Any D.I.Y Disasters ?.

My first Disaster was a few years ago.
We had purchased a new carpet for the kids room, but some of the floor boards in the room were loose and creaked a lot when the kids were playing.
I approached a contractor Joiner at my place of work and asked him,"How do I
know where the floor joists are running ,to put in some new nails" ?.

He told me to insert a decorators pallet knife between the boards to get the run of the joists and mark them with a marker then nail the boards down onto the joists,Easy

As my wife had been 'nipping my head' for weeks to get this job done, I decided to give her a nice surprise when she returned from work to have the job finished.

I cleared all the furniture and carpet etc from the room,hoovered all the boards,found the run of the joists,then proceeded with my Venture.
I did as the joiner said---switched off electric,as cables run under the floor boards,found the run of the joists then started to nail the loose boards onto the joists.
After the job was finished I went to hoover the boards again ,to pick up any loose wood etc before laying the carpet.
I switched on the electric,went upstairs ,plugged in the hoover,Nothing,No Electric,Dread And Horror.

To cut a long story short, the builders had run some of the cables over the joists not at the bottom of the joists, I had put a nail Through the cable..

I called in a friend he fixed it,after I had cleared away lots of nervous sweat from my brow.I had visions of the wife coming home from work and the kids coming in,and No floor boards in the bedroom ! She will go mad !I thought.

As it turned out my Friend gave me a hand.We had the boards down,carpet fitted,furniture down,Electric Ok,everything perfect for them coming in..

I was sitting in the room when they came in,Mr Cool ,with a glass of whisky in one hand and the daily paper in the other hand..

"That's Great,All Finished,Looks Lovely,Boards Not Creaking,Did You Have Any Problems ?",Said The Wife.
Mr Cool Replied," No ,It Was easy,No Problems.

Have you had any D.I.Y Disasters. ?.

 

I once decided my elderly but much loved Volvo estate needed her airways cleaning out, as she was running a bit rough. I'd done my research before starting, and so set about taking much of the engine apart.

After about an hour of being in contortionist positions inside the engine bay, I finally had every part of the air intake system out and cleaned. Another hour and she was reassembled. Great.

As I'm no mechanic, I was really pleased with myself having completed what to me was quite a big and daunting task. I popped the key in the ignition to test her out, cranked her over, and nothing. Ok i thought, maybe its just the engine computer adjusting for the new conditions. I tried again, she rumbled reluctantly into life, shaking violently, clearly misfiring like mad, black smoke spewing out the exhaust, the dashboard lit up like a christmas tree, then she clapped out.

Oh no I thought. I've killed my car.

Back under the bonnet to see if I'd missed anything. All the pipes were where they should be. Then I spotted a big, empty, electrical socket. No sign of anything to go in it, but I knew something had been there. Then the penny dropped. I had to remove half the bits again to expose the connector and cable that I'd disconnected and then inadvertently buried. Plugged that in, stuck the pipes back together, gave her a try, and she burst into life, quiet and smooth, no black soot, running sweet as a nut. I'd forgot to reconnect the air flow sensor. The poor old girl was try her best to guess how much air was going in and was choking herself. Once she had her sense of smell back, she was fine.

 

Not srictly DIY but, me and my partner in crime had to get an old fashioned cast iron bath tub down two flights of stairs in a old victorian house once. Im guessing it weighed over 120 kilos give or take. So we realised if we took the taps off and turned it upside down we could slowly slide it down the stairs which worked great for the first set of the stairs but on the seconed set of stairs we let go about half way down. The bath flew down the stairs picked up speed very fast and went straight through the wall at the other side of the landing....in somebody else house

Im just glad we did it that way and not plan B which was "you slide it down from the top and i will stand at the bottom and catch it so it does not smash the tiles on the floor when it gets to the bottom" " If we had done it that way i would probaly be in a wheel chair now. Apparantly the faster something goes the heavier it gets!!

 

It's that age old question: which would fall faster from an aeroplane; a tonne of feathers or a tonne of bricks

 

music, your tale about floor boards reminds of (yet another) of Mr Mum's ventures into DIY.

In a pre-new carpet survey of a bedroom, he notices a wonky floorboard. Clearly he had an of fixing it before having a carpet laid. Great theory, lousy practice.

