DIY Curry
Last night we made a DIY Curry. Did everything from scratch. We made it super spicy. Oooh it was a hot one. But beer cooled it down. Ahhh felt stuffed.

The disaster happened this afternoon. It took its revenge. I screamed in the toilets, and i just shat blood! :(
(Miggyman, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 15:48, 3 replies)

My dad, DIY legend.
Let's be clear, my dad knows how to make and fix stuff - for 40-odd years he was an engineer. He built his own cars, as a youngster and, in later life, has restored the odd classic or two. He is a dab hand with plumbing and electrical work and has even built a passable granite garden wall...

However, there are times that this seems to fail him and te profanity-ridden aftermath is often a sight to behold.

1) The kitchen lino.
It is a firmly held belief of my dad's that any substance, once poured on the floor, will "find it's own level". This included the bitumen he upended on the kitchen floor to hold the new lino down. The fact it came out of the three-gallon can in once piece and stood upright didn't seem to faze him. No, he could wait. It was only after twenty minutes that he decided the best thing to do would be to level it out - using the yard broom. We now have a kitchen floor that has a nasty dog-leg break akin to the longer holes at St Andrews. This is ignoring the fact he glued his slippers to the floor, stepped back, glued his socks to the floor and, in the process of removing himself glued his gloves and feet to the floor.

2) Plasterboard + dog +stepladder.
I don't understand why my usually sensible dad would choose to plasterboard the stairwell ceiling without shutting the (large) dog out of the way. Nor do I understand why he thought propping one end of the board up with a broom on a stepladder was a good idea. Nor, I'll admit, do I understand why he felt that covering the stepladder he was on, the bannister and everything below three feet in height in dust sheets was a good idea. I do know that, when the doorbell rang, the crash, yelps, barking and ensuing dust cloud that billowed out of the front door were worth the price of admission. Oh, and that you can comfortable turn a large labrador/alsation cross white with only one 6x4 sheet of plasterboard if it is smashed finely enough in the chaos.

There are more...most recently he sat in his van and watched my car roll down the drive and into a neighbours' car as he felt that having it parked with the handbrake on wasn't good for it and only realised he'd forgotten to put the brake back on when he reversed his van out of the way (it had been holding my car in place)...thanks dad.

Oddly enough, I wouldn't trust hiim to wire the Sky box to the TV, but I'd let him do my boiler....
(Chance, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 15:30, 3 replies)

My first rented house
on my first day in my new student house I went on the lash with a few friends. I got back home at stupid o'clock in the morning and yeast logic made me think my debit card PIN was my alarm code. After trying to throw stones at the box making the noise I went in and ripped the control box off the wall. Satisfied that this stoped the noise I went to bed.

It ended up costing me £150 to get the alarm replaced.
( CowJam, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 15:04, 3 replies)

This happened today...
The electrical items in the building in which I work are being safety checked today. That means that an electrician comes around with some kind of handset, presses some buttons, and then sticks green "Passed" stickers all over the place.

In the common room, there is a kettle. It's one of those kettles that has a cradle rather than a plug-in flex. It had used to sit perfectly in the cradle... until the electrician came to test it. It now doesn't. In fact, I reckon it's much less safe after its safety check than before.

The safety man has borked our kettle.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:57, 4 replies)

My dad's mate
This is the first time I have had a decent answer. Woo.

My dad's mate was doing some DIY and smacked his thumb with a hammer, properly hard and he was in agony for a couple of days. He showed my dad his thumb and my dad told him that the pain was being caused by the pressure of swelling under the nail and the best thing to do was relieve the pressure. How? By heating a needle and boring through the nail. Sounds sore but the guy was in agony so thought he'd give it a shot. That night he went home, found a needle and started boring. He tried it for a while but couldn't pierce through. Then an idiot lightbulb went of in his head. He wanted it done quickly so thought 'A drill!'. Genius. So he found his trusty Black and Decker and got the thinnest drillbit he could find. In preparation for some blood that he knew was coming, he filled a basin with water and put it under his hand. One quick blast and he would be fine. Just pierce the nail. One quick pull and done. So he did it. The drill pierced the nail as he wished, but also went on to pierce completely through his thumb. At which point he screamed, let go of the drill, which snapped the drillbit because it was so thin, the drill fell into the basin of water, which shorted all the electricity in the house leaving him in the dark with drill through his thumb. Nice.
(brain_blessed, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:46, 4 replies)

Not a disaster as such
But seeing as QOTW is often a haven for useful information...

