Joe's Dad
I have a mate known as Joe. His dad is infamous for doing things differently.

There are three things that spring instantly to mind...

Landy
He had an old landrover, and for some reason was had a recurring issue with the wheel-studs becoming loose. One day Joe was asked to help change a tyre on one of the the landy's wheels, and noticed that his dad was attempting to do so with the wheel still attached to the vehicle... Joe sniggered and suggested that he took it off...

"Can't... welded them on last year." True to form, his dad had cracked out the trusty arc welder and welded the wheels to the hubs.

The blood thing
Joes dad had some sort of interesting blood complaint that resulted in him visiting the hospital weekly to have a bag of blood removed. I think I recall that the aim was to force the body to make fresh blood that had the desired qualities... (Maybe one of our in-house docs/medics can help with this one) ... Anyway.. Joes Dad had heard that blood is excellent for nourishing rose-beds, and had managed to obtain permission to take his own blood home with him.

Joe came home one day to be confronted with a foul-smelling and steamy bonfire. Apparently the rose beds had had enough blood, and now Joes's dad had built up an excess stock. Willing to dispose of it safely he'd decided to "incinerate it" and was dutifully placing bag after hissing bag of blood on the bonfire.

Home-Makeover Extreme Edition
These all start the same.... Joe came home oneday... and tried to walk into the house. Door wouldn't budge.... odd. He went round the side and went in through an alternative door. He was greeted by his grinning dad. "Look... I saw a DIY programme this morning where someone knocked a few walls though to join the living room, dining room and kitchen.... looks great doesn it?"

Joe surveyed the sagging ceiling and noticed the wet spot in the ceiling: A load-bearing wall... Under the bathroom. He'd taken out 2 meters of it.

After calling a couple of mates they'd got it shored back up, but the pipes never lined up correctly on the upper floors, and the bath no longer lines up with the tiles.


Joe's Dad is now banned form starting "projects" without family consultation.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 7:31, 3 replies)

Woke up this morning...
... 'twas bit dark, not quite up to speed yet, didn't want to wake up the missus. Forgot about last night's bathroom fun as I was reaching for the pump-topped soap container we have.. found the wrong container and proceeded to try and wash my face with the lube from the near-identical container that we had left on the sink..
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 7:14, Reply)

Not me, but some twunt before me in my house. but my house now and I will sort it, one day. maybe.
When we moved into our house, there was a full size door and frame at the back of our cupboard under the stairs, ooh thinks I, Narnia! I open it and do I find a lion? do i fuck, I find myself staring at the contents of one of our kitchen cupboards, and the side of our microwave. The 'door' is an old one, that wasn't removed when the new kitchen was built about 15 years ago.

Light switches.
The switch in our dining room turns the kitchen light on and off.
The switch in the kitchen turns the outside security lights on and off.
The switch in the hallway, next to the kitchen door controls the dining room.

To make matters a bit worse, in our shed (old portacabin), someone has installed sockets AND a fusebox, excellent thinks I, new workshop, Xbox room, escape from the missus place, or all of the above.
Get some bits in there, only to find that the same twunt that done the light switches had installed the electrics in the shed.
The frigging retard had somehow managed to take power from the security lights, so you'd only have power in the shed if the security lights had been activated.
Took nearly a week of wondering why the power kept going in the shed every 10 mins.

I fixed that with a ingenius device, called a bloody-great-long-extension-cord-out-of-the-bog-window, (device name copyrighted), still works a treat to this day.
(Mensa Reject has gone out, I'll be back on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 5:10, 4 replies)

This could go on for a while
My dad's a carpenter, he has been for longer than I've been alive and so I've encountered my fair share of injuries... not just mine.

Let's get my (embarrassing) tale of woe out the way first. I was drilling multiple holes in a brick wall, think the perforations on a stamp and you'll be on the right lines. If any of you have used a pneumatic drill you'll know they have a bit of a kick to them. I was happily drilling away while my dad was doing sod all but talk to my mum when the mighty drill bit caught on some inconspicuous bit of brick deep within the wall, pressing harder on the drill did bugger all but gradually move my head closer for the final kick. The drill slipped from my grasp and, with no electric braking to stop it, continued on its rotational trajectory until it struck an object to stop it. Unfortunately for me this object was the underside of my jaw. The impact split my chin open in a Y shape deep enough for it to be glued shut. To add insult to injury I had to lay down with my head upside down to let the nurse drip the glue into the wound all the while ignoring the intense ringing in my ears that hadn't dissipated on the ride to the hospital. I've still got the scar.

My father has had worse injuries in his days. In his time he has managed to slice his middle finger to the bone with an angle cutter (luckily he was using a grinding wheel because he couldn't find the cutting wheel, if he had found it he could've sliced his finger right off). The injury itself wasn't the funny part here, it was the recovery period which involved him wearing an elbow length plastic cast with a piece of metal extending out and over the hand with a mini sling to rest the injured finger in. As it was the middle finger plenty of people were feigning mock offence at my dad's constant rudeness.

