DIY Disasters

We had bought a brand new state of the art wooden door for our home but we needed a lock installing. My husband insisted that it was a simple job and he would do it himself.

He does plenty of DIY and I thought why not?

Although he may be a good DIYer measurements have never been his strong point.

He drilled a three inch hole in our beautiful wooden door, only to find out later on that he had drilled it in the wrong place!

We ended up having to purchase a new front door, although we did enjoy having a nice spy hole for a while!

Submitted by Amy Toodle.

My husband fancies himself of a bit of a DIY fanatic and he decided to install some new kitchen cupboards.

When he told me he had to cut his nice kitchen cupboards I was worried and understandably so.

He got his saw out and began cutting the worktop in half…. Only to discover he had been cutting in the wrong place!

So now my kitchen worktop is in two halves and wobbles if you put anything on it .

A month down the line and he still hasn’t sorted the problem out. Never Again!

Submitted by Ruth Lister.

A few months ago my friend asked me if I could give her a hand painting her office.

I was on a ladder painting places which I couldn’t reach off the floor, for some reason I managed to forget what I was stood on.

I stepped to the side to go to load the roller with more paint, and stepped into thin air.

Before crashing down and knocking the shelving unit onto the desk, creating a big hole in the back of the unit and a near heart attack for my friend!

Submitted by Amy Sands.

Here’s one from a good friend of mine, he wasn’t the greatest DIYer ever to grace the planet to say the least.

He took it upon himself to lay a new carpet for his wife while she was away, after doing so he realised that he couldn’t actually shut the hallway door. He had an idea that didn’t seem to bad to be fair, he said ‘I’ll just take the door off and saw some off the bottom’.

He may of been a great welder but when it came to DIY he didn’t exactly have the biggest range of tools available! In fact all he had to trim the door was a hacksaw…

He took the door off and measured up before sawing to the right size. He seemed fairly pleased with himself actually.

Until he actually rehung the door and realised that he had actually sawed off the top of the door. opps!!!!!

I had never seen him swear like that before!! so he had to take off the door again.

He then reattached the door handles to the other end of the door… It didn’t look to bad but did take hours and the door never really looked the same again.

Submitted by Ben Johnson.

We were having a number of different problems within our loft, including condensation and insulation. So we contacted our local roofer and he recommended various different ‘fixes’.

My husband said he would take a look and try to amend the problems himself, which was a worry in itself to be honest.

I heard a huge thud coming from the loft as my husband was up there on one of his little expeditions, needless to say he was hanging through a huge hole in the ceiling!

Luckily he was OK and we got the bedroom redecorated on our insurance, but I was not best pleased a the time ….

Submitted by Janice Longsmith .

Sunday morning and I had finally got the time to paint the ceiling in the landing.I bought a paint tray and it was very slippery and didnt seem to want to sit on my ladder, needless to say I managed to lodge it on while I was painting the landing ceiling.

Do I even have to say what happened? I managed to dislodge it.

Talk about timing… I dislodged it just as my husband was coming up the stairs with a cup of tea for me.He ended up wearing not only the paint but the tea as well.

Just to add insult to injury I was so shocked at what I had done I jumped off the ladder and knocked the tin of paint over that I had been using to refill the tray with.

This flew all over the walls and skirting boards and a simply ceiling refurbishment ended up in a whole landing job.

Submitted by Danielle Drury.

We were getting a new sofa delivered.

Nightmare 1, First of all the sofa wouldnt fit through the door so the only alternative was to pass it through the front window… We couldnt get a professional out to do it for ages!

My husband had done this once before so he thought he would give it a go. This meant getting the delivery men to leave the brand new sofa on the front lawn (which is far from ideal).

So my husband called one of his friend who came round to help. The window started painfully creaking! And I mean really creaking…

It was okay at first… Then CRACK the full window had shattered into pieces… Not only was my new dream sofa on the grass outside but it was also covered in glass and we didnt have a front window any more!

And just as I thought nothing else could possibly go wrong… The rain started pouring down just to add insult to injury.

Submitted by Eve Warwick.

A few weekends ago my husband decided to take it upon himself to repaint the ceiling in the living room.

I made him go to our local DIY store and buy some plastic sheeting to protect our valuables. Some how he still managed to cover the television, stereo and also the recently new carpet.

The whole room looked like an episode of Braniac or an explosion in a dulux factory.

The following day we bought and laid a new carpet and ive since invested in an electric long handled painting gadget !

Submitted by Julia Garmston.

We bought a new home at the start of last year, and we wanted a project so this meant a lot of work needed doing in order to bring it to a live-able standard.

We spent months getting it to a place where we wanted to be and ready to move in.We had on last job before hand, mounting the television to the chimney.This all went perfectly well until we drilled into the side of the chimney to run the wires through and water started to gush out.

We had drilled into the central heating pipes which emptied out onto our wooden living room floors and freshly painted walls. Water everywhere and no central heating in February meant another couple of days at my parents while we rectified our mistake.

Submitted by Mike Dean.