DIY Disaster Stories

[Rroff]

I've spent my entire life seeing my Dad make half-baked DIY decisions that I've thankfully learned not to make them myself. My girlfriend is also extremely handy with power tools and DIY, so between the two of us we're quite good.

As for my Dad... Last one that springs to mind was him falling off the roof with a chainsaw, then there was the time he cut through a live wire with a pair of shears without switching off the mains, oh and the time he drilled the wall and burst the mains water on a bank holiday Monday...

My dad is usually pretty good at DIY but sometimes I dunno what he is thinking - one time he tried to round something off using a chisel held in a vice and a power drill end result the chisel took a trip around the object on the drill and then embedded itself in his leg resting against an artery - literally couldn't have been any closer without nicking the artery. Another time while clearing branches from a tree with a chainsaw despite me trying to tell him the branch he had the ladder rested against wasn't safe he wouldn't listen - cue the branch slowly rending off in comedy slow motion and me trying to hold the ladder up with him 15 feet in the air or so with a chainsaw - fortunately he released the trigger on the chainsaw and had the presence of mind to stow it but on the other hand panicked and was working against me trying to keep the ladder up and despite me telling him I could hold it up if he worked his way downwards working with me he decided to bail off the side of it half-way down and probably did himself an injury though he was too proud to show it.

Fireman bought house near me, his dad was helping renovate, open up downstairs living room and kitchen by knocking a wall down.

The house ended up very open plan when the upper floor collapsed onto the ground floor, only took them around 12 months to sort out before he could move in lol

Seen this happen too many times though not quite at that scale. For some reason people don't seem to want to take notice of reason if they want the offending wall gone (another one where for some reason people won't listen to me probably because I'm not a professional they assume I have no idea what I'm talking about if it is contrary to what they want to hear - even when my advice is to get a professional to check before they do stuff) fortunately it has been more of the order of sagging or slow collapse necessitating emergency shoring up and rebuilding than catastrophic collapses.

I once tried to rewire an extension socket while it was turned on, that hurt (I'd already done it once but for some reason decided to redo it but forgot it was still on)

Luckily no injury, its weird how it kinda sticks to you when you get a shock. I'm guessing its the muscles not responding or something but it freaked me out and I've been very careful since.

When I was about 7 or so I decided to try and fix a lamp - I thought to turn it off at the mains (actually it was off and I turned it on) but not to unplug it! on the other hand I'd read somewhere about the one hand rule so the current didn't pass through the heart so was doing that - cue electric shock when I touched a metal part which was live - didn't get stuck to it though all my muscles on that arm flinched involuntarily, got a salty taste in my mouth and blacked out for half a second or so.

 

[Bigpops]

Not DIY, but I broke a plastic pipe in a loft at work once. It was a sheltered housing complex, and I was running cables for a new warden call system. The warden herself had left, and there was just a temporary warden who visited in a morning to check on the residents.

I'd never seen plumbing like it before and I haven't since. It was all mains water in grey plastic. My foot just caught the pipe very lightly where it went from about 50mm down to 22mm or less, and it cracked and started spraying out a fine mist. I yelled down to my mate to alert him. I don't know if he heard. Anyway it then broke and mains water was gushing out, so I got down.

With no permanent warden on, nobody knew where the stop tap for the building was. Took us about 20 minutes to half an hour to find it. By then the walls on the top floor were wet through where it ran down. Anyway, we rang the firm we were working for. They got in touch with the housing association, and they delivered a load of bottled water to site. I think all the damage was in the corridors, and not people's flats, luckily. The next day the plumbers showed up to fix it.

That's by far the most serious thing I've done. Never injured anyone or myself.

In addition to that I've cut electrical cables accidentally when taking up floor boards. Drilled through cables when drilling through walls or drilling for fixings than I care to remember. Usually when cables have been where they shouldn't be. I've put my foot through a ceiling, but only once in 25 years, and it was on a building site so it didn't really matter. I've had a 240v belt a couple of times. Just a tingle on the finger for a fraction of a second.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

I've spent my entire life seeing my Dad make half-baked DIY decisions that I've thankfully learned not to make them myself. My girlfriend is also extremely handy with power tools and DIY, so between the two of us we're quite good.

