What's the simplest task you have f***ed up

SlowBlowin

So a few days back a blackbird flew into the window and broke its neck. Normally when I find a small dead animal here I pick it up with a pair of pipe grips and throw it up the mountain outside the gate to be a meal for something. 

My aim was off, he slipped in the pliers, and ended up wedged snuggly between 2 small branches of a birch tree by the gate.

He's been there for 3 days, looks completely natural.

Its a big job for me to get him down again, so I have left him there, not told the wife, but every time we go out I say "that blackbirds always up there".

I think they do similar in Tibet.

Count Dracula

Black birds are tasty enough.

You should have just plucked that phucker an eaten it?

Hellrazer

A thread right up my street since Im an avid DIYer and probably shouldnt be. My diy stuff sometimes ends up costing more than if I got an actual person to do the work.

Putting in new skirting boards. Was nailing them to the wall and after a couple of minutes I heard a hiss and water pouring all over the place.

Id put a couple of nails through a water pipe in the wall. Had to get the whole room redone.

Was changing a bulb in teh kitchen down light when I slipped off the chair I was standing on and pulled the transformer box out of teh ceiling. The problem - I had just gotten new wooden floors down upstairs and had to get them taken back up to access the wires to fit a new transformer.

Cutting back a tree in teh garden with one of those extendable Lidl chainsaws when a large branch came down and destroyed my gazebo.

Ill add more when I remember them.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311761#Comment_120311761

Congratulations, you've won the thread!

Unfortunately, you had to wreck your home to do so, but small victories and all that. 🤣

StupidLikeAFox

I was pulling a pint of guinnes once and the keg ran out. Sauntered out the back and up the yard, changed the keg, sauntered on back in only to realise I had left the tap down. Guinness **** everywhere.

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311781#Comment_120311781

Easy task - I **** it up.

Heres another one. Washing machine packed up and I decided to have a look at it. So the big weights that stop teh machine from bouncing around had broken off. the drum I got a huge hose clamp - think it was 24 inches diameter. Put it around the drum and put the weights into teh hose clamp. Nice and tight and everthing was going fine until the final fast spin. It was like a horror movie-- the washing machine literally jumped about 10 feet across the floor.I hadnt realised that they were supposed to be in a certain position to stop the machine from jumping around.

Lewis_Benson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311761#Comment_120311761

Christ.

Stay away from everything.

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311806#Comment_120311806

But theres a certain satisfaction when it does go right.

Ive tiled the entire bathrooms, put down wooden floors, dry lined the house,fitted new sinks and toilets, added new sockets and fused spurs without issues.

Its the little small jobs that you expect to be easy that that I seem to feck up.

Leg End Reject

@Hellrazer, you have an apt username anyway. 🤣🤣🤣

Tazium

‘Ok’ or ‘cancel’ I’ll say no more.

Gregor Samsa

I’m usually pretty good at DIY and fixing things, but about 10 years ago, the belt in our tumble dryer went, and as my wife was gone out with friends, I decided to have a go at fixing it at 10pm on a Saturday night after a few cans.

Got it opened up, replaced the belt, but when it came to putting it back together, it just wasn’t working out. As time went on, I was getting more and more frustrated and heavy handed, until at about 1am I realised that I’d basically bent all the panels irreparably, and it was now impossible to reassemble it. So I left it in a pile in the kitchen and opened another can.

Wife walks in, sees the pile of appliance and asks what’s going on, and I said “well, we’re going tumble dryer shopping tomorrow. Goodnight!” and went to bed.

standardg60

Relationships, finally realised i'm just not cut out to share my life with someone full time

ahnowbrowncow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311835#Comment_120311835

You might have to.

StupidLikeAFox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311802#Comment_120311802

👋.

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311761#Comment_120311761

Incredible!

Larbre34

Pulling out.

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312020#Comment_120312020

Or if you drive a BMW, pulling out without using an indicator 😀

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311838#Comment_120311838

I decided to have a go at fixing it at 10pm on a Saturday night after a few cans.

I think alcohol may have been a factor in my mishaps as well!!!