We want to get a shower installed. Just an over-the-bath job, as our bathroom is nowhere near big enough to accommodate a seperate cubicle (bloody ex-council bathrooms - the other rooms are massive, but the bathroom is a bit like a large coffin with a window installed). I have had the unit for a couple of years, but so far, attempts to render it a useful item, instead of an item that lives in a box, have proved fruitless.

We asked a plumber once for a quote, and were told 'You need an electrician for that, mate'.

So we asked an electrician, to be told 'You want a plumber for that'.

So, any b3ta handy-types out there... which is it? 'Cos the 'professional tradesmen' fuckers around our way don't seem to know...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:46, 33 replies)

Working construction equipment is a delicate task
requiring skill, precision and oodles of experience. Those little tracked diggers are prime examples. Top-heavy, jerky, and light in comparison to what they can lift, you need a cowboy's trigger finger to twitch the hydraulics to just how you like them.

If, for example, you're digging a trench in someone's garden for a conservatory foundation, you need to extend the boom, angle the bucket back and get the arm about 20degrees from vertical, then drag the whole combination towards you. You need to lift the boom and curl the bucket as you pull the main arm towards you, so that you scrape a tender two inches from the lawn surface at a time. That way, you will expose any buried pipes or cables that you didn't know about. You do not attack the ground in voracious scoops like a divorcee with a tub of Ben 'n Jerry's.

Jumping into the cab and waggling the joysticks like an 8-year old playing Space Invaders is therefore NOT the way to do things. I, a sober serious child of the 80s, understand the finer points of joystick control and my Dad, a dinosaur of 70s pub game machines, does not. Which is why he's always the one ripping the gas main out for the whole street every time I take a five-minute break from the machine. The cry of "Fer facks sake, boy, we're on a deadline 'ere," inevitably preceeds "schkoop, schkoop, clonk, pfffssssst and "Oi son, I fink we've hit a snag." And I, as machinist, get the fucking blame every single fucking time.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:35, 2 replies)

You'll like this, it's dead original
My Guilty Pleasure is answering QOTW three weeks after it's been set!

*sides literally spilt*
*messy death soon follows*
(Bazongaloid, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:05, 4 replies)

This was slow to type ...
As I currently only have the use of one hand.

Chisels - don't you just love'em?
(Biff..., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 14:03, Reply)

My father and DIY part 2
Yep, in the manner of a chirpy Irish comedian; "there's more" *gestures audience closer while smiling inanely*

Power Showers

My father announced over breakfast that we absolutely had to have a power shower installed. This device would change our lives for the better immeasurably, judging from the manner in which he enthused about his latest project.

The look on my mother's face was a mixture of fear and trepidation. She knew how the next 24 hours would pan out.

Sure enough, within three hours my father had returned from the local Texas superstore (nee Marley, with its rows upon rows of tools, paint, curtain rails and tungsten tipped screws left untouched save for new corporate price labels) with a "Heatrae Power Shower" with more dials than Mr Spocks alarm clock.

Such an instrument would surely dispense warm water under pressure in ingenious ways, much to my father's delight. The Black & Decker was pulled out of the shed and the drilling started.

The Saturday actually went well, with only a very few utterances of "Shit!" and "You bastard!". Of course, he'd failed to take into account the difference of microns in the diameter of the copper pipes he was attempting to join but by teatime everything was installed. By jove it worked.

I remember standing under this device with all the enthusiasm of a French aristocrat meeting Msr Robespierre. However, it did indeed dispense warm water under pressure.

