[Closed] DIY Disasters. Make me feel better, or just laugh at me.

Now you have an access panel.

Chased an old 22mm copper pipe out of a downstairs concrete floor in a bathroom and was caught out by a 90 degree bend that had no reason to be there!! It emptied the hot water cylinder into the bathroom in under 30 seconds...

*removes hardboard covering old fireplace in Victorian kitchen*
*notices 4ft by 2ft metal plate blocking off the chimney*
*taps it with a hammer handle to see how solid it is*
*metal plate collapses depositing the 6" of soot that was resting on it into the kitchen*

Me explaining what happened to my wife while she stares aghast at a kitchen where every horizontal surface is covered in soot.

Fitting my first kitchen, I was trial fitting the worktop when it slipped wedging my fingers between it and the wall.  I was unable to get any sort of purchase to move the worktop.  I was stuck, with fingers that were slowly being crushed.  In the end I had to drag my fingers between the wall and the worktop till I could get my other hand on the end of the worktop to tilt it out the way.  I had some very mangled throbbing fingers by the time I got them free.

We were expecting our child, and like many proud fathers, I was preparing the baby's room. One of the problems in the room was creaky floorboards, so I thought I would screw them down to stop them creaking.

So, I found the creaky board, and in my own true inimitable style, I decided to use a technique known as the 'Birmingham Screwdriver' and hammer the screw into the board. I'd seen my dad and other people do it in the past when joining two pieces of wood together.

Cue a huge torrent of hot water spraying all over the room, and my shouting at my (heavily pregnant) wife to put her thumb on the pipe to stop the water spraying everywhere until I could turn it off at the mains. Only the mains didn't do it, so I had to turn off and isolate the boiler too. My wife ended up with a scalded thumb, and of course, it was a Sunday.

The emergency plumber that came out said if it'd just been a nail, you could have pushed it back into the pipe, but as I'd tried to use a screw, it'd buggered it completely. Oh how he laughed.

Not me, but the Mrs’s does Regency property renovation work..

Best she has is the builders she uses ripped out all flooring and ceilings to access all pipes and wiring etc.

Then didn’t replace any boards over the joists to enable them to walk on.

The gaps were large.

One rather large chap fell through and got stuck by his belly, I think it took about an afternoon before they rigged ladders and stopped laughing.

Theres a pic knocking around somewhere, it went online via insta about 2 yrs ago...

🤣

bikebouy - bloke died on a renovation project round here following something similar. Person who was running the site's doing 3 years for manslaughter.

Same thing here - thought I'd put a nail into a squeaky floorboard. Hours later my sister walked over it in bare feet, stopped and said: "why's the floor warm and wet here?" Instead of leaving it I pulled up the floorboard only to see a geyser of very hot water shoot into the air. Shoulda just gone and found a self-tapper, screwed it in and waited for the plumber next day but instead we panicked and ran around with buckets and towels.

Midway through cutting some coving, I got distracted by somebody making a parcel delivery and somehow did all the following cuts the wrong way round on pretty much a whole rooms worth.

To my shame it wasn't even all like \_/ instead of /__\ one of the pieces was like /_/ bloody halfwit!

My mum and dad had a load of damp course stuff done at their house & I said I'd go down for the weekend to help replace the skirting board & get some decorating underway.
About an hour into it, I managed to drill into an electrical cable that had no reason to be where it was.
While investigating what the hell this wire was actually doing there, we uncovered a complete dogs dinner of repairs & patching up done by the damp course company. Ended up having to pull up floorboards & hack of a load of plaster so the electrician could do it all properly.

So, my attempt at getting the house back into a liveable condition actually set them back about 3-4 weeks. Although they were quite pleased because inadvertently drilling through this cable, unearthed a ton of electrical issues that could have caused a fire. Every cloud....

@wwawas the soot is a gift that keeps on giving. I was hoovering and dusting daily out entire house for about 2 weeks after a crow swept the chimney as it fell down and then flew round the house for a couple of hours.

In Yorkshire the standard method of sweeping a chimney is to drop a chicken down. You've got to catch it when it pops out though.

Not even doing DIY... We had a cast iron radiator that, due to location, lack of insulation, and being turned down, froze solid one night. Once we'd repaired all the water damage, we had the radiator just sat there, disconnected, in an upstairs room, for about 2 months.

