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Funny DIY stories


Humans pride themselves on their ability to tackle any task DIY style. While many are well skilled to take on the task of decorating or building their own home, others seem to have less luck with the hands on approach. It seems that while some tasks are performed with grace and skill, others rely on sheer good luck and a sense of humour to get them through.

Resene has gathered together some funny DIY stories from decorators for you to enjoy.

If you have a funny decorating story of your own to share we'd love to hear from you - submit your funny DIY story.

Thank you to all the adventurous DIYers who have sent tales of their exploits to us.


Paint-A-Cat

When my son was younger I was doing some painting outside unaware my son was painting the cat at the same time. Poor cat!! Thanks to Tania.


The… nearly… perfect day

I had had an excellent day painting the lounge and kitchen. I'm usually one of those people who looks like I've stepped out of a paintball game after a day welding a paintbrush. But not today, all the protective sheets were in place and unlike other days I had worn protective gloves and stayed in an almost smear proof state. I was putting the finishing touches to one of the beams when the phone rang and I stepped off the ladder a little too hastily, one foot landing squarely in the centre of a 10 litre pail. It's an odd moment, wishing I could go back a second or two, but no, there I was, paint halfway up my calf and not quite sure where to dangle it! Thanks to Barbara.


Sneaky toddler

When we were repainting our spare bedroom - we kept the door closed. After we had finished for the day I realised the toddler wasn't where I thought she was, she had chosen that day to show us she is finally tall enough to reach the door handles, and had got into the spare room and had paint all over herself! Needless to say - we were not impressed!! But we did still laugh about it. Thanks to Tasha.


Sticky situation

I was admiring a friend's newly painted dining room. The colour seemed different to the paint chart. I took the chart over to the wall to compare colours and it stuck to the wall! Thanks to Dianne.


Pawsome in green

I painted my red feature wall Grasshopper. I put my tray and roller down while I went to the toilet and came back to little green paw prints all over the carpet! My little Persian Sadie had hopped into the tray (I am sure she was just wanting to help)! Thanks to Leah.


Right back at you

My husband and I were painting the dining room and my son and daughter were playing ball outside. In a second the ball flew through the French doors and fell into the paint pail. Before we had time to say no our 3 year old son up to his armpit retrieved the ball and threw it at his eight year old sister... just argh. Thanks to Rosemary.


Surprise

My daughter was home alone one day and we forgot to tell her that there are people painting our house, so she ended up throwing open the window violently to yell out. The poor painter nearly fell off his stepladder! Thanks to Joyce.


Melting moment

I once decided to soak my (good, new) brushes in turps overnight, but couldn't find a jar the right size. A marge pot seemed perfect, and it would have been if I hadn't left the soaking brushes in the garage and forgotten them. When I found them, the brushes were standing upright, permanently attached to a wrinkled little piece of plastic that had been melted by the turps. Thanks to Anna.


Kodak moment

They say you shouldn't walk under a ladder because it will bring you bad luck! This applies also to scaffolding. My sister was leaving for school dressed in her uniform and had to walk under the trestle where the men had started to work painting the house exterior. At the very same time that she was passing my husband slipped and dropped the whole container of paint that he was using. Yes there was paint everywhere!! And too shocked to move there was my sister covered in paint from head to toe with a horrified expression on her face!!! Quite the "Kodak moment"... and while no one was brave enough to suggest taking a photo the story is still told 30 years on and has become a family legend! Thanks to Margaret.


Wrong way up

I found an oriental plant print wallpaper that I loved to have on my kitchen walls. I was full of enthusiasm when I pasted it to my walls. Proud of myself I showed it to my family that night. They were speechless at first. When I asked if they didn't like it, my daughter said 'Ooh, it's beautiful wallpaper, but.... you hung it upside down!' After looking at it again with my head upside down, I had to admit I was wrong. Thanks to Sissi.


Worn out

The plasterer who plastered our house had just finished what was The Sheraton hotel at the time. I concluded he was tired because he did a terrible job. One day I decided to sand back the dreadfully lumpy ceiling of the toilet and get it right. I spent hours in that wee room, sanding, prepping masking and painting with great care. Final coat on, masking removed and standing looking at it swollen with pride then a crash in the attic and through the ceiling falls my son. The insurance company sent a tradesman to redo the job but I know it was never as good as the one I had finished and looked at for 20 whole seconds. Thanks to Cathy.


Speechless

The last house I was in we had recently decorated the bathroom with tiles, vanity, bath and I had decided to paint the walls a beautiful Resene taupe. I finished painting the walls, and my friends came over to inspect the bathroom… "Isn't it lovely" they exclaimed.

As I was new to DIY and painting, I wanted a professional look for the windowsills and the door, so I recruited a professional painter.

The painter arrives and he starts painting the windowsills.

While on a tea break I asked him, "What did you think of the painting in the bathroom?"

He looked at me and a second later he asked, " Did you pay anyone to paint that?"
I quickly answered, " Oh no," I answered proudly, "I did it all myself."
"Thank goodness you didn't pay anyone..."

I asked the same painter to paint over my offending wall.

Speechless but not discouraged, I'm still painting with Resene paints. Thanks to Michele.


Second time’s the charm

I remember many years ago my mum offered to decorate my daughter's bedroom with me as at that time I had little knowledge of wallpapering myself.

I had bought some bright funky clown wallpaper which I wanted to put up on all four of the bedroom walls as the walls weren't great.

My mum did a terrible job I must admit at putting up the wallpaper especially round the windows and light fittings and when my husband came home to see the finished project he wasn't impressed. He went out bought new wallpaper and some big black sacks and began taking all the wallpaper off she had put up that day.

I must add my husband and I are perfectionists when it comes to DIY, him more so than myself! We both thought we could have it redecorated again to our standard and my mum would be none the wiser as we didn't want to hurt her feelings but she called round later that evening. She wanted to see what my husband thought of the wallpapering job she had done and she rushed upstairs to the bedroom before we could stop her to find all her hard work in black rubbish sacks. Since then I have self taught myself the skill of wallpapering! Thanks to Linda.


Double paint job

This happened when my two elder boys were bit younger...

The boys were little with Jack nearly 3 years old and Tyler 1 year old.

We'd decided to renovate our lounge in midwinter, ripping off plasterboard and insulating before installing new plasterboard, plastering and painting. This meant no heat as the heat pump had to be removed and reinstalled and so we made do with a small study off the kitchen while this was happening.

Well, after 4 weeks using our study as the lounge (an area the size of a small kitchen, with 2 adults, 2 kids and ALL their toys, small fan heater valiantly blowing dog fur and bits of renovating dust trying to keep us warm, cat, golden retriever, Spike the budgie, and with enough spare fur to clothe another golden retriever), we had just about finished renovating the lounge and hoped to be back in it within a week. My husband's dad and sister had come over on Saturday and we all went hard out painting with our Resene paint. We managed to get three coats on the ceiling, two on the walls and two coats on all the windows , skirtings and scotias. Except for some touching up, it was finished!

We were so happy on Sunday morning, we just kept going into the lounge so we could see it again, with big smiles.

I was walking down the hallway when I noticed Jack was in the lounge with a paint brush.

“Hi, Jack. How sweet,” I trilled “Are you pretending to paint like Mummy and Daddy?” Sick feeling in gut as I walked closer. I knew damn well what he was doing but refused to acknowledge it. Somehow the eye-brain neurological link was refusing to work. Self-preservation maybe? This happened a lot with Jack…

Please let him be pretending…

Nope. When Jack does something he goes the whole hog.

There was a Jack-high mural of white dripping paint all along a 2 metre stretch of our beautifully painted dark cream wall.

“They must’ve left the paint there, not me,” said Al desperately when I rang him two nanoseconds later. Actually I didn't really need to phone, I think he heard my screeches.

It took 6 buckets of warm water and hours to wash that wall down and repaint it the same night.

Yeeessshh! It hadn't even been done 24 hours!!! Thanks to Tania.


Missed a bit

Years ago my then husband and I bought a house in Taumarunui. Over the course of around 6 months I set about totally redecorating the house with paint and wallpaper. The entry area had a sliding door to the kitchen which we removed and repainted and rehung. But this door was rarely closed and if it was it was usually closed from within the kitchen. Eventually as money allowed I was able to wallpaper the hall, the entrance and hall to the upper level of the house would be in the same paper.

Well a year or so passed and we put that house on the market so that we could shift to a small farmlet out in the country. With an offer about to be presented I felt I should give the house a once over again ensuring all skirting boards etc were wiped down. So, I pulled close the kitchen door while in the hall and to my horror an entire strip of wallpaper was missing behind the door. Ooops!

Luckily, I had kept some of the leftovers and had enough to rectify the problem. Thanks to Judy.


A stretch too far

I was up a ladder in my daughter's room painting a wall with a 10 litre pail light blue oil paint in one hand and a paint brush in the other when I reached up to a patch on the wall. I fell off the ladder and the pail of paint went all over my head and body. I was temporarily blinded. I spent the next couple of hours with turpentine and rags trying to remove paint from my body, hair, carpet and worse of all eyes and contact lenses! Thanks to Darryl.


Paint ninja

At the end of a long day painting I decided to use up last of paint on the internal door to garage. It had insulation foam coming off on edges and I quickly scraped and painted over it thinking the next coat I’d fix it properly. It wasn’t kept open long enough to dry as next day, I went to go out and it was stuck shut. I then pulled at it forgetting the door handle was a bit dodgy and then the whole handle came off. I went to buy another and realised all the tools were in the garage and I impatiently wanted it fixed right NOW so I figured I could get through the garage door as I could pull up a bit to crawl through. I’m not a small girl and we’re talking maybe 30cm wide so in I slithered getting stuck halfway with my legs on the outside, so lay there for a minute to gain some strength to manoeuvre in. I finally got in and undid the handle and lock but that thing wasn’t budging as it was jammed stuck, so I shoulder barged it like they do in the movies and went flying in, stopping only centimetres away from crashing into my iMac on my new glass table on the other side. The moral of this crazy story is, don’t do last minute paint jobs when you’re tired and over it. Thanks to Vicki.


Straight through

My fiancé and I were complete DIY novices and decided to paint our spare bedroom ourselves.

We had the bright idea of using old bed sheets as ‘drop sheets’ to cover the carpet. We happily painted and weren’t concerned about the paint drips as we thought we were all protected.

Well the paint drips went through the thin bed sheets and onto the carpet! The result was a lot of hard work on our hands and knees scrubbing to try and remove it and quite a few blotchy patches! At least the walls looked good. Thanks to Hayley.


Missing bit

“Years ago my then husband and I bought a house in Taumarunui. Over the course of around 6 months I set about totally redecorating the house with paint and wallpaper. The entry area had a sliding door to the kitchen which we removed and repainted and rehung. But this door was rarely closed and if it was it was usually closed from within the kitchen. Eventually as money allowed I was able to wallpaper the hall, the entrance and hall to the upper level of the house would be in the same paper.

Well a year or so passed and we put that house on the market so that we could shift to a small farmlet out in the country. With an offer about to be presented I felt I should give the house a once over again ensuring all skirting boards etc were wiped down. So I pulled closed the kitchen door while in the hall and to my horror an entire strip of wallpaper was missing behind the door. Oops!

Luckily, I had kept some of the leftovers and had enough to rectify the problem.”  Thanks to Judy.

Wallpaper designs are usually only available for 2-3 years so it’s a great idea to buy and keep a little extra, just in case you find you need more later.


Not a drop wasted

“Our lovely neighbour, who is a builder, offered me all his leftover Resene paint to redecorate our cottage.

I did as he suggested and strained it through an old pair of stocking tights as he some of it had been around for more than a while.

Then I had great fun mixing part tins together until I had enough to paint each room. I had fun making up my own names for the plausible and surprisingly fashionable results like “dirty merino”.

All of it worked out really well except for the kitchen/living room which had a turquoise green coloured carpet. When I painted a sample on the wall it looked as if a heavy smoker had been living in the room for at least the last decade. This colour was definitely “nicotine”. Undaunted I purchased a large can of white mixed that in and “a trace of nicotine” was born.