Six weeks later, my father wandered into the bathroom for his shower and I heard him whistle as the shower ran.

*BANG!*

I jumped with a start. The noise had come from the bathroom where my dad was soaked in water.

*SPARKS and general arcing noises*

I had to do something... This was my father after all.

"What the BLOODY hell... SHIT!" exlaimed my dad from underneath the charred plastic.

He'd been lucky. The wiring had caused the unit to explode quite spectacularly, judging by the sooty deposits on the tiles around the melted shower.

Undeterred, he had another unit installed within a week. So far as I know it's still working although I fear for the occupants of our old house sometimes.

Lack of Bedroom Co-ordination

Upon returning from a happily DIY free nine months in Cape Town, the PJM clan discovered that the family home had been rented out to students instead of the "Smart, business couple" the estate agent had promised us. As a result, Dad had all the moral justification he needed to embark on his latest home improvement blitzkrieg.

I returned home from school to find my mum looking shellshocked and making tea while my Dad was upstairs in the bedroom whistling in his usual off-key manner. What's wrong?

"Better go see your father" she replied with as much of a smirk as she dared.

I duly climbed the stairs and went to see what he was up to.

Oh my.

He'd chosen to paint the room with two walls in a shade I christened "Harem Purple" and the other two walls were finished in a fetching hue of "Battleship Grey". Thank fuck I didn't have to sleep in that room, only the First Lord of the Admiralty would feel at home there.

He'd reason for his colour madness though, for he'd gone and bought several wall units and wardrobes in a fashionable grey finish. These units are instrumental to the story however.

Three solid days of swearing, drilling, cursing and sweating later the wall units were fitted above the bed. However, an awful truth began to dawn...

Despite the wall units having a scant inch at either end space and thus for once my father's measurements proved accurate he'd neglected to remember something important. The units protruded from the wall by three feet. In doing so they also obscured three feet of bedroom window.

Nice one Dad.

Six months later, we had new double glazing fitted. The builders were instructed to build a three foot wide wall on the enge of my parents' bedroom window before a narrower window was itself installed.

Looking back from the end of the garden, our house was the only one in the street with a squint.

Water Softeners

For reasons unknown, Dad had another bright idea on his way home from work one evening. We needed a water softener.

Logic be damned! Despite living in a soft water area, a water softener was urgently required and I strongly suspect that a mineral tasting cup of tea might have been the catalyst here.

Returning home from school in the spring of 1987, I find my Dad kneeling in the hallway cupboard sportiing a pale stripe of arse-cleavage daintily revealed to the street. Bits of copper pipe everywhere and a large plastic box with a set of instructions left on top.

"SHIT!"

I idly picked up the printed document and read the front page:

"Warning. This water softener should only be installed by qualfied persons. Failure to observe this condition will invalidate your warranty"

"What the bloody hell..." *more off-key whistling*

I walked into the kitchen to see my mother ashen faced and descaling the kettle. Had she read the instructions? Yes. How much had this thing cost us? A couple of grand (in 1987!). Why? Dad's tea had been off colour of late.

"PJM!" came an irritated yell

"PJM! Come here when I call you!" I had roughtly 0.1 of a second to respond to the first plaintive yell apparently.

I handed over bits of copper elbow joints and lengths of wire.

"Shit!"

I found an excuse to disappear to see a friend and returned two hours later.

"Shit!"

Despite the water softener being sited in the hallway shoe cupboard, Dad had for some bizarre reason removed some of the floorboards on the landing and my parents bedroom.

24 hours without flushing or showering later, the water supply was deemed to be working. I took a sip of tap water from the sink.

It. Tasted. The. Fucking. Same.

That week I recall an awful lot of swearing when I returned from school and on the Friday was startled to note the presence of an unfamiliar face in the hallway cupboard.

Yep, he was the plumber.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:50, 1 reply)

Home tailoring
I don't wear a suit very often. A few times a year, for the odd meeting, presentation and the like, but most of the time it hangs in the cupboard.

