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)

come home
there are pubs in london that need us to get pissed so you can make me laugh like this!!!!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sun 6 Apr 2008, 11:26, closed)

Four and a half hours to build an Ikea wardrobe?
That's nothing - it took me an Tourette's three bloody weeks to build an Argos computer desk... It was a total fucking nightmare. Not helped by the fact that the instructions bore absolutely no resemblance to the thing we were building.

Never again.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 7 Apr 2008, 10:52, closed)

Add MFI to the list of bastards!
My step-brother is pretty good with his hands, has built a cupboard from scratch, managed to put together a computer desk in just over an hour, not too bad an acheivement. It stood fairly well (was supported on both sides though) and we never really had a problem with it, until the day came when i removed the monitor from it, after a year and a half.

The loss of weight caused it to come apart from the back. We couldn't blame my brother, as on closer inspection each and every screw had been ripped straight through the wood when it fell. Bastards...
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 9 Apr 2008, 12:56, closed)