www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

When I was 21 I remember the first time I worked away with a team of engineers we were put in last minute digs in this giant hotel in Gilford. It was like the hotel out of The Shining, endless corridors. It was getting a total referb and there was only a handfull of guests in the whole hotel. the other two thought it was a laugh to get me rat-arsed in town on the last night and when I finally got to bed I was in a right state.
I woke up at like two in the morning or something and stumbled to the bathroom and when the light's on sensors finally came on I realized I was not actually in the bathroom, but the corridor, half-cut and completely naked with a locked door behind me.
I thought I have to try and find my mates but I had no idea what room they were in and i can't go banging on doors at random naked, so I thought there's nothing for it I'll just have to march down to reception.
Reception turned out to be unmanned which looking back is a relief. but I had no idea what to do now so I sat myself behind reception (still naked) and started trying to go through their booking system on the computer but I couldn't find my mates still so in the end I took the keys for the nearest empty room from the hook and let myself in and passed out.
The next morning I got up, made the bed, wrapped a towel around myself and left the room. The door opposite was marked Caretaker so I knocked, told the guy I'd just accidentally locked myself out of my room and He let me into my original room - The perfect crime!
Leaving the room and checking out I did notice a CCTV camera in every corridor and several in the lobby area. I was so nervous checking out and for the next week or so was waiting to get called in to the managers office. But thirteen years later I seem to have gotten away with it and I learnt a very important lesson about drinking and work!

ROC......don't tell me you've never done anything daft or stupid.......come on now ........this is an amnesty after all ! ..........

( I know your good at what you do ......so don't get pis....ss.....ed.....of. With me)

Out with it.......

This is a room I did recently for my brothers first child that is on the way.
I've never done coving or papering before so I was very happy with the end result and luckily so was everyone else. They were surprised I'd gone for border around the top but loved it.

Little did they know that because I was short on space with all the clutter I measured the drop and then used dining table downstairs to cut all of the drops to length............... 200mm too short! Lol

We've laughed about it since. Very nearly an expensive tape measuring error!

Lesson learned ;-)

happy handyman wrote:ROC......don't tell me you've never done anything daft or stupid.......come on now ........this is an amnesty after all ! ..........

( I know your good at what you do ......so don't get pis....ss.....ed.....of. With me)

Out with it.......

I did make a mistake once and it has previously been documented on here lol.........and it is the worst one.

I was carpentry foreman working on new class blocks at a private school. About a 10 degree pitch to the roof. We had gluelam beams imported from sweden to go on. Cut the first lot and got the first one craned up. I had done the plumb and seat cuts on them but forgotten to take the pitch into account. I just turned to my partner (work type, not gay) in amazement. he hadn't even twigged on either. went to see the site agent, to explain that the foreman had fcuked up and his partner (foreman and site agent) had also not twigged). The site agent as it turned out was originally a carpenter and had done the same thing. He pi55ed himself laughing and said to cascamite the cuts back in. So I spread the incorrect ones out around the different classrooms.

we did some work a few years back on a victorian house. 3 storey. they wanted a doorway blocked up into the kitchen and a new one opened up from the hall to enter the kitchen. No party wall agreements etc etc.....well that was there choice. I was subbing the work. I made a pocket in the party wall and had a good look next door pmsl. Went and knocked and said......very sorry but the electrician was chasing the wall and has damaged the brick and the wall your side. We will of course repair and redecorate your hall. Turns out the dividing wall was only half a brick thick! I told the electrician what I said, too lol.

ROC.......sir you are indeed a gentleman

If you are ever in West Yorkshire, please PM me and come around to my house for a meal.....

I can cook a variety of world foods......

Also......glad you took my request as in the way it was meant....

The electrician still hasn't forgiven me lol.

I've mentioned mine before
Working on the old mans house, old obsolete steel conduit (checked it was dead and not connected to anything) in the way so cut it out, working on the other side of the room later on and conduit again in the way, looked at the line and figured it was the same length so might as well just cut the lot out.
Didn't check it was dead, starting cutting it out...power went out....RCD had tripped, turned out the downstairs light cable had been run through that piece of conduit and the piece on the other side of the floor made a hard right turn about half way across the floor.... One set of cables rapidly repaired....Lucky it was RCD protected....old rewireable fuses would have made it quite a hair raising experience....

