What was your greatest home repair blunder?

Trying to repair a slate roof with no idea of what I was doing.Wrecked a lot more of the slates. Made everything worse. Finally found a professional in Vermont who knew what he was doing. Cost about three times as much than if I’d just called him in the first place.

Nope!! Can’t think of one!! :-) +6

I was wiring my computer room. Stripping a wire (the wrong way) I slipped and broke my front tooth.

Thank goodness, my dentist got me in right way (or, I’d have been calling in to work that night.)

The room turned out GREAT…and my tooth even looks normal.

I tried to fix my door handle. The handle then proceeded to fall off…..story of my life.

I pulled up a fake tile floor in my entranceway to reveal hardwood. So I tried the same in the pantry and I couldn’t get past the splintering particleboard. The pantry floor is still a few years later in the same state of disrepair, with some carpet squares over the mess I made.

i just change a lightbulb yesterday
and thank God I didn’t fell

@Scooby I’m jealous!! +6

@AnnieB Ouch!! Hard to imagine slipping while stripping wire but I have done harm to my body in similar ways!!

@Cruiser The tool slipped off the wire…I was pulling it toward me, instead of away from me…I learned a valuable lesson that day…and that’s also when I started loving my dentist. :D

I’m sure there is one!!?? :-/ Lol..

@AnnieB Ooooh I thought you slipped as in falling…whacking yourself in the kisser like that had to hurt!!

It was December 07. The wife had gone shopping. I was sat on the sofa and thought it’s getting a little chilly, it was then that I thought I’d take a look at the boiler.
Sure enough it had stopped working, it indicated that it was down to “0.25BAR”, so I thought how hard can it be to recharge it.
So I turned the taps and put it up to “4 BAR” it kicked back into life and I returned to the sofa quite chuffed with myself.
Unbeknown to me the radiator upstairs couldn’t take the pressure and decided to disconnect itself under the immense pressure of ”4 BAR”!
End result being living room ceiling becoming the living room floor and a months worth of dehumidifying the whole room before a professional could start to redecorate.

@AnnieB – Oh, I thought you were stripping it with your teeth!

@Mat74UK – FUBAR, huh?

@stratman37 – EPIC FUBAR!
Wife wasn’t too pleased till I told her our old carpet (that was about 40yrs old) was of such quality the insurance would let us have any carpet in the shop as a replacement!

my house was built in the 40’s and all the old plumbing is cast iron and i had a slow moving drain in my shower so i busted out my sawzall to cut the pipe and retro fit it to pvc plastic and since i’m an electrician iam good at working with P.V.C but in the process i cut the water line and started shooting water everywhere and at the time i never sodered before after going thru a roll of soder and researching it on google i finally figured it

@stratman37 I thought that, too….LOLLLLL. I thought ‘who strips wires with their teeth??!!’

@Cruiser better luck next time. Hope you got your floor dried out.

Personally, I don’t try to fix much of anything unless it’s a no-brainer. I leave all of that to my husband, who could build a whole house if he wanted to. He does plumbing, electrical, you name it, he can do it.

Everytime I tried. **ashamed**

Thankfully he is good at almost all kinds of small repairs required. If there is anything that needs to be fixed, the one and only thing I am allowed to do is, call for him. **giggles** If he is not around and if that is something which cannot be kept waiting then, I am supposed to leave the house and call the plumber or electrician or as needed and only when they arrive am I supposed to enter the house. **bahs!**.

I know, sounds a bit OTT, but learnt it the hard way. **frowns**

@jbfletcherfan – well if it’s a small enough speaker wire, I do it all the time, but he was probably strippin’ ROMEX, which WOULD necessitate a visit to the Dentist!

Me? None. My husband, many. The main problem when he screws up is that he didn’t listen to me. Seriously I know it makes me sound like a know-it-all, but he always takes the most complicated route no matter what it is. My dad is a woodworker, carpenter and master electrician. I grew up with that so I am not a female home improvement moron.

1 – Replacing folding closet doors. I told him not to take off a full inch from each door, that it was easier to take off more than to add any back. Result? Noticeable gap between the doors.

2 – Replacing linoleum in the kitchen of our first house with stick-on tile. He listened to the Lowe’s lady who said to spread some sort of leveling crap on the floor. It was a smelly, messy disaster. I had to be shut in the bedroom with a window open and the fan on because I was pregnant and couldn’t be around the fumes. He ended up scraping it all off and laying them on the subfloor, just like I suggested.

@stratman37 LOLL…since I have an upper partial, that’d never work with me.

nope!

LOWE’S You can botch it, we can help.

Not really home repair, but I picked really bad colors for a 128 unit apartment community once. It effected our occupancy and cost about $50,000 to fix.

@judi LOL! The color never looks as good as the swatch!

@stratman37 Lowes is 4 lock from my house and has more of my money than I care to be reminded of!

I’m right there with ya brother!

@Judi Yeow! That’s gotta hurt. :-/

it may have been more than $50,000. I’ve blocked it out.

@Judi LOLLL, yeah, I think I would, too. ;-)

@Judi You reminded me of mine. I chose a terrible color for our kitchen. I had it all settled and then the store didn’t have it. They couldn’t color match for some reason, so I just went with something there. Bad, bad idea.

@Cruiser ,I installed all white tile and grout in my newly remodeled kitchen and I have seven grandchildren, nuf said.

My husband rewired our house .. it appeared just fine. Except we found out later that the way he did it… the only time the front door bell would work is when the basement lights were on! Oops.

@Mandomike What were you drinking and how come you didn’t offer me some??

@JustPlainBarb – could be worse!!

@Cruiser ,Your invited over anytime and I have what ever you like but watch out for your house!

@Mandomike No worries there! I am moving and let the new owners fret over the details!! A Sam Adams or any Winter Ale for this time of the year would be quite nice! Thanks for the invite!