Eventually, one weekend that the wife was away I hatched a plan to shift this 300kg solid iron radiator outside singlehandedly. This involved using a dolly to get it to the top of the (steep) stairs. Then, using a carpet and yoga mat as a kind of moveable pad, I lowered the radiator down to a flat position, ready to slide it down the stairs.

At which point it emptied about half a radiator full of rusty black central heating water all over the wooden floors on the landing, seeping through to the ceiling of the floor below. Cue a hurried hiring of industrial fans to try to dry out the ceilings and joists before the wife got home. Sadly the rust stains where the water had run between the wood on the floor are still there.

Amusingly, having got the radiator to the kerb, it was gone within about 3 hours; someone had clearly picked it up for scrap

last summer was grinding off an old overflow pipe trying to get it flush with the floor. was made out of adamanitium or similar Google's were steaming up as it was super hot...then I slipped and went straight through the rad pipe elbow. 27 radiators worth of water poured out everywhere. luckily it was in the conservatory so no carpet to wreck....

bit more careful with a grinder these days...

Helping do the wiring in a mates house. Get to last plug upstairs that we're removing. Big bang and he flies across the room. Turns out it's wired through the brick wall into the back of next doors socket. Seem it saved them running cables in that room.

Similar to the OP - I was refurbishing our bathroom and installing a new wall-hung WC which required a steel bracket secured to the blockwork. The feed for the power shower was chased into the back of the wall running horizontally - I had measured and checked everything but then needed to reposition one of the mounting holes because of space constraints. Drilled through the wall and pierced the hot water pipe - loss of pressure activated the shower pump which then attempted to empty the contents of the hot water tank into my face at pressure in short order.

Manged to grab and towel to staunch the flow, get my wife to hold it in place whilst I switched off the pump and isolated the hot water feed. Oh how we laughed!

Fitting blinds in the kitchen the evening before going on holiday, I drill through the very corner of the window space to hit an electric cable.

Not just an ordinary electric cable, oh no, it's the 30 amp feed to the cooker, the switch for which is about 3 foot to the right of the cable I've just drilled through, which vaporised the tip of the masonry drill I was using and took out the master fuse for our electricity.

Turns out the cable goes diagonally from the switch, across the corner of the window then vertically from about halfway across the window width.

Just what you want late in the evening, the night before you're about to leave at 3:30 in the morning to go on holiday. I still say it's Mrs. P's fault though as she was insistent we had blinds fitted in the kitchen before we went away. no idea why as she's never used them in the 11 years they've been there.

Arrived home - no keys. Yale lock was a bit flimsy so thought it would shoulder open with a bit of persuasion. It didn't, upped persusion level until the door burst open, tearing the chubb lock out that I had forgotten about, along with most of the door skin.

Much cursing later, went to the timber yard to get a bit of ply to reskin the door with. Keys in footwell of car...

Doing some electrical work on a TV with a 2-pin inline connector between the TV and the mains socket. Unplugged the 2-pin connector then clipped through the wire however I did it on the live side not the isolated side. There was quite the bang! Still, it proved to my wife that the RCD circuit in the house worked and we didn't need stupid socket protectors everywhere (our girls were just toddlers at the time).

Also - I have had the same as the OP (but it was a workman that did it and it was into a foul pipe). I managed to cut a hole, fix it and patch it and it was 99% invisible.

Have a free stud-finder app... also finds pipework wires etc using phones built in magnetism sensor, not perfect, but better than nothing...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chatterbox.android.stud_detector&hl=en_GB

I've fitted two solid wood kitchen worktops in my life. One years ago when we were poor as church mice, another more recently in a holiday home, both over butler sinks (first found in the garden of the house we'd just bought, the second actually from a shop). I remember measuring many times the first worktop to cut a hole exactly the size of inner surface of the sink so the worktop just ever so slightly overhangs all the way round. Got it wrong, and had a few years to contemplate my stupidity each time I walked into the kitchen, and there's half the width of the ceramic sticking out from under the worktop. My wife noticed this too, and pointed it out, not infrequently.

Christ I've typed a lot.

Anyway. Years later, doing this again I was careful not to repeat my mistake. But I did. Exactly the same mistake. This time I howled in puzzled rage, chopped up the worktop and used it for stuff and went off to buy another. Don't tell my wife.