Armed with hammer and nails (but minus "common sense" ) off he set, hammering the loose floorboard via new nail placement. Job done! And off to work he goes (night shift!)

After a very trying day with young children/household chores/juggling roles, I decide upon a nice, quiet hour in front of the TV before hitting the sack

Turn on the TV, so far so good; then, I notice a blip or three more accurately, I notice a DRIP or ten!

Silly blighter, had knocked nails into the floorboard next to the radiator pipework with the consequence of it now leaking directly above the TV/music/Sky apparatus!!!

Suffice to say, he didn't get any homemade cakes that week.

 

17 years old i could not afford to get my car welded so thought id have a go my self

BAD BAD Move Haveing Never Welded Before I Did NOT Disconect the Battery and Neather Did I Remove the Carpet From the Inside

it was only a small patch along the sill

30 seconds may be a minute max the whole car was on fire Mom & Dad on Holiday I Panicked and Left the Car to ROAST On the Drive Luckley it was a Big Drive and Nothing Parked by it aprox 3 hours later when i returnd from the pub the police had put a note thru the door saying poss there had been an Arson Attack @ Our House and Would we Please Contact them I Contacted My Old Man in Egypt Who Said Ring the Scrap Man Get Shot and Leave it at That

I Will Sort it When I Get Back!!! Never Herd Another Thing

Sadley Scrap was Only £25 a Ton Then So Id Just Lost £975

Un Insured Cus I Had Not Passed My Test Just Learning GUTTED

 

OMG sorry Nick but that made me LAFF!!

 

The cast iron bath could have been smashed into smaller, more managable pieces if you'd have hit it with a big hammer!

 

Hmmm that mite have just done the trick too

About 20 minutes and not a moment longer after geting the bath out the front door a group of gypo`s appeared from nowhere like ghosts and asked if they could have it for scrap...i said yes out of fear and it was gone just like that all that was left was a big hole to repair CHUCKLE CHUCKLE VISION, CHUCKLE VISION!!

 

None from me, but I have had several at work, including a 33,000 volt electric shock that threw me straight out of a tree and shut down one of the two power feeds into Tonbridge.

 

I think that counts Eddie ...well its certainly a disaster haha

 

My current house is full of them, although not made by us but by the other occupiers before we moved in.Each week we seem to be discovering a new one.

So far the worst has had to have been the electrics. We were about to redecorate the lounge last year and after stripping the walls covered in wallpaper I noticed these large lumps of filler protruding from the wall. I thought I would get a sanding block and sand them smooth. Quickly I had found a piece of copper wire in the filler and gave it a poke, nothing happened so I thought it was an old piece of wire.

Turns out it was a live wire supplying the lounge electrics. These wires from socket to socket went in strange arcs from one to another and were filled with your cheapo crack filler. I had literally only sanded a few millimetres and discovered a live cable, so you can imagine that none of them were buried deeply either, no trunking either, just a few matchsticks bracing the bits they had gunned out.

As a result all the electrics had replaced in the lounge, which other half did and then ended up rewiring the house earlier this year which cost us thousands. Glad we got it done. My neighbour across the road told me that she reckoned a bunch of teenagers rewired it, which would explain a lot.

 

Sounds more like it was done by orangutans on work experience Jane

 

Our bathroom light has recently developed an electrical fault. I was in the bath one night through the week when the lights just went off. Having established it wasn't the bulbs, I told the missus that we can't switch on the bathroom light until I've been up to fix it, but a few times force of habit has made me pull the string and the lights come on, but sometimes you hear them arcing.

Today I've been up into the loft. Peeled back about 8 inches of loft insulation, and was horrified by what I saw.

Firstly, there's the fact that its wired with ordinary choc block. No proper sturdy junction box for the lights, just wires running into a collection of bits of chock block. Not good.

Then there's the fact that the people who came in just over a year ago to do the loft insulation were clearing blind. They must have been, otherwise they'd have easily seen the tops of the recessed bulbs before piling 8 inches of loft insulation directly on top of them. Also, had they not been completely blind, they would have also seen the transformer box for the recessed lights sitting on top of one of the beams where it could cool itself with natural airflow, and then would have not buried that in several inches of insulation.

The wiring for the light was too wrong for me to tackle, so I'm going to have to fork out to get someone in now I reckon.