DIY disasters - are you ready to confess?

Many years ago, as first time buyers, we bought an unmodernised house in east London, with the intention of renovating it ourselves. It had previously been in multiple occupation so had not one, but three gas meters. To keep things tidy under the floor boards and make space for the new plumbing, we decided to remove all the redundant gas piping upstairs. It had all the original gas lighting points so there was a lot of redundant gas piping. We started in the room that was to become our bathroom and my husband carefully traced all the pipes and turned off the relevant gas meter. He then started to hacksaw through one of the pipes, only to hear a tell-tale hisss. He shouted to me to turn off the two remaining gas supplies, but as they were very high up, and there was no furniture to stand on I couldn't reach. So I had to rush upstairs and put my hand over the hole while he rushed down to turn them off. One of the scariest moments of my life.

How a spark from the hacksaw didn't cause an explosion, I'll never know. The renovation was a success though.

Good point, but be careful. Trade bodies are there
to protect their members, not you.

I have to object to the phrase "lining the buildiers pockets" do me a favour and go to a builders merchant or yard, price everything they had to purchase, add on labour (you could base it on what you earn per hour) and have a look at the profit margin after overheads (tax and insurance etc). Wet rot can seriously damage structures and is not cheap to rectify. regards

Thought I'd save myself some money digging up the lead pipe that was our water supply. Carried the pipes to the car and took them to the dump. Ended up in hospital with a slipped disc, and damaged nerves to my legs. Still not fully recovered and that was a year ago. Pay someone else to do it.

i know what you mean about no pop concerts for the people who are left with nothing after the floods, this country is very quick to help other countries after a disaster, wheres our help??

quite a number of years ago now, when our grown up children were small, we were decorating our living room.My parents had the children for the weekend and late on the Sunday afternoon we had almost finished the wallpapering and decided, as the children were due back soon, we would light our coal fire as it was Autumn and getting a little chilly.My parents brought the children home around 6 and all the decorating was finished and everyone said how lovely it looked. Later that evening after the children had gone to bed we decided to have an early night ourselves as we were shattered from all that decorating. The next morning my husband got up first as usual and after a little while he came back upstairs with a strange look on his face, when i asked what was wrong he said that the wallpaper had fallen off the wall! As he is a bit of a joker i said yeh yeh and thought he was joking again, but when i appeared downstairs ten minutes later sure enough the wallpaper had slid down the wall but it had also dried, because of the coal fire it had dried out too quick and had not stuck! It was just hanging where it had slid and had dried rock hard- we had to scrape it back off and start that wall all over again, we both could have cried and luckily enough we had enough paper to re-do it! Since then we have had central heating installed and now have a gas fire, but every time we decorated we always have a laugh about our "Sliding wallpaper" although it definately wasnt funny at the time!!

my garage roof has been replaced twice leaked second time, was replaced partially 2 weeks ago yup leaking like a seive at the new joins cost altogether one thousand pounds now i just want to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing and have a garden shed instead, so come on u Polish builders u cant be worse than the home lot ive had in, though not so bad as the people who have had their homes totally flooded in the rest of the uk, I dont notice any pop concerts to help them, just a thought.;

Why waste money buying copper plumbing pipes for the installation of a new radiator in an existing central heating system?
As a mortgage valuer, I inspected this house, and noticed that the new pipework appeared ribbed .A prod showed it was extremely flexible, and I then realised it was a length of garden hose, painted white. It worked perfectly.

Why waste money buying copper plumbing pipes for the installation of a new radiator in an existing central heating system?
As a mortgage valuer, I inspected this house, and noticed that the new pipework appeared ribbed .A prod showed it was extremely flexible, and I then realised it was a length of garden hose, painted white. It worked perfectly.

i thought this was a d i y disaster stories site ............................not about florists and chippies