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New York nailing disaster
Posted by Martin on 18 March 2010 - 8:41pm.
Yesterday I bought a chest of drawers at Ikea. The construction seemed simple enough, but time was not on my side, as I had to work fast while the baby slept. Everything seemed to be going well. Too well, in fact. Because speed has brought disaster. As I struggled to get the drawers into their gliders I discovered, to my horror, that I'd nailed the back onto the wrong side. The whole thing is back to front! So my nice new Ikea chest of drawers is now littered with unsightly nail holes, and looks horribly second hand. I feel absolutely awful.
Please help alleviate my shame by sharing any similar stories of DIY humiliation.
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I can't tell you the number of cock-ups I've made
The worst was probably when I was putting a shelf up in the kitchen and drilled into the washing machine power cable (which bizarrely was going up the wall), sending me flying backwards across the stepladder, hitting the wall across the other side of the room.
It took my then father-in-law to come to the rescue, natch. Nothing like making you feel totally incompetent.
I'm a pretty dab hand with flat packs now, but have numerous Ikea Billy bookcases with screws facing up on shelves, rather than being hidden underneath.
I've also tried to fix the loo and failed so miserably so that it wouldn't stop filling up. Had to call the plumber, of course.
Personally, anyone who says they've never made a cock-up is either lying, or never does any DIY!
Thanks robram...
...for sharing your pain. The funny thing is that as I was building my chest of drawers I was marvelling at how clear and legible the Ikea instructions seemed to be, while quietly laughing to myself at all those apocryphal flat-pack disasters. Hey presto. Instant karma. And I messed up the dinner too.
new
I bought a kitchen from IKEa last year and had to build every single unit after ripping out the old kitchen. My wife had to wait 4 weeeks as I struggled to construct these things every night after work. When I had finished I had enough screws,nails and brackets left over to start a hardware shop. Anyway,the kitchen fitter came to fix them to the walls, took one look at my units and declared them useless as they were not plumb. I was livid after spending all that time and effortI now avoid Ikea and any talk of new wardrobes or chests of drawers. I work on a building site by the way.
I too should know better...
My living room door keeps working loose. It's the top hinge; an old problem, in an old door frame, and it's basically had that many different sized screws fixed into it over the years as a temporary solution that there's barely any timber left to bite into at the point where the hinge sits. OK, that's an exaggeration - it's more that the receiving holes are now too big for the size screw the hinge allows.
Over the last few months I have had to 'fix' the door on a nightly basis until eventually, in a moment of frustration, I explained the problem to my bemused* wife. Who then said the following crushing words: "why don't you just use one of those plug (rawlplug) thingies you use when you screw into brickwork". Obviously this worked a treat.
Full disclosure time: when I left school I served a three year apprenticeship as a Joiner. Later I went to University and got my degree. I now work in construction project management, where I help to run multi-million pound developments.
(* bemused given she's aware of my profession)
This is a repost from another site, but
I'm not typing it all in again...so, I'm installing a kitchen {wavy lines}
...(I'm *relatively* competent at this sort of thing.) I desperately want to get the sink taps and washing machine installed so we could wash some of the backlog of clothes that has built up - Got a 3 month old, colic-y baby? Splendid time to install a new kitchen...
So I get most of the pipework guts in, taps working and all is well. As with all these things, though, I have hugely underestimated the time needed to complete the job, and I have an appointment with the Pub.
...So I reel in at about 2am, and think, "damn it, lets get the washing machine working". First stop, a few holes in the cabinets for wastepipe - hmm, they don't seem to line up with the pipework. Never mind it's more Carol Smillie than Handy Andy, lets add a few more...it's under the sink, after all.
Eventually, I can feed the washing machine pipes through, and hook everything up. A triumph. Now for testing. Stuff my dirty clothes into the washing machine and set to "on". It's now 3am, gosh, I hadn't realised how tired and pissed I am. Perhaps I should just have a little rest on the kitchen floor?
5am. Something is wrong. I awake, naked, in about an inch of soapy water. Mercifully, with all the power tools near by, I haven't fused myself.
...the wastepipe from my sink has a nozzle to attach a drain from an appliance. This nozzle is blocked with a bright red plastic disk which says "Remove before connecting appliance"