And so it was that no paint was wasted and I painted my walls for the cost of one big tin of paint. If any other greenies are tempted to give this a try be sure to make sample swatches first!”  Thanks to Colleen.


What a scream

“I had some time off work around Halloween so was busy pottering around the house doing a little bit of redecorating. I'd diligently sanded, sealed and removed the handles off all my doors down the hall to change them from wood to white.

The first door to get the coat of white was my bedroom door at the front of the house, I'd just finished painting the bedroom side of the door and thought I should really 'chock' the door to stop it closing, put my paint brush down, and a gust of wind caught the door and slammed it shut!

I ended up locked in my bedroom with no escape, couldn't prize the door open but did ruin the fresh paintwork trying to turn the mechanism with a pair of scissors I found, couldn't call anyone as my cellphone was in the lounge and the dogs had started crying to be let in too!

As it was Halloween afternoon I contemplated screaming out to some passing 'trick or treaters' to come rescue me and open the door but figured there was surely a less embarrassing escape than that. Eventually I decided to climb out the window, along the garage roof and clamber my way back onto the front porch, definitely a lesson learnt and luckily none of the neighbours witnessed my stupidity!”  Thanks to Annette.


Going with green

“Our 25 year old daughter kept coming home and suggesting we paint all the rooms in our house, a neutral colour. White, white and white. She had picked up a few Resene colour names along the way and obviously felt empowered, Spanish White and Black White. We were impressed but realised it was probably due to dating a particular young man that her knowledge of these things had finally blossomed.

Finally getting tired of this and wanting to freshen up our old house we decided the lounge was the first to get a makeover. Green seemed to be the colour of choice but which green? And so, on one fateful Saturday at the Resene paint shop it was decided ASAP would have the opportunity to update, refresh and make our happy place, happier.

I prepared a piece of anaglypta wallpaper with the Resene ASAP on it. I put it where visitors could admire it and maybe make comment. The admiring was non-existent and the comments underwhelming. But still my husband and I decide to pursue our dream of a green lounge.

I can now look at three different walls and see three different colours. Hope that’s not our painting! Sometimes it looks so elegant, sometimes it has a beautiful ambience and other times it’s a crisp green.

Our daughter was impressed. She couldn’t believe it when she came home. Sitting on the couch in the lounge she said, ”when you look out there to the kitchen/dining it’s pretty boring but wow, in here it’s like these people are going somewhere” which I gather is approval.”  Thanks to Isobel.


Hard to tell

With the trend to making things invisible, sometimes it can be hard to tell what you should or shouldn’t paint, as one of our customers unfortunately found out…

“A painter rang me up to find out the best way to remove paint from plastic. It turns out he had inadvertently painted over five TV screens in a commercial building that were inset into the wall. He was told to paint them by the property manager who was just as oblivious to them being TVs as the painter.

It’s a shame as a great paint job had been done with Resene Waterborne Smooth Surface Sealer and a couple of coats of Resene SpaceCote Low Sheen perfectly covering what was behind them.” Thanks to Peter for sharing this story!


Surprise shade

It’s always nice to surprise someone with a new paint job, but it does pay to write down the paint colour name very carefully, as Polli’s husband found out…

“Hubby decided to surprise me by painting our lounge walls in our new home while I was away doing a pottery class. He knew I hated the dated avocado green that the previous owners had used, and we had discussed using a neutral light grey like Alto or Aqua Squeeze to update it. I even took some Resene swatches home to show him and we picked from there. As he was being sneaky he couldn't ask for the swatches from me and so he picked the colour himself. He was all but done when I turned up, proudly showing me through to my 'grey' lounge only for me to find a light pink "Resene Always", on all four walls. He had forgotten he was red colourblind and hadn't asked at the counter for help as he remembered it started with Al.... something and it looked right to him. Oh well, it could have been worse, and was definitely better than what had been there.”  From Polli.


It’s all in the colour

Choosing colours with interesting names is popular, and can lead to some very interesting conversations as Ann tells us…

“Hubby was going to Resene and having seen 'Love Me Do' at the garden show I asked him to get me a sample pot. The male shop assistant looked at his mature customer and suggested he should be buying Irresistible, thought this might produce better results.

Arriving home hubby was confused had he bought the right pot?”  From Ann.


Safety first

When you just have a little spot to do, it sometimes tempting to take a quick shortcut. When it comes to painting at height though, it always pays to make sure you have a stable platform to stand on, as Tom tells us…

“I was painting the exterior of our house. On one corner I had a plank running from a ladder to a small tree branch about two metres off the ground. My wife said it didn’t look safe, but I thought it was fine. She went shopping, while I continued painting. Unfortunately the plank slipped off and I survived the fall without injury, except to my pride. I put the plank back up so it couldn’t slip again and finished the job. I got caught out however as I could not disguise the big white patch on the lawn.”  From Dave.


To test is best

Once you have narrowed down your colour options, the best idea is to try testpots to double check you have the right combination, as Rose tells us…

“As with most novice paint bunnies a small swatch is not a good gauge to what colour your house will look like. So we looked at the swatch and decided on what we thought was a lovely honey/brown colour and then Pohutukawa trims.

I’m not sure if it was our painter or our choice in colours however we came home to a bright orange house - I must admit we love it now and it does stand out however at the time it was a bit of a shock.

Fortunately we were home when the painter started on the trims and asked us to check - he obviously got the gist we were shocked at the orange. The trims turned out to be a lovely pink and we asked the painter to stop and quickly changed to black trims.

I totally blame the painter however we love the colour and it’s refreshing and everyone knows the orange house so it all ended very happily. Note to self - try a testpot next time.”  From Rose.


Beware wet paint!

When you are viewing or choosing colours give the paint a chance to dry first before you decide if the colour looks right. The same colour in wet and dry paint often looks different as Dianne found out…

“I was admiring a friend's newly painted dining room. The colour seemed different to the paint chart. I took the chart over to the wall to compare colours and it stuck to the wall!”  From Dianne.

Just like wet concrete, there’s something about wet paint that attracts kids, pets, insects and event adults. If you’re painting or staining an area that is likely to get walked on or touched while it is drying, make sure you put a large note and where possible block access to the area so your handiwork dries looking good.


Gone but not forgotten

“My son and daughter in law had been mulling over alterations they could make to their home, situated in the suburbs, and my wife and I had been suggesting that would be a waste of money and they should sell and buy something more suited to their family of two children.

Suddenly they decided we were right and announced they wished to put the house on the market as soon as possible and asked me to help paint the outside, which is what I did.

The weather was bitterly cold and we all wore several layers just to keep the cold out while we painted, starting a little after 8am in the morning. All was going well and on this particular day my son and daughter in law were both out at work so I cracked on with the painting, completing the longest single expanse of wall which was the back wall of the integral garage. I had just completed it when the sky went black and a horrendous rain storm hit.

The next morning I examined the wall and there wasn’t a single trace of paint either on the wall or on the ground beneath it. Where it had all gone I am not sure but it was gone and I spent the next morning repainting the wall.

I’m not sure my son and daughter in law believed me when I told them.”  From Steve.


Straighten up

Old walls can be very deceptive so it always pays to use a plumbline (also known as a plumbob) or a level when wallpapering. Just make sure you let the plumbline do the work as Christine tells us…

“Mum was helping Dad wallpaper their almost eighty year old home. He held the plumbline up on the corner of the room, then he felt a gentle tug and looked down to see my mother carefully eyeing up the wall and moving the plumbline over. “I’ve got it straight now honey” she beamed. I can still see Dad nearly fall off the ladder laughing.”   From Christine.


It’s all in the name

“When I went to get my house painted I wanted to stay with the same colour that was already on the house which was Resene Double Tea. I couldn't remember the colour of the trim so the painter got a Resene colour chart, to find the colour of the trim by putting it up against the garage door as that was the colour of the trim. Came up with the colour which was Resene Coffee so now the house is tea and coffee. Just waiting for the colour sugar to come out on the colour chart. Then the house will be tea coffee and sugar.”  From Beverly.


Clean up time

When cleaning up after a paint job, always make sure you take care of the paint brushes. For waterborne paints usually water is all you need. For solventborne paints, you’ll normally need turps and a metal paint pot. Don’t be tempted to use plastic for solventborne paints as Anna tells us…

“I once decided to soak my (good, new) brushes in turps overnight, but couldn't find a jar the right size.

A marge pot seemed perfect, and it would have been if I hadn't left the soaking brushes in the garage and forgotten them. When I found them, the brushes were standing upright, permanently attached to a wrinkled little piece of plastic that had been melted by the turps.”  From Anna.


Cutting in

“Have been repainting our place. The lounge wall was freshly painted beige, and I was painting the skirt in chocolate. I needed a brush quite trimmed to do the angles easily.

My husband came with a brush and a pair of scissors, bent over the bin, along the wall, and cut the brush… and all the free hair flew to the fresh paint and stayed, as glued, on the wall, like a vibrant tail! Such an effect, on both of us, that we left them on the wall!”  From Sandrine.

P.S. If you do need a cutting in brush, you can get one at your Resene ColorShop when you are getting your paint to save you having to get the scissors out!


Check the job description

“We moved into a new build home a couple of years back and the agreement with the builder was that the painters would come back after we had moved in to brush up from any dings that occurred during the move. We got to know the painters quite well over the months and when they came back one day to brush up I said to one of them that I would be going out and leaving them in peace but would be back in an hour to feed my baby daughter.

I could see by the sheer look of panic on his face that something wasn’t quite right and then I realised that he thought that I was going to leave my baby alone in the house with them. At the same time the other painter came running in from the hall to say that looking after the baby was a bit out of their job description – I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and had to tell them that in fact she was out with my Dad and that I was only telling them to expect me back in an hour! Lol!”  From Kathryn


Open and shut

Before you start it always pays to check you know what you are doing, as Tanya tells us… “We have been restoring a property built in 1860 for the last 3 and a half years. We have renovated a few properties previously but nothing like this house.

Because we have 12 foot ceilings we agreed that we would spray the board and batten ceilings as that seemed to be the best option. We chose to tint the ceiling paint to Resene Alabaster, my favourite white. So with excitement my husband purchased a spray gun system and decided to try it out before he painted the ceilings. Fair call I say...

So he carefully taped the glass and walls around the French doors with masking tape (not quick release tape). I had just spent weeks sanding back the same French doors. But he had decided he would undercoat them using the spray gun. I know right… he was thinking I will do something to surprise my wife to justify the money we just spent on the spray gun.

Now the house is two storeys and 300sqm so I was downstairs doing something else and was none the wiser. All I heard was this loud voice proudly shout out... ”Honey come and check this out”

I arrived upstairs to see him standing in front of the French doors he had undercoated pointing proudly at how well the spray gun works and to look at the good job he had done.

All I could say was “Well done darling maybe one day we will be able to open the doors as you have just spray painted them while they are shut”

The look on his face was priceless...” From Tanya


Drippity drip

When you’re new to painting, it always pays to check where you put your paint pot to make sure it doesn’t create a mess, as Ashley tells us:

“My stepfather was painting my room for me a few years ago and he wasn't doing a very good job around the edges so I got on the ladder with a small bucket of paint. Minutes later I asked him if he had spilt water inside (while I continued painting) saying that I could hear running water. When I looked down I realised that I had the paint bucket upside down and the running water I could hear was the paint dripping onto the newly polished floor.

I've just asked for him to paint my new place and have been told I'm on my own!!!” From Ashley.


Watch that scaffolding

They say you shouldn't walk under a ladder because it will bring you bad luck. This applies also to scaffolding as Margaret tells us…

“My sister was leaving for school dressed in her uniform and had to walk under the trestle where the men had started to work painting the house exterior. At the very same time that she was passing my husband slipped and dropped the whole container of paint that he was using.

Yes there was paint everywhere!!

And too shocked to move there was my sister covered in paint from head to toe with a horrified expression on her face!!!

Quite the "Kodak moment"... and while no one was brave enough to suggest taking a photo the story is still told 30 years on and has become a family legend!” From Margaret.


The (not) helper

Never work with animals, no matter how cute they are, as Martin reminds us…

“Most recently while doing up our master bedroom we had a little helper that innocently and playfully decided that all the attention shouldn’t be on the job at hand but rather on him.

