0zitr0n - phunarmically charged particle, detected at, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 17:03, Reply)

homemade potion
does anyone remember when they used to make magic potions when they were youger? You know the type, the ones made with pretty much any liquid you could get hold of (fruit squash, tap water, pond water, etc). Well, this one relates to that.

My friend Joe and I were going through our 'George's Marvelous medicine' stage. We thought we could make 'potions' to help us do anything we wanted to do: Fly, become invisibble, run faster, grow.

One day we decided to create the ULTIMATE potion of all. Everyone would be jealous of us at school, we'd get Nobel prizes for our creation, we'd be so rich we'd be able to afford as many Power Ranger toys as we could possibly want!

We raided our parents cupboards for almost anything we could find: Water, Beer, Squash, mouthwash, a bit of toothpaste, some rain water from the bucket outside. I think we might have even puit some dregs of wine into it.

Instead of this potion being the bubbling green/blue mixture that we'd been hoping for, it was sort of murky grey with little bits (i assume to be the toothpaste) floating around in it.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover" said an enthusiastic me, "this potion will be our ticket to the Olympics and beyond". Getting two cups out, we filled our goblets with this magical creation and prepared ourselves for the huge transformation we were about to undergo.

I took a swig, Joe took a swig. "MMMMMM...yum" I said (secretly hating the taste). "yeah, this is sooo nice" said Joe (equally disguisted), "Lets try running to see if it has made us any faster!"

So off we ran, around the garden, faster than we'd ever ran before...or so we thought. We'd created a miricle, the elxir of life. Destiny awaited.

Then it happened. I threw up. Joe threw up. We both threw up. Again and again. He had to go home and I had to stay in bed for the rest of the day. My mum threw away the only remains of the glory potion.

That was my first and only foray into the wonderful world of DIY potions.
(Foulkesy123 The one and only..., Tue 8 Apr 2008, 16:57, 4 replies)

What's blue, sticky, and fucks old ladies?
A friend of mine intended to replace a pickup on one of his (really arse) guitars, but was unsure of how to wire it up. He left it to me, as I'd done a bit of guitar-DIY on some of my babies.

I had a wiring diagram to hand, unfortunately, I didn't have a soldering iron or any solder in my posession. Bugger.

I was able to fix it up however, applying my ingenuity to hold all in place. My friend is now doing the occasional pub gig, safe in the knowledge that his guitar is wired up good and proper.


With Blu-Tack.
(Lythium deals in lead, my friend., Tue 8 Apr 2008, 16:48, Reply)

Homemade Chilli Vodka aka "Liquid Mouth Death"
Back when I was a bit more innocent/ignorant I decided to make some Chilli Vodka.

I had several rather successful attempts of the "Put chilli in vodka, leave it 2-3 weeks, drink and be merry" type but then I decided to move on and create "uber" chilli vodka. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

Someone had told me the best chilli vodka had to mature for a year. "Right then, lets do this right" I thought striding into my local supermarket.
Quality brand of Vodka, Check.
A handful of large chilli's that could still fit in the bottle (so it would look good and big chilli's are mild, 1 year remember?), check.
No sense of impending doom and destruction, check.

So I put it all together and left it for a year.

Year over and out it comes. 1 bottle of browny/orange Vodka with a handful of large white chilli's. Yup that's ready.

Oh boy. That vodka was hard to drink. So very very very hot. We only managed 1/3 of the bottle before giving up, but not, it's not over yet. I then decided to make it stronger (I still don;t know why).

So I changed it to a new bottle and put Bird's Eye Chilli's in and then left it for another year!

1 shot of the stuff gave peopel hicups, made them drool like 3 months babies looking at page 3 of the Sun and (for one person) be noisily sick. and the next morning poos.... Ever wanted to use sandpaper to stop the pain of your burning poopchute?

Someone named it "Liquid Mouth Death" and it stuck.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Tue 8 Apr 2008, 16:10, 2 replies)