Jackson's bollock
A combination of buying my first home in the mid 90s (i.e. one you're allowed to use something less innocuous than blutack to support pictures of tennis players scratching their bum), and consequently having neither a car nor the money to pay tradesmen, lead to many steep learning curves.

To be fair, some of the problems were inherent, though most were inherited from a couple of hippies who owned the house before us - the major protagonist we called 'sellotape man'.

His howlers were wonderful, deluded and profoundly optimistic. Drawer bottoms (the ones that are meant for tins) , tiles, shelves, heaps of sellotape. A stable door with hardboard where a window should have been.

When they'd artexed (thanks for that) the front room, and painted it pink, they painted round a chest of drawers, so there was a large white rectangle remaining when they moved out.

His proudest DIY moment was fixing a leaking ball-cock valve. These work by floating on the surface of the water, and shut off when they reach a certain height. His wouldn't, so he got a bit of garden twine, and attached an old socket spanner too it, and hung it out of the cold water tank to lift it a bit. Cost of a new one - £2.

Sometimes though...shit just happens. The walls in this place were horsehair and plaster, c1900, knackered, crumbly.
Most corners were obtuse. Most walls bowed.
Not ideal territory for an Ikea project.
Anyway, cupboard duly assembled and mounted, feeling rather smug, compliments paid, condiments displaid, we went out on a munted walk....

.....and returned an hour later to this..




We had a very bad Sunday morning once. Alarmed by a crack in the ceiling (different house) I decided to pull up the floor boards in the ensuite to see if there was a leak.
Carefully edged up the first board.... and was greated with 'old faithful' errupting in my face - but the worst of it - it was the hot water pipe not the cold feed... and I couldn't find the shut off, so it drained the entire central heating loop into the ceiling plaster..
A few weeks later, the night after one of our mates had been sleeping on a sofabed directly underneath it... with an enormous whumpf, this happened.



Turned out the previous bodgeitnscarper occupants had nailed through the pipe, and it had held till I pulled the board up.

Possibly my most embarrassing and comedy bodge up came when replacing a washing machine in a house I'd just bought, which had the electricity on a meter.

Unfamiliar with the house, I decided to unplumb the washing maching but undid the 'mains' side of the water pipe, not the handy tap side by mistake.

Cue full on mains pressure water pissing out all over me, I was soaked in minutes. I kept trying but I just couldn't force it back on again, the flow was too strong and my hands were numb from the cold. Alone in the house, I was caught between two stools - should I hold the hose and keep trying (up to an inch of water now in the kitchen) - or should I try to find the stopcock (didn't know where it was yet).
I made a break for it, scurried round the house, opening cupboards, that kind of thing, desperate to find the stopcock, when 'click' the electricity card ran out of credit. It was dark. Kitchen in 3 inches of water. No back door key. No electricity. No sign of the stopcock. Eventually I fumbled my way back to the hose and managed to reinsert the mains tap, utterly drenched. I'd only gone in for a few mins. I had to drip my way to a 24hr tescos and buy a mop and bucket, looking like a proper sap.
And the kicker? They'd filled the hoses with bleach (must be a mrs beaton tip or something) and it totally destroyed a coat I'd bought at the weekend.
(Countryslicker, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 16:03, 1 reply)

Haha, this is getting a click for the image...
...of someone soaked to the skin buying a mop and bucket =)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Mon 7 Apr 2008, 16:07, closed)