Therefore, I was a tad annoyed when my fairly new (at the time) Pierre Cardin suit trousers developed a hole in the pocket, causing loose coins and keys etc to exit rapidly past my foot.

I was in a hotel somewhere when I discovered this, and it had one of those little sewing kits. So I got out the needle and thread and attempted to effect a repair. There's an expression in Scotland which accurately describes my proficiency at such tasks - 'like a coo wi a gun'.

The edges had frayed a bit so it was difficult to sew them together, but my mending did the job until I got home, whereupon I decided to do a rather more industrial strength job on it. So I got out my stapler, and put a few staples in to hold the two edges together, then finished off with a couple of strips of duct tape to stop the staples jabbing my fingers when I put my hand in my pocket, and to seal the inter-staple apertures.

So far this has been entirely successful, and even (surprisingly) survived dry cleaning.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:48, 9 replies)

I gave up on DIY...
...before even starting

I had a bad experience in D&T lessons at school. To fully appreciate this one though you have to consider firstly that my dad was a technology teacher, and very adept at carpentry, engineering, plumbing, metalwork, and DIY in general. You should also appreciate that he was *my* D&T teacher. So you could say there was alevel of expectation in lessons.

This expectation was not necessarily well met. In fact, beairing in mind that at the time my best friend sat next to me was organising a '50p to drop your trousers in Pete's dad's lesson' with the guy sat next to him it was a miracle any of us managed to pass our GCSE's.

So cue a morning of making some kind of thing out of wood. I have no recollection what it was, just that I had to use a variety of bench-mounted power tools. The big bench drill was used without incident, the milling machine and lathe were willing accomplices in my masterpiece. The belt sander, however, was somewhat less willing to behave itself.

The briefest summary of the incident might be that I was sanding one side of the object, pressing down on to the belt as it span round. Next thing I know, 2 things have happened;

1. The object in question had flown off at great speed into the girl-I-fancied's direction* and
2. there was a deep red streak going around the sanding belt as it span.

To this day I have a slightly flattened bone in my index finger. Sadly, my fingerprint grew back, as I initially thought my opportunity for some bond-villain-esque life of crime had arrived.

*now my memory of this is somewhat more specific than I think is reasonable, considering my otherwise shite memory. There was either pretty lady with a very atttractive bottom involved, or my imagination got carried away with itself (possibly due to bloodloss) and decided it liked what it had come up with more than the reality.
(OP, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:41, Reply)

DIY Tree House
This would prob have fit into last weeks QOTW as well, come to think of it.

I grew up in the Far East courtesy of the parents moving about and always wanted a tree house the likes of Enid Blyton's descriptions in her many books. Problem was that we mostly lived in the city without much greenery around us.

Fast forward to one time when we moved to a property with a sloped garden and a massive tree with spaced out branches that was perfect for said treehouse. So, father decides to indulge us with a treehouse, and sets about sketching lots of pictures, followed by a trip down to the timber yard. Back at the house, lots of sawing and hammering ensued, with lots of fatherly Man-grunts. Finally the work of art was unveiled, and the gangplank to lead up to the entrance was put in place.

My sister excitedly ran across and entered the tree house, followed by Timmy, our overweight retriever, who finding herself unable to squeeze past the entrance, poked her head through the tiny window on the side with both her paws on the sill. From here, everything settled into slow motion:

Timmy's paws slipped and she lurched herself through the tiny window where she got stuck and started to panic. Her hind legs flailing managed to kick the gangplank out of place. Her bulk then shifted the balance of the base of the treehouse, tilting at an angle because my wonderful father had only balanced the planks between the branches and forgotten to hammer them in to secure them.

So, dog half stuck in the house, and house is moving. My sister screams and tries to get out, house lurches onto its side. My sister is now stuck clinging to the other window for dear life. Her legs are dangling out of the door and you can see her cotton undies rapidly filling up with scared crap. My dad runs over, positions himself below her and tells her to let go as he will catch her.

