DIY/Home Improvement disasters- share your pain

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FelineGuitarsFelineGuitars Frets: 11494
in Off Topic tFB Trader
With the bank holiday weekend upon us - the aisles of B&Q / Homebase / Ikea and various Garden centres will be heaving with people ready to spend the long weekend putting the house or garden in order .
Even I am thinking about painting some window sills  if the weather holds up .

But things don't always run smoothly with such matters 
What cautionary tales do you have that we may all learn from ?

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  • Phil_aka_PipPhil_aka_Pip Frets: 9794
    Don't paint a panel with it on the floor over newspaper. The cat will walk onto it and sit down before you can stop him. Then it's off to the vet to see if they han help you get the paint off his paws and out of his fur coat before he tried to lick it off and make himself seriously ill.
    "Working" software has only unobserved bugs. (Parroty Error: Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!)
    Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
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  • hywelghywelg Frets: 4302
    I've got some scumble glazing to do. 
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  • ArchtopDaveArchtopDave Frets: 1367
    I’m currently putting in many hours of work on a somewhat neglected flower garden that I’ve acquired. I’ll be buying a hedge trimmer this weekend. Hopefully only hedge will be trimmed.
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  • randellarandella Frets: 4086
    I’m in the middle of making a replacement rip fence for my £99 Amazon special table saw on which everything else is surprisingly straight and true. 

    I’ll get back to you on Monday when, having said all that, I’ll inevitably be in A&E typing this with my nose. 
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  • randellarandella Frets: 4086
    I’m currently putting in many hours of work on a somewhat neglected flower garden that I’ve acquired. I’ll be buying a hedge trimmer this weekend. Hopefully only hedge will be trimmed.
    @ArchtopDave - it’s always my back that gets it when hedge trimming. Strimming does the same. Must be some sort of cantilever action that disagrees with it.

    My wife is a bloody ninja with the hedge trimmer though. :)
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  • martmart Frets: 5205
    randella said:

    My wife is a bloody ninja with the hedge trimmer though. :)
    Perhaps you should take the hedge trimmer off her and then she can just be a ninja and not so bloody.
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  • CorvusCorvus Frets: 2924
    tFB Trader

    Don't latex a kitchen floor, shut the door and forget the cat lap is set to in-only... cue panicked cat, many many paw prints and having to do the thing all over again.. and try catching a pissed off cat to wash her off. Which makes her more pissed off..

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  • randellarandella Frets: 4086
    mart said:
    Perhaps you should take the hedge trimmer off her
    Hah! After you, buddy ;)
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  • spark240spark240 Frets: 2073
    Dont start to top up the boiler pressure then take a phone call and forget it......some serious noise !!


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  • randellarandella Frets: 4086
    edited May 2018
    Corvus said:

    Don't latex a kitchen floor, shut the door and forget the cat lap is set to in-only... cue panicked cat, many many paw prints and having to do the thing all over again.. and try catching a pissed off cat to wash her off. Which makes her more pissed off..

    Ford got so many things right with the original Ka - go-kart handling, cheap to service, surprisingly comfortable driving position. The glaring omission was of course the ghastly Endura-E lump under the bonnet. When they had the Zetecs by then, it’s anyone’s guess why they chose to power it with a chunk of cast iron that had its roots in the Anglia. 

    Anyway, I digress. Mrs. R’s Ka had an oil leak. I’d been using a washing-up bowl under the sump to catch it prior to part-exing the thing. Being the eco-conscious sort. I didn’t want to just sling the waste oil down the drain so I put it up out of reach ready to take to the tip.

    Saturday morning, the cat’s after a mouse. Mouse takes a beeline up on the shelf where the oil is, and runs straight through it. Cat does same. Cat gets bored. Cat decides to come up to our bedroom and wakes us up. The path from the front door to the bedroom takes in several cream-coloured carpets, diligently-painted eggshell skirting, and a nice pale duvet cover and sheet. 

    Trying to wash used engine oil off a cat is no laughing matter. 

    Imagine all this with your mother-in-law staying for the weekend.
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  • 57Deluxe57Deluxe Frets: 7329
    With the bank holiday weekend upon us -
    Even I am thinking about painting some window sills  if the weather holds up .

