to ask for your dh diy disasters *lighthearted!*

[Gimmeashake]

I'm fed up with tales of wonderful house renovations/ projects over furlough and thought I'd remedy it by asking for your diy disasters! Specifically, your dh disasters because I seem to have landed the one who can't put up a shelf (well, not one you can actually, you know, put stuff on 😄). Now, I have worked throughout lockdown otherwise I'd have done it - dh has been furloughed but working on a private project, watching dc, does the shopping, cooking etc. He does his fair share, this isn't a dh bashing thread. But, my house most definitely does not look amazing after five months of having people in it ALL OF THE TIME. Please tell me there are some downsides to having a dh who actually knows what to do with a drill 😁

@candycane222 faints

I employed a man to inject damproofing. This involved drilling holes in my outside render at eight inch intervals. He drilled right beneath the electricity supply box and was surprised that he cut off the electricity to the entire street., and Was still alive. Electricity company had to dig up the road to make repairs and reconnect and he couldn’t believe it when they handed him a bill of £6k

My DH is another who likes to think and demonstrate that he is a great DIYer whose name should be Mr. Practical. Unfortunately, he isn't.

A number of years ago he was cutting back bushes at the front of the house and some ivy that had started to climb the outside wall. He decided that a brown cable that also ran up the same wall was rubbish and needed thrown out. So he chopped through it, yanked it out and binned it. Suddenly we had no phone, broadband or WiFi in the house as he had got rid of the landline cable. Cue a £200 bill that we could ill afford at the time to put a new one in.

He built his own computer. Put a fan of the wrong power rating in and the whole thing blew itself up.

He then started again. He now has one that works, but is absolutely bloody enormous. Literally, you could fit about a dozen laptops into it and it can hardly be moved. It goes under his desk in his man cave study and leaves him hardly any legroom to sit there. He spent frittered loads on all the parts too and thinks he saved loads of money doing that. He didn't. I've no idea why he won't buy a nice, neat gaming laptop instead, and get rid of all the shit. He won't though, and it is a standing joke.

I'm sure there is plenty more.

My DH is quite good at DIY but has learnt a lot of slapdash methods from his dad. My dad is meticulously thorough and neat so I will often call him to come and help DH with things. That way, the project is finished well and I hope that my dad will have taught DH to do it the best way.

Our bathroom door kept sticking as the handle was faulty, so my dad (a newspaper man who was proud of saying that his hands had never done a day’s hard labour) decided to replace it once we’d gone to school and my mum had gone to work.

He put it on. It looked fine. He went in the bathroom and shut the door. The new handle stuck and he couldn’t get out. Faced with the prospect of being stuck in there for five or six hours he shoulder charged the door to get out, splintering the door and pulling the entire door frame off the wall.

I hate doing DIY - I like making things that are usable and functional but have no eye for aesthetics!

My partner generally just gets her dad to do stuff about the house - and then I have to sort it out in a few weeks!

One was mounting the cordless vacuum on the kitchen wall, which has just left 2 massive holes where it fell off - didn't use the right wall plugs (and partner is heavy handed with everything!)

Other one is the bathroom sink - previous owner used a stupid catcher thing for the out-pipe, which clogs up constantly. So I took it apart to empty out the filter, but had run out of plumbers tape to put everything back together. Father in law had some, but also glued the thread and is now impossible to undo!

That being said, he did make a very nice under-sink cabinet.

Dh is far too fond of gorilla glue. I'm certain at least half of house is held together by the stuff.

My DH is a bit of a prat.
He was trying to attach an extension cable onto the wall so it looked neater, however, he drilled straight through a gas pipe and didnt realise.
I was at work when this happened at around 12pm, this is back in the days where we both used to smoke and do it in the house (gross I know) and he'd had 3 fags by the time i'd got home at 5pm and walked in and asked why it smelt like gas, evacuated our 3 cats and daft husband out of the house to sit in the car and ring the gas board.
Knob.

@Katlow that is worrying!!

One my dad did when I was little. He put up a work shelf / breakfast bar thing in the kitchen, about chest height to him. But my mum is only 4ft 10 so she could practically stand underneath it

We had a leak somewhere in the bathroom, so my husband cut a floorboard to investigate. He cut through a water pipe. He shot downstairs; I thought he'd run away but he'd gone to turn off the water. I was in bed, not well. I rushed into the bathroom to pull the drill away from all the water. And promptly threw up all over the bathroom floor due to moving too fast. Fortunately we had cover for plumbing emergencies; I don't know where we would have found a plumber the day after Boxing Day which was when he decided to investigate the leak...