As for my Dad... Last one that springs to mind was him falling off the roof with a chainsaw, then there was the time he cut through a live wire with a pair of shears without switching off the mains, oh and the time he drilled the wall and burst the mains water on a bank holiday Monday...

Sounds like mine he was an avid DIY'er but without much ability at it. Was told about the time he was up a ladder sawing through some power cables thinking as it was teh old electricity supply it was disconnected... it wasn't. One flash and bang and woke up on the other side of the room apparently. Another occasion he decided to nail down a squeezy floorboard not quite realising the reason why the nails where in the edges of teh board and not in the middle was because there were central heating water pipes running through the middle, he put a huge nail through a 1 1/2" pipe the water gushed up like a fountain and poured through the ceiling below and down the walls, was quite a sight.

My stepfather was splitting logs with an axe and wearing only rubber wellies very silly really well the inevitable happened and the axe bounced off and sliced into his foot ended up in hospital for umpteen stitches only to return days later as it became infected and had to open it up again and clear out the muck still in there including wood chippings.

I've only managed to drill a hole in a wall for a shelf and drilled through the ring main cable, a flash and a bang and no electricity and it was getting dark too...

My dad is usually pretty good at DIY but sometimes I dunno what he is thinking - one time he tried to round something off using a chisel held in a vice and a power drill end result the chisel took a trip around the object on the drill and then embedded itself in his leg resting against an artery - literally couldn't have been any closer without nicking the artery.

Oh that reminds of something that happened in college in the metal shop this girl was using the floor standing drill the huge one with the lever you pull down - she'd forgotten to take the chuck key out of it, she switched it on and the key flew across the classroom and whistled past my ear I felt the wind of it - a inch to the right and it would have imbedded itself in my head...

 

[lookitsjonno]

Luckily no injury, its weird how it kinda sticks to you when you get a shock. I'm guessing its the muscles not responding or something but it freaked me out and I've been very careful since.

Been doing DIY for 13 years or so but managed to shock myself for the first time last week! Was changing an outdoor floodlight, removed the old one, realised I needed to drill another hole so turned the power back on... blimey my finger wasn't the same for 2 days. Really shook me up and nocked my confidence (which is a good think as it'll make me more careful next time)

Also drilled through a gas pipe putting up a towel rail. Stud/voltage/pipe detectors should be taught at school!

 

[Freakbro]

My friend went to help her daughter with some DIY in her new property recently. It was to fit a swing bin under the sink and put an Ikea shelf on the wall in the kitchen.

The bin had the mechanism so the lid opens automatically when the door opens, but it was a corner cupboard so nowhere to attach the mechanism, so their solution was to take it all apart and just screw the bin to the back of the door...£55 for what ended up just a bucket on a door

Next, the Ikea shelf. Initially it was too big to fit the space, so they cut it in half. To be fair, they made a good job of putting it up, very level....in the way she managed to drill into the main water pipe twice with the screws on the middle bracket

£150 emergency plumber call out later and you can't tell that much where they chopped out the wall

 

[ahar]

Moved into a new house and one of the trees in the garden was dead, so I thought I would cut it down. I put ropes on it and cut for it to fall in a certain direction, but it was more rotten than I thought so snapped too early and fell on the neighbours green house.

To be fair, he was very good about it. We obviously paid for a replacement

 

[InvaderGIR]

I was doing some bike maintainence. I had taken the wheel off to fit a new tire, when I out it back on the pads were rubbing the disc brakes. I span the wheel and then, and for the life of me I can't work out why I did this, I reached in to adjust the brake pads. Half severed the tip of my thumb. Off to a&e i go.

