Joe's Grandad... (cont from Joes Dad on page 2)
Joe's dad inherrited his Scary DIY logic from his own father.

Joe once recouted the final trip with is grandfather's car.. A thing of many botched repairs following his grandad's habit of driving into things.

Stopped in trafic mid-town, he got heavily shunted by a truck. Joe was fine, but a bit worried that his grandad's car was finally dead. He got out of the car and found a rather bewildered yet apologetic trucker looking at the car.. and more importantly the large amount of concrete that appeared to be surrounding the car.

Turns out that his grandad had become a dab-hand at filling his car's dents with quick-drying concrete and then Filling the pourous surface with poly-filler before spraying over it all.

Genius - with a touch of senility.
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 23:03, Reply)

useful feminine devices
The ages of 13 to 16 are a bit of a blur to me as I was smoking round about an 8th of skunk every two days or so, whilst attending one of the most sloaney private schools in the country and generally fucking things up.

My greatest achievement however, before I was packed off to boarding school for 6th form, was creating the Incredible Tampon Inserter for my final project in GCSE DT.

DT was one of my favourite classes cause I could sneak off, have a few spliffs and then spend a relaxing double lesson sanding random bits of wood I found and painting them pink. However my safe, balsa wood smelling haven was soon to be disrupted.

A few months before our DT exam we got a new teacher called Mrs. Angel who was a complete and utter cunt, and made it her mission to whip me into shape and force me to get an A so she would look good. I complied, by copying out IKEA instruction manuals and pretending I was going to make a bookshelf for my practical exam.

The day came, and honestly, I did think I was going to attempt to make a bookshelf! A shit one, I suspected, but a bookshelf none the less. However this was not to be. That morning I met up with some mates from the adjoining boys school and smoked some extremely powerful skunk, plus a huge hash blunt that turned out to have had a large percentage of opium in it.

I turned up to the four hour exam stoned out of my tiny head and starting to hallucinate a little bit. I felt great! I was gonna make the best fucking bookshelf the invigilator had ever seen.
Alas, I spent 2 hours doing what I had always done in lessons, and just sat there sanding a big block of wood (bout the same size and shape as four bricks), so one of the sides was slightly curved.

The half way point arrived and I finally noticed my teacher staring at me with an unprecedented look of fury in her face. I looked at what I had created and decided I must make SOMETHING, if not a bookshelf.

So, for the remaining two hours I attached (with duct tape, no wood glue for me, oh no) six, 4" by 2" posts to the top of the block of wood, all in a row. I then preceded to paint the base pink, and the posts red. It was a work of art, I just had to decide what it was. Then a stroke of genius came and I started silently laughing so hard that I almost cracked a rib.

The end of the exam came, and the invigilator man walked around asking everyone what they had made and looking at their plans etc. He came to me. "So young lady, this doesn't look like the bookshelf in your designs...."

"No. This just appeared in my mind and I had to make it Sir. My brain had no control over my hands, I think I was possessed with the spirit of Jesus, he was a carpenter too wasn't he?"

"Erm.......Ok...So what is this?"

"It's a tampon inserter"

"................"

"You balance a tampon on top of each little peg, then you sit on it and the tampon goes right in, easy!" "I painted the pegs red so it's harder to see the mess if your having a heavy flow day"

Cue the invigilator trying hard not to burst out laughing, and my teacher running over, grabbing my invention and shouting "GO TO MY OFFICE...NOW!!!".

I had never been in that much trouble, ever. Not even when I habitually wore a garter belt and stockings to netball lessons. Still, the only thing that was a disaster in my mind is that they confiscated the tampon inserter and I never got it back!!!


Apologies for width, I always had to use super plus tampax.
(little fawn, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 22:43, 10 replies)

Late late late
I read last week’s QOTW late yesterday and laughed a lot. But I was also slightly regretful that I didn’t have an amusing shit story to tell of my own. Oh, how I regret that now.

This morning, after I had dropped the kids off to the pool, one of them still appeared to be stuck to my arse. So I wiped, and looked (of course) and oh my god what my christ is that.

It was a fucking worm. A tapeworm. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. It’s about 3 inches long, with a sucker on the end that’s about the size of a smartie (a brown one, obviously). I’ve been having some tummy trouble recently but I didn’t suspect this.