She does, falls into his arms, smearing him with shit. Then Timmy the dog who is howling away, still dangling above them, decides to empty her bowels too. All over my father, who is cradling my sobbing sister. My mum runs over, grabs sister from dad, instructs him to recue dog and walks off in disgust. So dad has to try and recue dog, but finally the planks give way due to weight of dog and she comes crashing through. Dog falls on dad, dad goes under like a sack of potatoes.

Then the front of the treehouse falls out onto the both of them.

Luckily after a visit to A&E and the vets (after both of them had been hosed down) there was no damage apart from bruised ribs and a bruised manly ego.

We had a bonfire a few days later and we stayed playing indoors and never requested dad to build us anything again.

[EDIT: There was the doghouse...]

Apart from the doghouse which he built for said dog a while later, with a one way hinged door that opened inwards to keep out the tropical rains. Dog went in, turned around a few times and in the process shut the door on herself. Given that dog was fat, she couldn't really budge, and because the door opened inwards she was essentially stuck. Lots of howling and fouling later, dad set her free by prying the top of the dog house off.

Another bonfire. No more building.

EVER.
(Marmoset Bored bored bored of cnuting revision..., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:41, 4 replies)

Very unfit
Many years ago, before the kids were born obviously, I had the idea of making a MAME machine - I didn't realise that there was quite an 'underground movement' of people doing the same and thought I was quite original.

Anyway, the idea had been floating around my head for a few months, and one Saturday morning I thought "fuck it, I'm just going to make it today".

So I drive to the hardware shop, buy some large sheets of MDF and chipboard, nails etc... and get home. Went into the garage and started cutting out the shapes I wanted - I only had a jigsaw and a handsaw as tools (completely the wrong tools it would seem).

I made a frame out of lumps of 2x2 that I had, and these I cut by hand. After cutting the first few I realised I was getting hotter and hotter. T-Shirt comes off etc... but still by about the 4th bit (and let's remember this was only 2x2, it's not really that hard to cut through with a wood saw) I was all but ready to collapse.

Still, it was getting hotter and hotter, to the point where I thought to myself, "I'd better give up drinking and smoking", when I heard a shout of "Oi, don't you ever put the kettle on then?" from above.

I'd completely forgotten about the chap who I'd booked to come and hot-tar the garage roof.

All the while I was in there he was plastering steaming hot tar all over the show!

Never did give up the fags and booze.
(dchurch bah, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:36, Reply)

Sorry to the subsequent owners
My first house was a little 2-up 2-down terraced house which needed lots of decorating and general sorting out, and this was my first experience of DIY (at least without parents around to help). The decorating was easy and, feeling confident, I decided to have a go at plumbing, so I bought a new bathroom sink, sitting inside an antique-style cabinet.

Fitting the sink and the cabinet was easy-peasy, but when I came to connect up the pipes I found that they were a different size to the connections on the taps (probably imperial to metric difference).

First I tried swearing, but that didn't help. Then I ran out to B&Q (luckily only 500 m up the road) and got some fancy little push-fit connectors to join pipes of different sizes. But they leaked, so I bought some metal ones instead. They needed soldering, and I'd done metalwork at school, so I thought I could do this, but the only heat source I had was a camping stove. So I tried to solder these things together by waving a camping stove at them. The only thing I succeeded in doing was partially melting the plastic pipe taking waste water to the drain...

So I ran back to B&Q (the people there must know when you're having a DIY disaster as you keep going back, each time more sweaty and red-faced) and bought a huge tube of leak-o-stop or whatever it's called - it's some resiny stuff mean to temporarily block holes in pipes. I squirted the entire tube onto the joints, leaving walnut-sized growths of white resin around the pipes. But they didn't leak any more!

