refridgerator unit
"Sir the ceiling in this rented store is making noise" THIS IS A BAD THING!
My boss and myself show up at a vietnamese grocery store that is rented by one of the craziest bastards I have ever met, thats another story. The ceiling is indeed making noise as they had installed a 5 ton(10,000 pound) refridgerator unit on the roof without permits, consulting engineers, or even thinking of taking the old ones off! How fast can we drive to Home Depot for braces before the fucking ceiling caves in, I know its 15 miles and I don't remember any of it. I remember fucking off ceiling tiles down and bracing up roof beams in 120 degrees, as fast as I can. I think, and this is what my boss told me I measured and installed 16 4x8 beams in less than 4 hours. Saved the roof which had to be reengineered, welded, braced, and I recieved, 60 dollars for a days work.
I hated those fucking store assholes, their live fish, seaweed, fucking dried everything everywhere and crap attitude when I saved their whole store.
(starvinm1, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 8:03, Reply)

Never put your mobile down when doing DIY jobs
Like the time I was putting a TV cabinet together for my mother and couldn't find my phone.

The cabinet was fine, built magnificently and quickly, just in time for me to have a shower before the dinner I had reserved at a fancy restaurant for me and a lady friend - upon the completion of which I would be able to bring her back to my house for a nightcap and quite possibly some heavy-duty shagging.

Yes, it was all going to plan, for once, I thought, as I cracked open a beer in a quick celebratory finishing ceremony.

Mistake number 1: Building mobile phone into cabinet.

Mistake number 2: Forgetting to take my Sertraline.

Mistake number 3: Drinking alcohol whilst being in treatment for panic disorder, a condition which, in my case, is more prevalent when alcohol is present and I haven't taken my Sertraline. I was about to have a panic attack. A big one.

Upon exiting the shower, I hear the distinctive sound of my mobile - the electric guitar cover of Canon in D - at a somewhat muted volume.

"Ah!" thought I as I toweled off. "I must have left it in my work jeans!"

So I pull my jeans out of the linen basket, only to find that they are indeed bereft of mobile phones.

It was then that I suddenly remembered that I had put my mobile down whilst building the TV cabinet.

"Fucksocking buggernuggeting cuntbuckets" said I as I realized the extent of my folly.

The phone stopped ringing as I was pulling my tools back out of the toolbox.

Then started ringing again nearly straight afterwards. My lady at the time NEVER called more than once, she would just leave a scathing message.

It was at this point that the alcohol started to get into my system. Combined with the sudden and unexpected double-call, the two conspired to give me what can only be described as a massive hit of nausea and paranoia.

Good fucking god! Had something happened? Was she injured? It had to be fucking urgent if she was calling more than once! Jesus! Was she on fire? Had her car crashed? Had an ill-advised aircraft sloughed into her house?

My confused, addled mind accepted these terrifying, infeasible ideas as fact. My lady friend had caught fire whilst crashing a car into a plane! And now she was calling me to perhaps pass on her last words!

My brain, at that moment, was in more self-torment than that of the bastard offspring of a Pirate and a Viking who had gotten pissed good and tight and had accidentally done the horizontal mambo in a brothel in Thailand.

But one thing had burnt itself into my synapses through the hazy fog of chemical imbalance and hyperventilation. I had to get to my mobile. NOW.

I picked up a hammer, foregoing the screwdriver, and swung my mighty, misguided arm downwards.

Hardened Steel met fashionably finished matte black coated laminate chipboard at a velocity that far exceeded the recommended limits of safe hammer-cabinet interface.

The chipboard exploded most satisfactorily, a harsh, broken keening wail of terrified triumph tearing itself from my lips as I pulled back for another swing.

Again, steel met chipboard. Again, steel proved the victor. Great fissures and cracks appeared in the cabinet's sides as I hammered it into splintering submission, driven by a combination of adrenaline, paranoia and an increasing sense of disquiet. A lot of fucking disquiet.

At some point I chundered, spraying vomit onto everything whilst I continued to attack with my mighty hammer.

Finally, I stood victorious. The cabinet lay before me in at least twenty three pieces. In it's death throes it had painted almost every surface in the room in the peculiar sawdust-like detritus that chipboard emits when smashed with a hammer.

