What DIY repair made you feel ridiculously proud of yourself? Win £200

[EllieSmumsnet]

From coaxing a dying washing machine back to life, to replacing a tiny part instead of buying a whole new appliance, some repairs feel like a genuine triumph and you should absolutely feel very smug if you’ve managed it! <back pats.

Have you ever fixed something you were fully expecting to retire to the tip? Maybe you saved a small fortune, avoided a call-out fee, or simply refused to let the toaster/washing machine/fridge win.

We’d love to hear your best repair story. Come on and share how handy you are and don't be shy about celebrating that feeling of bringing something back to life! We want to know: What broke? How did you fix it? Did it save you money? And did you spend the rest of the day casually mentioning your achievement to anyone who would listen?

Share your story below by 17/08/2026 to be entered into a prize draw to win a £200 VEX voucher for a store of your choice and to inspire other MNers to try fixing before replacing. (T&Cs)

10 year old Washing machine wasn't draining.
Pulled it out and removed the filter. Still wasn't working so I youtubed it and found out how to check the pipes. I found all sorts of stuff it there. Also the same washing machine needed a replacement window thing at the front. I youtubed that and order the parts and fitted it.

Our shower head started leaking and had terrible water pressure, so rather than replacing the whole shower, I bought a new shower head from Screwfix for around £25. It took minutes to fit, works perfectly and saved me the cost of a plumber and a much more expensive replacement. Definitely one of those little DIY wins that makes you feel rather smug!

I'm going to puff myself like a chicken here. I have a DD who mends everything.
Really handy to have in the house.
She can build flat packs and rebuild your computer. Not her profession, she's a trainee psychologist. Her granddad was like this and my husband too.
Me? I can't put a plug on but I can paint and lime plaster.
I'd love to attend an adult education course for DIY. None our neck of the woods.

Oven door broke on Christmas Eve Eve. I'm cooking Christmas dinner.

Down to Wickes round the corner. Roofing bolts bolted the layers together. Lasted years longer.

Cut down the loft hatch that rested on top of the hole to one that flapped down to allow a loft ladder to fold down.

Mended wooden lounge double glazed patio door/window that had rotted through at the bottom by cutting out the rot, treating the surrounding wood, cutting a piece of hardwood to fit, sanding filling, sanding filling etc, primer, undercoat, top coat. Saved on buying a new window/ patio door.

MNHQ pls edit your title to the correct spelling

I fixed an oil filled radiator. If I had not looked it up on YouTube, I would have assumed it was broken and needed to be disposed of.

It was a relatively easy fix, I just needed to take the radiator apart and reset a part that had tripped.

We have an older property and the phone connection/internet is in one end of the house and it didn’t work anywhere but the room it’s currently in - so, after much research, I installed an armoured cable throughout the house, linked internet hubs I bought on eBay at various points of the house and now we have internet in the whole house and parts of the garden (yes extenders didn’t work, tried and failed miserably). When a Sky installer came to update our internet recently he was very impressed and asked ‘how much did this expertise set you back?’ I felt incredibly smug announcing it was all me, ha!
Good grief I hate myself reading this back 😂

This may not be a biggie to most.. but for me - I was SO proud - particularly as some of this task was particularly strenuous! I hit a bad pothole while my son & his mate were in the car - I pulled over safely (luckily a quiet rural lane) - established the tyre was totally flat & proceeded to change my tyre - BY MYSELF!! My wonderful female boss had talked me through the process in our car park at work one day, & I remembered - a little slow as I tried to work out which way the jack went in, but I got there. Even my hard to please teenage son was impressed! It may not have saved me much in monetary terms, as I still had to have the tyre replaced - but it saved me a lot of time as I didn't have to wait for roadside assistance to come out & do it for me.
Also car related - I can change my headlight bulbs which saves me around a £10 each time, which I used to pay to get them fitted at Halfords!

My tall fan suddenly stopped working during a hot spell, just when we needed it most at night. I took it apart, cleaned out all the dust and fluff, checked the connections and carefully cleaned the motor before putting it back together. To my amazement, it sprang back into life. I saved around £40 on buying a new fan and, more importantly, got a cool night's sleep. I was ridiculously proud of myself and definitely mentioned my repair several times afterwards!

I mended my tumble dryer belt. It felt like I was taking it completely apart and it got to the point I was labelling the pieces I was removing. A Sainsbury’s delivery guy saw it mid job and wished me luck. The following week he came, the TD was tumbling away and he and I did a little high five thank you to YouTube 😊

I super glued a very small slide bolt to the door of my tumble dryer when the door lock mechanism broke. More than 10 years later it is still going strong. I got this dryer from facebook back in the day, it cost me £50. On first use i found £20 in the drum. Best dryer ever!

We have some oddly positioned and orientated lightswitches in our house. My first achievement was turning one upside down so that on and off felt like they were the right way round. I then progressed to replacing a double one and making sure the right switch was on the right side to make sense of the lights in the room. I discovered it's not that hard to change them, but learnt to take a photo of the wiring before I unscrewed it all so I knew what I was returning it to/changing it from!