The internet suggests that it’s a beef tapeworm, probably from eating uncooked meat. I live in the middle of one of the biggest cattle herds in the world. I also like eating rare steak, and even steak tartare on occasion. There may be some connection.

As soon as I finish work I am off to the doctor to get pumped full of drugs to kill the beast that has been living inside of me for god knows how long. Please forgive me for sharing, but I’m in something of a state of shock, and I can’t tell anyone except anonymous strangers on the internet. (Wouldn’t you take the piss out of someone who’s got another species living inside of their colon? Me too.)

Apparently most doctors in North America go through their career without seeing a tapeworm. I am fully expecting to be bent over a bed while every doctor in the place is invited to come and prod around in my unusual bum.

The worst bit? My (long-distance) girlfriend is coming to visit next week. I like cooking for her, but am terrified I am going to somehow infect her. Therefore, I’m probably going to wash my hands so thoroughly and repeatedly before I touch her that she’s going to think I think she's dirty, or that I have developed OCD.

If anyone wants I’ll take a photo of the worm and post it.

EDIT: Sorry, no photo. The doc sent the worm away for testing and wouldn't let me keep it. But if any more comes out, you'll all be the first to know...
(silencer, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 21:59, 11 replies)

DIY Potato Cannon
Last easter when I was but a young 17 year old, a couple of friends and I decided it was about time we made a potato cannon thing that we had seen on youtube.

After all the right parts were bought from B&Q we proceeded to take it to my friends house and build it.

After we spent a while building it (I say we..my friends are all aspiring engineering students, i'm going to do history, my input was standing around and pretending the main tubing was a giant penis).

The way that the cannon was to work was that we took apart one of those electric lighters and filled the tube with deodrant, then used the spark to egnight it, firing the potato.

However, we found that the bottom cap of the pipe just ekpt on blowing off as we couldnt find a way to secure it onto to main pipe so we used a bit of duct tape to secure it on.

After we fired this Red Dwarf style prop successfully, the launcher stopped working. As it was already filled with deodrant, the only thing that wasnt working was the lighter. Bollocks. The four of us crowded around the end of the launcher and in my eagerness to show that I could be useful, i clicked the lighter a couple of times.

What happened next was a blur. The end of the cannon thing blasted off with a hell of a lot of force, right into my friends upper leg...about 3 inches from his crotch. A lot of screaming and blood came about soon after.

Luckily, nothing on him was too badly damaged, although he still has a great big mark there to this day.

EDIT wow...i didnt actually realise how uneventful that story was...
(Foulkesy123 The one and only..., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 21:41, 1 reply)

True story.
My dad was a soldier in Northern Ireland during the worst of the troubles in the 1970s. It was obviously a pretty miserable time, not only for the locals but also for the squaddies, who couldn’t go into town when off duty for fear of abuse or physical violence.

So, the soldiers were mostly confined to barracks, and to prevent them going stir-crazy, the powers that be decided they needed to provide some entertainment for the men. What better than a squash court? This would keep the soldiers happy, while also providing them with exercise.

A local firm was contracted to build the new facility, but with one important proviso: as this was a military base, the army didn’t tell them what the building was actually for – in this case, the ultra-top-secret activity of playing squash. They just gave the company the measurements, and away they went.

The court was built post-haste, and was ready in no time – but unbeknownst to the army, the builders had applied some good old-fashioned common sense to the situation. Noticing that the design hadn’t included any windows, the builders had thoughtfully included some. Right on the main wall of the squash court, where you’re supposed to hit the ball.

Cue angry complaints from the army that the building was in no way suitable. The builders agree to take out the window, and come back to sort things out.

A couple more weeks pass, and soon the window is no more and a nice smooth wall is in its place. Upon inspecting the outside of the building, the top brass are far happier with how the building looks.

Unfortunately, they soon discovered that the builders had hoisted their concrete mixer into the squash court through the window. They’d then taken out the window, and concreted over the hole… and then realized that the concrete mixer was too big to fit through the court’s door. So they’d just left it there.

There are few suitable hazards to have in a squash court, and a concrete mixer isn’t one of them. The army contracted a different building company to pull the wall down and get the mixer out again.
(silencer, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 21:38, 2 replies)

Chase, do you want to go to Jason's to watch the finals on TV?
No, I'd much rather go down into the crawlspace and try to fix my leaky pipes, but you go along and have a good time.