Thrusting my free hand into the sad pile of shattered IKEA and vomit, I pulled free my mobile, flipping it open and checking the baleful "You have 4 missed calls" message, accompanied by a "You have 1 new message".

They were all from my mother.

The terror ground to a halt. My lady friend was not, in fact, in trouble. I fought my pulse down, breathing slowly to try and calm down.

If any of you have ever had a panic attack, you'll know how draining they can be. Coming out of one is like digging your way out of a concrete grave with a butterknife.

Trembling and sweating, I checked my messagebox.

"REMEMBER TO TAKE PILLS U ALWAYS FORGET"

So it was that I turned up for dinner slightly late, having quickly cleaned up any evidence of there ever having been a cabinet in the living room and quickly showering again to get rid of the chunder-stench.

And I still managed to pull that night, though I got into so much shit the next day when my mother found her carpet a bit soggy.

Apologies for length, the panic attack only lasted about 4 minutes, but it felt a hell of a lot longer.
(DarkLite swallowed my entire undercarriage, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 4:24, 11 replies)

Not mine
But This Old House's gallery of Home Inspection Nightmares is a nice little collection of object lessons in the importance of thinking before you act.
(tellum0 is spelled with an 'o', Sun 6 Apr 2008, 23:38, Reply)

I learned DIY from necessity.
I had to decorate and furnish our whole house, as my ex had, shall we say, very little patience.

Wallpapering (even the patterned stuff that needs matching, oh yes!) painting, stripping paint, tiling, carpetting, furniture assembly, oh I could do it all.

I made the odd arse of thing, sure.... our bathroom tiles were like a row of broken teeth, but generally I was good.

We got a new kitchen in and as usual, I left the ex to decide what she wanted knowing it was going to be my job to put things together. Big black slate effect floor tiles? BOSH! Job done. The wall behind the cooker was my crowning achievement, a chequered black and white pattern of mini tiles, it looked great! "We" decided to tile halfway up the other walls and paint the rest. But there was a problem.

Either side of the windowsill, above the sink, the tiles had to be cut into an impossible shape. Every! Single! Time! I tried they would snap. An angle grinder was out, it shattered the tiles. Tile pinchers wouldn't work. The tile saw meant ages of arm-aching sawing before *tink*. AAAAAARGH *SMASH* *SMASH* *SMASH*. Cutting smaller tiles to fill in the gap was also out, the kitchen looked great and doing that would have meant a lifetime of being whinged at about it.

It would also have meant admitting defeat.

Box after box of tiles were destroyed. When I got kicked out about 6 months later, they were still there, staring out like cavities.

I often wonder if the guy she moved in ever had a crack at them. I hope he had as much fun as I did, the fat sweating tool.

Bit of bile there :)
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 22:45, 1 reply)

A few years back
the ex and I had had (yet another) fall-out which, as it so often did, saw me retreat to the spare room in a huff. She had stormed out and buggered off in the car and wnen she returned a couple of hours later, I was reading on the spare bed.

She opened the door, came in and gave me a strange look, then went out again. I was NOT speaking to her. I was undoubtedly in the right and would remain firmly in a huff until I got an apology.

She returned about a minute later with her prize.... in an unusual move, she had rushed out and bought a shelf.

It wasn't my bloody shelf. I am in a huff, I won't be putting any shelf up. No sirree bob.

She again gave me an overly theatrical evil glare and left the room, returning this time with my cordless drill. Tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, she then proceeded to reduce me to helpless fits of laughter with the worst piece of DIY I have ever seen.

If I remember rightly, the shelf never got put up that day.

Bad DIY has it's uses.....
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 22:03, Reply)

I decided one night that I would take all the strings off my guitar to save time before I bought new ones the next day.
I didn't realise the tension they produced was a vital part of the balance between the bridge unit and the head of the guitar\the truss rod. This, I think, was my undoing, but the temptation to pry was too great.

I twiddled a bit, but when I finally decided to take off my G string I was left holding my whammy bar and bridge unit in my right hand, nervously hoping I hadn't fucked everything up. Curiosity got the better of me, and I lessend the tension on each of the rest of the strings, to see what would happen. And oh, what a feeling. Little did I know it would cost me £60 to ever experience a similar setup again.
( Reid got it going on like Donkey Kong, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 20:48, 7 replies)

So I'm fitting my kitchen and it's plumbing time...
...(I'm *relatively* competent at this sort of thing.) I desperately want to get the sink taps and washing machine installed so we could wash some of the backlog of clothes that has built up - 3 month old baby? Time to install a new kitchen...