Was ask to paint some new galvanised roller shutter door for a car cleaning company, went out the back to sizes job up on this industrial site, where all the units went round in a circle.
All the roller shutters doors painted the same and this was the only one unpainted, gave the guy a price which he was happy with.
Came back a month later on a bank holiday weekend drove in, and there was the door I had to paint.
Got the mordant solution on and sat there watching it turning black having a cup of tea, look across the yard and there was the car cleaning company door I was suppose to do.
In between me starting another company had been ram raided and had a new door fitted

Jammybstard wrote:Leaving the room and checking out I did notice a CCTV camera in every corridor and several in the lobby area. I was so nervous checking out and for the next week or so was waiting to get called in to the managers office. But thirteen years later I seem to have gotten away with it and I learnt a very important lesson about drinking and work!

You've obviously never found the footage on YouTube! Keep looking

I used to work for a church. In the house (built c. 1900)there was a downstairs loo out the back, only used when the garden was being used. The basin was loose, and the cold tap had been dripping for ages, so the priest (my boss) decided it was time to sort it. I loosened the sink mounts and re fixed it. I cleaned the limescale stain off the basin. I tried to get the tap open to change the washer, but it wouldn't budge. So we decied new taps would be the way to go. I turned off the water, installed isolators, disconnected the taps, started to undo the back nut under the cold... and as I wiggled the tap to help it, the sink cracked. Some plumber 100 years ago had put plumbers mate or something similar around the tap to seat it in the hole in the sink and over the century it had become concrete!
Fortunately, my boss's reaction was along the lines of -oh well, the basin was huge for that room. Let's have a new small one, shall we?

I've just had a classic. So bad that I didn't even get cross with myself. I just chuckled............. And swore a little bit.

We've been trying this week to remove the glossy paint from our kitchen walls ready for tiles, paint and plaster (in different areas). I grabbed myself a large paint scraper from screwfix on the way home. In my eagerness to try it out i dumped my bag at the door, ripped off the packaging and got cracking! Half an hour of me thinking "this is sh1t!" The blade came loose. On removing it ready to insert and re-tighten I realised that for safety reasons it comes out of the packaging with the blade on the inside and the normal metal end sticking out......... Oops!
Funnily enough it works much better
With the blade end! Oh well. The mrs thought it was funny!

do you really think you're the first person to do that????

We've all been there

Was arsing around on a housing site last month at break. Dancing and singing on a hop up with a younger joiner to dance songs on the radio when I lost my footing, fell into the stud wall we'd put up (it had just been plasterboarded), the top of my hardhat somehow smacked the edge of a weak joint and through I went. Massive big hole in the plasterboard, to this day dunno how I went through it because I'm only an average build lad

On a site last month I skirted a massive room out, 6 well done scribes and atleast 4 spot on external mitres. Went for my brew then realised I'd done the wrong room, it was getting lino skirting. These are just stupid things really lol I can't think of any proper dire mistakes I've made that are worth a mention (sorry this isn't DIY oriented lol)

Some years ago, i was working on a house refurbishment (lady owner was a property developer) Skirting the front room out and drilled through a live cable. ( after marking where all the bloody cables were) That was in the morning. Luckily the spark was there later on and repaired it. In the afternoon I was at the corridor at the top of the stairs and somehow managed to put a chisel through a central heating pipe. Again , luckily, the system hadn't been filled and the plumber repaired it a few days later.

Wife asked me to do a simple job in hanging a picture on the wall.

• Rush to get my drill.

• Located a screw

• Located a rawl plug

• Chose the correct sized drill bit

• Hammer action enabled (walls are pretty much solid and nothing will normally go drill through unless hammer action is enabled)

• Commence drilling.

What I've left out of there is that you should pay attention to the spot your drilling otherwise the drill chuck will also drill into the wall :-(

Thankfully the rawl plug holds the screw in place (just) and the picture is light so i didn't have to drill another hole