In trying to tighten pipe A into pipe B, I had two pipewrenches (one on each pipe) and was turning them in opposite directions. When they stopped turning, I kept pushing/pulling, to get it "really, really tight". I pushed/pulled so hard that one wrench flew off the pipe and smacked me in the forehead. It was quite scary to be underneath an empty house, thinking "hmm...I'm about to pass out". Luckily, I didn't, and promptly left the plumbing for the next day.

Another time, I was replacing a hose spigot outside my house. I got angry, at a point in the process where there was just a pipe coming out of the house, with no spigot on. I was sitting facing the pipe, and I laid back and kicked the @#$@# thing as hard as I could. A stomping-type motion, not a punting-type motion. I was wearing sandals. The sandal somehow slid away, so I ended up hitting the pipe with the bare sole of my foot, which then proceeded to turn a nice purple color and stay that way for a week.

I have also made the white part of my eye bleed due to not wearing goggles while chopping wood. This winter I cut my thumb while working on the car, and didn't clean the oil/grease off of it well enough, so even though the cut has healed you can still see a black mark under the skin that will probably give me cancer and make me die someday.

But, on the plus side I have also installed a water softener, stripped my shed down to studs and rebuilt it, replaced one wall of my screened porch, built two fences, laid a few tile floors, done lots of electrical work, and changed my car's timing belt and brake rotors+pads, with no major problems.
(chase, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 21:17, 2 replies)

Painting
I knew a man years ago who was a painter. He did pretty good work and didn’t charge exorbitant fees, so he was pretty busy for a while- and then the economy got rather dodgy, so his work load dried up.

The local minister was a nice guy, and knowing Jimmy needed the work he got permission from the church board (or whatever they were called) to hire Jimmy to paint the church. Jimmy gratefully accepted the work and did the job in record time, so the church was again a beautiful gleaming white. The minister was so pleased with the work that he contacted other ministers in the area to recommend Jimmy, so suddenly he was busy again.

I knew Jimmy somewhat, and heard through the grapevine that he was cutting costs by thinning his paint down with water. I told him he shouldn’t do that, especially as it was essentially charity work, but he laughed at me and told me that God wouldn’t care- and if he did, he could paint the churches himself. As it really wasn’t my place to say anything, I let it go, though it bothered me a fair bit.

Apparently Jimmy got bolder and cut the paint further, until he may as well have been brushing milk on these buildings. Finally he was on his ladder, painting the steeple, when a wind blew and lightning hit the steeple and blew him off the ladder. He landed on the grass, bruised but otherwise intact, and realized that this was a not-so-subtle hint. He fell to his knees and cried out, “I’m sorry, God! What can I do to make it up to you?”

A booming voice from the heavens roared, “Repaint! And thin no more!”

(/coat)
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 20:41, 8 replies)

Paint explosion / Burning church
A friend of mine - let's call him Jacob for that is his name - is a master in the arts of DIY disasters. 2 memorable moments will stick with him forever, to be retold by any of his so called friends, including myself, for public amusement.
Disaster 1 struck when J. wanted to spray paint some scratches on his car. It was winter, and the cold paint would not stick on the cold car properly. The solution to this problem: Stick the can of paint into the oven, heat properly, retry. Unfortunately pressurized cans tend to burst when subjected to excessive heat. The can of white paint in this case exactly knew what was expected of it and thorougly exploded into a cloud of white spray paint, covering the interior of the oven and pretty much all else in the kitchen. If you have ever seen that one episode of Mr. Bean where he tries to redecorate his room with a can of paint and a fire cracker, you pretty much get the picture.

Disaster 2: J. works as a janitor at the local church. One day in summer, he was asked to remove a wasp's nest from the entrance of the church. Since the little fuckers wouldn't leave just like that, J. turned to increasingly aggressive measures, finally trying a small flame thrower / gas torch, which he pointed right into the entrance hole of the nest.
Things went as planned insofar as the wasps were pretty impressed / flamed to death.
Things also went completely unplanned, because in addition to the entrance of the nest, the entrance of the church also caught fire, which quickly spread on the bone dry wooden portal. Pure luck and the local fire brigade next door prevented a major disaster.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 20:20, Reply)

Beer+Shed =

In my defence, I was very drunk and it was raining. Work was generally interrupted by sniggering about the word "erections".