So I get most of the pipework guts in, taps working and all is well. As with all these things, though, I have hugely underestimated the time needed to complete the job, and I have an appointment with the Pub.

...So I reel in at about 2am, and think, "damn it, lets get the washing machine working". First stop, a few holes in the cabinets for wastepipe - hmm, they don't seem to line up with the pipework. Never mind it's more Carol Smillie than Handy Andy, lets add a few more...it's under the sink, after all.

Eventually, I can feed the washing machine pipes through, and hook everything up. A triumph. Now for testing. Stuff my dirty clothes into the washing machine and set to "on". It's now 3am, gosh, I hadn't realised how tired and pissed I am. Perhaps I should just have a little rest on the kitchen floor?

5am. Something is wrong. I awake, naked, in about an inch of soapy water. Mercifully, with all the powertools near by, I haven't fused myself.

...the wastepipe from my sink has a nozzle to attach a drain from an appliance. This nozzle is blocked with a bright red plastic disk which says "Remove before connecting appliance"
(Mousy Tongue ...Generally bemused by life..., Sun 6 Apr 2008, 19:58, 2 replies)

My first husband and I
were useless at DIY.
He was very much into the 1950's era - played slap double bass in a rockabilly band and loved the kitchen equipment of the 50's. So, when we moved to the US, we were able to buy a refrigerator from that era. It was ace, it was red and cool looking, but totally ate into our power bill.
So we decided to turn it into an entertainment center.
One night, after a few drinks, we started on it - erm, first husband, says I, that coil on the back you're attempting to take off has freon in it.
No problem, says he...........10 minutes later I'm on the phone with an electrician figuring out how dangerous the freon spraying around our apartment is.
10 minutes after that, the fridge is outside and the apartment is airing out nicely.

Ooooh, thinks hubby #1, let's spray paint it blue! So off we trot to the hardware store and pick up some cans of baby blue paint.
We open the doors, put the fan on to avoid getting fumed out and start spraying away merrily. The fridge looked FUCKING ACE!

Woke up the next morning and spent 3 days cleaning blue paint of every single surface.....floor.......ceiling........the cat was not too amused to be a delightful shade of baby blue.......
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 18:00, 1 reply)

Two minutes too late.
When I returned home from college a number of years ago I was greeted with a piece of wood laying outside the house, a trail of broken glass leading up to the front door and a very confused looking welshman with a bleeding nose sitting on the top of the stairs. Apparently, my dads work on the loft hadn't been a total success.

The kit he'd bought from homebase promised unparalleled ladder climbing luxury. Upon opening the hatch the ladder was supposed to descend from the heavens, gently touching down on the carpet. It all sounded faintly futuristic, like something you'd hope to find in a Barratts home.

In my dads overenthusiastic race to test this mechanism he had installed it somewhat cack-handedly. At the first try at using it the hatch got stuck and in his attempt to release the mechanism my dad had wrenched the panel off of the ceiling, dropped it down the stairs and then looked up as the ladder hit him full in the face with one of its rubber legs. If I had arrived only a couple of minutes earlier I could have witnessed this first hand.
(quicksort, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 17:25, Reply)

This is a tale of my surprisingly undeparted father.
My father had recently acquired himself a new hammer drill. As you need a firm grip on a hammer drill, this one came with a front grip. The grip attaches to the drill via a loop that you slip over the front of the drill then tighten. By an utterly appalling design feature, it is Very Easy to attach the grip to the chuck (the bit that spins) and not the body of the drill. It is also relevant to this story that the drill features a depth gauge in the form of a metal stick that you adjust and fix by tightening the grip handle.

As you may have guessed, my father attached the front grip securely to the chuck and not the body of the drill. He set the gauge to where he wanted then positioned himself and pulled the trigger.

The front grip moved with the chuck at a high speed. The handle leaped out of dad's hand and impacted solidly with the family jewels. Reflexively his left hand leapt to their defence, straight into the path of the high speed depth gauge which proceeded to tear two of his fingers apart. The right hand let go of the drill which then tumbled to the ground, smacking his leg and leaving a few nasty welts for good measure.

