I am ticked..!!!!

[hawkeye08]

Yes, I have done this.... enough said.

 

[oldnslo]

There are two types of people that don't make mistakes, Bosses and people who don't do anything. I found that frequently they one and the same person

I learn by doing, and redoing & redoing....

 

[newbury]

For somebody nearly sixty-two years old you would expect them to have a little common sense.

Talking about myself.

Had a pipe crack in my little bathroom off the master bedroom. Went to pee at 3:00 one morning and stepped in water. That is never good. Had to tear up the wood flooring. Since then I have done every single thing wrong! EVERY SINGLE THING. Have broke tools. Cut flooring wrong. Spilled paint in the bedroom. Ruined good paint brushes. Chipped the bathtub with a dropped drill. Broke pipes and sprayed water on the subfloor after spending a week drying it out.

I stepped on the wax ring after removing the commode with my BARE FOOT! GAG..!!

After finally getting the vanity installed this afternoon I was applying caulk to it to hold the sink. Kept squeezing the trigger of the caulk gun but nothing was coming out. So I continued to squeeze harder. The tube was split and the adhesive was dripping on the floor I had spent two days installing.

Taking me three weeks to do a one week job. And I'm not finished yet.

Wife doesn't even laugh anymore. She just says, "poor baby", and leaves the room (to laugh where I can't hear her).

Anybody else ever have a project like that??

RSKY

I'm working one now. Wallpapered and refloored a small bathroom over 30 years ago. Didn't take into account that 4 teenagers (2 unborn at that time) would routinely shower until the water turns cold. Resulting humidity levels caused a small corner of wallpaper near the ceiling to peel back from the wall. With children moved out bathroom went unused. To make her mother happy, daughter pulled all the wallpaper off the walls, while we were gone for a month.

No wallpaper stripper, just brute force and a spackling blade. Where the drywall wasn't stripped of it's surface the 30 yr old wallpaper glue was left in a waffled surface about 1/8 inch thick. She then painted over it twice with a thick paint.
Resulting painted surface:




The resulting surface, where it was not gauged down through the drywall paper and deeper was difficult to remove. I finally found if I put CitriStrip on it and let it soak in for 12 hours I could get down to drywall after about 3 applications.

Then came the skimcoating, which I had not done before on a large surface. Let me just say it's been a long learning curve, taking about 1 gallon of mud, 1/2 gallon of paint, several new tools. I'm on about the last coat of paint. I've learned that a Dewalt ROS coupled with a $12 wet dry/vac and hooked up like a hookah is an excellent dry wall mud sanding tool. That some drywall mud can take up to three days at 60 degrees F to harden.

I thought the project would take a week, it's been three. In retrospect I could have hung new drywall quicker, but I've got several walls that prior owners used contact paper on and I know the difficulty of getting that off and the need for "skimcoating" skills.

 

[roadhunter]

Know when not to do it yourself. LOL

 

[jlgurr]

Yep. Reminds me of the time I installed a hangar rod in the closet. Measured twice, cut once, and it was exactly a foot too short. As for plumbing, I never do it any more. I go ahead a hire some other fool up front. Learned my lesson the time Sharn Jean lost her contact down the kitchen sink. No problem; remove the goose neck, retrieve the contact, replace goose neck and everyone is happy. Well....removing the goose neck, I discovered it was old and thin and I knocked a hole in it. New goose neck, no problem. Twisted too hard, collapsed part of the pipe going into the wall (old and thin also). Gave up, called plumber who was there all day, knocked hole in wall to access pipe, major project, etc. $$$$$$$$.

Did you find her contact lens?

<OS_dispatch_group: 0x1460d430>

 

[davesl708]

Well, at least you were not responsible for the Big Dig in Boston.:thumbsup:
Or the EPA project that dumped all the pollution in the river recently.

 

[ultrarunner]

I've noticed more problems when under the gun or having an audience...

Often the best results are when you can just roll up your sleeves and take your time.

Deal with a lot of turn of the century plumbing... 1910 and newer... sometimes you just have to go where the job leads.

Sawzall and a set of plumbing taps and dies up to 2" really helps plus an assortment of rubber couplings!

 

[Thomas]

Now how does that little old song go...if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all.

You might think your half way down the ladder but your really half way up the ladder.

 

[Citydude]

There is nothing more satisfying than standing back and admiring your carpentered work. And then, that voice standing behind you says "where are the built in bookcases?"

 

[Mysfyt]

For somebody nearly sixty-two years old you would expect them to have a little common sense.

Talking about myself.

Had a pipe crack in my little bathroom off the master bedroom. Went to pee at 3:00 one morning and stepped in water. That is never good. Had to tear up the wood flooring. Since then I have done every single thing wrong! EVERY SINGLE THING. Have broke tools. Cut flooring wrong. Spilled paint in the bedroom. Ruined good paint brushes. Chipped the bathtub with a dropped drill. Broke pipes and sprayed water on the subfloor after spending a week drying it out.