In recent months we got a small black and white kitten named banjo who was loving life. He found his way into the bedroom and had a great time playing in the plastic. As with most kittens your attention is gathered towards the playful little chap but reality kicked in when the kitten soon leapt all four paws into the paint tray, He got such a fright that he took off out the bedroom and down the hall towards the living room,

Rollers were dropped and we were in hot pursuit to stop him getting too far, He was caught on the couch at the end of his trail that unfolded before us as he was chased through the house just an arm’s length ahead all the way, He was quickly washed down and paint was removed from the carpet and couch, He appeared from the washtub as if nothing had happened and was ready to play again.

Kittens and paint don’t mix no matter how cute they may be or how much they want to help!” From Andrew.


Left behind

Before you start painting or varnishing, it always pays to make sure you have everything you need and can move around without having to walk over the freshly painted floors, as Tania tells us…

“I was putting the last coat of varnish on my self-sanded floors, working my way backwards towards the door when I realized I left my handbag and car keys on the kitchen island.

I had little white socks on and being winter, I couldn't be bothered to take them off, so I tip toed towards my bag, brushing my footsteps with varnish as I tiptoed backwards towards the door. By the time I arrived at my boyfriend’s house 20 minutes later the socks were stuck to my feet.

I had to bath with them on hoping it will come off, but finding they didn't, I had to cut them off around the soles of my feet. It was days until they finally came off!

Everyone had a pretty good laugh at my padded soles and me...” From Tania.


Call cutter

“We were so pleased with the makeover on our small hallway.

We had laid a beautiful wood floor and painted the woodwork a crisp white. Now for the wallpapering. We had chosen a pretty blue and white wall paper which we were having a bit of difficulty hanging as the hallway was all corners.

As I trimmed the final piece near the bottom I found it really difficult to cut. But it was the last piece and I was determined to finish in order to pick the children up from school so I carried on.

Oh dear, when I finally scissored my way through it I found I had cut through our telephone line!

Never mind the hallway looked lovely. Now to fix the phone...” From Caroline.


Hands off

Sometimes when you think you’re doing the right thing, it doesn’t always work out that well as Shona tells us. If in doubt, ask your Resene ColorShop staff for assistance before you start. “My first attempt at plastering walls for painting - I thought you could put plenty of plaster on and it would be easy to sand off. So when I discovered the mountains of plaster were not that easy to smooth down I called in a friendly painter to help me out.

He looked over the job and said that he could be back that same day to "sort it out". He then gave me a quote for the work, adding it was on condition I did not touch the plaster before he came back!” From Shona.


Painting perfect

Painting is a job that DIYers can easily take on, but it does take a little while to get the hang of it and get a high quality finish so it pays to be patient as Michele tells us. If you’re new to painting, we recommend starting a small project first to get used to using brushes and rollers, then work your way onto bigger and more visible projects once you’ve mastered the technique.

“Last year we had our bathroom remodelled. All I needed to do was paint the walls.
Armed with a fresh tin of Resene, I carefully prepared and painted the walls.
I was so proud when I'd finished and subsequently showed it to all my friends; who in turned exclaimed that the bathroom now looked very nice.
Later that week the painters came to paint the high bits in the house.
The painter asked, "who painted the bathroom?"
I proudly said, "I did."
He replied, "That's good I hope you didn't pay anyone to do that."
I relented and the painter repainted the bathroom walls.
It hasn't stopped me painting.” From Michele.


Permanent evidence

It always pays to take care to leave paint alone while it is drying, otherwise you might just find you create an ongoing and unintended paint feature… and be the brunt of an endlessly repeated story, as Catherine tells us.

“I am now 81 years old but this story remembered by my six children is always told.

I lived on a farm in Central Otago and decided to give my kitchen a lift of colour which was all the rage in the 1960s.

I loved Cadbury's chocolate and during the painting of the doors, I opened one where the chocolate was stored before the paint was dry. A large smudge resulted and remained for years.

The painted kitchen was replaced in the 1980s but my story is never forgotten.” From Catherine.


Satisfaction of a job well done

If you’re going to do a project, you may as well do it properly, as Cathy tells us. We just hope you get to enjoy your handiwork longer than Cathy did…

“The plasterer who plastered our house had just finished what was The Sheraton hotel at the time. I concluded he was tired because he did a terrible job.

One day I decided to sand back the dreadfully lumpy ceiling of the toilet and get it right. I spent hours in that small room, sanding, prepping masking and painting with great care. Final coat on, masking removed and standing looking at it swollen with pride then a crash in the attic and through the ceiling falls my son. The insurance company sent a tradesman to redo the job but I know it was never as good as the one I had finished and looked at for 20 whole seconds.” From Cathy.


Beware of shortcuts

Tackling a DIY project means sometimes you need to improvise… always check though that that shortcut doesn’t end up making the job a whole lot longer as Hayley tells us…

“My fiancé and I were complete DIY novices and decided to paint our spare bedroom ourselves. We had the bright idea of using old bed sheets as ‘drop sheets’ to cover the carpet. We happily painted and weren’t concerned about the paint drips as we thought we were all protected.

Well the paint drips went through the thin bed sheets and onto the carpet! The result was a lot of hard work on our hands and knees scrubbing to try and remove it and quite a few blotchy patches! At least the walls looked good.” From Hayley.


Resene to the rescue

When you’re in the midst of DIY, sometimes you have to get a little creative as Martin tells us…

“Our 30 year old clothesline was rusty, its crusty looks were annoying, and it yearned refurbishing... by using trusty Resene products of course.

The project began by dismantling the entire clothesline down to the last fastener. A lot of time was spent on rust removal, rust treatment, and applying metal primer.

Preparation is not high on my list of how to while away life, but I still do a thorough job in the firm belief that 'good prep is the key to a great finish'.

For me, the enjoyment of a project really only kicks in when applying topcoats.

I started the first topcoat on the clothesline pole with Resene Teal Blue Lustacryl on a calm and settled warm day, or so I thought, after I had checked on the MetService website that no rain was expected.

What is it with clotheslines? Invariably, when you hang sheets out, a clothesline becomes a rain magnet. And so it seems when painting them as well.

The sky clouded over. As I was completing the first topcoat, a light shower began.

What to do? Sometimes, necessity leads quickly towards innovation.

I bolted inside the house and fetched our lovely Resene umbrella and settled it inside the top of the clothesline pole.

Thankfully with no breeze, the paint was not affected.” From Martin.


Beware of shortcuts

Tackling a DIY project means sometimes you need to improvise… always check though that that shortcut doesn’t end up making the job a whole lot longer as Hayley tells us…

“My fiancé and I were complete DIY novices and decided to paint our spare bedroom ourselves. We had the bright idea of using old bed sheets as ‘drop sheets’ to cover the carpet. We happily painted and weren’t concerned about the paint drips as we thought we were all protected.

Well the paint drips went through the thin bed sheets and onto the carpet! The result was a lot of hard work on our hands and knees scrubbing to try and remove it and quite a few blotchy patches! At least the walls looked good.” From Hayley.


Satisfaction of a job well done

If you’re going to do a project, you may as well do it properly, as Cathy tells us. We just hope you get to enjoy your handiwork longer than Cathy did…

“The plasterer who plastered our house had just finished what was The Sheraton hotel at the time. I concluded he was tired because he did a terrible job.

One day I decided to sand back the dreadfully lumpy ceiling of the toilet and get it right. I spent hours in that small room, sanding, prepping masking and painting with great care. Final coat on, masking removed and standing looking at it swollen with pride then a crash in the attic and through the ceiling falls my son. The insurance company sent a tradesman to redo the job but I know it was never as good as the one I had finished and looked at for 20 whole seconds. From Cath.


Permanent evidence

It always pays to take care to leave paint alone while it is drying, otherwise you might just find you create an ongoing and unintended paint feature… and be the brunt of an endlessly repeated story, as Catherine tells us.

“I am now 81 years old but this story remembered by my six children is always told.

I lived on a farm in Central Otago and decided to give my kitchen a lift of colour which was all the rage in the 1960s.

I loved Cadbury's chocolate and during the painting of the doors, I opened one where the chocolate was stored before the paint was dry. A large smudge resulted and remained for years.

The painted kitchen was replaced in the 1980s but my story is never forgotten.” From Catherine.


Always triple check

They always say you should triple check your wallpaper before you start hanging it, as Sissi found out…

“I found an Oriental plant print wallpaper that I loved to have on my kitchen walls. I was full of enthusiasm when I pasted it to my walls. Proud of myself I showed it to my family that night. They were speechless at first. When I asked if they didn't like it, my daughter said 'Ooh, it's beautiful wallpaper, but... you hung it upside down!' After looking at it again with my head upside down, I had to admit I was wrong.” From Sissi.


Plan, plan and plan some more

Sometimes it can be tempting to hurry up and get the job done with whatever you have on hand. Sometimes that works, sometimes not so much, as Kay tells us...

“I got tired of waiting for my husband to help me wallpaper a ceiling so decided to do it myself. I read the instructions about a trestle across the room but as I didn't have a trestle I put 3 chairs spaced across the wall.

I pasted the first ‘drop’ and climbed the chair and carefully butted the paper in to the corner. With the paper draped over my head and shoulders I looked around for the next chair - yep, you guessed it, the chair was way out of reach!

After standing on the chair, draped with paper and giggling hysterically for a few minutes, I removed the paper, rolled it up and hid it and, when my husband came home, gently suggested he might like to help me with the papering THIS weekend." From Kaye.


Painting trails

When you’re moving paint about, always make sure you have it secured as Sharon tells us…

“Many years ago back my grandparents had headed off to work on their push bikes. With one uncle staying home sick and the other finishing work earlier, this was a recipe for disaster. They thought they could whip into town using the trusty super snipe and no one would ever be the wiser.

Well they were a little longer than they thought and upon realising the time a quick exit to home was needed. Rushing around the corner little did they realise that there was paint and a lot of it in the boot that was purchased for repainting the house. Entering the driveway full steam ahead. Slamming doors and running inside they thought all was well.

As grandad was biking home (approx. 4kms) he saw the trail of paint . He thought what is this blinkin trail of paint? Someone had had a mishap. As he followed it, it led to his street and then to his driveway. The trail led to his car. He looked in the boot and it was covered in paint. He knew straight away the uncles had taken the car for a joy ride. The uncles were sitting quietly watching TV like nothing and happened. They saw granddad come in the driveway and they soon heard the yelling.

We all laugh about it now. But the uncles still to this day remember having to clean the boot of the car. And the trail off paint on the road that they saw was a daily reminder.” From Sharon.


Getting the fit right

We have completely repainted the interior of our house with Resene product and now our son is completely renovating his house and we have become very good customers/ friends of the dream team at Masterton Resene.

The other day my son asked me to call past Resene and get a 2.4 metre roll of plastic to mask/cover the windows as he is spraying the interior of his house.

I said sure and called into Resene to get the plastic.

As I was getting out of my car I looked at my little Mazda hatch and thought “How am I am going to get a 2.4 metre length roll of plastic in here?”

Hmmm dilemma (just hope the team can help me – maybe I can fold the seats down).

So I go into Resene and ask for a 2.4 metre roll of plastic adding “not sure how I’m going get that length into the car”.

Some very big smiles were apparent and then laughter as they handed me the very small pack of plastic which is about 400mm in length as it’s folded!!!

Much more laughter followed as I paid for the very short length of plastic.

To follow up I went to my sons and thought well I’ll carry on with this story.

I asked him just how he thought I was going to get 2.4 metre length of plastic into my car?

He said “oh well I thought you could put the seat down!!!!”

Ha-ha - yeah right! From Carole.


Watch which way

Hanging wallpaper these days is so much simpler with new paste-the-wall wallpaper. However there’s one thing you always need to check you have right… the pattern… as Tae tells us…

“When we were newly married and really scrimping and saving finish off our new home, we bought some sale wallpaper for our dining room.

It was my husband’s first attempt at paperhanging. We chose a beautiful weeping willow design and needed every drop available. After the first three drops were hanging I took a sneaky peek around the corner to see how it looked. To my horror he had the 'weeping’ willow pointing upwards to the ceiling.