He hobbled into the kitchen to seek assistance from the wife who, upon seeing dad covered in blood and clutching his nads, assumed the worst and called an ambulance :)
( Ratsta, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 17:19, 4 replies)

I'm not THAT bad at DIY.....
though it does have to be said, I am not the best. But I know my limits! I know nothing about plumbing. Therefore, when our heating was less than amazing at staving off the harsh Scottish winter, it was decided that it was broken and a professional should be called. I'm no hero, and I can easily admit my own shortcomings in the home-heating department.

However.

Having a highly trained, fully qualified professional plumber arrive at your home and spend half an hour teaching you to light your fire properly is a humbling experience.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 16:53, Reply)

Ceiling
This is a story about the bit of DIY of which I am the most proud although the reason for doing it was the most embarrassing.

My Dad used to be a builder and decorator for a living, however any skills along those lines that could be passed from father to son went to my brother. I can scarcely saw in a straight line although I can manage flatpacks with little difficulty.

A month or so ago I decided to take a day or two off work to rub down and paint frame of my patio door. I also thought I would have a tidy-up in the loft as it had become filled with tons of rubbish.

I thought I would have a go at that first so first thing I went up into the loft and started climbing through the joists (see I know the right words) and timbers to get to the heart of the boxes. When I moved in I boarded most of the loft space, apart from about one square foot which was really inaccessible and no-one in their right mind would stand.

No-one, that is, apart from me. In climbing through the 3D maze of wood, I lost my footing and my leg plunged cleanly through the unboarded sqaure foot and straight into my bedroom.

So, the bit of DIY I am most proud of, is the square foot of plaster-board that I had to cut away and replace with an equally sized bit of MDF. Looks rubbish but it kept the cold out.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 16:25, 2 replies)

Paint
You know that old story where some dickhead starts paint a floor and ends up in the far corner of the room with the whole floor painted and he's unable to get out?


I was that dickhead.

But, being me, I had to make it worse. So I took my shoes and socks off and made a dash for the door reasoning that I could paint over my foot marks when the floor had dried. I also decided to run on the tips of my toes and use big strides to minimise the damage.

First stride, lands OK and the momentum swung me into my second stride which touched the floor and went into an immediate skid which ended up with me crashing into a wall, bouncing off, and rolling all over my freshly painted floor.

I'm a great ideas man but my implementation lets me down.....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 14:06, 7 replies)

Real DIY
A few years back I was going for a weekend away with my best mate and my now ex-girlfriend down in Brighton. The ex had a Nissan Micra which was fairly reliable but would occasionally be a little temperamental. Anyway, she was driving and me and my friend had started on the beers somewhere around Leatherhead. All of a sudden, in the cold wet and dark, the car shudders to a halt. We're near a service station, so we pile out and push it over so I can pop the bonnet and see what the problem is. "Aha!" I noticed. "The oil cap is missing. I wonder how we could fashion a new one?" So in my wisdom, I necked about 3/4s of a can of beer, ripped it in half, tapered the torn end into a point and hammered it into the engine block with a full can.

The car got us to and from Brighton after that. I fixed it with two cans of beer, I'm quite proud of that.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 14:00, Reply)

drill bits
just a bit of advice, don't leave a corded drill on the bed and then ask your son to give you a hand. He will inevitably trip on the cord and cause the drill to fall bit first into the back of your hand and require the removal of the broken drill bit with pliers.

Length? About 70mm, girth? About 4...

*cherry pop*
(kick_in_the_knackers If force isn't working you aren't using enough, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 13:55, Reply)

Repost from the letters page in Viz some time ago:
"to the person who owned my house in the early '80's, and cemented the old kitchen tiles in place before artexing over them. I hope you had as good an easter weekend as I did."
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 12:49, 1 reply)

Paint..
According to the decorators that our Landlords in Leeds sent round... (Avtar Properties anyone?)

If you paint over a leak with oil based paint, it fixes the leak. Voila.


I didn't believe him.
(earplugsdont _work and I'm fed up listening., Sun 6 Apr 2008, 12:29, 3 replies)

Lattice
My maternal grandfather was a builder and farmer, my paternal grandfather was a fitter and blacksmith. The practical bit seems to have skipped a generation in the male line though. Give Dad a paintbrush or roller and he'll do a wonderful job but anything else, not really a good idea. Got no idea of leverage, torque, pressure and that sort of thing. Example - sanding disk. Rubber backing disk, actual abrasive disk, biggish sheet metal washer, big screw holds it together, what's to go wrong? Well he put a new abrasive disk in and the thing disintegrated. Why? No sheet metal washer. "I didn't think it was necessary" says Dad. Er, Dad, the makers would not have put it there if it wasn't needed.