Another time he managed to cut the tip off one finger, after getting that sorted out he sliced the tip off another one and then again once more. All of this happened within a week.

We may have had some injuries but there's never been a problem with the goods themselves, we just need to make sure we're intact afterwards.
(maca2kx, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 2:59, Reply)

I was once 'doing it myself'...
... with my headphones on and my mum had come in and left me a cup of tea!
(MJPerry was crude but clickable at, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 2:57, 3 replies)

Great-Granny
My Great-Grandmother was a tough old lady from Chesterfield. She died in about 1987 aged 96 and I remember meeting her and hearing all about my layabout Great-Grandad who left her for another woman and how she had to work hard all her life to provide for her children.

When she was 88 she decided that the living room in her bungalow needed re-wallpapering. Rather than get someone in to do it for her, or getting her son or my father or uncle to do it for her, she decided to do it herself. She got a stepladder, the wallpaper, and did three walls fine.

She was just finishing the last wall when the accident happened. She hadn't secured the ladder properly and she fell off and broke her leg... potentially a death sentence for a lady of 88. Apparently she crawled to the phone and called my grandfather who lived in Derby at the time, then whilst waiting for him to turn up drank whisky to keep the pain away.

She was in hospital for a while, recovered fine, and moved back into her bungalow.

A few days later my grandparents went to visit her. She was up the damned stepladder again, wallpapering the ceiling and steadfastly refused help or to stop.

That is dedication. Or stupidity. I'm not sure which.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 1:23, 1 reply)

Nice but dim
A few weeks ago I came over all environmentally conscious and green and decided it was time to change all the lightbulbs to CFL low voltage thingies.

I even dug out copies of the most recent electricity bill to see how much we were spending each month, the idea being that I would chortle with delight every time a subsequent bill arrived with a much lower amount on it. I planned to wave the bill under Mrs Spankengine's nose, shouting "See? SEE?!", and feel very smug.

So armed with a count of the number of light bulbs in the house, off I trotted to stock up on the future of electricity, metaphorically slapping myself on the back the entire journey.

There's one very important fact you need to know about these marvellous, more-expensive CFLs: they don't work with dimmer switches. And Chez Spankengine has just two light fixtures that don't have dimmers.

The other thing about them is that they only really save you anything if the light's left on for 15 minutes or more at a time. If you just use them for quick on and offs the life of the bulb is shortened (like the old fashioned ones they have a certain number of on/off cycles before they die). And the location of my CFL-friendly, dimmer-free light fixtures? Cupboard under the stairs and bathroom.

I think I'll save 1p a year, once I've paid off the cost of the bulb itself.

Note to tree huggers: I really was trying to save the planet!!
(Thomas_The_Spankengine, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 1:20, 4 replies)

cordless power drills
when the battery is low and you're not prepared for it, the cordless power drill can achieve stall-torque.

This is the time when your drill is no longer driving the bit into the material, it's when the bit digs deep and becomes embedded and the drill tries rotate the world around its drive axis instead. Which of course is ridiculous but your forearm doesn't know that when it gets snatched violently off to the anti-clockwise and your frenulum bone and antipasto bone separate as your coccyx node rotates around your gyroscope in reverse antimatter.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:44, 1 reply)

christmas before last...
my dad was talking a great deal about pruning the apple tree in our back garden, so i bought him one of these bad boys:

www.blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/Product-Details.aspx?ProductID=9867

we've passed a few happy saturday afternoons now, in the garden, taking branches off. it's utterly bloody brilliant. no disasters to speak of, just good, clean fun. i'm rarely happier than when dad says "apple tree? chainsaw scissors?"
(notjustahatrack peeling a sausage..., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:37, 3 replies)

The Appliance Of Science
Every year the village I used to live in had a raft race, and every year, I'd enter with some untested vaguely scientific entry.

Year one was Pollution. This was raft made from bamboo tied together and then a load of empty bottles and cans were laid into the spaces between the bamboo. The entire thing was then filled with expanding foam from spray cans. Over £100 worth. Oddly enough it actually floated but it floated 6 inches *below* the water.

Year 2 was Pollution 2. Same raft but this time with 10 sheets of thin polystyrene glued to it to give it more buoyancy. It also featured a 10ft long blow-up killer whale strapped to the front. The best addition was a chair or throne where I sat holding a Ghetto-Blaster that belted out Ride Of The Valkyrie as we paddled under the bridge.

Year 3 was a pub boat. It was actually a decent design being made from ladders with beer barrels tied to it. Quite streamlined. Unfortunately, some dickhead added a bloke from Newcastle to the team and the fat-fucker weighed 22 stone so we went nowhere fast. After the race, we weighed in the team members and I was the lightest at 14 stone. Total weight, not including raft, was over 60 stone.