Luckily I could close the cabinet door and forget all about this abomination, but I know the people who bought that house off me must have laughed when they saw that crap job.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:33, Reply)

My Grandad....
Was ace at DIY back in the day and was widely regarded as the man to see if you wanted any oddjobs doing. Until about 10 years ago. Aged 73 at the time he was on the roof of his friends bungalow doing some retiling. His mate shouts up that there's a cup of tea in the kitchen. Grandad shout, 'Coming!' and promptly steps into fresh air.

Luckily, his friend had a lovely, lush and springy lawn so his injuries were fortunately fairly minimal for a gent of his age. He stopped the big jobs after that though, but can still be found in his natural habitat of flat-pack furniture and shelving.

He's ace, my Grandad.
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:23, Reply)

Dangling dad
My dad had hired a scaffolding ladder so he could paint something high up on the side of the house. We put it up in the morning, securing it with a rope, then had lunch. I was still eating when my mum called from the kitchen: "Ruddles, your dad's calling for you to go and help him with the scaffold." So I finished my sandwich, then sauntered outside to find the scaffolding tower leaning at 45 degrees, supported only by the rope, with my dad hanging off from about 2/3 the way up, dangling over a rose bush.

I quickly got the tower back upright, dad climbed down, completely white, looked me straight in the eyes and whispered "Don't tell your mother!".
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:22, Reply)

The loft's the limit
I’ve already mentioned that I don’t do DIY wherever possible. Again, as with parenting skills, I’m acutely aware of my limitations in this department.

However, even I would consider myself not be so much of a spaktard as the guy whose house fell down while he was doing a loft conversion. Why did it fall down, you ask? Well, it transpired that he wanted to save money and did the job himself, on the cheap. Wanting to maximise (how can you tell I work for the Government – I use words like fucking ‘maximise’) the space available in the loft, he decided to cut out the bits of wood that were jutting out into the loft space, in order to create a clearer path.

These bits of wood were, in fact, holding the roof up… A short time after he’d finished the job, the roof just gave way, and brought half the house with it. As this was a terraced house, the neighbours also had to be evacuated in case further structural damage took their properties along for the ride.

I wish I still had the linky to this story… I’m sure it was on the BBC website if anyone can be arsed to do a bit of a search. I don’t think it’ll work if you type in the criteria ‘stupid bugger whose house fell down’ though…
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:16, 2 replies)

Somewhat of a pearoast, but fuck it, it was the last DIY i've ever done
Long long ago in a rented flat far far away..... when I was with a mentalist highland bitch with whom I had mistaken lust for love.
Anyhoo, said mentalist was rather into, well not quite BDSM but shall we say kinky bondage with a few extras. She was rather more into it than me, as I regarded it somewhat of a kerfuffle on occasion. But as I was confusing lust with love and proceeded to fulfil all her desires to be tied up in various positions/places and spanked/fucked/what-evered. To give her fair dues, I was rather entranced by her kinky suggestions on most occasions.

This went on for a while.

Once day, having, I suspect, been reading too many Nancy Friday books or indeed the Readers Digest home improvements manual, she requested to be tied upside down over a door and thoroughly pleasured, i was rather/extremely dubious but encouraged by promised of unearthly delights partaken from her upside-down form I consented to help. This was an engineering challenge of the first water as she wasn’t by any means anorexic and I was thinking with the main brain only by this stage.

So I get her to do a handstand, protect her ankles with a towel, loop some tow rope over the door and her ankles, go round to the other side and hoist away. As she grunted aroused success on the other side i was stuck with a more practical problem, how did I attach the rope to prevent her falling on her head? I couldn’t attach it to the radiator, that would impede my re-entrance to the room and much anticipated unusual sex. So what to do? I failed around and spotted an old metal hoop on the bottom of the door, presumably to hold the door back or something (I know it was outside the room but perhaps someone had reversed the door in aeons past), so I looped the tow rope through the hoop and job done.

I stood back to admire my handiwork and to let the creative tension build on the other side of the door. Opening the handle I prepared to enter the room and my gf, only to have the door snatched from my hand as the silly bitch’s weight ripped the fucking door clean from the frame and wedged it firmly both on top of her and into the door frame.