I had no option but to inform him of the disaster! Well, if the atmosphere was rather tense before it was absolutely blue now. So much for saving money and having none to spare and no more available.” From Tae.


Wallpaper saver

Well I’m going back a few years now, but when my husband went to England to visit his family, my mum and I decided it was time to decorate our bedroom.

To save time and money for our decorator, we thought it was a good idea to strip the wallpaper off the bedroom wall. I rang my husband to say what we were going to do, but he told me to leave it until he returned and he would do it.

Well, mum and I were adamant that we were going to do it.

The paper was difficult to get off, so we bought a round tool with spikes on it thinking this would help. Well it didn’t, so we kept on moving around the room, taking paper off as we went. How many layers did we have to peel off?

Anyway, to cut a long story short, when my husband returned, he wasn’t at all pleased with what we had done, as we had taken off the layers of the plasterboard and he ended up having to replace the plasterboard in most of the bedroom.

So in the long run, we didn’t save money or time. From Cheryl.


Caught in the corner

You wouldn't believe this. My wife, who knows everything, specialises in giving instructions to me about painting: hold the brush at an angle to the wall, start the job at tight corners, don't over brush, etc etc etc. Her most common refrain, which she calls ‘My Philosophy’, is "use ya common sense".

Well, last Sunday, as dusk drew its dark sheet over our part of the woods, I completed my task of painting the kitchen wall and was beginning to hammer down the paint can tops, when I heard my boss-wife from the end of the long hallway call in a helpless tone: ‘oh darn what shall I do I've painted the floor but now I can't get out.’

Wouldn't have been fair, would it, if I had quoted her philosophy back to her? From Zee Bee.


Start fresh

At the end of a long day painting I decided to use up last of paint on the internal door to garage. It had insulation foam coming off on edges and I quickly scraped and painted over it thinking the next coat I’d fix it properly. It wasn’t kept open long enough to dry as the next day, I went to go out and it was stuck shut. I then pulled at it forgetting the door handle was a bit dodgy and then the whole handle came off.

I went to buy another and realised all the tools were in the garage and I impatiently wanted it fixed right NOW so I figured I could get through the garage door as I could pull up a bit to crawl through. I’m not a small girl and we’re talking maybe 30cm wide so in I slithered getting stuck halfway with my legs on the outside, so lay there for a minute to gain some strength to manuoevre in. I finally got in and undid the handle and lock but that thing wasn’t budging as it was jammed stuck, so I shoulder barged it like they do in the movies and went flying in, stopping only centimetres away from crashing into my iMac on my new glass table on the other side. The moral of this crazy story is, don’t do last minute paint jobs when you’re tired and over it. From Vicki.


Striped fashion

My friend Hugh decided that painting a louvre door would be a lot easier by spraying it rather than using a paintbrush.

He knew to get the best out of spraying that the trick is to only apply a thin coat each time.

After three sprays he admired his handiwork and called his wife in to view it.

She was very happy with the new colour, until she opened the wardrobe door to find her clothes now had stripes down one arm. From: Tony.


Paint pourer

I felt elated to be so near the final stage of my new ensuite bathroom. Eager to complete, when painting the shower room ceiling, instead of climbing back down the ladder to immerse the roller in the paint tray, I lifted the paint tray up to me and attempted to lean back and paint the ceiling holding onto the tray.

As I leant back to roll the paint on, I felt a wet trickle from my stomach, down the front of my shorts, legs, feet and heard a gentle splat as the angled paint tray poured its contents over me and onto my brand new shower tray... ahhhhh! I had covered it with newspaper, but not enough, and to this day, some three months later, I'm still scrubbing away at that newspaper stuck to the shower floor!” From Anna-Michele.


Flower power

I was watching my Dad painting the outside of the house when he decided to move his ladder along the wall. Unwisely, and uncharacteristically, he left the pot of paint sitting on the flat platform on the top of the ladder. He very gently and carefully moved the ladder along to an unpainted section, but unfortunately caught one leg of the ladder in a small red geranium plant in the garden. Inevitably the paint tin fell off, hit his head on the way down, poured white paint down his front and on to the ground. “Those damn flowers!” he exclaimed through necessarily gritted teeth.

He was quite a sight – the edge of the paint tin had hit the top of his nose, so red blood was dripping down through the paint; and the black hairs on his chest above his singlet top were popping up through the cascade of white paint. It was hard to muffle my involuntary hoots of laughter, but somehow I managed. From Liz.


Watch those cups!

I've not long bought a tiny house which I painted in three different tones of your Pearl Lusta.

Well it was a hot day and thirsty work so I poured myself a pineapple juice to help me on my way.

No doubt I'm not the first but I reached for the glass with my free hand, paintbrush in my other to take a big gulp only to realise it was the glass of turps I had sitting on the side.

I have now learned not to have to identical looking glasses with different liquids whilst doing any decorating ever again. From: Sharon.


Beware of shortcuts

So - never having decorated before I’m a bit of a novice – but hubby said to start with painting the ceiling – then work down from there. It took me hours to get the ceiling done – but it was perfect – cut in to all the sharp corners with finesse. I had a break then came back to do the walls – from the top down – not realising that as I was standing on the ladder my hair (in a high messy bun) was rubbing its way across my freshly painted ceiling. I didn’t notice until I had completed the room and went to take a look up at the smooth perfection of my ceiling – only to notice the very rough and very obvious hair drag marks through the WHOLE ceiling… and it took me three washes to get the paint out of my hair completely! From Renee.


A deal is a deal

Stripping wall paper in the old house we bought was a nightmare - paint over three and four layers of paper in most rooms.

Prior to attempting the job we told paper hanger that we would strip and prepare the walls and he could hang it, which brought a wry smile to his face.

Exasperated and so over stripping the walls back I asked our man "Is there an easier way to do this?"

Came the quick reply "Sure is, get someone else to do it."

Looking him square in the eye I promptly replied, "Well you've got yourself a job."

"Alas Ann, a deal is a deal, happy stripping", the mirth on his face evident as he romped out the door then shouted "Give us a call next year when you might have the walls ready." From: Ann


Belated appreciation

Several years ago, I painted my front door beautiful Resene Pohutukawa red. At the same time I decided to paint my two front planter pots with the same colour to complement the front steps and lead you towards my spectacular front door. Last week, my 16 year old asked me when did I paint the planter pots? Hmmmmmmm!" From: Alice


Watch where you put your paint

Just dropping off to sleep when I remembered my nightly sleep routine, so without even bothering to sit up, I reached over to the bedside table and felt around in the dark for my tub of night cream.

Very cleverly while still lying flat on my back I gently unscrewed the lid and dipped a finger into the cream and placed it on my cheek, screwed the lid back on, placed the jar back on the bedside table and was about to rub the night cream all over my face... when it dawned on me that this didn't quite have the same feel as my night cream.

So oh so carefully I sat up, pulled the bedsheets back and went to the bathroom mirror only to discover that the big blob of cream on my face was in fact paint from the testpot of Resene Billy T green paint I had placed on my bedside table ready to sample onto the wall behind the bed! Imagine if I had rubbed it all over my face in the darkness! From: Carole


Not quite 20/20

Recently my husband has been complaining about struggling to read small print, text messages, and generally things looking blurred. He commented it wasn’t that long ago he had new prescriptions in his glasses so it couldn’t be that. He convinced himself he needed a few early nights and more rest from the computer screen. However a fortnight on nothing seemed to improve.

Until one evening I spotted a pair of glasses on the bedroom dresser. I stopped in my tracks as I recognised they were my husband’s good glasses. Back in the lounge where hubby was watching TV, and without saying anything, I removed the glasses he was wearing and put his good ones on asking if that seemed better. Huh! How’s that possible? Way better he said still confused.

In the meantime I had figured it out - a few weeks back when we had that lovely warm weekend my husband got outside and did a bit of painting. To avoid getting paint splatters all over his glasses he put on his old pair… and you guessed it, he still had them on!

But there’s a good tip for decorators, save your recently replaced glasses for painting, especially when using rollers that tend to splatter. Just remember to put your good ones back on after the job is done! From: Tricia


Total chaos

I was attempting to touch up the ceiling, starting behind the TV. While up the ladder I received a huge pain in my side which caused me to fall off the ladder with paint bucket in hand. My first contact was the $5000 TV which got paint all over and inside of it. Once I hit the ground after bouncing off the TV I had also pulled over the freeview box and TV cabinet into the path of the paint.

I was covered head to toe (hair included) in paint as was the TV, cabinet, freeview and carpet. I must have hit my head because I was found up the other end of the house shedding my paint covered clothes. Apparently I crawled from the lounge up the hall to the bedroom painting the carpet as I went which I don’t remember.

After cleaning it all up I stored the TV in a spare bedroom only to discover that I hadn’t cleaned the TV properly so when the insurance man came to look we found that I had inadvertently also painted the carpet in the spare room as well so we ended up with a house full of new carpet, new TV, new cabinet, new clothes and new Freeview.

No ceilings or ladders were harmed in this fiasco (just everything else)!

Lesson learnt - I never paint or DIY without someone else home to save the embarrassment of any future catastrophe. From: Doug


Melting moment

Cooking and new paint don't go together!"We bought our first house in 1975, a do-upper in pretty poor condition. We were absolute novices at this DIY stuff but how hard could it be?!

We worked our way through the house, new curtains, painting, wallpapering, so green were we that it took time.

On the last leg we decided to repaint the kitchen cupboards with gloss enamel one Saturday morning, it would be a doddle to finish by lunch time and meet a friend to go to club rugby. A good idea was to put the slow cooker on with a lovely piece of corned silverside so we could even go to the club rooms after and come home to find dinner cooked.

We arrived home after a team win, a few beers at the club and could smell the dinner when we came into the house.

Then we discovered the kitchen. The steam and heat from the crockpot had peeled the paint off all the cupboard doors above and around the crockpot and we spent the rest of the evening scraping the remaining paint off.

The dinner was still good though, and the team did win!

It just goes to show new paint doesn’t like cooking!" From: Maureen


Avid admirers

I decided to paint a dreary sitting room wallpaper a nice shade of straw yellow. It was a nice summer day, and I decided to keep on doing it and get it done in one day. By the evening it was done and it DID look pretty and fresh! I left all the windows open to dry the paint and sat down with a book. Night fell… and every insect in the Waikato came in to admire the new look and sit on the tacky paint. I noticed before it was TOO bad, but it was bad enough! By the time the pictures, books and furniture were back, I was able to tell myself that the little black corpses dotting the walls weren’t THAT noticeable (painting over them made it look worse).

What a job it would have been for the next person who was unlucky enough to have to paint this room. They probably had to strip the paper off. I’m glad that I wasn’t there to hear their comments on the idiot who’d done it last time. From: Anna


Cover up

From bad to worse - but painting pants to the rescue!

Chapter 1. Going green
Why paint my own roof when I'm nervous of heights? It will save time (and I won't wreck my clothes) if I get professionals in.

The first coat goes on in perfect sunshine. But is that a big black cloud a-coming? Down comes the rain. Gutters overflow, joyously splashing green roof paint onto the previously immaculate cream trims and chimney.

Chapter 2. I wreck my clothes
The painters patiently sand the roof again, paint the roof again, and even offer to paint the cream as well for me if I supply the paint. Aha! I knew there was a reason to save that pail of paint! I triumphantly fetch it from under the house, only to have the bottom of the pail crack and leak paint over my jeans and gumboots. Quickly I invert the pail with the lid still on. I now have paint on my hands and shirt as well. (So do the painters after they transfer the paint into a spare pail. Have you ever tried pouring paint from an inverted lid-on pail with a split base?)

Chapter 3. I waste time
Now it turns out the chimney needs a special kind of concrete paint. If I hurry, I can buy some while they paint the trims, so after a quick rinse under the hose I jump in the car and go, the Resene paint-code in my pocket. But alas! The paint colour has been deleted... phone calls are made, catalogues are searched, time is lost, but it is untraceable. I must have updated to a new similar colour but not updated my trusty record book. My confident assertion that 'it is cream' does not sufficiently narrow the field when it comes to matching paint colour, it transpires. I am instructed to go back home, get a sample, then come back - and they'll match it. The painters will have gone by then of course.