Year 4 was another pub raft but this time powered by a couple of Royal Marines, the pub landlord, and me. Marines lost their paddles and then started fighting with each other.

Year 5 was another pub raft, this time powered by a bicycle strapped to the raft driving two bike wheels that had been bolted together with mild steel. Between the wheels were bolted planks of wood to make a kind of paddle wheel. We were in it to win it. Sadly we discovered that the torque applied to the paddle wheels just doesn't work with bolts and the wheel buckled under load. Should have welded to the fucker. Tide eventually carried us to the finish line.

On another note, we were disqualified every year on one pretext or another. This wasn't unusual as the judges were very strict and used arbitrary rules to determine whether a raft was legal or not. Other disqualifications have been:

"Taking it too seriously. Alnwick Fire Brigade"

"Raft members are too ugly"

"You won last year"

"Disqualified for coming first as the judge had bet a pint on the second raft"

Blatant cheating. Me. Twice. Once for laying a kilometre of garden twine at low tide and using this to pull the raft along, once for missing out half the course by carrying the raft over the headland. Bloody press photographers!

I never did get to do the ultimate cheat though. But I will one day. I came up with the idea of laying a load of garden hose under the river held down with long staples. Hose will be corked at one end and then hundreds of holes would be made in the hose that would snake backwards and forwards over about 10m X 10m.

Idea is to attach the hose to a cylinder of Co2 and wait for the rafts to pass over the hose. A simple twist of the valve and the water would be filled with millions of bubbles of C02 making the water about as dense as a heavy fart. Any raft entering this zone would plummet to the bottom of the river like a lead brick.

I was quite proud for working that out. Got the idea from a programme on the Bermuda Triangle where methane from the bottom of the sea was suggested as the reason why so many ships sank there.


I have too much time on my hands.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:35, 8 replies)

I'm joining the ranks of the incompetent...
...I am not a DIY God. If anything, I'm more along the lines of the DIY Antichrist.

To give you a small sampling of things I've done, in a few short years.

- I've mixed cement badly with some of this new-fangled quick-mix crap, and then accidentally used it as hairgel by getting some on my hand, and then running my hand back through my hair and not realising I'd just palmed a load of cement into my hair. Ruined my brothers hairclippers getting it out. He still hasn't forgiven me.

- Fallen through the loft floor/bedroom ceiling not once, not twice but three times. First time was when we had first moved into our house, and we didn't know that we weren't supposed to stand on the lighter coloured floorboards because we'd go right through them. The fucker who sold us the house didn't tell us this. Second time was a case of me thinking "Ah it'll be safe to stand there whilst working on hammering in some new floorboa- FUCKSOCKS!" and falling through onto my parents newly-installed hanging cupboards in their bedroom and half-ripping them off the wall. They weren't too happy about that and bollocked me after laughing at me for a good half hour.

The third time was a good 'un. I hate spiders. Our loft had been known to have spiders in it that were a fair size. I was up there repairing the hole left by incident number two, by doing a quick job of nailing some sort of sheet of hardboard or something (I don't know, I'm not a carpenter!) over where I'd fallen through. Anyway, mid-hammering, I see a spider advancing to me. So, having Rammstein playing at a fairly loud volume, and feeling manly, I hit the twunt with my hammer. I must have bollocksed up the shot somehow though, as the little fucker was still alive, albeit very concussed and missing the use of a few legs, so it was a sort of demented sidling spider. Which then took it into its concussed brain to run away. But messed up the running part and took a run at me. So I, being less manly now, scoot quickly out of its way, and promptly fall through the floor/ceiling yet again. This leads to...

- My dad stepping into the DIY Antichrist shoes for a temporary time. Whilst repairing the damage I'd done in the loft, somehow the old man knocks a massive box of videos, and I mean seriously massive, like a good sixty or so videos in one box, out of the attic. Straight down the hole and slightly to the left, so this box is now on a collision course heading straight down the stairs. I happen to be walking up the stairs at the point, listening to my iPod, so I'm unable to hear his shout of "Watch out!". About two seconds later, I'm hit in the head by a fast-flying massive, heavy box, and then to compound matters, a few seconds later, I'm hit in the back by a drill as my dad climbs out of the attic and accidentally kicks the electric drill out, which decides to go for a little jaunt via my back.

- I've sanded off my fingerprints on my right hand at one point, got a little distracted by my dad talking to me, whilst I was using a sander, and then suddenly noticed that I was feeling something new on my right hand. The feeling of not having any skin left on my fingertips. That was fun.