When all said and done though - When it's raining, it's too wet to fix and when it's dry, it's as good as anyone else's shed...
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 19:38, 6 replies)

100% on-topic posts are for Losers!
So I decided I didn't need any assistance with getting down to Bournemouth for my interview, I was going to Do It Myself!
(is there such a thing as tenuous points, i think ther should be...)
I got a bed and breakfast booked, costing 20 pounds
I went down on the train to Bournemouth, costing 26 pounds
2 hours later I was IN Bournemouth, and meandered my way to my bed and breakfast
I was in Bournemouth for an interview at the arts institute at 10am the next morning.
I treated myself a healthily greasy fish and chips, costing 2 pound 50.
I went to bed at a reasonable hour to be nice and rested for the interview.
I can’t sleep.
My horny drunken girlfriend is sending me texts, making me practically drunk on horn.
Tossing (steady now) and turning thinking about the interview I can't sleep till about 4am, and I get my sister's boyfriend to phone me the next morning to make sure I wake up.
I do anyway so that's fine.
I shower, have breakfast and sit down for the 10 minutes I have to spare.
I decide to read the letter Bournemouth sent me... maybe it'll be hiding the secret password that gives you instant access to the course!
'Dear Quibble, we would like to invite you to an interview at 10am on the 8th of April 2008....'

Shit.
It's the 4th...
(quibble, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 19:31, Reply)

I have no imagination tonight
"Right," said Fred, "Both of us together
One on each end and steady as we go."
Tried to shift it, couldn't even lift it
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea and

"Right," said Fred, "Give a shout for Charlie."
Up comes Charlie from the floor below.
After strainin', heavin' and complainin'
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea.

And Charlie had a think, and he thought we ought to take off all the handles
And the things wot held the candles.
But it did no good, well I never thought it would
"All right," said Fred, "Have to take the feet off
To get them feet off wouldn't take a mo."

Took its feet off, even took the seat off
Should have got us somewhere but no!
So Fred said, "Let's have a cuppa tea."
And we said, "right-o."

"Right," said Fred, "Have to take the door off
Need more space to shift the so-and-so."
Had bad twinges taking off the hinges
And it got us nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea and

"Right," said Fred, " Have to take the wall down,
That there wall is gonna have to go."
Took the wall down, even with it all down
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea.

And Charlie had a think, and he said, "Look, Fred,
I get a sort of feelin'
If we remove the ceilin'
With a rope or two we could drop the blighter through."

"All right," said Fred, climbing up a ladder
With his crowbar gave a mighty blow.
Was he in trouble, half a ton of rubble landed on the top of his dome.
So Charlie and me had another cuppa tea
And then we went home.
(Vic Flange, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 19:14, 8 replies)

Number in a series of....
...as many as i can think of.

I am crap at DIY.
My wife is great.
I try to help but always end up getting in the way and/or getting it wrong.

First important safety tip:
When laying fibreglass roof insulation, no matter how hot it gets, NEVER NEVER NEVER remove your shirt.
(MadBouncyDog Barking at the moon since, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 18:20, Reply)

Shears
When i was in junior school, so i must have been about 9 or 10, I was helping my mum cut down some bushes and trees in the garden. I'd done ever such a good job like the little labourer i was so i was just chopping the larger bits on the floor and chucking them in a bin bag. Now it was a lovely day so I saw it fit to do this in sandals.
My big toe did not think this was such a good idea when i chopped half way through it, i now have a nice big scar that stretches half way around my toe. The nurse at A&E scrubbed at it like no tomorrow to get it clean, I think thats probably the one and only time i've REALLY wanted to punch a woman in the face.
(jangaaaal shes lost control..., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 18:02, 1 reply)

Dentists and drills
My Dad, God rest him, was a dentist. You'd think that drilling a hole for a phone cable to run from the hall to the landing would be a piece of piss.

No. He acquired from a mate a 15 inch 10mm masonry bit, and set about making holes in the hall ceiling with abandon. What would he do was shove the bit in all the way, and then walk upstairs to see where it had come through. When it hadn't, he would then walk back downstairs and make another hole. He couldn't understand why the holes had soot pouring out.