Chapter 4. A stroke of genius
Suddenly I remember that I am a walking paint-sample, owing to my wrecked clothes. And the time spent researching the paint archives has allowed the thick paint-splash on my jeans to dry to the finished shade. I just walk over to the swatches and the ever-patient assistant matches the closet shade of cream.

Chapter 5. Home, sweet home
"Hey! I got the paint!" I yell roof-wards upon my return. Boss painting guy climbs slowly down the ladder.

"What took you so long?" he asks. I just smile sweetly. "I stopped to look at shoes", I tell him. From: Molly


If at first you don’t succeed…

When wallpaper friezes were all the rage, Felicity and her husband decided to give it a go… little did they know they would be in for a repeat performance…

My husband and I had made a combined effort to glue a dark frieze around our bedroom walls just above the height of the door. We thought that was the last of it, and expected to admire the result.

But during the night I was awakened by a weird, crackling sound that was "out of this world". I’d never heard the likes of it before - a sort of continuous swish. I don’t know if I would have plucked up courage to get out of bed, because it sounded rather close!

But by the time I woke my husband, in the amount of light available I was able to make out against the light wallpaper a dark line sloping downwards. One end of it kept dipping down, then the whole line, and then the sound started nearer to the bed.

By that time we could tell that our efforts of that day were unravelling… and we couldn’t do anything to stop it. Before long, the entire frieze lay on the floor.

And yes, it did get put up again, with extra care, and that time it stayed.

Thanks Felicity for your funny decorating story. The good news is that wallpapers are very forgiving and with new paste-the-wall styles they are easy to install even for those new to wallpapering.


Dogs and paint don't mix

I have painting shorts. I know they're my painting shorts by the perfectly paint dipped bottom! While painting the toilet I had put our rather cuddly/mumma's boy 40kg German Shepherd outside. 3 walls painted and I was just finishing off the last one with the door pushed shut when my darling dog let himself in. It's a small toilet and I just had to be standing right in the line of the door so was pushed up against the freshly painted wall. I ended up with almost a full back of paint. The dog flopped down along the other still wet wall for a nap.

The dog and I have painted the whole house in the last few months and both of us always end up with paint splatters in our hair!
From: Jacqui


Favourite colour

A few months ago we decided to re-do the bedroom for our 4 year-old son (he is 5 now). I wanted to do it right, in his taste as much as possible, and started to ask him what was his favourite colour to repaint the ceiling (at the time dark brown). So his favourite colour was orange and yes he would love it for the ceiling. Here I am, going to my favourite Resene shop to find the orange paint needed! I decided that my son will have this bedroom for the next 5 years, before we'll decide to change the room for a teenager. So here I am, buying my 4 litres of Resene Carpe Diem (I love this name!!!) paint, and off I go, all happy and proud that I made the decision to buy exactly what my little boy wanted!

Back home I started straight away to paint the ceiling and was all busy when my son came back home from kindy. I couldn't wait to see his face when he would come in his bedroom! He opened the door, had a quick look at me, then at the ceiling, and didn't show any sign of excitement. So I tried to be very excited, and ask him "So, do you like the colour of your ceiling?" Another quick look, no more sign of excitement and "Yes, but I thought you'd paint it orange". "But it is orange my love", "No it's not!"

I felt that we had a little problem with the colour chart so I asked him to show me what orange he wanted. He went through his toy box and showed me a bright flash green dragon, saying "This is the orange I wanted". I tried not to laugh and told him I was sorry I didn't choose the right orange, and I tried to explain that his dragon was in fact green. He had this little face that he gets when he tries to find out if what we say is right, and decided that the new colour of the ceiling was another of his favourite colours, and he likes it. Lucky me!!!" From: Dominique


Beware the cracks

I was at the Resene store one day when a tradesman came in looking frazzled! He had just been to see a lady who needed a price to paint some walls that had cracks in them.

She said she had already bought the paint and the cracks were all sorted as she had very kindly squirted a whole tube of no more gaps into the 10L bucket of paint!

He priced the job very high, hoping he wouldn't get it! From: Jackie


Looks can be deceiving

We have just finished redecorating the whole house. I have learned my lesson about wearing my glasses as the joins are so much better with than without! I really should have them on when shopping too as I ran out of paste with one roll to go. Imagine the heart-stopping moment when I realised the paste I had used was in fact size! The whole house apart from one roll! Thank goodness for pre-pasted paper, I managed to get away with that one.
From: Alan


Hot wired

Funny DIY StoriesMy DIY story is about my husband as I am sure he has nine lives. He is a real trier and eventually succeeds in most DIY ventures he attempts. Unfortunately a lot goes wrong before he reaches perfection. The worst is when he is wiring the house. Yes that's right, rewiring our house! Don't get me wrong, the job he does is excellent as long as I or someone else is there to switch the main off. Most people make this mistake maybe once in a lifetime, my hubby has made this mistake 4 TIMES and lived to tell the story.

Once he wanted to put our automatic door opener on the other shed door, so he went out there and cut the plug off. He was flung off the ladder and on to the concrete because "HE FORGOT TO TURN OFF THE POWER". Another time he was putting a plug in the hallway from a plug in the lounge. The wire was old and had frayed. He was thrown to the other end of the lounge and into our ranch-slider. On two other occasions while wiring the house and shed he has been thrown through the air.

My hubby needs to attempt some safer DIY projects. I want to do up our son's bedroom - what trouble can he possibly get up to painting? Worried But Loving Wife. From: Kirstin


Painting the lounge, gnome-style?

With all the furniture piled up in the middle of the lounge, all the preparation done; light switches taped and redundant curtain rods removed, holes stopped and filled…

I was painting my way round the walls, moving my drop cloth as I went. Almost tripping over a very long curtain rod (the kind with a drawstring), I picked it up to move it. With that, the weight at the end of the drawstring became airborne, then dropped, unseen, behind the heap of couches and pillows, with an ominous 'plop'. Yes, right into the open can of turquoise paint! In shock reaction, and with all the skill of a fly-fishing garden gnome, I pulled back, only to watch the dripping, swinging weight do what dripping, swinging weights do!

Now I know why those garden gnomes never move! From: Ceri


Paint smash

We were repainting one of our teenage daughter’s rooms. You know, one different bright colour per wall and white on ceiling. Anyway, she wanted the carpet removed to have polished tongue and groove floor but I couldn’t be bothered so said “NO!”

We had her desk, chair and bed in the middle of the room and I had the tins of paint out of the way, yeah, on top of the desk.

I decided to pull the desk one side to get more working room and you guessed it, the side panel collapsed! 2 tins (4L and new) of bright paint fell (actually 4 tins fell but 2 remained intact) and opened up onto the carpet!!

Guess who didn’t want to clean the carpet and guess what flooring our daughter got to go with her multi-coloured room?! From: Winsome


It’s a wrap

We were prepping our toilet, bathroom, and long hallway for painting, so I took hours to painstakingly put painter’s tape along the skirting, then took a few more hours taping two layers of industrial protective ‘floor plastic wrap’ onto the newly polished wooden floors. For some reason I didn't realise there was a slightly tacky side (to face downwards) and a non-tacky side. When my partner got home, he walked straight down the hall to the toilet, with his bare feet sticking to the plastic wrap the whole way and tearing it all up off the floor. He was laughing as he walked into the lounge with a 2 metre long piece hanging off the back of his foot like a piece of loo paper. I had to lay fresh sheets all over again the following day! From: Roz

Funny DIY Stories

Asleep on the job

The funniest thing that happened to my Dad was when he was trying to fix chairs for our deck. He had just finished putting them together and decided to try them out. He was sitting on one, and everything seemed to be going great until he fell asleep on it. He was rudely awoken by a crack and a snap, and ended up sitting on the floor. Let's just say that that was the last time my Dad ever fell asleep on the job. From: Krissie


Ladder slide

My parents were overseas and I decided to paint the eaves and soffits of their house. The easel type ladder was used to get under the job and the oil based paint brushed on the edges prior to rolling the broad areas. I was using a 1 litre can of paint in one hand and paint brush in the other. One leg of the ladder suddenly pressed into the soft flower garden soil and I fell onto the soft garden and lawn. The can of oil based paint had an even softer landing on the side of my face. Paint poured over the side of my head, into my ear, into my hair, over my now closed eyes and mouth. I didn't want to open the closed orifices so headed off to the workshop like a blind man. I found rags and began the hour long clean up. Inevitably some paint and turps found its way into my eyes which stung. That was about 30 years ago and I'm still painting houses! From: Ian


Power play

It all happened about 5 months ago. We own a beach house over at Kawhia and needed to have the trees cut near the road just in case they fell and caused damage. Instead of hiring a professional to do the job my husband decided to take the job on along with a German friend of his. They went there for the weekend to do the job but before they even attempted to trim/cut the trees they thought that they deserved a little drink of beer.

While intoxicated, the German climbed the ladder to cut some branches while my husband waited on the ground to navigate and stop branches landing on the road (the main road into Kawhia in fact!) They were on a roll until both made a mistake. They cut a branch and let it land on a powerline. The line snapped and was flashing around throwing sparks everywhere. My husband was in shock and could almost see his life flash before his eyes and the German was swearing in his native language.

Because these powerlines were the ones that ran into the Kawhia township it cut off the power into Kawhia for four hours until they were repaired. We were forced to pay the $800 fee for the call out and equipment. It was a costly lesson that it is sometimes best to call in the professionals rather than a Do It Yourself. From: Lynn


Rock solid

The toilet roll holder had fallen off the wall and left a hole. My sister brought a can of Space Invader and told her husband to squirt a little bit in the hole so that when it went hard they could put the toilet roll holder back up. Think that's easy? It should be. Her husband squirted the whole can in. The whole wall bulged in the toilet and in the bedroom on the other side. My sister now does any handyman tasks in the house! From: Cara


Doggy dilemma

One day I was converting the outside porch at the front door to a study. The front door was built on the wrong side of the house. I had to add concrete to level up the slab. I had nearly finished when I ran out of materials. I still had half a barrow load to go. In the distance I could hear the neighbour mixing concrete so I rang him. No problem I will mix half a barrow and put it on the ute and you can drive it back he said. I drove carefully back, no problem.

His dog heard the ute go without him and, not wanting to miss anything, took a direct line to our place, through the swamp. As I arrived he was standing in the wet concrete. Needless to say he got a strong piece of abuse. The dog panicked and ran through the front door down to the far bedroom and I found him standing with muddy and concrete covered feet on my daughter's bed. He was cornered but no way was he going to surrender. I had to drive back and get his owner to retrieve him. Needless to say the clean up had become a major task and the concrete was going off rapidly. An hour or two later we all had a good laugh. From: Roger


Steady as she goes

I was decorating the dining room and my husband kept finding jobs to do out on the farm to avoid helping. Finally I asked him to go up the ladder to strip the highest part of the wallpaper. He moved the ladder and I told him it wasn't secure. "She'll be right" he said, climbing up. Next minute, the ladder started to slip, my hubby fell and the ladder smashed into the back of our wall unit. All the cupboards opened, wine glasses smashed and the phone jack was ripped out of the wall. The moral of this story is when doing it yourself DO IT YOURSELF... don't ask for help!!!! From: The Bolgers


Fashionable before its time

Shortly before we were married we decided it would be nice to spruce up our very dated formal lounge in our Victorian Terrace house. While still at the planning stage (i.e. deciding what shade of green to use), my dear husband mentioned our plans over a few lunchtime beers to his mates (all merchant navy officers at home on leave). They decided how pleased I would be to come home and find the chore done, so you can imagine my face when I opened the door after a long day at the office to find a three quarter finished lime green lounge. I might add that this was well before lime green was a fashionable colour! I took one look at their still slightly inebriated grinning faces, burst into tears, spluttered 'Change it' and left. I guess I should have been more specific as change it they did - to a vibrant fluoro orange! It stayed that colour until we sold the house to an amused couple a few years later.