- Fallen off the garage roof whilst about to use a nailgun to nail up some wood in between the two levels of the roof. My dad was up on the roof with me, I passed him the nailgun so he could show me how it worked (I was young at the time), he put the nailgun up to the wood, pulled the trigger and sneezed at the same time. My dad tends to sneeze really loudly, almost like he's just lopped a limb off with a chainsaw and is screaming about it. All of this was happening about 6 inches away from my ears, which were sensitive, and I wasn't expecting it, and I kind of leapt up in surprise and then fell off the garage roof as it was sloped. Picked up a few bruises only, thankfully, from landing on the fence and then grass.

- I've also done the no-ventilation-whilst-gluing before. This was in a time when I hadn't sniffed glue or any solvents in two years, or done any drugs for about the same period of time. I can remember nothing of this incident after beginning gluing. My housemate (for I was at uni at the time) found me lying by the front door, which was open, laughing like an absolute looney at randomers on the street. I've also gotten a buzz off Dettol Mould and Mildew Remover. Not sure how.

I'm no longer allowed to partake in DIY after incidents like these. I miss DIY. God only knows what I'm gonna be like when I get my own house of my own and don't live at uni/parents any more and have to survive on my own.
(Ghost Atreides enjoying incontestable health benefits on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:13, 2 replies)

re: dyspraxic women
i read queen of cheesecakes post (3 below)...

Now it's hard to say things like this without seeming like bernard mannings more right wing cousin but i will try.

can someone expain why women think SUPERGLUE is the answer to all diy scenarios. i swear if the roof came off my house in a force 10 my missus would advocate a few dabs of SUPERGLUE.

Its patently obvious ther are only two things that superglue sticks - that hoover belt the gym bloke in the 80's ad was bouncing up and down on... and human flesh - which is specifically why the septic's invented it for field dressings in 'nam' (FYI the active ingredient in clingfilm was also a compound developed to make napalm stick to flesh)

this love affair ith SUPERGLUE has only calmed down since mrs spimf spotted an ad for 'no more nails' she honestly would advocate trying to stick a rhino to a moving train with the stuff. she even suggested throwing out my bloody hammer.
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:10, 3 replies)

Bricks all look the same from a distance....
The complete muppet who built my parents previous house didn't know what he was doing, he alledgedly learnt by watching the builders next door. Suffice to say that because bricks look pretty similar from 200yards he screwed up; my parents house ended up with external walls so soft that you needed a couple of 1/2" expanding bolts to support a hanging basket and internal walls that put most bank vaults to shame. My Dad decided to knock through from the bathroom to the toilet which with hindsight wasn't worth the effort. It took nearly a week to cut a door sized hole thanks to having to go to the doctors due to serious tennis elbow, burning out the switch on the angle grinder, burning through about a dozen angle grinder disks and having reshape a chisel that was so badly bastardised that the back of the handle started to shatter. In the end we called in a professional builder, who took best part of a day to remove the rest of it with a kango hammer.
(lankymike, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 0:08, Reply)

Over the years I've discovered a brilliant way to make money
Simply take a household appliance or self-assembly furniture and disassable it completely, carefully making note of where each screw belongs. Then put it back together again, with each screw carefully put back from whence it came.

Every time I've done this I've had at least three screws left over. If I'd bothered to do this more often and keep all the screws, I could open my own screw shop.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 23:51, 3 replies)

I am a dyspraxic woman
As such, I am not very good with the whole DIY thing. Indeed, the only thing I ever attempted to do was put up a shelf. It was wonky and collapsed almost immediately as I had nailed (lacking any screwdrivers) it into pure plaster.

So I'll tell you about my superglue disasters instead. I have superglued:
-all of my fingers together.
-the superglue dispenser to my rather expensive floor (this was actually connected to gluing my fingers together: you try getting the lid back on the bastard thing when all you have is a pair of mono-fingers).
-my finger to my lip (instinct dictates that if one gets something unpleasant and not higly toxic on one's finger, it's best to suck it off).
-my hand to the tap (having learned that sucking didn't work, I attempted rinsing).
-the legs of my jeans together.

Oh, and once the lawnmower broke, so I tried to mow the lawn with a kitchen knife. A blunt kitchen knife. My visions of appearing like a machete wielding bushranger faded fast, and I got bored after about a square foot.
( Queen of Cheesecake, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 23:30, 3 replies)

More of a DIY near death experience
My dad was helping a mate gut a room and the last thing left to do was to knock the light switch out of both sides of an adjoining wall. The matey was having a bit of trouble chiselling it out so he asked my dad if he would go round the other side to see if there was anything blocking it. Of course he couldn't so he decided to have a closer look. This coincided with his mate deciding what was really needed at this point was a hefty whack on the said chisel with a mallet. The next thing my old man knew he was sporting a lovely new chisel above his eyebrow.

