What's your most stupid DIY cockup?

[RobertL]

A friend of my father's mistakenly built two left sides of a boat (a full sized riverboat that was).

Robert

[Nick Odell]

Nick

[Lobster]

Bet it still hurt though?

[John Rumm]

Yup that did just about sum up our response... (on a solid wood floor fortunately rather than a carpet)

[Adam Funk]

Our varnished, cork-tiled bathroom floor is considerably darker than the tiles were originally.

The instructions with the tiles & glue said to put enough glue around the edges for some excess to squeeze through, then wipe it off. I didn't wipe it off quickly enough, so there were dark bits around all the edges. The Planning Committee said she thought the tiles were too light, & why not stain them darker to cover up the glue stains?

So I carefully stained the sides, then worked down the middle strip from the open window towards the door, but near the end I kicked over the tin of stain, so I had to even the puddle out.

Fortunately, the varnishing later was trouble-free.

[Bill]

In message , Muddymike writes

Been there, seen that. I was working with a colleague in an office with a false ceiling, he was tracing some cabling above the ceiling and stood on top of his steps, turned around 2 or 3 times and lost his orientation. He too stepped down on the side with no steps, it was spectacular as he fell across the customers work station and landed on the floor. Amusing afterwards, but not at the time!

[Reentrant]

Which reminds me - I was painting the ceiling, but as SWMBO was using the stepladder elsewhere I was standing on the B&D Workmate with the big tin of emulsion on it too.

I finish one area and go to slide it along a bit, but as the retaining clips had long-since broken the leading legs fold inwards and the whole tin of paint tips over my feet and the floor.

[The Medway Handyman]

Doing some painting for a lady once, who bred some kind of rare cats. She was paranoid about the cats getting paint on them & me getting any paint on her newly sanded & varnished pine floor.

So she shut the cats in a room & issued strict instructions not to leave the door open.

An hour later I see a cat walk through the paint roller tray, then all along the floor.

She had left the door open :-)

[meow2222]

Despite being quite unconservative about DIY I couldnt think of much on stu pid cockups. Well, there's the usual drill a buried cable, and measure twic e cut it wrong once that we all have. And spilt paint.

On one job I drove pins in from the back to fix some timber that already ha d a single front fixing, only to realise after 20 or so that the pins were too short to actually enter the necessary timber :)

I recently put some sheet insulation in the shed on a shelf, it was being a bit awkward going in but a bit of waggle and shove and home it went. Thoug ht no more about it - but next time I went down to the shed there was sheet insulation sticking out the back, and cladding lying on the ground! It tur ned out the nails had hardly any grip on the timber frame for some reason, I'm glad I decided to screw the frame together.

NT