My beloved, who can actually do DIY, caught him and told him he was drilling into the chimney breast. Then she said "Have you measured up?"

"No, why?"

At that point she took the drill off him, got a tape measure and put the hole spot on first go.

In his defence, he'd always lived in Forces houses, where you needed a form in triplicate to hang a picture.

Oh, and it cost £150 to have the ceiling replastered. 14 holes, and only one in the right place.

Length? 15 inches, like I said.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:45, 1 reply)

I'm pretty good at DIY
I think my biggest disaster was in B&Q. I knocked over two tins of paint in separate incidents, in the same visit. Both of them popped open and spilled. I made a grovelling apology after the first one. I delayed telling them about the second one until I was past the tills and in clear sight of the exit. I didn't go back to that branch.
( JimM, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:33, Reply)

Just come back from swimming...
There was a wonky shower at the baths and guess what was holding it all together.......duct tape!
( girlinthehole, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:22, 6 replies)

Okay, back to the actual DIY disasters...
My ex's father was a man who was parsimonious to a degree that would have embarrassed Jack Benny. He was also fairly smart and clever, had grown up in the Great Depression and WWII and was determined that he would do things himself as much as possible. Unfortunately, if he needed a part he wouldn't go out to buy one- he would improvise from what was at hand. The results:

-when he was mowing the lawn one day, the lawnmower shot a piece of gravel that shattered the light by the driveway. Rather than go out and get a new glass globe for it, he took a gallon pickle jar and washed it out and painted the inside white. It stayed that way for a good fifteen years.

-he had an old Buick station wagon, just like the one they drove on The Brady Bunch. It had the headlights with the little doors that closed down over them when not in use. Apparently the vacuum actuator stopped working on one side, so he measured the opening and cut a chunk of tree branch to fit. Remember "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex was forced to watch movies with his eyelids held open? It looked a lot like that.

-the water heater didn't really work properly, so the ex's mother would run out of hot water while running laundry. His answer? Put on the kettle and add the hot water to the machine as it was running.

-he had a Saab turbo that he loved and polished to a gleam. One day I looked under the hood and found that he had lost the cap to the brake fluid reservoir. He replaced it with the cap from a soda bottle.

-his wife drove a Chrysler station wagon for a few years. Apparently the dashboard lights didn't work because the fuse kept blowing, so he wrapped the fuse in foil from the pack of cigarettes he had in his pocket. The following day he came home to find the fire department there, putting out his wife's car.

-he had a thing about it being too quiet. Every room had a radio in it, hooked up to the light switch so that if you turned on the light you'd be comforted by the sounds of the Big Band era station he preferred. I was a little taken aback by this happening when I went to take a shit, but when I went out to the barn to get a saw and switched on the light and heard Tommy Dorsey coming from the milkhouse, I got creeped out.

And I won't even start on his substitutions in recipes. Suffice it to say that dinner at that house was always a culinary adventure...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:18, 3 replies)

Car DIY
I'm crap at DIY car repair.

No, really.

I bought a car once for £150. Took it for an MOT to see what was wrong with it, and, as predicted, it failed.

I had two choices here. I could buy the parts (for about £90) and drive the car to my mechanic friend, who would do the work for £50.

But no, I'm far too cheap for that. Instead, I bought the parts (one suspension arm, new front discs and pads, and a track rod end ball joint) and drove the car home, to fix myself.

The thing is with me that I underestimate the difficulty of jobs and vastly overestimate my own ability. Discs, pads, and track rod end went on fine. Suspension arm was a different matter.

I got the old one off easily enough. Would the new one go on? No. Turns out that rubber bushes are a lot harder when new. Getting the new one on would seem to require a gymnast with the strength of arnie.

I couldn't get the old one back on either. So, now unable to drive the car, I had to pay for a tow-truck to my mate's garage, who charged me more because I'm an idiot.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:15, Reply)

Someone Else's Disasters
I bought my flat off two French benders.

Don't believe the hype - gay men do NOT all have an innate sense of style and taste in home decor.

These fuckers must have watched a home improvement show and came away a 'paint technique' - paint a room in some dismal colour (sky blue, bright orange, etc) then stab the wall in regular intervals with a brush dipped liberally in a darker colour - with GLOSS.