Silly tart.
( Smithlick is often seen at the bottom of threads, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 23:13, Reply)

I'm something of a DIY God myself
I'm not afraid of flatpack, for a start, and I built the back garden myself. A patio, raised flower beds, decking, walls, fences, the whole 9 yards (it literally is, too). Big complicated stuff like that, no problem. However, when I first learned to use a roller, things went a little... wrong. I hadn't realised the problem of splashback and didn't believe in using dust sheets, so my carpet was nicely covered in teeny tiny little white paint spots.

I have a relative of a similiar DIY bent, and she's almost as good as me. Apart from the last time she tried to fit lino in the bathroom. She took out the old piece of lino to use as a template (after washing it, of course). She placed it down, drew round it, and then cut out the resulting piece of lino. She then tried to fit it in the bathroom, only to discover something had gone rather wrong. She'd put the template down the wrong way round, so now she has a nice piece of backwards lino she can do precisely bugger all with. Oh well, something else for me to fix...

Mind you, I'm not entirely scot free. When I was digging out the concrete so I could put down some proper foundations for the patio, my fork (don't ask) got caught on something. Something that wouldn't move, no matter how much I tried. So, as all blokes will do everywhere, I gave it a mighty shove. And then... **CRACK** water started spurting everywhere as a section of pipe went skywards. I'd taken out our water main. Whoops!
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 3 Apr 2008, 22:38, Reply)

Why you should never work alone...
As mentioned before, chainsaws and I have a long and colorful history together. So here's another one...

I had a house on one of the Finger Lakes in New York, an old pile of a house at the back of a very shallow, muddy bay that at one time had been an orchard. There were enormous willows there and a lot of smaller, lesser trees as well. The area around the house itself was clear, but the lot was a long narrow triangle that stretched along about 500 feet of shoreline to a point. Toward the pointed end was a side yard that had a few scraggly trees in it, a dense strip of brush along the roadside and a bit of brush along the lakeside- so it was a beautiful and fairly private little glade along the lake. We had a porch swing hung from a branch out there on one of the big willows, and I spent many an hour there with a book and a beer.

One day I realized that one of the skinny little maples there was about dead, so I decided I would take it down. It was only about eight inches in diameter, but about forty feet tall- a toothpick of a tree. It was far enough from the house that I felt safe in just dropping it without ropes. Within twenty minutes the tree was on the ground, and I was limbing it out.

One of the things they stressed over and over again in forestry school was that just because the tree was down didn't mean all was safe. But did I think about that? Hell no- I was cutting away, happy as can be, and cut through a branch that was wrapped around on itself. The end lashed out, carrying the bar of the saw with it right across my left knee.

I stood there for a moment, sickly realizing that I had just run a chainsaw through my own leg, and turned off the saw. Part of me wanted to freak out, as you do, but the logical part of my brain realized that it couldn't be that bad- I was still standing, so it hadn't done any real damage like cutting tendons. So I quashed the scream that was bubbling up and decided to put away the saw and the gas before I did anything else.

All was put away and I was very pointedly ignoring the trickling on my leg when I decided I was okay to look at the damage. I walked to the kitchen and unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down, and had a look.

I had basically torn a strip of skin about four inches long off of my leg just above the kneecap. It was seeping a bit, but once I cleaned it up it didn't look that bad. There was just one little problem- it was my left knee, and I had a car with a manual transmission.

So in true redneck fashion, I got out a roll of packing tape (no duct tape available) and wrapped it wound my knee, then drove myself to the doctor in the next village over.

All's well that ends well, right?

Like fuck.

The wound healed, but to get the stitches out meant taking time off from work, so my wife the nurse volunteered to take them out herself. She brought home a pair of those scissors with the little hook in the end and sat me in a rocking chair, then proceeded to dig into the fresh scar with the scissors to get the tip under the suture. She had the delicate touch of an iron worker as she jammed it into the healing wound, and I very nearly puked on her head.

"Oh for chrissake, hold still!" Nurse Mengele snapped at me. "Do you want these out or not?"

I'm of the opinion that her patients got better just to get away from her.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 3 Apr 2008, 22:37, 5 replies)

Making things is what I do
DIY, although not something I rush to do, is somewhat second nature to me. I make most things myself - I cook, invent recipes, garden, make people cards and presents (not the shit - oh, a home-made christmas card type stuff - things that are personal to you, are things you specifically like and are humorous) fix cupboards and shelves, make clothes, know how to weld large steel things etc etc.

All this leads to a certain state of mind. Like the little old lady in Goodness Gracious Me, why you need to get that when I can make it at home for free?! All I need is one smaaaall aubergine... It's not a cheapskate approach, it's just that when you know how something's done the markup on products is thrown into sharp relief. So there you are, pitched against the world and ready to make anything damnit!