Somehow got the front door stuck closed whilst changing locks, without access to the bit the key goes in. Had to kick it in and replace loads of surrounding timber.

Done the pipes thing whilst securing floorboards.

Plumbing, as a general rule, is best tested using as little water as possible to begin with, rather than slapping open the mains and seeing what happens.

Opening up old chimneys is best done whilst wearing a mask of some sort. And goggles.

General rule, if something looks a bit flimsy, DON'T "tap it to see if it's ok".

and this is why I always pay a grown up to do everything

Forget the hole in the wall and sort out the garden .......

Been there & done that. Twice! The first time I got task focused as the first couple of nails bent but I didn't twig why & was determined to get the third one in.

No nails = no holes, stick on walk away.

Looks like it's not just me then 😀

I'll have a read through on nightshift tonight.

All up and running now, and no one will ever know

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bikebouy – bloke died on a renovation project round here following something similar. Person who was running the site’s doing 3 years for manslaughter.

This bloke didn’t die.

HTHs

My best was falling completely through the ceiling of daughter's bedroom from the attic. Very lucky to land feet first.
The irony of it all is that I was measuring up for boards to cover the attic.

Our first love nest,

Replaced minging artex ceilings, decorated and fitted new carpets down stairs

Tackled a new bathroom upstairs and was pleased with the result. Fitted a fancy towel rail and used chrome pipe and compression fittings (cheaper than buying torch/solder for 1 job). Went for the refill and it filled and filled and filled and.......

Went down stairs for a can and found a lake, it seems chrome pipe and compression fittings don’t get on very well.

Couple of weeks later I replaced minging ceilings, decorated and fitted new carpets downstairs AGAIN.

My £20 saving on torch and solder cost me about £800.

By that time i had picked my self off the cream carpet and walked through white walled house hold my scalp shut.

Structural engineers report and plans.
Building control approved.
Brick piers built.
Steels assembled.
Acro's ready.
Friend assisting.
Fire up the circular saw.
Discover at this point that the off shot kitchen wall is not tied into the main house wall, at all. Discover the few mm of movement is enough to prevent the steels going in and cranking up the Acro's seems to push the wall above out, not up...
Let's just say if 2 of my neighbours, including a builder, hadn't arrived home for lunch just then, our old house would be a pile of rubble.... 😱😱😱😱

Sanded the wood floor in my first house but the double rad was making it hard to reach one bit, so tried to loosen the valves to get it out of the way. Stripped the thread on one leaving sooty black rad water gushing out over my pale, unsealed wood floor.  No way to get those black marks out without replacing the blocks, so ended up just varnishing over the stains.

Same house many years later I had lifted the floorboards in the spare bedroom and just before lunch I nailed the last one down. A while later I went upstairs and wondered why the banister was wet, then remembered that the heating pipes ran under the last board. Yep, straight through the pipe, floor void flooded. Managed to save the ceiling that time, but it took a few coats of undercoat to stop the stains showing through the hallway ceiling.

Over an Easter weekend took up old carpet and laid thick insulating underlay and laminate flooring perfectly in the living room. I had removed the living room door so measured the height of the new floor level, twice.Carried the heavy, hardwood door carefully through the hall,kitchen ,utility room avoiding banging and scraping the rest of the recently redecorated house and out into the backyard and laid it over a couple of chairs.Measured twice and marked the door then trimmed about the door with a hand saw(too poor for a power saw or plane). Went to rehang the door and it was still too big so measured again and repeated.Tried to rehang again but still too big.Exasperated I looked up at the top of the door......

My £20 saving on torch and solder cost me about £800.

If it helps, you still saved money as you can’t solder chrome pipes either. (Unless you clean off all the chrome to the joint, which most people who try it, don’t).

Helped my stepfather fit a new UPVC window in the kitchen, the old paned glass frame was rotten and literally fell apart as we removed it. The new window was 3" short at each side and 2 inches top /bottom. I don't know what he was smoking when he measured up, and assumed he'd measured the new window before we started the work! My mother was entirely unimpressed with the new open air aspect to the kitchen, or at having to pay for another new window!
Did manage to sell the tiny window on ebay though, every little helps etc...