Every-fucking-where.



The khantz
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:13, 2 replies)

My dad.
Not the best at DIY jobs. We live on a farm. In Ireland. He is pretty much what you imagine an old-time Irish Farmer to be like. Named Paddy, fairly stubborn, and not the brightest. The following is just a fraction of the many DIY disasters he has had:

Accidentally stepping on an upturned nail after working on building a shed. It went straight through the foot.

Crashing the tractor into a single standing tree only a few feet away from him,while trying to move some bales of hay.

Breaking the car windscreen when carrying a lamb in the passenger seat. It got panicky and head butted the windscreen. He ended up putting a crack in the replacement screen 2 weeks later.

Accidentally starting a large fire when burning some rubbish. Using copious amounts of petrol.

When about to work on breaking down a wall, he put a hole in the opposite sided one, after letting go of a sledgehammer mid-swing.

Another time, him and his brother wanted to build a fence for a field. It was to be approximately 100 yards long, and wasn’t going to take very long. So they decided to do it first thing in the morning.
They wake at about 9am.
Have the breakfast and are out at the field by about 10.
First post is put in, when a friend of my dad’s is walking by.
They go over and talk.
11.30, they go back to work.
Then their mother calls them and tells them to go down to the shops to get some meat for the dinner.
They’re back about 12. They then decide it’s best to wait until after dinner to get back to work on the fence.
2pm, they’re back out. Then another friend drives by
3.30, they get a call that some sheep have escaped a field and need to be put back.
By 5pm, it’s getting dark, so they decide to wait until the next day.

So out of a whole day’s work, to get a job that would take only a few hours to get done, they managed to get one singular post erected. It was another 4 days before they went back to building the fence.


He really is an endless source of amusement.
(Zigmund can't think of anything good., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:12, Reply)

DIY Prospects!
I've spent the last three years as a recruitment consultant, and hated every second.

I've tried everything to get out, even tried using another recruitment consultant. Nothing. Nada. Only good for sales, apparently.

So I started 'Doing It Myself'. I wrote letters, made 'phone calls, begged and pleaded. I applied for everything, and just when I thought I was never going to get anywhere and began accepting my fate...

I have today been offered a job! Marketing & Research manager for a website! More money! Better prospects! Job satisfaction!

(Sorry it's not on topic, I just had to tell someone!)
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:08, 11 replies)

In the new house :)
Where to start?

Moved into a new house a year ago and it had a few "things to fix!" as the estate agent put it.

The bathroom had no bath, only a shower cubicle, bog and sink. The bedroom next door had an on-suite shower room. I had back to back showers and no bath at all!

All the glosswork in the house had been tarted up with white emulsion paint as they couldn't be arsed with painting properly.

They had carpet in the garage. Big 1970's brown ugly shag pile with bits of crud stuck in it.

There were no less than 6 TV amplifiers bodged in around the house and more co-ax than you can imagine.

The original interior doors had been changed but instead of buying the really cheap but nice looking doors and handles that normal people would find tasteful, they went for the ugliest combination of curved fronted moulded doors with Georgian sticky out, bruise you to fu*k brass handles. The annoying thing is the good studff is the same price. To top this all off they painted them with emulsion paint GEERRRR!

Dull I know but I needed to get this off my chest. Some people should have their tool kits hidden!
(Trickweazel, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:57, Reply)

Fencing is dangerous!
One of the many renovation tasks on my seemingly infinite list of jobs in our new (to us) home was to remove the rather tatty and potentially lethal asbestos fence and replace it with a nice shiny modern fence. The old fence sheets are buried nearly a metre into the ground and after taking nearly half an hour to dig out one of the 40+ sheets I decided to go to the big boy's toy store and hire a mini-excavator. If you ever get the chance to use one, do it, they're great fun!

40 sheets, several huge tree roots and a small pile of old dairy machinery later, the fence was down, but not before I'd reversed over our cheap, temporary mail box in my first few minutes of random lever waggling. No problem, once I'd finished I nipped down to the local DIY warehouse and bought a replacement for about four quid. Half an hour later (including walking to and from the shop) the mail box was replaced.