So a couple of summers ago, I was at Glade festival. It was fantastic, a nice friendly place with biassed cross-section of society. There were lots of people in outlandish getups, and there were stalls where you could costume yourself similarly. It was at this point that an increasing number of chubby girls started walking past wearing those tiny, glittery, fluffy fairy wings.

"Gah! You, you're not aerodynamic! If you were a REAL fairy you wouldn't be able to fly with those pissy little bloody wings!!! I'm gonna make a REAL pair of wings that I'd be able to fly with!!?!"

I then collapsed from a punctuation overdose. The idea was lodged though. I would make fairy wings to scale, or at least as near to scale as I could. And so I did - of course they weren't actually to scale, the wire wings would've collapsed under their own weight and I wouldn't have been able to move anywhere, but they had roughly a six foot wingspan and I was satisfied. They also flapped nicely if I wiggled my shoulders back and forth.

Here I am in a cafe with them on. Spot the aubergine.


( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 22:22, 9 replies)

Super-Absorbent -- It's No Lie!
The spouse is fairly handy around the house, but even the best make mistakes every now and again.

One evening, a few days after he'd fixed the bathroom sink, I felt some water on the floor. A quick check of the area revealed water leaking from under the door of the sink cabinet and further inspection showed that he hadn't tightened everything as well as he'd thought.

So why hadn't we noticed for nearly three days?

The cabinet under the sink was where I stored my 'feminine hygiene products', as they say, and I had bought several boxes of them recently during a particularly good sale. They'd done their job admirably, absorbing almost all of the leaking water and leaving the cabinet relatively undamaged.

I keep those elsewhere now and make sure the husband has an extra go at tightening things before he declares a job complete.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 22:21, 1 reply)

Never help my dad mend the fence
Now I use the word fence, but it is more of a collection of rotten wood held together by an assortment of ivy, planks and extra nails/screws.

On one (not all that rare) occasion when my dad decided that the fence was in need of a repair, he requested my assistance. I made the mistake of agreeing to help; as is typical with father/son jobs, he took the lead and I did the passing/holding. Due to the fact that the fence could have been knocked over by a mouse with emphysema breathing on it, I was directed to the opposite side to support the piece of wood into which the nail was to be hammered. He started hammering a nail in no problem, however a problem was soon discovered- the nail was longer than the combined thickness of the wood, the nail penetrated both pieces then continued on its merry way into my hand. Swearing ensued, and that was the last time I ever helped him repair the 'fence'

Sorry for length- too long, causing unwanted penetration
(madsporkmurderer, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 21:51, 1 reply)

My Dad is shit at DIY
My dearest Daddykins does try, bless him. However, I should have realised that asking him to "look" at the pipe connecting the washing machine to the water supply meant he would use his hands. I moved into a new house last week and on the second day there, my Dad flooded the kitchen / diner because he'd forgotten to turn the water off first. It went inside my stereo, all over the kitchen units; everywhere. You could have had a swim in my kitchen.
My Dad has also done the following:
* fused my kettle 10 seconds after getting it out of the box
* smashed up my Mum's bathroom tiles because he dropped the drill on them whilst putting up shelves
* fused the entire house whilst decorating
* fallen out of the loft, broken the stepladder, falling on top of my little sister who was 14 at the time (he is not a small man, his size has been compared to Marlon Brando)
As a consequence, my mother will not let him so much as look at a drill or a screwdriver.
(SpongyMonkey is an honorary East Anglian on, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 21:32, Reply)

April self-fooling
The current ex has given me permission to tell his story from last Tuesday. He was supposed to be meeting me for dinner but rang to say he'd be a little late. This is not unusual as he has worse timekeeping than a troupe of deaf, geriatric showgirls with Parkinsons.

He phoned a little later: "er, I might be a bit longer than I thought".

He sounded cagey so, thoughts of my belated dinner dancing through my head, I demanded to know why.

He 'fessed. He'd been clearing the u-bend of the kitchen sink. Initially, he proudly informed me, it had all gone to plan. He had carefully placed a bucket underneath to catch all the water and swilled the scum and crud through by running the tap a little. He turned off the tap and gently placed a dainty tea cup underneath to catch the final drips. He then picked up the bucket... and poured the whole thing down the sink.

He says it took him a minute to work out where the water was leaking from.

This is a guy who is one of the smartest computer scientists I know. He makes robots for a living. It's a pity such skills do not guarantee common sense, but then common sense isn't all that common, is it?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 20:54, 10 replies)

Just don't start
If anyone lives in a Victorian house, just don't go there. Because of the huge rush to build everything in 1897, houses are not well made. People have not subsequently added to that.

We did a complete rennovation of our house over the last year and a half, just me and my other half as we didn't have enough money to pay other people to do it.

We started taking the woodchip off in the kitchen- the plaster started coming off

We started taking the plaster and lathes off- there's massive dry rot in the walls

We ended up having to remove the entire wall and rebuild it.