Then there was the time when I came home from work to find the same mates (again on leave from the merchant navy and again a tad inebriated) had decided to help my dear husband remove a wall between a box room and a bedroom. Pity they didn't realise it was a supporting wall, as in supporting the roof! I'm glad I wasn't home for that one! By the time I saw it, most of the damage had been repaired and dear husband had resolved to never, ever again mention home improvement to his mates at the pub. It has worked, and we are still married! From: Lesley


Lunch time

A friend of mine and I were building a deck on the front and side of the house and also putting a big ranch-slider on the side of the house where there had been no door before. We cut a massive hole in the side of the house for the ranch-slider and then told my wife that we had had enough of the job. We promptly left and went and had lunch at the pub, leaving my wife with a very large hole in the side of the house and a worried look on her face. Needless to say we came back a little later and fitted the new ranch-slider. From: Bryce


Funny DIY StoriesPaint shadows

A friend of ours went to buy a house - a lovely house that looked as though it had been recently decorated. They liked it, put in an offer and brought the place. Then the surprise came when they went to move in. The last people had presumably been in a hurry to paint or couldn't be bothered. Instead of removing the furniture they just went around it, so as you can imagine even with the furniture removed, in some ways the furniture was still there. There were shapes left on the wall depicting where a tallboy was, a chest of drawers, bookshelves and so on. How frustrating! From: Judy


Colour blind

My Dad wanted to surprise my Mum by painting the bedroom a nice colour that she liked. He went to the shop and brought a colour that he thought she would like, then went home and painted the bedroom. When Mum came home, Dad showed her his work. She laughed and laughed. Dad asked her what was wrong. She asked what colour did he think it was. He said "peach". "Nope" she said, "it's bright orange". He forgot he was colour blind! Mum had to go with him the next time to buy another colour. From: Amanda


Coming unstuck

Thirty years ago we had just bought our first house in London and started redecorating. We chose the regency stripe, cut, pasted, climbed ladders and tried sticking the wallpaper to the wall. We tried everything, but as we let go, it slid down. As a last resort, we pinned it, using drawing pins for every drop. Two weeks later, we ripped the whole lot off and painted the walls... we have never wallpapered again! From: Janet


Tile pile

My friend was lowering the ceiling in his lounge by putting up new Michaelangelo tiles. Not liking the idea of painting them afterwards he decided to paint them first. He painted them all, stacked them up and went to bed. Of course they all stuck together! The next day they were inseparable so off he went to buy some more. After eventually getting them up onto the roof and painting them, he found that his hammer was missing! You guessed it, he'd left it on a beam inside the new ceiling. Not wanting to redo it again, he mumbled something about needing a new one anyway and went and bought one! So much for DIY, it would have been cheaper to pay an expert! From: Kathy


Sock stealer

Funny DIY StoriesWe bought our house a few years ago now with the intention of "doing-it-up" within a couple of years. That has now become the five year plan after discovering that every owner since year dot has "done-it-up" to their taste, leaving layers of paint and wallpaper for us to remove and walls to patch up. The latest owner, prior to us, was a developer whose idea of wallpapering was to use enamel paint as glue, and who enjoyed papering over large holes made by door handles (I believe that almost every wall in our house had one such hole that we would eventually discover). The worst thing that we discovered, however, was during the bathroom revamp, when, upon ripping out the old cast iron bathtub, we found a beautifully woven rat's nest with some of my husband's socks woven in. Everything became clear to me at that stage - the noise in the wall behind my head when I sat on the couch was probably the jolly rat after a pilgrimage to our laundry to pick up another of Scott's socks! People often talk about the strange occurrence that happens when one out of every pair of socks goes missing, but we know the truth. From: Nikki


White butt

I was flatting with a girlfriend in Mt Albert who came to meet me after work and we walked home. As we walked she was a great talker and told me all about her day, as I too shared the various happenings in my day. The walk took about an hour and as soon as I arrived home a trip to the toilet was in order. Sitting down on the toilet, I noticed it was very wet - she had failed to tell me in all the stories on the way home that she had painted the toilet seat that day!!!! From: Coralie


Uncertain downpour

We brought our first home with some friends with the plan to do it up and sell it. The only piece of DIY knowledge that I possessed was that I knew which end of the hammer to hold and so I looked to my friend Nick for directions. Nick at the time was a roof layer and would collect all sorts of materials from building sites whether he needed them or not. His motto was 'I'm pretty sure that I could use this'. One month after moving in he brought home a window that he said was a skylight and suggested we install it in the bathroom. Of course Nick had all the gear so we lifted the roof, installed the window, waterproofed it and admired the natural light streaming into the bathroom. Two months later the window cracked. Then it began to leak constantly. In an attempt to stop the leaks he put down more silicon. There was some improvement - it only leaked when it rained heavily and the wind blew in a certain direction. They moved on after three years and we stayed on for another seven. My wife calls it 'the little water feature that Nick left us' and he is constantly reminded each year when our families holiday together. From: Dawson Family


Bubble bubble toil and trouble

Last year we decided to repaint our bathroom as we had sold our first home and wanted to make it look nicer for the new owners. We spent hours painting it all and left the house. We came back the next day for the final cleanup. To our horror, when we walked into the bathroom, the paint had bubbled, and some of it was looking like melted wax!!!! As the new owners were moving in the next day, we had no choice but to leave it how it was... luckily we never heard anything from them. From: James


Strip tease

When we moved into our new house, Dad liked everything except the wallpaper, so one weekend he decided to re-wallpaper. This was going well until the weekend ended and there was still a strip to do. He said he would do it next weekend, but next weekend came along and it was never done. Then months and years passed until finally 10 years later when we decided to move house he wallpapered the strip. It only took 2 minutes to do, the same time it takes to brush your teeth in the morning. I can't understand why he didn't just wallpaper it in the first place when it only took 2 minutes! From: Corey


Framed

I prepared some window frames for painting in windy Featherston only to have the wind catch one and take it off the hinges. My wife caught it by the bottom of the window and gently lowered it to the ground, but the whole frame now has to be rebuilt. From: David


Funny DIY StoriesMatch that door

I asked my 20 year old son to paint the passage in our house plus all the doors. He removed every single door and took over a month to paint them. It gave communal living a whole different meaning and I became a lot closer to my family than I wanted to be. I got sick of waiting and finished them off myself. Unfortunately he didn't mark each door as to which room it came from, so I had great fun trying to find which door went with which room. It is now all back together, thank goodness, but it is the last time I ask him to do any painting around here! From: Janis


On the safe side

My husband is usually really careful with his DIY efforts being a Virgo, but one day he slipped up. I noticed two screws protruding from our dining room wall. Why? He'd used extra long ones (to be safe!) to attach a mirror to the shower room next door! Fortunately I had some Resene Forest Green left to touch up the damage. From: Angela


Walk the plank

We were building a new deck on our house and had the joists etc in place and were saving up for the deck-tread. In the interim we had some loose planks on top for 'safe' passage to and from the sliding door. I was out there one day having just potted up some seedlings and made my way carefully back along a plank. Unfortunately the end of the plank was not resting on a joist. When I got to the end I went down between the joists and my seedlings became airborne over my head. My visiting friend had to help me back up. I had a big gash on my thigh and she took me into the nearest Medical Centre for stitches. The main thing we learnt from this was just how quickly you can find the money needed to complete a job when you have to. Also, when stepping out onto a plank -ensure that it is resting on a support of some sort first! By the way - the seedlings landed right side up and other than needing to be pushed back more securely into the potting mix, they went on to grow well!! From: Donna


What goes up must come down

My husband Jim is NOT a DIY man, but trying! When I asked him to put up a wallpaper border with an interesting pattern around the top of our (high stud) bathroom wall, he was reluctant to say the least. But he allowed himself to be persuaded and then, as is the nature of the man, he insisted on doing it all himself. He chose the border wallpaper ("I know where I can get it really cheap!") and got the equipment ready ("This is a good ladder - my Dad used it for forty years!") He wanted to do it all by himself ("I know what I'm doing - you go shopping or something and leave me to it!")

We hadn't actually left the house when the poor old ladder collapsed... then, re-equipped with a neighbour's ladder, he got started. We got out. On our return he took us in proudly to show us his job. You should have seen his face when he opened the door with a flourish only to reveal the border all in a state of coming off the wall. Some of it had already curled up on the floor. He couldn't believe his eyes! As we wiped away tears of laughter, I explained to him that, "Some wallpaper borders are pre-pasted. some are not." So much for cheap wallpapers! It seemed that the wet border went up alright, but as the water dried out so it came down! The moral of the story (and useful Bonus Tips):


Sprinkler shower

My ex and his friends owned a few rental houses in Hamilton. One day we were doing one of them up before tenants moved in. The guys decided they were going to install a shower in the main bathroom, simple right? Wrong! Very, very wrong! It was in the middle of winter on what was a very cold day. The shower was installed by three of the boys (none of them are the best DIY'ers I have ever known). After a few hours and much abuse towards the poor shower it was finally in. The grand unveiling was announced and the shower was turned on. It actually went, the problem was it went all over the walls, the floor and the roof (I'm sure you get the idea!). My main worry before breaking into fits of laughter was whether the water would damage the wiring and cause a short circuit. They finally managed to get the shower working properly and we were able to return to Auckland with a few wet and cold males who were pleased they had finally got the job done. From: Rosemary


Hole in one

Funny DIY StoriesThree days before Christmas, my husband Richard and I moved into our first home. Being our first home, it is a DIYer's delight with a pink exterior to be painted, grease stained carpet to be replaced, and lots of other issues (we are finding more everyday, funnily enough!). Wanting to enjoy our Christmas, Richard decided to start out with a simple task before tackling the more labour intensive tasks after the New Year.

How hard could it be, after all, to get a phone connection into our study so we could have internet access? Deciding to run a phone cable through the roof from the phone jack in the garage, in order to feed it through the ceiling of our study, Richard ventured up the manhole in the garage roof with the phone cable and crawled along the narrow space towards the dining room. As I guided him towards the study, I received a great fright as I saw his foot come flying through the ceiling in the study and plaster flying everywhere. He had not realised that he was no longer walking along the beam. Managing to correct himself and regain his composure, Richard eventually fed the phone cable through to the study and then returned slowly to the entry-hole in the garage roof.

At this stage, I reminded him that he also needed to bring the other end of the cable back with him in order to plug that into the phone jack in the garage, rather than leaving it lying in the roof. When he did return the second time with the cable, the board and plaster he perched himself on in the garage gave way, dramatically increasing the size of the entry hole to the roof.

We now have an internet connection in the study... but we also have two damaged ceilings, Richard has a badly sprained arm that took the impact of his second fall, and, best of all, we have all our other DIY adventures to look forward to! From: Meredith


On edge

My Father was put in charge of painting and decorating the lounge. My Mum was forced to take us out of the house because of all the swearing coming from my Dad. We came back a few hours later to a silent and calm Dad. We were all pretty impressed by the job my Dad had done. Mum was relieved and we were off the hook. A couple of days later my Mum went to retrieve some of her favourite cookbooks from the newly decorated lounge. She was dumbstruck when she took the books off the shelves to find my Dad had actually painted around the books rather than take them off the shelves. The swearing started again. From: Kuljit


Funny DIY StoriesDivided by two

My Dad and brother tried to divide our garage into both a garage and an office. They thought they were pretty handy at stuff like that, putting up plasterboard on the walls and roof and so on. But after a recent downpour in the Hawkes Bay with lots of rain in only 30/60 minutes, we discovered that the job wasn't all that great. When we went outside to use the computer the next day, the whole floor of the office was about 80mm deep in water!! We were just lucky that the computer hard-drive and all the plugs weren't sitting on the ground!! From: Angela


Patch work

I remember, many years ago as a child, Dad fixing everything from a leaking tap to a broken armchair. He managed to spend twice as long on each job, but wow was it done to perfection. This particular day after many, many hours of scraping, sanding and lastly painting, the kitchen was finally completed. It looked fantastic and I remember for a few days' afterward he would sit and admire his handiwork and rightly so. My Dad went out for a while and my Mum was sweeping the floor rather vigorously. She swept so hard that, to my Mum's horror, the end of the broom handle smashed though the newly painted cupboard door. After much screaming and many choice words she managed to control herself and gather her thoughts. Quickly she flew into action. Dad called and was on his way home. My mother's arms were just a blur somewhat resembling propellers. Frantically she grabbed the colour chart and matched the same colour on the cupboard, cut out the colour chart colour, glued it to the door and with a quick dash of paint you could not tell it was there. To Mum's and our relief, he noticed nothing. PHEW! Not bad thinking for a matter of 20 minutes or so. From: Marinava


Flying paint

We had our house on the market and someone had just signed up - it was all a done deal. My father (in his wisdom) decided that since he had the paint, he would paint the lounge ceiling for the new owners. He was painting away, then got down to move the ladder, but he forgot that he had a full can of paint sitting on top of the ladder! It went down the newly wallpapered walls, over the furniture and all over the brand new carpet!! Oooops! (I cannot repeat what he actually said). Technically the house was no longer ours. As the new owners wouldn't be too pleased with the big white paint spill, it was all hands on deck in a big hurry. The sheets got pulled off beds because we didn't have time to look for rags (which would have been too small anyway). It took us a while but believe it or not we managed to get every little speck of white paint off the walls and out of the carpet.