My own disasters have been pretty minor. I've got an inflated idea of my limitations but I've changed engine head gaskets, ground in exhaust valves and put new rings on a mower piston, honed brake cylinders and engines still ran and brakes still worked. Ask me to drill a hole in a particular spot and it might be a millimetre or two off though.

Bought a house in tropical Queensland, lovely old place, built about 1925, all good timber and a veranda out the front, partially enclosed by timber lattice, made from strips about two fingers wide. Someone had painted it nicely outside but inside it was peeling and blistered. Wore out an old B & D drill with sanding disk on it, then set about repainting. A b@stard of a job but the finished lattice would look great.

Yours truly has a bright idea. I'll be painting against the light and with white gloss over white undercoat and I won't be able to see where I've been. A hint of blue pigment in the undercoat will make the top coat appear whiter and I won't miss anything.

Of course I used too much pigment. The finished topcoat was patchy but palest blue and had to be done again. Big lattice panels take a long time to paint. You really don't want to paint them three times when you can do it twice.

The place had gorgeous skirting boards with ogive tops and matching architraves. Fretwork ventilators above the genuine 3-panel doors, a picture rail and really high ceilings. I scoured local lighting shops for fittings that were close to 1920-ish and got a vintage looking ceiling fan. Took the brass window latches off the 8-pane windows, cleaned off years of tarnish and paint splash, polished, lacquered and put them back on freshly painted windows. Lovely.

A few years later moved away, then when passing through called in on old neighbors. While I was there the third set of owners after me called in. So I used to own the place? Well, yes. Oh, we have been doing some work, come in for a look.

They'd ripped out out the lovely old skirting boards, the architraves and the picture rails and sheeted over the timber wall boards with featureless plasterboard. The 8-pane hinged windows that caught every stray breeze were gone, replaced by sliding aluminium framed panes that caught nothing. The interior looked like it had been built the week before.

That's a DIY disaster.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 12:19, 3 replies)

Just do it your damn self...
The love of my life is not a DIY man atall...

A cupboard door fell off in the kitchen, its now held on by huge brackets fitted to the *outside* of the door...it doesent even close. Apparently this isnt a problem tho, and three years later i still bash my head on the door nearly every time i go in the cupboard below as it swings freely on its huge totally unsuitable brackets.

Next comes the loose tiles in the kitchen. To this day they are somewhat wonky and held together with copius amounts of sealant via the method of layering this on the outside of the tiles. Oh well at least they arent falling off anymore....

He helpfully fixed the back gate when it fell off...as in *fixed* in place, immovable without taking it off completely to go in and out. When the fence panel blew out last winter, this became our new and permanent access.

So... eventually some other minor DIY is required. The tap in the kitchen needs a washer replacing. After much swearing and wrenching at the tap I get the helpful answer of, it wont come off so I can change the washer..so its your f***ing problem. Ahh bless him...

*at this point i turned off the water..as this was something he had forgotten to do*

One helpful DIY book (which we have had since the day we moved in - a lovely moving-in pressie from concerned parents) and 5 mins later I had indeed done it my f***ing self.

Now of course, I have managed to volunteer myself as the designated DIYer for all future repairs........damn.

Length? Well that explains why I still keep him around. I sure don't love him for his handyman skills :D

Cats xxx
( catswhiskers the cats mother, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 12:07, Reply)

I'm not sure I'd want to do it, myself.

(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 7:33, 7 replies)

Rogers Wife
There's only a tenuous link to DIY but it's a great story. Had me crying with laughter in the pub when I heard it.

Roger's a mate of mine. A thoroughly decent chap but he had been married to a total nutcase. The marriage eventually ends and nutcase moves to a village about 5 miles away and Roger settles down to a life of peace and quiet.

Ah, but life's not like that is it? Especially when your ex is a nutcase. So every time nutcase went down to the local pub and filled up on "Olde Knickerdropper" she'd stagger home and ring Roger up and hurl abuse at him. And so it was on this fateful night.