However, I am now a master craftsman in wall building.
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 20:39, 5 replies)

Tree
I suppose this is sort of DIY, well garden tree DIY.

When we moved to Warwickshire we had a house that had an L shaped garden with 7 or 8 good sized trees in it. The house was a newly built one, but we'd had to rent somewhere for a while as the assclown builders had somehow constructed the chimney in such a way that it collapsed just before we moved in.

Anyway, I digress. Something was wrong with one of the trees in the garden, it had some disease and was slowly shuffling off to Arboreal Heaven. The dad of my sisters friend was a tree surgeon and told us that it needed to be taken down (it was maybe 30ft high) and that he'd do it for a reasonable price.

My dad, terminally disinclined to spend money, decides to do it himself. This is a man who is to this day totally incapable of changing a lightbulb, and gets his 91 year old mother to iron his shirts.

One hot summers day (I was 10 or 11) he's out in the garden trying to start a small chainsaw he'd 'found' in a skip down the road. Weirdly it doesn't work so he takes an axe to the tree. Several hours of profuse sweating, swearing, smoking and drinking of coffee later he's finally got it to the point where its ready to come down.

The Old Man readies himself for the final push, heaves, veins bulging, language that would make a Catholic brothel keeper blush escaping in between puffs on a Silk Cut. The tree creaks, wobbles, and slowly falls... crushing a section of the fence. The Old Man is not best pleased by this, but hey at least its down. He leans (heavily, he's not a small fella) against another tree behind him... which shifts under the weight and starts to slowly fall over smacking hard into the relatively newly laid turf.

Silly father had cut down a totally healthy tree... and then lent heavily on the diseased one.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 20:25, 3 replies)

Love Handles
A woman at my work is always complaining how rubbish her hubby is at DIY but came home one day to find him standing on the landing beaming proudly. Their bedroom door had been in a sorry state so, as a surprise, he'd had been out, bought a new one and replaced it all by himself. At first she couldn't believe it (this was the man who had made a foot wide hole in the wall trying to put up a single picture hook). But he seemed to have done a bang up job this time. The door was standing ajar so she pushed and pulled it a bit to make sure it was firmly attached and was suitably amazed when it didn't fall off the hinges instead marvelling as it glided to and fro. Suddenly she had a thought and pulled it closed, sure that he would have put it on wonky and it would either stick or just bang off the frame, never to close again, but no, it shut perfectly with a click. She was absolutely flabbergasted. She congratulated him, thanked him and gave him a kiss.

With a beam of pride at the hubby she went to open the door again and found the handle wouldn't move. She looked at him and his face fell in utter heartbreak. She pushed down with all her might in case it was just a bit stiff but it wouldn't budge. She was just about to shout at him and ask how the bloody hell they were going to get into their bedroom when she was stuck by inspiration. She yanked the handle upwards and the door clicked open. He'd fitted them upside down.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Thu 3 Apr 2008, 20:05, 1 reply)

Yey - I have loads of these
I have loads of stories for the QOTW. YEY.

I am a DIY GOD. Well, I mean I am handy with a drill. I think it started off from playing with Lego and Mechano. Over the years it got bigger (flatpack furniture) then moved even bigger (fitted wardrobes, kitchen etc). At least once a month I get asked to help a mate or family member out and I have seen a few things.

But first a story about me.

Me and the then girlfriend moved into our first flat together and done what all sickly loved up first flat couples do – decided to “make it our own”.

For those who have never done that, it involves painting the “Apple White” to “Apricot White”. If you are finding it hard to tell the difference – its very easy.

THEY.ARE.THE.FUCKING.SAME.

Anyway, the next day we went off to Ikea (sorry to digress again, but, Satan himself designed that fucking hell hole, Satan’s spastic cousin designs the furniture) and stocked up on kitchenware, bedside tables, rugs, blah, blah, blah.
As we wondered the lighting section my girlfriend stopped dead in the aisle, looked up and made a strange cooing sound solely reserved for occasion of lust.
“Its soooo pretty” she said.
I followed her eyeline to be confronted with a (ahem!) mock bronze chandelier. Now I am not a particularly fashionable guy, I think Sarah Jessica Parker looks like Mick Jagger in shit drag, but I could not get my head round why anyone would want this pig ugly piece of junk anywhere near their house.
“oooh We must have it”
“Are you taking the piss, Mrs KMWIP”
“No, Its sooooooooooooooooooo pretty”
“It looks like something Del Boy would try and flog for a fiver”
“What do you know”
“Fair point – what do I know – well I know how to put it up and you don’t”
I folded arms and grinned smugly
“Yes I do”
“What……..HAHAHAHAHA – okay – you can buy it if you put it up”

It took about six hours to go through the checkout, but, we finally made it to the car and shot back to our new home. We immediatly started to construct, rearrange, move stuff back, move it again, slightly shift, put up, put down, put up again but at a different angle and then readjust. To my complete shock Mrs KMWIP managed to put the chandelier up. To my greater shock, up it stayed.