There was a moment of dread calm as I rapidly achieved de-tumescence.

Jesus-Titty-Fucking-Christ, I’ve killed the stupid bitch I thought.

Until i heard her snarling lilt from under the door requesting in plain terms for me to get the fucking door off her sharpish you fucking twat.

Problem is i couldn’t.

Fucking thing wouldn’t budge, not a fucking inch, it was fucking wedged, now we’d only just moved in and there were no tools in the house, so i (luckly it was Saturday lunchtime) volunteered to go get a saw/crow bar and a new door, I’d be back in under an hour i said as i gallantly stepped on the door to get back into our room and get dressed.

This was met with a torrent of the single least lady like language i’ve ever heard from a woman. Ever!

I scarpered out, bought the tools/door and rescued her but a mere two hours later after several pints to calm an attack and a half of the giggles.

Freeing her and re-attaching the door was the last bit of DIY i have ever done. I haven't even touched a screw driver in 15 years.

What a hero.
( edz314 smelled the glove on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:15, 3 replies)

You only need 2 tools...
... WD40 and Duct tape.

If it moves and shouldn't use the duct tape.
If doesn't move and should use the WD40.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 13:07, 3 replies)

My Dad
Couple of quick stories:

He decided to add locks too all the opening windows.
The locks were 2 piece things. Piece 1 was a holder for a bolt. Piece 2 is where the bolt fixes. The idea is that you put the 1st piece on the window and the 2nd on the frame. The bolt paralell with the window so, when locked, you can;t open the window cos the bolt is there holding it in place.
He, ofc, put the 1st piece on the frame with the bolt facing the window.....
Result? You could open the windows when the bolt was lock or unlocked. Oh how we laughed.

He also (still) puts door hinges on the wrong way round.

He once painted a window shut then waiting for the paint to dry before trying to open it.

Doing some garden improvements he decided to attach some steps to the decking and he bought screws the same height as the step base to do it, discovering that the screws only managed to touch the decking and didn't actualy penertrate he decided to glue the steps on instead (lasted under a week)

and finaly, when building a shelving unit he decided to set it up in another room from where it was going because there was more space in that room, when done he realised that the shelves wouldn't fit through the door.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:48, 1 reply)

Under the floorboards
I re-layed my dining-room floor last summer. On the concrete, before the laminate went down, I wrote in big black marker letters, "HAVE YOU FOUND THE BODIES YET?"

I'm quite proud of that.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:37, 8 replies)

Home-made fancy dress
Fortunately for me, any furniture or painting DIY things I've done have turned out fine: the bookcases are still intact, the paint is a good colour and went only on the areas it was meant to, and plugs I have put together have (so far) managed not to electrocute me.

So, instead, I shall regale you with the tale of the time that the young BobFossil entered the under-10s fancy dress competition for the village fete.

I will freely admit that I was a precocious little bugger, with a highly advanced vocabulary, reading age and knowledge of culture, thanks to my academic parents. At the age of 6, I was especially fond of the opera "The Magic Flute" by Mozart. I wasn't yet aware of the masonic connotations prevalent in the plot and imagery, but it had a good story, some storming tunes, and a crazy man dressed as a bird: Papageno. The coolest of all semi-retarded support characters in a Mozart opera.

Yes, I decided to do the fancy dress competition dressed as Papageno (I did mention I was a precocious young pillock). I got a length of cloth from my mother to make a cloak, raided my feather collection (every time I saw a feather, I'd pick it up and keep it, so I had quite a few), and liberated some needle and thread from the sewing box. I was going to make a cloak of feathers, ensuring a win at the fete, and for my name to go down in legend as the coolest kid in the village! (Yes, I was a bit of a fantasist at that age).

