I have a hard act to live up to.
My dad is one of those freakishly-good-at-DIY types; everything he fixes stays fixed and lasts for years, a quality he got from his own father, and he can fix pretty much anything if given the right tools*. He genuinely enjoys it and since retiring when I was still in school, will happily take on other people's DIY jobs as long as they don't try to pay him. I think I know who I'm getting to install all my stuff in the first post-uni flat with Mr Maladicta (I am a total beadlehands and cannot be trusted with power tools).

My grandad, who died in February, however, is another story. Everything he came into contact with was either reattached to its original position with tons of black insulating tape, or it would have several extremely complicated mechanisms holding it together. This is how my nan's iron ended up being attached to a spring, resulting in it catapulting onto the carpet and burning a nice iron-shaped hole.

* This does not extend to computer glitches, where his preferred method is to use the little bit of DOS he still remembers from work sometime in the early 90s and type "format c:\"
( Maladicta, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 14:49, 4 replies)

Gets a big click
Just for the phrase "a total beadlehands"
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 14:53, closed)

An iron attached to a spring?
WTF?
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Mon 7 Apr 2008, 15:05, closed)

He attached it to the ironing board by its cable
which was encased in this massive long spring that looked like this: www.cal-av.com/pics/springs.jpg (fuck knows where he got it) to keep the wire tidy and stop it short-circuiting out. As well as this, he shortened the wire by about three feet so it was far too short, resulting in the steamy catapult of doom.
( Maladicta, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 16:14, closed)

@ RadG
It's true - just don't ask Mr Maladicta what happened to his phone.
( Maladicta, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 16:15, closed)