I get these mad ideas after a few beers to fix something thats been annoying me for a while - No it cant wait until Sunday morning - It needs to be done , NOW at 3.00 am after 10 cans and a half bottle of JD.

Just as well the power tools are well away from the house or god knows what could happen.

But as I said earlier its those little small jobs that I seem to have a habit of messing up. You know change a bulb and have to pull the floor up to fix it - all over a bulb.

Thinking back on it the burst water pipe wasnt really my fault - what builder buries a water pipe in a wall behind the plasterboard ??

The tree cutting - those branches look at lot smaller from the ground - the one that hit the gazebo was probably 12 inches in diameter and 10 foot long - more like a small tree in itself.

I blame the middle aisle in Lidl - power tools should need a licence. Who ever thought they needed an extendable chainsaw? Thats just asking for trouble.

Mister Vain

Putting a condom on inside out.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311753#Comment_120311753

A pie perhaps?

SuperBowserWorld

Sliced through the electric hedge clippers lead twice.

Aside from that, the number of people I see, amateur and professional who wear no eye protection using power tools is ridiculous. I would say it's the norm.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312713#Comment_120312713

That sounds like a her problem.

Bobblehats

Cap on the sriracha sauce didn’t look like no cap .. mi amiro I punched a damn hole in it

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312713#Comment_120312713

You didn't know whether you were coming or going! 😀

blade1

Would this be classed as a task?

Put stuff for burning verrucas off in to my eye.

Had a stye in my eye and mistook my eye drops for the other half's young fella's stuff for his verruca.

Similar bottle and same colour.

Felt like pouring acid into my eye.

Gloomtastic!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311761#Comment_120311761

I did the water pipe thing one Saturday afternoon. Had to get a plumber out, he was there til 9/10pm, he missed some family do he was expected at. The next day I was putting the floor boards back down and managed to burst another pipe. One man DIY disaster-zone, that's me!

Hellrazer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312908#Comment_120312908

But then theres another extreme.

I watched my neighbour one day come out with full face mask, 2 gloves that a falconer would use, overalls, work boots etc.

He drilled 2 holes and took the gear off - putting on the full gear for the job took longer than drilling 2 holes in the wall.

niallpatrick

A family on my parents street who I don't trust but I'll take off the clock jobs where I can get them other than from that family. My brother he's a bit of a 'please like me' type and he dropped me in it by suggesting to the dad of this family I'd fix their comp for them. I won't say I'm an expert but I'm qualified competent and honest. So to save my brother face and my family's rep I fixed the comp back at mine. Total POS infected with browser hi-jacks slow as hell. I always keep spare parts even for outdated comps, in this instance suitable ram. I had a suitable CPU as well but just stuck to the basics.

Clean out Quick format and Ram upgrade an easy £30-£40, sht happens somehow I zapped the motherboard BIOS and one replacement I didn't have or could get at short notice was a motherboard to suit, I had to buy a new motherboard new CPU new RAM. No two ways about rather than have them accuse my parents of having a son who messed a job up. Honesty pays well it cost me £180 giving them back practically a new faster computer. Scrub the format and clean out I'd have accepted £100, the dad pulled out a wad of cash and gave me £15. If I mess a job up I'd never expect the customer to pay full amount for my mess up but FH £15 when I told him in simple laymans terms what happened and what he was getting back broke my heart.

Anybody else would have given me at least a ton or the full amount for a fully rebuilt comp, I learned from that, money up front don't want to pay what I charge then bring it to PC world they charge £40 just to open the POS and you aren't given any guarantee it'll be fixed or even have someone qualified trying to fix it but you'd still get charged.

eggy81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120313992#Comment_120313992

You could have just lied and said something was goosed surely and it was this fix or a new computer.

Ubbquittious

Changing spark plug. I changed loads of them successfully but one time it went badly wrong and for a while thought I made sh1t of the cylinder head. Made thread about it at the time but managed to recover from it easy enough after

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312879#Comment_120312879

As in "Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.." ( From" Sing a Song of Sixpence" old nursery song)

Gregor Samsa

This one was a delayed reaction.

Summer 2005, I fitted the kitchen in our new house. Did absolutley everything except the tiling and connecting the gas hob.