Funny side note, this was 10 days before my wedding. The a&e doctor referred me to the plastics team at Addenbrookes but first he bandaged me up like a mummy (Genuinely he had gone to town with the bandages, when I went to see the plastics guy for stitches his first words were "who the bloody hell bandaged this"). When I walked out the fiance burst into tears at the thought of wedding photos involving a giant comedy hand. I luckily managed to get the stitches out two days before the wedding and was given second skin plaster for the day. Wedding salvaged.

I've had a very close experience to that (without the worry of a wedding).

I was working on a car and not even doing a mechanical job, just trying to sort an issue with the remote locking and alarm which was in the passenger side of the car. I was in and out of the car loads of times and one final time I got in, caught my (at the time and top of ear) ear piercing on the top of the door felt a bit of pain but was used to catching it so thought nothing of it. Then it got quite hot and I knew something was up, hand to ear and it was covered in blood. Went in the house, found some tissues to mop some of it up, then got a large plaster applied by someone else. Drove myself to the local small A&E who said "not a lot I can do, I'll refer you to plastics at the regional hospital", drove on over to there, waited a bit and then had plastic surgeons stitch it back together.
The guy doing it was a new doctor and so was being guided by an experienced one, once the stitching up was done he told the young doctor to dress it and he'd be back in a few mins. So the young guy puts a dressing on the ear and then wraps my head in a bandage as if I've split my head open or something. Senior guy comes back in and is quite confused (and amused), says to take it all off and applies what is essentially Vaseline, job done, no bandages needed.

 

[Andrew_McP]

The most memorable DIY disaster I was involved in was back in the late 70's. My (single) mother was always short of money and we lived in a cheap, damp property which the landlord let her do what she wanted with. As long as he wasn't paying, he was happy.

Mum decided the living room fireplace was coming out of the upstairs flat (don't ask me why... it's a women and 'this needs changing' thing). She got me and my brother to stand either side of it while she stood in front of it with a crowbar, levering the top loose from the wall. My brother and I were just supposed to stop it coming away too far. We didn't. The fireplace surround (brick, cement, tiles) suddenly came loose in one piece, we couldn't stop it falling, and my mother jumped back out of the way.

Nearly. She still has a big toenail divided neatly in two after her long recovery from a very crushed big toe. She was a self-employed hairdresser with 4 kids, one still very young, to look after and didn't take a day off work despite being barely able to hobble up and downstairs from the flat to the shop below, let alone look after us.

I remember this every time I'm climbing a wobbly stepladder or about to pick up a drill. Probably explains why I only do essential rather than improvement DIY. It's hard for stuff to pass the 'does this really need doing?' test.

 

[eddiemcgarrigle]

I've been spending my time replacing the old radiators in the house.

Missus decided that since radiators where getting replaced, she would like the pipes to come out of the wall and not the floor. This entails cutting the floor open and cutting a whole in the wall (easy with plasterboard walls). The very first cut into the floor and I sliced into a radiator pipe that had been recessed into the underside of the floor panel. Not exactly what you expect when your cutter depth is set to the exact thickness of the floor. I've also had a few near misses when cutting the walls as there are cable runs all over the place, seemingly not corresponding to the placement of sockets. Damn builders leaving traps.

 

[DXP55]

Nothing really serious -drilled through a mains cable in a factory once - but seen a few.

Lad I worked part time for had TV men in to fit bracket on the wall -mate got them back next day because he wasn't happy so he and I removed TV and bracket including the wall fittings and there was the Rad pipe all nice and shiny on one side- half a mill more.

Came to make a cap of tea at home once (Mid 60s) and two pin rubber plug was missing a pin- Dad said he pulled it out and it left a pin in socket so he pulled it out- I looked around then said "You did turn power off or use insulated pliers?" - he went white.

Another mate years and years ago had a stuck water stop valve and couldn't turn off one in road so had to replace it live -just like that video - What he did say was next time I will turn on all the taps which would have released some of the pressure.

Sometimes when you look back it's amazing how close you came to making a big balls up - There but for the grace of God and all that.

