Funniest Home Repair Story?

Borski2B

Just for fun... humor me with your funniest or favorite home repair story. DH and I are juggling ongoing dishwasher issues and a leaking toilet right now (it's never just one thing at a time!!!) and we're joking about how fun tonight's toilet surgery will be.

 

mom2ll

Not excatly funny, but when we did the addition on our previous house we had the plumber come out to figure out where we should hook up the new drain to the existing sewer line.  He had a long metal pole and was poking it into the ground.  He was out there for several hours.  I called DH and work and told him I wanted a new plumber because "this guy is an idiot, what kind of plumber can't find a sewer line after 3 hours."  It got dark and he came back the next day and continued to look.  I was on the phone with the water department trying to find out if they had a map or something to help.  I demanded a new plumber (to the contractor).  New plumber comes out and pokes around for several hours.  Then he asks me to flush a big wad of TP down the toilet.  Guess what?  It came out into our "abandoned" septic tank.  WE DIDN"T HAVE A SEWER LINE..  that's why he couldn't find it.  Story goes on and on, but we had to install a sewer line that the city was paid to install in the early 1960's and never did.  We had been paying a monthly sewer bill for about 9 years...

Borski2B

OH MY GOSH! That is crazy! Infuriating at the time, I'm sure, but makes a good story now.

*BlueAvocado*

We've had several projects that have turned out to involve a series of comedic (now--not at the time lol) errors.

The first project we ever did together after we bought our house was replacing the heinous, rectangular, fluorescent light fixture in the kitchen with track lighting. We read about it, asked people in the lighting dept at the hardware store about it - it was supposed to be an easy project. It ended up being our first example of the lovely, absolutely inept, work done by the previous homeowner.
When we took the original light fixture down, there were just wires poking out of a hole in the ceiling - no mounting box - thus, nothing to attach our new light fixture to - and a fire hazard. So suddenly we're thrown into a much higher level project than we were anticipating - and had NO idea what we were doing.
After much googling, contacting FIL, and a MILLION trips to the hardware store (which started as DH going alone until he forgot things, bought the wrong things - then I took over) we were completely frazzled, the kitchen was covered in drywall dust and the pair of us were grating on each others nerves, each on a ladder in the middle of the kitchen trying to hold up the armature for the track lighting while screwing in the most ridiculously TINY screws we'd ever seen. Every couple of minutes one of us would drop one, the other would have to balance across the two ladders and hold the other person's part of the light fixture while the other hunted for the lost screw (with a flashlight, mind you, because there's no kitchen light!). The culmination of all of this resulted in us finishing the project, both on our ladders, smushed against the ceiling, TRYING to get the stupid last screw to fit correctly, our arms about to fall off from holding the stupid light above our heads...and fighting...completely stuck, 10" from each other, saying things like "Oh yeah? well, you're lucky I can't get off this ladder...because if I COULD...." lol... We had to have looked absolutely ridiculous lol.

Suzi-G-

We've had a lot of projects that "grew" as we've dug into our 50+ year old house, you always find more than you bargained for.   So far though we haven't found anything DH couldn't fix. 

I did come home one day to find him jackhammering a hole in the foundation under my bathroom floor.  I was pregnant at the time and we were just beginning a total bathroom renovation.  I sat on the floor and bawled (totally irrationally) because there was a mountain of dirt INSIDE my house and a big hole in/under the floor.  He was digging so he could move the drain and replumb it because we were enlarging the shower and the slope of the floor was wrong.  It was a huge mess but turned out fine.  

Right now he's midway through installing a new HVAC system and there have been some issue with joists being in the way and measurements being off with the new equipment being bigger than the old and he's having the sheet metal fabricator guys build him some custom stuff for the duct work....  I don't understand 99% of what he's talking about so I nod and make sympathetic noises and trust that he'll work it out and all will be well.  LOL   

I should probably mention DH is a tradesman, he currently works in commercial HVAC but has done everything from plumbing to electric to auto mechanics.... so  he's not your typical DIYer.