    Don't do this if your neighbours are prone to BBQs and Bonfires which well they might this weekend!
    <Vintage BOSS Upgrades>
    __________________________________
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  • DominicDominic Frets: 16004
    When I was a lad I went to work on Saturdays for a Landscape garden firm -I was keen to please and obliging 
    The Foreman sent me to the shops to buy some new bubbles for the spirit levels.......off I went with the £2 he had given me.
    The lads at the local builders merchants had obviously seen it 100 times before and redirected me to Travis Perkins as they were "out of stock'......so were Travis......and the next one !
    4 hours,5 miles and 3 blisters later I caught on after being sent from merchant to merchant.
    DONT DO THAT.

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  • munckeemunckee Frets: 12254
    edited May 2018
    My first house hadn't been touched by its one owner in the 60 years the previous owner had it, with the help of my dad and a few other people we gutted it and changed everything, proper central heating, new floor boards, rewiring the lot.  My dad who is a trained electrician repeatedly electrocuted himself with his tried and tested method of testing live wires with the back of his hand.  Spent several hours a night for several nights scraping up marley tiles until my brother in law came round and showed me that with a heat gun it could be done in a few minutes.

    Once everything was finally finished and just needed all the carpets which were being laid next day, my brother only offered to help once, I asked him to nail down the last floorboard upstairs and he went straight through a pipe as he nailed it out of the area I had clearly marked and carpets were delayed a week at my expense.

    When the house was done we did the garden, getting fed up of removing a few bricks a time from the old garden wall I knocked it over and attempted to pick it up and manouvere it into a skip, where it snapped in half and the half I wasn't holding fell to the floor and a piece of metal sliced through my leg cutting it open to the muscle.  Seeing the wound my wife freaked out and knocked me over in her panicked run past me into the house where she locked me out and phoned someone to take me to hospital.

    Arriving at the hospital they asked if a trainee could do the stitches as they needed to learn which I agreed to, a week later when they removed the stitches they had done it too early and the wound burst open again and had to be restitched leaving me with a large fat slug looking scar.
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16541
    Has anyone ever used self levelling compound on a floor and not had a cat walk through minutes later?

    last time it happened to me (it’s been more than once) I mixed up a constrasting filler as a nice surprise for whoever lifts the laminate
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  • grungebobgrungebob Frets: 3299
    We moved into our new house 9 months ago and the wife has said from day one she wants me to paint the kitchen. 
    The kitchen  is an early 90’s pine affair incredibly well built a true hand made bespoke design. 
    So I took a week to sand, prime and paint all the units and fit more modern handle for her. 
    The very next day the dishwasher breaks down and I have to rip out parts of it to get at it. 
    Wasnt a happy bunny. 
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  • BodBod Frets: 1286
    I sawed through the back of my hand once which smarted a bit. I could see all the inside bits you're not supposed to see, but thankfully no real damage done.
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  • ArchtopDaveArchtopDave Frets: 1367
    WezV said:
    Has anyone ever used self levelling compound on a floor and not had a cat walk through minutes later?

    last time it happened to me (it’s been more than once) I mixed up a constrasting filler as a nice surprise for whoever lifts the laminate
    It's interesting that cats have an inbuilt desire to help out whenever anything is done to a floor. I can virtually guarantee that my two will appear, and show off their best dance moves, when I clean the kitchen floor tiles.
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  • Axe_meisterAxe_meister Frets: 4612
    Taking and old shed apart in the back garden. Stepped on a massive nail that went through my boot at the sole, through my foot and up through a lace hole.
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  • Phil_aka_PipPhil_aka_Pip Frets: 9794
    lots of cat disasters on here
    "Working" software has only unobserved bugs. (Parroty Error: Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!)
    Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
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  • randellarandella Frets: 4086
    DIY injury update.

    Today over the course of several projects I’ve managed to use a circular saw, several hand saws, and a table saw. Also a pneumatic nailer. Stanley knife, chisels, a multitude of drills and bits. 

    Now have a bandaged thumb. 

    I opened the fridge door as I was shutting the freezer door underneath trying to be clever and put the leftover mince away and fetch myself a beer at the same time. Thumb between the two. 

    Ow. 
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