Roger had been down the local playing darts with me and the boys. He'd had a few and eventually went home and parked himself in front of the telly with DVD and the sound turned up to max. He cracked a can and was watching some movie with lots of bangs ad explosions. The phone rang. Roger turned down the sound and picked it up.

"YOUFUCKINGCUNT YOUFUCKINGRUINED MY LIFE YOUSHITBAGWANKER"

It was the nutcase.

"IHATEYOU AND YOURFUCKINGFAMILYANDYOURDOG"

The usual abuse.

"IMGOING TO COMEROUND YOURHOUSE AND THROWAFUCKINGBRICK THROUGHYOURWINDOWS YOU SLAGCUNTBALLSWANKSHIRFUCKER!!"

Roger said: "Ah. Drunk again. Do what you fucking want" and put the phone down. And unplugged it and went back to his movie.

Now at the time, Roger was doing some DIY (told you the link was tenuous) and had a pallet of bricks stacked on his lawn which he was using to repair a wall. So he's sitting watching his movie when:

"CRASH!!!"

A brick comes flying through the window and bounces off the wall next to his head. Roger leaps up and runs into the garden to find nutcase wobbling across his lawn, in high-heels, towards a waiting taxi. He collars her and pulls his mobile out and calls Plod. Plod turns up and arrests nutcase and Roger heads back indoors and goes to bed.

Next morning he rings up a mate, Mick, to come round and give him a price for fixing the window. Mick turns up, had a cuppa with Roger then goes outside to measure up. 2 minutes later Roger hears a strange high-pitched noise from the garden and looks out the window. Mick was lying on the lawn, bright-red and flailing around weakly.

"Fuck'n hell - he's having a heart attack." thinks Roger and then runs out to help him.

Mick is sitting up, wetting himself with laughter, and pointing at the wall.

Roger looks.

All around the window where the brick had come through were marks on the wall. And strewn around under the window were broken bricks. About 50 of them.

Nutcase, standing not more than 5 feet from the window, had thrown over 50 bricks before actually hitting the window.

"No wonder she was so crap at darts" muttered Roger.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 3:37, 4 replies)

Pole-axed...
When I was an undergrad, I lived in a huge ramshackle old Victorian house with six other students. It was cold, had crappy furniture and the kitchen was a death trap. It was owned by an old Polish guy, who steadfastly refused to do anything to tart the place up. Any repairs that needed doing, instead of getting the professionals in, would just get his identical twin sons to do it. One of the sons was okay, seemed reasonably on the ball, you could ask him stuff and he’d generally have a clue what you were on about. The other, erm, not so much. It wasn’t that he was stupid, he was just, well, vacant. A bit oxygen deprived… We used to ask leading questions to whichever son came round just so we could work out which one we were dealing with.

Somehow, we managed to persuade the landlord that the place really needed a coat of paint, as it looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since the 60s. The 1860s. He sent one of the sons round just as we were leaving for lectures – we were on our way out of the door so didn’t have time to do the usual intelligence test.

We soon worked out which son it was when we got back.

My housemate, Mary, (for that is not her name), went into her newly painted room and had a look round. It all looked rather nice and, oh, that’s kind, he’s even put everything back on top of the wardrobe.

Except he hadn’t. He’d just not bothered to move any of it and had just painted around it. So when Mary took the bag of blankets from up there, there was a wavy line of paint on the wall where the guy had gone around the outside.
We called the landlord back and heard him screaming at his son for being an idiot. He promised to come round the next day and fix it.
True to his word, he did, except without warning us when he was coming. He just let himself in and went up the stairs. He walked into Mary’s room where Mary getting dressed. The sight of a six foot, red-haired Scottish woman wearing naught but a towel chasing a tiny old polish man down the stairs will live with me till the day I die. As will his cries of “Dear Jesus, I saw her negleesh.” I think he was going for negligee, but it could just be Polish for ginger ladygarden.

My DIY skills? Put it this way, it took 3 of us, with 7 degrees between us 4 and a half hours to build an Ikea wardrobe. And I’d been in my new flat all of 2 hours before I shorted out the power by putting a nail through a wire. And to think, they let me work with x-rays…
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 1:31, 3 replies)

Dad's Barbell
My own DIY disasters are legion, but most of them are very complex, irritating and boring so I can't think of a particularly worthy one. My long departed father however was a master of simple, majestic mistakes.