I hadn't realized quite how tough and solid a feather is at the base, and my needle got stuck. I couldn't push it in or pull it out. Of course, the sensible thing at that point would have been to get a thimble. But no, I decided to force it through with my teeth. I bit down on the needle, pushed and with an audible *crack* the needle snapped. I couldn't see where the long bit had gone, and swallowed nervously at the anticipation of telling my mother that I'd managed to break one of her needles. Gah, there's something weird in my throat *swallow again*, ok it's cleared now. I wonder what that was?

You can see where this is going, can't you...

Yes, I'd swallowed two inches of pointy steel, which was even now heading towards my stomach. I told my mother, who (after calling me a stupid little twerp a few times) took me to A&E at Addenbrookes. After a 4 hour wait, I had an x-ray, where they pointed out the little sliver in my stomach, which was the needle. I had an appointment made for 3 days time for another x-ray, so they could see if the needle had passed out "naturally", or if they'd need to go in and get it. Fortunately it didn't show on the next x-ray, so it must have gone undetected in one of my turds.

But when I think about the potential sensation of a needle ripping into my bowels, or sticking into my anus from the inside...*eek*.
After that I stuck to dressing up as Frodo Baggins (old tunic top, no shoes, a dagger and a ring on a chain round my neck) or Gulliver (old tunic top, no shoes, holding a small model "Lilliputian" horse).
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:35, Reply)

B&Q kitchens
I have a long and chequered history with DIY... In fact as we speak my house is in dissarray whilst I'm slate tiling the ground floor.

Anyway, I think one of the worst was when I bought a kitchen from B&Q.

They confirmed the delivery, phoned several times before to confirm again and again. Including the night before the actual delivery date.

SO on "delivery day" I woke up and my mates and I ripped out the old kitchen. I mean totally gutted the whole kitchen, tiles off the wall sink out and even the plumbing cut back to just the stubs of copper pipes poking out the wall.

Imagine a room complete bare of everything, the only clue to it's use was 2 inches of copper tube poking out of the wall.

Now all I had to do was build my new kitchen....

It got to 5pm and still no kitchen. I phoned B&Q who told me their deliveries are up to 5:30pm. That time came and went.

I phoned again; "Where's my kitchen delivery?!" "What kitchen delivery? We have no record of a delivery to you today?".

Oh bugger.

By means only possible through B&Q they managed to totally not pick, load or try to delivery anything to me. Leaving me with absolutely no kitchen facilities whatsoever.

Even better it only took another 6 weeks to get the kitchen delivered.

The wife was not impressed. On the plus we had take-aways and microwave food for 6 weeks, although we had to wash the plates in the bath.


Lesson learnt... B&Q are the mother source of all DIY fuckups.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:34, 5 replies)

We'd taken a socket off the wall..
.. so there were two bare wires poking out.

We needed a cup of tea, so we made sure the bare wires were well-apart and turned the power back on.

Whilst drinking my tea, I bent down to inspect something below said bare (and now live) wires

Forgetting they were there, I stood up again and brushed against them with my head.

There was a big black mark on the wall tiles after that.
( teedyay, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:09, 4 replies)

Don't drink and DIY
Whilst drunk, we broke the lock on the bathroom door.

So, whilst drunk, we fixed it again.

All went well until we tried to close the door and found that we'd put the door handle back on the wrong way round: the sticking-sideways bit went away from the hinges instead of towards them. It stuck out beyond the edge of door, preventing us closing it.

My immediate reaction was "oh yeah - we've got to take the handle off again, close the door and then put it back on again".

I was wrong.
( teedyay, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:04, Reply)

QOTW
The week we had the Geek question I ended up reorganising my books so they were in alphabetical order.

Last week all I could think about was my bowel habits.

This week I'm now considering building my own bookcase.


B3ta thank you for changing my life on a weekly basis.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 12:02, Reply)

DIY b3ta
So the other day I was walking at lunchtime through a nearby park, and passed a picnic table. On top of the table was a small black thing, so I looked closer at it. This turned out to be a zipper pull:



I was going to throw it out, until I happened to turn it over in my hand:



Add some Mardi Gras beads, and:



Presto! Who needs Photoshop or Paint?
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 11:45, 15 replies)