I can recall that Ex was having real trouble putting a cabin bed together, so I took it apart and it turned out he'd not bothered to read the instructions and was assembling it wrongly. It was close to falling apart before it had been made...

But then, he never bothered to read instructions anyway. I frequently had to go along behind him and quietly redo stuff.

I'm reasonably good at assembling flat pack. DD is even better, we jokingly refer to her as "Queen of the Flat Pack". DS and I do the grunt work for her if we get any flat pack for the house

@iklboo haha!!

Where do I start? Glossed the walls in the downstairs bathroom, hung internal doors upside down, cut tiles the wrong way round so he got covered in tile dust slurry - then broke the last tile but still decided to fit it as he didn't want to buy another box.
Needless to say, he was required to make good on all of the above, and is now only allowed to paint (and that is under supervision).

My MIL turned up whilst I was at work and insisted my husband re-grout the bathroom floor.

This was the result. I wasn't impressed.

Mine has just decorated a room by himself for the first time, left unsupervised while I took the DCs to visit family. He did not follow my very precise instructions, for reasons best known to him. This means he didn’t rub down filler/plaster skim (either properly or at all, not sure) before painting. We’ll skip what happened with the ceiling and I’m not entirely sure what happened to the window sill.

He has been sulking for a week because I have failed to be sufficiently appreciative of his efforts. Even though he personally said he’d give it a 6 out of 10 (which is fair).

On the plus side, he’s brilliant at flat pack....

My husband rarely does any DIY as he’s usually at work. He is fairly good when he does though. My dad however has some dreadful history for a man who is usually very precise when it comes to DIY. He once put a wall bracket up for my sister to put her tv on (you know those 90s “portable” TVs that weighed about 35kg and were in no way portable whatsoever). All went well, assembled as per instructions and tv within weight limit. Cue 3am 4 days later there’s a huge crash followed by my sister wandering into mum and dads room to announce “dad, my tellys fallen off the wall” 😂😂. He visibly greyed when I asked him to help me with our TV wall bracket a couple of years ago. Pleased to report that one is still good and sturdy though!

He also can’t bear it when things go wrong. So when fixing mums car once (not like mechanically, it just needed a new back window on the pickup lid) he got very frustrated, threw the drill and promptly smashed the bit that was the only one of the size he needed 🙈

Dh tried to fix the taps once : all it needed was a new washer apparently, easy job.
Ended up calling on the plumber who had recently put our boiler in : the four quid washer became nearly 150 pounds for new mixer taps and plumber fees.
His not bad at diy usually but plumbing and electrics are his nemesis and his starting to give up on it all.

The downside of having a DH who is handy is that everybody wants him to do their jobs. He's done all sorts for people, from little jobs that take half a day, to building an entire kitchen extension for his auntie. He's just spent a week doing his mums drive. He's helped both of his brothers with their house renovations, plus renovated our house too. It's a nightmare, he's always in demand. The auntie whose extension he built needs him to fit her a new bathroom very soon so that will be on the cards in the next couple of weeks.

My husband is great at diy. Less so at planning.
A couple that spring to mind.
Years ago I took the kids away to my sister’s for a few days and left him to paint our bedroom a nice calm sage or thyme colour. We got home and he had painted it soft lime. It was bright. DD asked if I was going to tell him I didn’t like it and I just said “no, because he’s worked so hard building the bedroom it would be mean”. We had the paint for 4/5 years.
Another time, he hung the bathroom cabinet. He is 6’3”. I am 5’8”. I couldn’t see the top of my head so I had to make him lower it 1’ that same day. I felt bad but I did laugh!
Oh and the new kitchen need something gluing. The super glue was left on the brand new worktop. And stuck. We had remnants of the packet until we replaced the kitchen.
I’m worse than him though!

Not really DIY.... But dh checking something in the loft above ds's bedroom, me in doorway below holding Ds (about 1yr at time). I say I thought the roof just moved, cue DH saying no it's fine and pushing on the roof a bit. Next minute the whole ceiling caves in...bloody ancient artex!!!!

I was kinda glad he had done it as it was obviously unsafe and I dread to think what would have happened had ds been in there in bed or playing!!!

My poor dd is great at diy but he always gets hurt somehow.
Once he was so busy loves a gab talking to us he put a srewdriver threw his hand. It was horiffic

My dm and i once decided to surprise dd by ordering a carpet for their bedroom.
It was a bloody good surprise. We had so much carpet we did the full house.

Last one Dh and i got a wendy house for the kids for the balcony. Built it in the living room and it was too big to get it out the door and to turn it. We had to take it appart and rebuild it on the tiny balcony.