We were living overseas when Dad decided he needed a bit of exercise. He looked around for some weight sets but they all were very overpriced, and being a cheap bastard (an inheritable trait, apparently) decided why not make his own. He returned home with a bag of concrete mix. He found a sturdy bit of metal pipe somewhere and two paint cans to serve as the ends. He mixed up enough concrete to fill one can, set it under the center of the patio table (the type with a hole in the middle for an umbrella) and used the hole to position the pipe upright in the wet concrete.

The next evening on returning from work he tipped the table up, pulled the bar and first can out and satisfied with the result mixed up the second batch of concrete. This filled can number two, and the previous night's assembly was upended and positioned via the handy hole in the table to set up overnight.

The following evening on returning from work he borrowed a nieghbor's hacksaw and with much cursing sawed through the metal pipe, as having a barbell as a permanent centerpiece of the patio table did not appeal to him.

He was not the best handyman, but he was a wonderful man. I wish he were still around.
(Ennui Kissinger, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 1:29, Reply)

you know that old visual gag with hitting a hammer on a springy surface and it smacking back up into the face?
Done that.
Told people I walked into a door - I'd rather have them suspect spousal abuse than sheer cocking stupidity of hammering something together but missing on a sprung floor.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 1:26, 3 replies)

a while ago
i was re-doing my kitchen and was sawing some wood for the cupboards. someone distracted me and the saw slipped and went straight into my thigh.

needless to say, the offer that distracted me, do (i want a brew?), was turned down in a tone so sweary it would embaress somebody with tourettes
(Big Ginge putting the laughter into manslaughter, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 0:51, 2 replies)

Angle grinder with wire brush attachment
hey look i polished the bone (well it was white whatever it was if it wasn't bone!) on my wrist, lucky it wasn't the bit where the arteries go, as luck would have it, the wire brushes where hot enough to seal it and it didn't bleed at all, stung a little bit though, it left a lovely scar ! (sorry for length - its just under an inch)
( SkUG >_O i got a couple of stitches in my eyeball... ow, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 0:33, Reply)

This is a normal post i am a heron. i haev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans

( GrandmaOfShoes, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 23:57, 4 replies)

Oh lowly DIY'ers!
Why should I dirty my hand with a big nasty hammer, saw or drill bit when I can buy from IKEA! Land of flat packed joy.

Simply poke the little wooden doo-da into slot a and put slot b into slot x.

Wait, how the hell does that work?

Damn...
(Guilt wants to get in your moist confines, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 22:43, 2 replies)

I was never much one for the rough hurly burly world of DIY,
given that I'm a sensitive little flower, who would recoil at the horror of blemishing my velvety fingertips - I need them to write horrendously deep and meaningful prose. That's right reader, I'm you! I josh.

I do however like pretending at DIY, you know, when you hold tools and occasionally hit stuff, and to this end thought I'd make meself a shelf/clothes rack combo in my freshly painted room.

I'm gonna attempt to show you the basic premise:

shelf              shelf
 ----------]      [-----------
______|___|______

^ length of curtain rail wedged through curtain rail holders

I decided to eschew the measure twice, cut once rule, in favour of a more dynamic tilting of the head and frowning system, thus ensuring utter failure. Basically the two top shelves were not level. Somehow, and I still chuckle to think of the effort involved, I wedged the rail in there.

But it's in! Success. I adorn my creation with my clothes, and settle down to a well deserved jazz cigarette on my bed, possibly watching Gordon Ramsays Kitchen Nightmares, or some similar pillar of televisual entertainment. Minutes later, a soft "shiiiiissssssshhhhhhhh" noise is heard, followed swiftly by a "FWUMP". The FWUMP is made by all the clothes on the right side of the rail falling on my head - it is at such an angle, that any coathangers on it set off in a very slow, but very constant, slide. On the plus side, the left part of the rail is ridiculously effective.

Don't you just hate a long winded piece of guff with no pay-off? That statement works both for this piece, and when doing a poo.

[EDIT] Why can't html just be like, you know, I want a space there. Let me. Now. Oh you need a little 6 character doohickey to do something I can do with but one button push. Computers = WACKY AND FUN
(bacontrout got ska, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 21:30, 1 reply)