Home Projects Gone Wrong

[monkeywrangler71]

Have you ever attempted a renovation or redecorating project in your house only to have it go horribly, or hilariously wrong?

What was your worst or funniest do-it-yourself experience?

[frugalfoster]

I once painted my downstairs hall 5 times trying to get the color right...I hate painting!

[Russ]

our bathroom.

I'm a "white walls" type person and when my wife wanted to paint our bathroom a "light peach" right away I was skeptical so I reluctantly said ok.

So off we go to Home Depot to get paint and when she asked what I thought, I said uhhh, I'm not giving ANY input on the color, you choose. So she did and when we started painting... well it was an UGLY dark peach and that does not really describe it.

I kept my mouth shut.

2 months later, she broke. She hated it. She felt horrible about wasting the money, the time and the headache of painting it. So back to HD and got a much lighter peach.

I still hate it.

[Dancing Lotus]

I tried to paint my baseboards a dark color and it bleed under the tape , now it's a mess I don't have anymore of the wall paint to fix it.

[Neeley]

I ripped the carpet out of DD's room and attempted to paint the concrete slab. It was so cute, but I bought the wrong paint and didn't seal it. In a couple of weeks it was a big mess, scrapped up and pealing away.

A few weeks later a pipe burst in the bathroom and flooded her room. Insurance put new hardwoods down in her room.

[stinkbug]

Twice, in older houses, I've attempted to clean and regrout bathroom tile, only to have the entire wall collapse. Also, pulling up old flooring only to find the subfloor rotted and in disrepair. Mostly, I find that one project just leads to another.....doing something cosmetic usually leaves something else looking shabby....it's never ending.
Right now, my bathroom needs painting, which will, in turn, make the bedroom look frumpy......

[greekislandgirl]

This isn't me, but my parents....

When the law changed in our state to require only low-flow toilets (and this was like 15 years ago...) my parents FREAKED OUT and went to Home Depot or whatever it was back then and bought five high-flow toilets. Their house has water from their own spring and they pump the water themselves so it's not the best water pressure, thus they were convinced that low-flow toilets wouldn't work. They have three bathrooms, one in pink, one in green, and one in yellow. The HD only had dark pink toilets, so they got five of them. They now have a green bathroom with a dark pink toilet, a yellow bathroom with a dark pink toilet, a pink bathroom with a dark pink toilet, and two extra dark pink toilets that have been sitting in the garage for about 15 years.

However, my father sees all of this in a positive light. I think I'm the only one who thinks it's a bit odd....

(So next time you are congratulating yourself on your stockpile, ask yourself "how many extra toilets do I have in my stockpile?" )

[Pemberleyan]

Mostly, I find that one project just leads to another.....doing something cosmetic usually leaves something else looking shabby....it's never ending...

So true! I call this the domino effect.

We have been working on our house for ten years. In all of this time we have never had a walkway from our cars to the front steps and have had to walk across the grass, which results in lots of grass and dirt on the floors. Finally we got ready to lay a brick walkway ourselves, but realized if we were ever going to divert water away from the basement, we had to do it now. So, trenches had to be dug, 200 feet of pipe hooked up, etc. Thankfully we were able to borrow a relative's excavator for some of the work.

[monkeywrangler71]

My worst experience was when I painted my oldest daughter's room at our last house. She had gone away for march break so I thought I would get her room done while she was gone. It was just one problem after another.

It had wallpaper that just refused to come off, I scraped for days, I've never seen anything like it. When I was finished there were gouges all over the walls, some places big chunks came off. I should have put paper up again to cover it, but I just painted. My daughter is a packrat, so I had shoved her bed and all her stuff into the middle of the room to paint. I was exhausted, I had an infant and a toddler at home and I was really sick with bronchitus. So I'm stumbling around her room half asleep with my paint roller on a long handle, bump into her fishtank, which lands upside down on her bed. The mattress was soaked in smelly fish water, poor little fish flopping around on the bed (don't worry, all were saved).

In the end I got the paint on and I absolutely hated it. I had picked sage green, thinking it would be a relaxing outdoorsy looking colour. But the paint finish was too shiny and when it was done all I could think of was those avocado green toilets that were popular in the 70's. I eventually got used to it, I refused to paint it again.

[stinkbug]

A few years ago, I decided to paint one of our upstairs guest rooms that popular *robin's egg blue*. It came out Easter egg blue!!! Horrible - and two coats to cover it up!!! I usualy stick to very earthy colors...I should have known that was never going to turn out well.....

[Russ]

my auto OOPS...

My car needed brakes and being as broke as I was, I had to do the job. I was 21 y/o and had NEVER done any kind of auto repair in my life. Changed oil a few times but that was the extent of my shade tree mechanic skills..

So off I go and get all the necessary tools supplies and instruction at the local auto parts store. After hours in the driveway, bleeding knuckles and some cussing the job was finished.

So to test them out I drive out of the driveway and go speeding towards the main road at the end of my street except... OH CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not stopping! I had forgot to pump them back up after changing them and now I'm headed for traffic.
Luckily I started pumping like a mad man and got them pumped up in time to stop.. Got the blood flowing that day!