If that wasn't bad enough - a week later Dad decided to touch up the outside frame of the kitchen window. He was painting away and then lost his footing. This time he was determined he was not going to spill any paint. One minute Dad was visible through the kitchen window, then he disappeared from view very quickly. We went rushing outside to see if he was okay (and to check the damage!). There he was lying on the ground flat on his back holding the can of paint upright with a big smile on his face - he managed to not spill one drop!! After that he was banned from doing any more painting - until we shifted! From: Lucy


Funny DIY StoriesClowning around

paint in and everything! I looked kind of silly in them though, me being XS and he being XL. They looked like clown pants, but I tied them all together with a belt and thought I'd be right. The belt kept the pants up alright, and left handy vents around my waist where all the fabric had bunched up. These came in handy when I spilt 2L of paint down my pants! My knickers got soaked with lime green paint and dried to my skin while I was rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. I paid for my mirth later though - I had to soak them off with meths!!! From: Emma


Foot fall

A few weeks ago my Mum and Dad decided to repaint all the ceilings in our house because we'd had a leak in the ceiling that we'd just plastered over. With an open 10L pail of ceiling paint at his feet, Dad picked just the right moment to fall off the chair. He got one foot caught in the side of the chair and splashed the other one into the paint, tipping it over and painting (what we found after lifting the sheets we'd put down) to be quite a large patch of our carpet a nice shade of WHITE! Needless to say, Mum was not impressed, and a few words were muttered that I'd never heard come out of my mother's mouth in my life! Mum ended up painting the ceiling and Dad went and had a beer. From: James


Phone home

Midway through installing paperfaced plasterboard in our hallway, the telephone rang. When the conversation finished, the phone was put down on a dwang out of the way. At the end of the evening, while standing back admiring the curved piece of wall, the phone rang again. Whoops!!! It was still on the dwang, behind the newly paperfaced plasterboard. In the panic of wetting and curving the paperfaced plasterboard to fit around the wall, we forgot to remove the phone. In the end we had to remove another piece of lining from the other side to retrieve it. From: Andrew


Fit to drink?

While I was painting the ceiling with white paint, the paint fell off the ladder hook. My cat thought it was milk and started drinking it! It's funny to look back on now, but not so funny when it happened with me busy trying to remove paint off the cat without getting more (paw) paint spread across the (wrecked) carpet. You can imagine the chaotic scene! From: Tony


Moving target

Not long after we were married, my wife and I were putting up a curtain rail in our bedroom. Being newlyweds, we were a bit disorganised as far as having the right sort of ladder to help with the job. I was standing on a wobbly table about the middle of the window, screwing in a fitting for the curtain rail. My wife had a smaller stool and I asked her to place it a couple of feet from the table so I could step off onto it. She placed it not quite where I had pointed, so I said, "No, not there, over there", and pointed to the spot where I wanted the stool placed. My wife moved the stool, but again not to the spot where I wanted it. Again I asked her to move it. This time she did move it to the correct spot and I began to step off the higher table down onto the stool. However, my wife thought I was being silly about my requests to keep moving the stool, and assumed it still was not in the correct spot. So as I was halfway off the table, and committed to stepping onto the stool, my wife moved the stool!

Of course, now there was nothing for me to stand on, and my momentum sent me falling to the ground, totally out of control. I smashed "head first" into my stereo system in the corner of the room. Fortunately, I wasn't badly hurt, although when my wife saw the blood streaming from my right ear she did scream rather loudly! When I cleared some of the blood away, we could see I had ripped a piece off the top of my ear. My wife does not drive, so I had to drive us both down to Accident and Emergency, get a tetanus shot and a couple of stitches in my ear!

The DIY lesson we learnt from this is, don't fool around, and make sure you have all the right equipment before you start! From: Mark


Hitting the spot

My parents decided to do up their kitchen and put in nice wooden shelves and a wall oven. They even decided to polish the floors. Halfway through doing the kitchen up I said to my Dad, I wonder what it would look like with the wall between the lounge and dining room gone. Dad's reply was it would open things up but he wasn't too sure if Mum would like it. Before he had a chance to say anything else, I had put a sledgehammer through the wall. Needless to say the wall did go, but they had to remove electrical wires and put in a supporting beam and so on. The conclusion to this story is that I am not allowed to do any decorating and Dad's tip is that if anyone has a daughter like me don't mention renovation. From: Diane


Funny DIY StoriesBowled over

My fussy husband likes to mow his lawns to look like bowling greens. He has been known to sweep dirt from the lawns after holes have been dug and filled in, but it gets worse. After mowing the lawns one day, our cat proceeded to catch and eat a bird on the "bowling green". There were feathers everywhere. What's the best way to clean feathers off the lawn? Yes that right,". Yes that’s right, we arrived home to find him cleaning them up with the indoor vacuum cleaner. Like he said, “well it was the best way to get rid of all the feathers”. From: Wendy


Blow out

On impulse we decided to buy new carpet for the lounge and dining rooms. Afterwards we decided that before we had it laid we should redecorate the lounge. While pondering how to do this we decided that there was no point in repainting/wallpapering until after we had demolished the false ceiling and returned it to the original height. We also thought that at the same time we would move a wall to build a windowseat and bookcases. While discussing these alterations with a builder and talking added value, we decided that altering the bathroom would add considerably more value for money to the house than titivating the lounge. However, we could not alter the bathroom until we had shifted the linen cupboard. This could only be achieved by altering our daughter's bedroom to accommodate the new linen cupboard and wardrobe and by shifting the bedroom door.

So, around $12,000 later we have run out of money, the bathroom has been successfully altered but not decorated, the bedroom is successfully altered but not completely decorated, the lounge ceiling and carpet have been removed, the fire surround stripped, the doors and frames partially stripped and the damaged walls replastered. No walls have been moved, no windowseat and bookcases built. We have used hundreds of screws trying to stop the floorboards from squeaking (unsuccessfully), but THE NEW CARPET IS STILL NOT LAID!

What started out as a simple replacement of carpet (to be done by someone else) has led from the redecoration of one room to the structural alteration and redecoration (eventually) of three rooms. It has meant months or perhaps years of no more free weekends or evenings, sore shoulders from too much sanding and a garden overrun with weeds due to neglect.

The moral of this story is NEVER BUY CARPET ON IMPULSE! You never know where it might lead. From: Nichol Family


Double time

I had been hounding my companion for months to paint the dingy and dull laundry. We lived in a large, old character house, but the laundry was the eyesore of the house. It only had one small window so the natural light was poor. He kept saying I'll get around to it, but just kept putting it off. He agreed to help put in reticulation at a friend's house and managed to squeeze this in before going away with his job (welding) for four weeks. Consequently, we had a "little disagreement" about doing other people's odd jobs and not getting around to our laundry.

The weekend after he left I decided to do it myself. I am not that flash a painter, but I thought I would have a go. I thought I did a pretty good job and it did seem to brighten the room up a bit. Two days before he was due back I got a phone call at work. It was my companion. He said he had come back early and had a surprise for me. When I got home he led me to the laundry, where the smell of paint hit me. The welding job had finished early. He felt bad about our disagreement, and had decided to surprise me by painting the laundry. "A bloody twit did the last job, it was really sloppy," he said. Do you think I could convince him I painted it while he was away? From: E Regan


Twinkle twinkle little star

Funny DIY StoriesAfter a long, hard day of redecorating our lounge with a blue colour, I stepped out with a mate to have a few beers not realising I had left the door wide open. Our neighbour's 5 year old son Jeremy came in and started to flick white paint everywhere all over my long hard day's painting. When I returned to add another layer I found my girlfriend was just opening the door to see the white dots everywhere. As Jeremy ran past me with white paint all over his hands I knew right then something had gone wrong. I ran quickly to the door and the look on my girlfriend's face would make anyone scared, I mean VERY scared.

It was supposed to be a surprise for her to see her favourite colour on the wall, but then it was ruined by white dots. I knew I had to make up an excuse and fast, so with my intelligent mind I came up with these words 'Honey remember on our first date when we sat underneath the stars, well that is what this is so we can always remember that night'. Immediately she blushed brightly and she asked me to marry her! I've always thanked Jeremy for doing what he did and he is my best man. From: G Williams


Paw'er paint

I painted the living room ceiling using a thickish oil paint. To make life easy (or so I thought) I had the tray on a stool so I didn't need to come so far down the ladder. The stool was about waist height and rectangular, in fact perfect for the shape of a paint tray. All was going well until my cat decided to help. He jumped up on the stool to get a better view of what was going on. He wasn't pleased to find himself in the paint tray and jumped out and ran around the house leaving paw prints of white paint over my carpet and rugs until I could catch him. Have you tried to hold a struggling cat with paws in the air and wash them with turps? I really only got one paw clean and had to put him outside. From: Sally


Behind closed door

Some friends of ours just bought a house. They were so happy about getting their house that they had everything moved in and set up in five hours. Days went by and then they found the downfalls. My family and I had gone to visit my friends at their new home and my 2 year old was playing in one of the rooms. When he walked out he must have remembered to close the door. When we went to open it we couldn't! We tried everything to get the door open. In the end we had to take the hinges off the closed window from the outside. When we did that, we found that the window was nailed shut. We had to de-nail the window and in doing so found that the area around the window was rotten and had been freshly painted. We looked around and found that other windows were exactly the same. It pays to have the hawk eye look with you when you buy a new home! From: Tina


Red handed

I have found it is always best to supervise my husband when painting. Many years back now, when our first-born was not quite two, my husband James set about to give our kitchen a fresh coat of paint. Dad's helper of course wanted to be involved, so James opened the nearest cupboard and found the red food colouring and brushes that I use for cake decorating. He found a large piece of paper, opened up the food colouring and proceeded to show our baby how to paint like Dad. Once first-born was happily painting just like Dad, hubby returned to his painting and forgot all about our baby he was meant to be supervising. I returned from the shops to find our little chap sitting in the middle of the lounge floor with a large puddle of red food colouring all over the carpet. Luckily the insurance company was very helpful replacing the carpet. From: Kerry


Paw painting

I painted my deck bright blue and although I had fenced the deck off with cardboard, my cat managed to walk all over the blue paint and then all over my partner's company car! He was not impressed when he saw all the blue paw prints all over his car. From: Michelle


Graffiti artiste

I heard the funniest way to get your husband to do the painting through my wife's aunt. She told us how she persuaded her husband to do the painting inside and outside of their home. They had been living there for at least 35 years with it never being 'finished'! One day she decided it was time to make things happen, so she started graffiti writing obscene messages on the walls! He would read them and reply with equally obscene remarks until all the walls were covered with graffiti. Of course, he did the painting eventually. My wife brought me a paintbrush and roller to give me the message, but she ended up starting, which causes me to take over to do it properly! Our house is quarter finished! From: Marcus


Expect the unexpected

This story actually stars the WIFE as the DIY disaster queen. I have been watching lots of the DIY fixit jobs and always it's the guy that gets it... well, for all you blokes out there, meet my wife Aroha!!!! While at work doing my civil servant duty I got home at midnight in the middle of winter. All I wanted was to come home to a warm kitchen and loving family, only to find my wife had taken to the kitchen wall with a chainsaw/jack hammer, chisel, hammer - you name it, she probably used it. The following month it was the wallpaper in the dining room half on half off. Then there's the hole over the fireplace covered now by a mirror, half painted rooms upstairs - and yes I did say rooms, 4 in fact. And I haven't even started with the outside. I am a harassed husband with a DIY DISASTER WIFE. Three years have gone now and it's still the same. From: Peter