Later that day Mrs SteamedCleaner needs to go out, so hops in the car and reverses down the driveway. Being the considerate person she is, she put in an extra special effort to avoid the shiny new mailbox and kept it in view in her side mirror. It only dawned on her that the strange screeching noise and slight resistance to her reversing was coming not from the mail box, but from my car, which was parked on the other side.

So the cheap mail box remains undamaged, but my car needed a new body panel and a respray.

I am not allowed to bring this incident up in any arguments as it is deemed unfair and unrepresentative (as is the time 2 months earlier when she reversed into a supporting column at the local petrol station).
( SteamedCleaner, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:41, Reply)

Well...
I'm leaving early today, as nobody has noticed me not doing any work this afternoon, so I might as well push my luck.

Going to fire up the BBQ at a mates for some DIY grilling, hope this goes well, although judging by most posts this week and last QOTW, I'm doomed to either burn my hair off, or to shit myself inside out.

*frowns*
( Cawl, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:30, Reply)

today in fact
i revieved a new DVD burner through the post and after fitting it in my PC and turning it back on etc it thought

"hang on i i forgot to check if there was a disk in the old drive?"

there was, arse
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:23, 6 replies)

My missus and her mob..
Whilst my family tend to the practical, my other half comes from entirely the other end of the spectrum. Odd, considering her mum's family were all farmers and her granddad ran a garage, but her mum is more likely to paint a shovle (don't ask) than dig with it and her dad thinks anything can be fixed with sellotape...

Aside from my beloved thinking that it was ok to keep putting air into a tyre that was running not just bald, but through the canvas and onto the wire and seriously considering putting a 42" plasma TV on a wire TV stand she had that was "pretty, but a bit wobbly as I put it together using a knife and could only find some of the screws", it is her dad that is the blinding source of comedy.

The thing is, he's useless, but he's very earnest - he spent 45 minutes reading the instructions on how to put a fan together before losing half the parts and handing it to me to "finish" (i.e. scrabble round the garden looking for the missing screws and put it together). He had a folding chair that didn't fold. For fifteen years. Until I pointed out that the arms were on the wrong way round - I had to fix it, as watching him try to use a screwdriver is just a case of waiting for the blood and trip to A&E...

He spent an entire day putting draught excluding tape around the front door. Fine, apart from the fact the door won't close properly due to the amount of foam in the door-jam and because he put it round the edge od the door-frame, not on the flat, it peels off when you open the door. Oh, and the letterbox he replaced works so well that the mail is left in a box on the doorstep....

But, his absolute piece de resistance was walking down the stairs, seeing a "useless" wire and, because he had some pliers to hand, cutting it away and pulling it out of the wall. Then wondering why the phone didn't work....

Then again, my best mate's wife used to wash the plug sockets and light switches with a wet cleaning sponge as "it brouht them up nice and white", so it's not just my family!
(Chance, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:22, Reply)

DIY legend part 2
Just remembered the time we were having a garage built and my dad, being the sort who follows the tradesmen around tutting and saying "are you sure you wantt o do it like that?" had decided that the builders hadn't stacked the windows properly when they'd been delivered.

My mum and I came back from shopping to find him standing up to his ankles in an icy cold bath. My mum just thought it was an attempt to cool down on a hot day, but I subsequently found out it was because he'd been wearing sandals when he'd been poking around on the building site and had guillottined every one of his toes when the windows that were happily stacked slipped due to his trying to move them to prove they weren't stacked right...

Then there is the time he decided to wrap lagging round his van's engine bay to deaden the sound, despite the fact it tended to absorb the oil that leaked out of the engine...he thought the guy flashing his lights and pointing was trying to overtake, so cue much swearing and flicking of V's. Until my dad saw the flames billowing out of the cooling slots... So he pulls over to the sound of flames crackling around the fuel line and empties the fire extinguisher into the bay, only to have it still be hot and threatening to burn. So, he figures he needs some sort of liquid to cool it...does he use the flat bottle of coke? Nope. The de-ionised water for car batteries? No. He uses anti-freeze. two litres of Ethyl-butyl-Combustable-blue-stuff onto smouldering wires and bubbling plastic. How he is still alive, I don't know....
(Chance, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:08, 3 replies)

Bought my first house last year
The house is something of fixer upper, the previous inhabitants having favoured pink, yellow and pastille shades of blue, as well as all the bathroom and kitchen being the original 1985 fittings and hideous.