March 2008, my wife went to go out for a walk with our newborn in her pram. I was out the back, with the back door open. When she opened the front door, a gust of wind came through the house, and slammed the door from the kitchen to the dining room with such force that it knocked one of the kitchen cabinets off its brackets on the wall. The cabinet that happened to have glass doors and contain all our glassware. This is exactly how it ended up on the ground. About 2 minutes before this, my 3 month old daughter was asleep in her pram in this exact spot.

Those two rectangles on the unpainted part of the wall were the brackets that came with the cabinet. Ridiculous design, particularly for a partition wall. All the cabinet had to do was slide a centimetre to the side for it to fall off. Needless to say, the replacement was securely fitted to a batten.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120311761#Comment_120311761

Apt username.

Hyperbollix

Changed oil in the car. Didn't study myself and forgot one important step. Poured in new oil, refitted the cap and started the engine to hear it clattering like an old diesel lorry. Shut it off after afew seconds and thought there must be something badly gone wrong internally...... I'd forgotten to put back in the sump plug after draining the old oil. Got away with it. Many miles and several (successful) oil changes later, all is well.

Gregor Samsa

^^ This reminds me. Topped up the oil in my old Mazda 6 years ago. Wife drove the car for a bit next thing the oil warning light came on. Turns our I had forgotten to put the cap back on, and the oil had spewed out all over the engine. Awful mess. I must have left the cap sitting in the engine bay somewhere, but there was no sign of it.

That car eventually died from catastrophic engine failure as I was overtaking another car, going at about 130km/h on the motorway. Threw a rod through the engine block, destroying it. Huge bang, white smoke, and complete loss of power - had to coast into the hard shoulder from the overtaking lane in traffic, arse cheeks suitably clenched. Probably caused by low oil pressure.

danfrancisco83

Got a job with my mate's aul fella in a factory years ago, I was about 16/17. Busy Christmas, I was asked to separate all the parcels into northside and southside for the delivery drivers. I said "sure, no bother" but I didn't know the job entailed having a geography degree, and didn't want to seem stupid by asking. Anyway, I got stuck in - "Tallaght, that's a kip, must be northside. Cabra, sounds posh, southside..." etc.

Made a total balls of it, delivery drivers took ages sorting everything out from scratch. That was the day I learned that northside is odd and southside is even.

Anyone can **** up anything...I remember working with a lad before in a lab who was far more experienced than me and he was quite eccentric and he said to me ' I never make a mistake' while he was saying it he had a bit of eh "dried mucous" in his nose unknown to him which was distracting me lol...anyway I said to him.."ah sure anyone can make a mistake, it's human error etc bla bla' and he said 'no I NEVER make a mistake'. Bout a week later guess what he did?

larchielads

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120318623#Comment_120318623

Well go on tell us!!!!

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120312908#Comment_120312908

Especially when strimming or power hosing - many’s the time a small stone went flying towards my eyes- I always wear goggles when doing those kind of jobs- I imagine A&E will be filled with people with gardening accidents over the next month or two - why risk your eyesight for the sake of a pair of safety goggles

blade1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120318623#Comment_120318623

What's this, Blankety Blank? 😁

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120316702#Comment_120316702

Fooook!

Thankfully I know who fitted my kitchen and he’s a complete professional but that just fooking scary- great to hear no one injured.

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120320720#Comment_120320720

I was in the eye hospital and their was a roofer there with shards of metal in his eye. Young guy. That was the second time it had happened. I said why don't you wear goggles and he laughed it off.

brokenbad

Replacing some old two way light switches in the house and not taking a picture of the wiring configurations before fitting the new ones - half the lights in the house stopped working. Had to call electrician to sort out.....

Sgt Hartman

I installed a wire junction box upside down while putting in a new LED light for the back garden before Xmas. It would have meant that rainwater would have gotten into it. I had to unwire it again, drill two new holes and set it up all over again, much to my OH's chagrin.

Also while putting together a chest of drawers back in 2008 I installed the front panels for the 3 drawers upside down so that the drawers wouldn't close properly. It would have been a nightmare to take the drawers apart and do them the right way around so I just left them as they were 🤪