I stepped on the wax ring after removing the commode with my BARE FOOT! GAG..!!

After finally getting the vanity installed this afternoon I was applying caulk to it to hold the sink. Kept squeezing the trigger of the caulk gun but nothing was coming out. So I continued to squeeze harder. The tube was split and the adhesive was dripping on the floor I had spent two days installing.

Taking me three weeks to do a one week job. And I'm not finished yet.

Wife doesn't even laugh anymore. She just says, "poor baby", and leaves the room (to laugh where I can't hear her).

Anybody else ever have a project like that??

RSKY

Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?

 

[oldpilgrim]

 

[chuck172]

I do believe that the moon suns and stars align sometimes and you best just stay in bed.
One morning I was trying to start a log splitter, priming the carb, it burst in flames singed my hair and eyebrows.
Was pissed off, hauled the log splitter to get fixed (I never pay to get work done like that)
Came home, cast a line in my pond, settled down with a beer, my daughter starts screaming =Dad come quick.
My ford 8n tractor rolled into my wife's car taking out her front fender.
Now I'm really pissed, went down to the pond to get my pole and call it a day-It was gone! Caught a big catfish I guess and he pulled the pole and reel into the drink.
All this happened in a matter of a few hours.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Did you find her contact lens?

<OS_dispatch_group: 0x1460d430>

:laughing: I think so. That was over 40 years ago. :laughing: That old house was a hoot. One Saturday Winter morning we had just woken up and were lying in bed when we heard a loud bang, and the sound of water running. I got up and looked the place over, went outside and the outside faucet was sticking out of the wall about a foot. I grabbed it and it came out from under the house with about 3 feet of pipe. The thing had broken/frozen off and completely severed. Another call to the plumber and $$$$$$.

 

[newbury]

I've noticed more problems when under the gun or having an audience...

Often the best results are when you can just roll up your sleeves and take your time.

Deal with a lot of turn of the century plumbing... 1910 and newer... sometimes you just have to go where the job leads.

Sawzall and a set of plumbing taps and dies up to 2" really helps plus an assortment of rubber couplings!

Being able to take my time is essential. When I used to have to rush a job the mistakes could easily multiply on jobs I was doing for the first or second time.

It also greatly helps to have the RESOURCE of TBN to pop on and ask things like "XXX just happened, do I fix it or call a professional?", and of course YouTube videos to be able to watch the moves to splice a wire, weld a seam, etc.

Add to that the prevalence of Amazon and really quick shipping it's possible to get a wide variety of supplies that really make a job easier. For my skimcoating job I had started with a 12" taping knife, then I read about the "Magic Trowel Drywall Smoother" bought a 22" with Prime delivery and that made the job a LOT easier.

I watched youtube and saw better ways to mix the mud to the right consistency.

In my workshops in Mississippi I deal with a lot of "good ol'boy" construction. I've a light switch in a bedroom that turns on a fan 60' and 2 rooms away, water plumbing put together with gas pipe tubing, lot's of lights powered by extension cords with the ground plug clipped off. Most of the "man entry" doors are recycled from narrow RV doors.

 

[ultrarunner]

TBN and the NET are great resources...

Nothing like watching a video to get an idea of what lays ahead.

Dealer wanted $550 each to replace two window regulators...

I did both with total out of pocket of $75 and a Saturday morning... saved at least $1000 plus the inconvenience of having to drop off and pickup the car.

I find I'm at my most productive in Washington... no cell service or Internet... just peace and tranquility...

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Last week I lost my fob for my keyless truck. Two days before that, I lost my atm card somewhere in New Mexico. This week I lost a promotional debit card with a hundred bucks on it. Thank goodness, my you know whats I keep in a bag attached to me...

 

[KubotainNH]

Some days nothing goes right, best to just stop. Sometimes it's a whole project that is jinxed but I hear it builds character...

 

[groundcover]

I cut it twice and it's still too short !

Sometimes your best tool is a telephone !

 

[dragoneggs]

I thought I made a mistake (sp?) once... but I was wrong! :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Yeah and I used to have one flaw... I was conceited... I fixed that and now I'm perfect.

 

[2ndhalf]

I was trained by my dad to get irate about anything that went wrong on a project and we had a lot of them as a kid living in a very run down house my dad fixed up. As an adult I did the same, trained my boys to make a big deal out of everything. Now as an older adult, my son moved back in a year and a half ago and I have decided that he is going to help me with projects and I'm NOT going to get upset. Just laugh off mistakes and issues as they come up. I was a maintenance/electrician for 4 years in a coffee plant so I have a few things to teach him. I have been pretty successful with not getting mad and just laughing at my mistakes and we have done a lot of projects in an older home we just moved to. We have had a few blow ups but by the end of day we are laughing again. I'm really glad he moved back in for a while, I feel like I have a second change to teach him some things without being an @$$. He is shipping off to the Air Force on 4/19.

Learn to laugh at your issues... life is too short to do otherwise guys!