So anyway, I ripped out the kitchen, cleaned up the unholy mess that was left and installed all the lovely new units from Ikea in just a couple of days. Laid a lovely new floor in the living room and just last weekend my plumber friend came over and we pulled out the revolting old pink bathroom suite and fitted a lovely sparkly white suite.

In all everything's going swimmingly so far, just need to put the floor down in the hall and paint the walls and the job's pretty much done.

So the disaster?

Mortgage with Northern Rock. Got a 110% mortgage on the place coz it was going for a steal and I knew for a fact I could increase the value by a fair bit by ploughing that extra back into it and then remortgage to drop my repayments. Now it looks like I'm stuck paying way more than I can afford for the next god knows how long coz it's almost impossible to remortgage at the moment....

Still, at least thee bathroom isn't pink anymore...
( BlueHaze Chutney. All good., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:05, 4 replies)

Mrs Greencloud
She's a whiz at cleaning, ace at nagging, she even cooks pretty well. The one thing I truly fear is her attemting DIY again.

Painting.
When nought but a young pair of frisky teens, we moved in together. The place needed some decorating etc. and with my technical savvy, natural aptitude for such and keen eye for detail we set forth. The problem came about when I'd been at work one Sunday. I went to the toilet not long after returning home and noticed some paint finger-marks on the bathroom sink.

Curious as to why a colour of paint I'd used a fortnight previously and not again since had suddenly appeared on the sink, I investigated further. She had began to paint a room with about a teacup-full of leftover paint (retained for touch-ups). She'd managed to spill / run / dribble most of that over the doorframe, skirting and lightswitch.
She is no longer allowed to paint without supervision.


Electrics.
Being a typical lazy bloke watching DVDs at home alone while she was at work, I was startled by a sudden flash. It appeared that a chinese stand-off between heavily armed papparazzo had come to a dramatic end. I pulled up my pants quickly and went to find the cause of the blinding blip. Before even fully ascending the stairs, I found it. There was an 18 inch teardrop shaped carbon-based mark on the wall above the socket where her hairdrier was plugged in.

I switched off the mains and returned to see what was wrong. That didn't take long either. The cable on the 'vanity gun' was almost completely severed, held together only by a few ml of plastic. She'd been using this thing immediately on exiting the bath, while still soaking wet. Every day.

When she got home, I showed her the offending article and admonished her with an informative yet stern lecture on electrical safety and the risks of electrocution and fire. I would obviously have to fix the thing for her. Upon retrieving my toolbox, I noticed that all but one of the fuses were gone (I had an unopened packet of 6 or so). She'd been changing the fuse on the hair-frier rather frequently lately as it was constantly going on the fritz.
More lecturing ensued and she is now disallowed from any electrical operation beyond the insertion and removal of plugs from sockets.


Drilling.
After all of the above, I dare not let her too close to powertools. I would have to be careful. I needed to drill a hole right through the exterior wall to run a cable to the shed. Fearful of 'blowing' the front off a brick upon emergence of the drillbit, I asked her assistance. Her simple task was to hold a piece of thick ply hard against the wall outside and shout very loud at me to stop once she felt the drillbit push through.

All went well, except I didn't hear her shout and stopped drilling only when I felt no more resistance. She related to me while I applied germolene and bandages that "the drill had come right through the wood, so when it stopped I tried to push it back through". I think the second degree burns on her palms helped teach her about the principles of friction.


Thankfully, now that we have little-cloud she has remained indoors while I've been pouring concrete, bricklaying and swinging a pick-axe around to landscaps the garden, I would hate to think what/who she could damage.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:05, 1 reply)

Disaster for my parents
When I was young, I, like most people, learned to associate certain senses with certain actions. Touching a hot object = recoil hand very quickly. "Just wait until your father gets home" = hide under bed, and so on. Around this time we had our boiler replaced.

My parents discovered the ramifications of the aforementioned process when, in a Chinese restaurant, some bloke in the kitchen started hammering away at something. Every time a certain 3 year old heard *BANG* it was quickly followed by "FUCK! FUCK!"
(Toucan - http://www.titmonday.com, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 16:01, 1 reply)