That night, after sharing a warm bath, we walked into the front room to try our new sofas. A bottle of champagne was opened and we kissed in that sickly, doughy way that you do when you first live together. Within a few minutes I was removing her dressing gown and caressing her body. After at least an hour of award winning foreplay (what – its my story) we were gently making love on the sofa.

I remember looking deeply in her eyes and thinking how lucky I am.


I required 5 stitches when the chandelier fell on my back. My spine was so bruised that I was unable to walk for a week. She thought that the Rawl plugs were little plastic sleeping bags for the screws so they wouldn’t bang about in the bag they were supplied in. She had carefully removed each one before screwing the screws into the half inch plaster ceiling.

The chandelier was returned to Ikea the very next week.

Very sorry for length and sp£ll1ng M1stake5
( KISS.ME.WHERE.I.POO Signed the sex offenders register on, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 20:04, 5 replies)

Mike
Now Mike seems like a good DIY dad's name. And it was.

Mike (aka dad) decided to completely strip the bathroom for all it was worth and start again, new tiles,lick of paint for the ceiling and (in celebration of the forthcoming 21st Century, he always was a bit behind bless him) a new power shower.

I was about 14 at the time, and often sat stropping the way only spotty 14 year olds do, in my room which happened to be next to the bathroom. Enter Mike the builder, ready for a day of gauging a trench in the wall to hold pipes for our new shower.

Cue me, merrily stropping away in my room.

Next enter hammer, spectacularly, through my wall. It slowly disappeared through taking much wall with it. 'Shit' utters Mike, as he looks through the hole in the wall from the bathroom and sees yours truly with an utter look of 'OMGWTF!!!111oneone!1'.

The new lack of wall angered Mike, so it was left there for about 3 months.

To make matters worse, whilst sitting on my bed, the new 'window' in the wall gave me a lovely* sight to whoever was on the loo. Or in the bath.

I won't even mention the smell.....


*god damn awful
(Stegosaurus Shaped Pencil Top, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 19:50, Reply)

locked in
Im converting the old barn opposite me into a house just now. I have got the upstairs floors in and recently put up all the partition walls and internal doors upstairs.
I had been sanding and treating the floorboards in the bedrooms. Its tedious stuff - sand, hoover up dust, apply varnish, wait for it to dry, sand, repeat for 3 more coats.... I just got on with it and let my mind wonder far and wide.

I was in one of the bedrooms merrily sanding away, and I came to the bit behind the door. I shoved the door shut and it snicked closed. In that millisecond of the echo fading away, I knew Id screwed up.

I have recently installed the doors.

I have not yet fitted the door handles.

I was confronted with a closed door with just a wee square hole where the handle would fit. No handle. No tools, nothing to force the mechanism. I was trapped in the room. The door opens in towards the interior of the room, and I had done a nice solid job of fitting the frame to the studding of the wall, so forcing it would require a big effort and would destroy the frame, door and probably a decent bit of the partition walls I had just fitted. It has lift-off visible hinges, but the door has to be open to lift it up.

ah.

The window.....
I live alone here and am quite isolated. Nearest neighbour is maybe 1/4 mile away and with the wind blowing, well outside shouting for help range. My dog was in the garden, but lacks Lassie-like skills in retreiving help. The road is access to my house and the neighbours only - no passing traffic to scream at.

damn.

The window... yes, it has a handle fitted and is big enough to fit through....
But im the equivelant of slightly over 1.5 storeys up and the ground below is rocky. Im no stuntman or paratrooper so dropping would have likely resulted in broken bones.
My van was parked maybe within leaping distance, but my chunky body landing on its flimsy wet roof from such a height would likely result in a badly dented van and broken bones.

"I need a rope" i thought. No rope present.
Inventory check....
electric sander with cable - hmmm possibly. Nope, too thin, too short.
broom. err?
me, fully clothed. now there is an idea -

Braced the broom handle diagonally across the window frame. Tied one sleeve of my fake AllBlacks rugby top to it and let the rest out the window. Hmmm not long enough. Trousers.... off came the shabby old shell-suit bottoms. One leg tied to the free sleeve and the other dropped. Hmm, that looks manageable.
I was commando under the trousers though, so am now sporting just a t-shirt and trainers. ssssssexy.

The isolation saved my dignity though. Only my dog was faced with the sight of my flabby, semi-naked self fearfully shuffling over a window ledge, turning round baring my hairy arse to the world and daintily decending the rope*

*Barely controlled slide.
(dave likes cheese, Thu 3 Apr 2008, 19:44, 3 replies)