 

[Greebo]

20 years ago after we had just moved into a new house which I had spent the previous year restoring without an issues, my gf was at work and she had asked me to put the curtain rail up in the lounge on Christmas Eve.

I proceeded to do the measurements, mark the wall where the hangers were to go and then plugged my drill in and started drilling the wall when there was an almighty bang, a big chunk of the plaster came off the wall and the electric went off. I had drilled straight through the electric wire which was directly above the socket I had the drill pulled in. I cursed myself for my stupidity and it cost me £320 on xmas eve to get a sparky out to fix so we would have electric for xmas day.

 

[glenimp617]

I would recommend people buy one of those metal rods used to turn the outside water off with. In an emergency, you simply can't turn it without one. If you think a big screwdriver will do it, think again!

 

[Rroff]

Nothing really serious -drilled through a mains cable in a factory once - but seen a few.

Someone did that somewhere I was working on a big site - I can't remember details but it was something like 3 phase 11kV or something not regular 240V mains - apparently wasn't pretty though I didn't see it for myself though got 2 days off while it was fixed. Can't remember now if the guy survived or not but supposedly he was tossed "20 feet" in the air.

 

[Greebo]

Someone did that somewhere I was working on a big site - I can't remember details but it was something like 3 phase 11kV or something not regular 240V mains - apparently wasn't pretty though I didn't see it for myself though got 2 days off while it was fixed. Can't remember now if the guy survived or not but supposedly he was tossed "20 feet" in the air.

Local factory owner decided to top himself like that a few years ago. Went to the factory, altered the trip and then grabbed hold of the 3 phase connectors. His 12 year daughter came looking for him and found him. So sad.

 

[Basher]

I was digging us a new drive in a mini digger and went through the mains gas pipe into the house. That's pretty scary, I can tell you.

 

[Lopéz]

I've drilled through one gas pipe and cut through another. Neither are as dramatic as people will have you believe.

 

[builder22]

I thought if I left a radiator bleed valve open it would release all the pressure from the combo boiler so I could change a leaking valve (for the fill loop I think)....nope..still plenty pressure left when I took the valve off...assumed it would only last a few seconds since I had opened the radiator bleed valve, nope! but thought **** it...there can’t be much pressure left..will just let it run and clear up the mess
Eventually had to leave it spraying everywhere, running around like a fanny gathering towels as the pools of water in the kitchen were getting a bit much!

 

[iamdjdz]

I put a long nail into the block wall in my bedroom when I was living at home (to hang a speaker on) and it hit the fixing for the bracket for my brother's heavily loaded bookshelf on the other side. The whole wall length shelf fell along with all his books and ornaments... luckily he was out and I had superglue lol.

 

[413x]

Worst for me is a near Darwin award

Was changing a light switch

Made two mistakes.

One, for some reason forgetting to turn the mains off
Two, using a fully metal screw driver.

I got zapped by the mains.
My heart beat went crazy and took a bit to settle

 

[DXP55]

I've drilled through one gas pipe and cut through another. Neither are as dramatic as people will have you believe.

Quite right - I was fault finding and dug on a new patch of tarmac- 6" down with fork and psssssss - Fork tine through plastic pipe. The bloke in house i was outside of came out and said his gas fire has just gone off-
Called gas board and two blokes turned up who looked like they had worked for the gas for years.- One wondered up smoking a fag -had a kick round pipe and said to his mate get me whatever it was he needed - He put his fag end on kerb right next to him -cut pipe in half -stuck his thumb over the hole -leaned over and had another drag - his mate put fitting on the other end then he removed his thumb and joined pipe together and that was that.
I was of course 50 yds down the road and he said people panic with gas -it will only explode when mix is right and out in the open with a wind blowing you won't get the right mix.

Rroff.
Mine was 240v and it fed the socket I had drill battery charger plugged into right in front of me. Fortunately it was the only breaker tripped in the biggest strip of breakers I have ever seen.
I am glad I am not out there doing all this now.