Quick change

My parents decided to lift and renovate our 8 year old house, which was still not finished. Mum picked the colour of the upstairs bathroom without Dad and then painted it while he was away. When Dad got back we had a bright yellow bathroom and a big frog shower curtain. He hated the colour and swore and cursed about it, so mum decided to paint over it without sanding or anything. The bathroom is still unfinished and is a half yellow and a half browny colour as the blue paint she used to paint over it was too light. Dad has promised to sand and repaint it but I'm sure it'll take another 7 years. From: Beckah


'Til the cows come homeFunny DIY Stories

During my university summer break I worked on a dairy farm. Between milkings I was set to do odd jobs around the farm. The owner of the farm was a grumpy old man who always resented change with the excuse that the cows wouldn't adapt! One of my jobs was to paint the inside of the milking shed, which was a very dull unpleasant yellow. The son and I took some chipped paint to the store to get a match just as the father had instructed. At the shop we saw a beautiful bright yellow, so we decided to take our chances. We went home and I painted the milking shed. It was fantastic, the shed looked clean and a lot bigger - it felt like the sun was shining inside! The cows walked in and sniffed at the paint, but otherwise were not worried... I think they even liked the change. Then the father arrived. Despite the shed still being yellow he did not like it. He instructed me to repaint the shed back to the old yellow, all before the next milking so as not to upset the cows!!! Some things never change. From: Lis


The hole story

My husband is not one to want to pay anyone to do alterations, so he decided to redo our bathroom himself. Our home is a bit of a doer upper and it was taking a long time to get this task completely finished. We had one piece of Seratone left to go on - the one that runs along the front of the bath. I had waited almost 2 years to have this job done, but he really had done a pretty good job on everything. As I was giving my niece a bath one night I noticed a soft spot in the flooring, only the size of a saucer. I thought, oh well, not a major problem... boy was I wrong! It turned out that all that hard work my husband had done was a huge waste of time. We had to have the bathroom completely redone by a builder because the floor had rotted, not to mention the rotten walls in the bathroom, the laundry room and part of the hallway floor. But at least I have a new bath and that last piece of Seratone has finally been put up on the front of the bath. From: Jacqui


Paint makeup

Years ago my grandfather and father had built a hayshed over the side of a small cliff towards the back of our farm and it required painting. They rigged up a form of scaffolding on the back of the truck at the bottom of the hayshed and proceeded to start painting the shed with red paint. Somehow, my grandfather managed to fall from the very top and landed across the plank. Unfortunately, the paint also fell and, like the movies, most of it landed on his head! As my Dad and Uncle rushed to help Poppa, fearing the worst, he sat up and cried "Never mind me, save the paint!" They took him up to the house a mile away to get him cleaned up and checked out and, as you can imagine, like all good comedies, my grandmother happened to see him coming down the road and thought he was covered in blood! They still have a good laugh over this one! From: Julie


Not your average gem

My husband is a Jeweller, not a Handyman. And it shows... When we got our new dishwasher, Clint decided he could plumb it in himself quite easily. So he and his trusty cordless drill got out a 5cm (approx.) hole saw bit for a piece of piping that was about 2.5cm in diameter. He proceeded to drill firstly a hole in the side of the cupboard (he didn't install it under the bench, but beside it), so he could get to the waste trap. He then drilled a hole through the floor to get to the water mains, which are under the house. Unfortunately, he didn't check where he was drilling. Once the hole was finished, he realised he could actually see the grass outside through the hole because the top storey of our house slightly overhangs the bottom storey. How did he fix it? He simply went outside and made another hole in the side of the basement to put the pipe back through to under the house. I think he should stick to jewellery. From: Amanda


No point crying over spilt milk

When I was painting the last room in our old house I ran out of ceiling paint. My darling wife rushed down to the hardware store to purchase the last litre I required to finish the ceiling. She came back with the cheapest paint she could lay her hands on. It was like painting with green milk, splatters everywhere and see through. It took five coats of milk (paint) before I ran out and then I had to go back and buy a quality ceiling paint and start all over.

My advice is: 1) Don't send your wife to buy paint, 2) Don't try painting with milk, and 3) You get what you pay for. From: Giles


Funny DIY StoriesCamera shy

While painting Mum's beach house one day last summer, her partner descended the ladder and got his overalls caught, losing his balance. Thankfully the ladder was firmly in place and could hold his weight. The funny bit was yet to come -a tour bus stopped outside and tourists started taking photos while he just hung there. From: Anon


Concrete muffins

Our church was re-building. The concrete had been poured and smoothed over. There were a heap of children from the neighbourhood helping and watching. Most of the day my dear wife was telling the children 'Don't walk on the new concrete'. They were very obedient and walked around it so that it would look nice when it had dried. Towards the end of the day, who was it that came out a door with a tray of cups of tea and muffins and tripped and dropped the lot on the new concrete? Yes, my dear wife! She will never live this down! From: Stephen


Stickability

I always thought wallpapering was easy. After all, I had helped my parents often enough, but Dad always did the hanging. When my children were quite small I decided to redecorate. Yes, a patterned wallpaper with lots of animals was going up on the walls - well, it would be when I got down to the job. I cleared the table and spread it with newspaper, measured out the first roll and then swept the large paste covered brush over the paper. Into the bedroom I went with the bottom tucked up just the way Dad had done. I pressed it against the wall and down it went on an angle. I pulled it off and tried again. Each time it twisted or buckled its way down.

Frustration took over as the effects of the time and attempts at hanging the impossible 8' length began to show on the paper. In fury I crunched the large strip of wallpaper up into a ball and threw it on the floor -not a good thing to do when I was already short on wallpaper. I sat and looked at that wall and the strip of paper that had defeated me. In good Kiwi fashion, the jack of all trades/Kiwis can do anything vein pulsated in me. I picked up the ball of mushy wallpaper and began to unravel it. I climbed the stepladder once more. Carefully and slowly I smoothed the creases against the wall working my way down the steps as I went. I stood back and looked at this final attempt. The strip of wallpaper was up in the right place. It was at this point, I learned how forgiving damp pasted wallpaper is. It was almost impossible to see the abuse that had been rendered to that strip but for two small permanent creased marks in just two small places.

I completed the room (it looked great) before venturing forth and wallpapering my son's room. Many home renovation jobs have been tackled since giving this Kiwi a sense of pride in her own DIY. From: Alyse


Funny DIY StoriesFrom pillar to post

My parents offered to help my husband and me build a fence down the driveway. A big working weekend was planned with the arrival of Mum and Dad at noon on Saturday. My husband and Dad started work with much enthusiasm on the first hole at 1pm. At 1:15pm, Dad walked up the stairs holding his head and said that he'd had a bit of a bump, but it should be fine. The A&E doctor gave him 4 stitches and some painkillers for the inevitable headache! Upon pulling up to the driveway, I found my husband and not-so-fit mother struggling, determined to get one post in. With a funny look on their faces they told me they were finishing up and would meet us inside. Once in, they told us that my husband tried to use the posthole borer by himself, nearly ripping his arm out of his socket and was now in a lot of pain. By 4pm we were all packed up inside the house admiring the handiwork from the big working weekend - a solitary pole standing at the top of the driveway - I'm sure it was laughing at us! From: Tracy


Cover up

Before last year's midsummer hailstorm in the Wairarapa, we were preparing to paint the walls and ceilings in the lounge, and the ceiling in the kitchen. All the walls had been stripped of wallpaper in the lounge and all that needed doing was the ceiling. Then the hailstorm hit, and the ceiling in the lounge was flooded. We came home to find water dripping through the roof and from the lightbulb as we turned it on!! Thank goodness for the frantically busy on call electrician who allayed our fears about electrocution!! The insurance painters finally made our ceiling a far finer finish than we could ever have done.

We didn't get any replacement carpet however as it was too old, so we decided that this was the time to hire the floor sander and hit the rimu floors. After carefully filling the nails in the main room, we ran out of filler and bought some more from a certain warehouse. My wife spent more time filling, and waiting.... and waiting... for the potent smelling filler to set. It seemed to have set, so she began to sand, but the filler smudged everywhere across the nice rimu - any varnish over this and it would look like smears. So she had to get it out of the nail holes and replace it with the correct stuff.

There were no available professional floorsanders able to help, so my wife hired a floorsanding machine. It must have been quite a sight! If it hit the wall, then the sand belt would rip off, and it would take the next five minutes to unscrew the $5 paper, and put on a fresh one. There weren't many surplus ones to return to the hire centre, let's just put it that way!

On varnishing day, it was a stinking hot day and the one detail we had forgotten was to varnish when it's not too hot. As we mopped it on with speedbrushes, it began to set really fast, "Quick" said hubby to wife "It's setting, and quick, there's some pouring down the hole in the floor." Not knowing much about varnishing, we thought the next coat would cover up the diagonal strokes you could see in one area, however three coats later, it didn't. The rest of the job looked pretty good with the lovely varnish, but we now have a mat over the less than perfect area, and hope that in a few years we will have another go, and this time be a little wiser. From: Phil


Power cut

My husband (how many funny DIY stories start like that?) was changing a light fitting outside. He had to drill some new holes for the fitting. While up the ladder with his electric drill he decided to be cautious, climbed down and told me he was going to turn off the power as he would be drilling close to the wiring. (Remember, the drill was ELECTRIC!) From: Stuart Family


Overnight clean

When in doubt, don't. With great enthusiasm my husband painted the bargeboard after we had removed the old guttering. The paint was the same colour as the new long run Colorcote guttering due to arrive in 2 days. He worked until dusk and completed the painting. Next morning there were large gaps on the bargeboards free of the new paint colour. The evening and morning dew had been the culprit. Learn from this tale and if in doubt about the drying time, don't paint - leave it for another day. From: Carolyn


Funny DIY StoriesPatient paper

I had saved up to buy some expensive wallpaper for my lounge and when I finally had the wallpaper I couldn't find a professional to do the job right away (I just couldn't wait). My partner's friend said he had papered his mother's house so would do the job for me. As soon as he started I could tell he didn't know what he was doing. He cut the paper with scissors (all crooked). Instead of using tools he smoothed it over with his hands. It was all crooked. I rushed out to find my partner to tell him how worried I was. When I returned he had done one whole wall and it was full of air bubbles. That night I had to rip it all down and ended up painting the walls myself. Next time I'll be more patient and wait for the professionals, instead of wanting it all done yesterday. From: Donna


Limited shelf life

I love my husband dearly, but in our earlier years of marriage,DIY was not his strongest attribute. As I was going out with a girlfriend that day he asked, "Any odd jobs needed doing?"

Quickly I responded to seize the moment, so to speak, and said we really need a shelf behind the door in the toilet to put spare toilet rolls and smellies and so on. Now being a basic 60s house, our toilet is the size of a postage stamp and approximately 6 feet long by the width of the door itself.

My girlfriend and I left knowing the task was not too daunting and we returned some six hours later to a tiny voice calling from the toilet vicinity. He had erected the shelf, very straight, and very secure behind the toilet door... but the width of the shelf prevented him from opening the door and he was trapped. My girlfriend and I rolled about the hallway laughing. What I really meant was for him to put the shelf above the door, which is behind as you walk in.

Now we sit and look at the two holes in the door and can laugh. (Dads don't try this at home, taking a shelf down when someone is bursting is not that quick!) From: Sonia


Fall from grace

My father was painting the roof, standing at the top of the ladder to finish the last metre of painting. He had the paint can on the roof and was reaching into it from the ladder, which was working fine. As he finished each piece of roof, he got down and moved the ladder along. Halfway along where the ground slopes, he had to stretch to reach. Before long we heard a crash outside, and went out to find Dad on his butt on the ground, drenched in green roof paint. You can imagine the clean up! From: Tama


Child's play

Five years ago, we were expecting our first child. My husband thought it would be a good idea to DIY the spare bedroom for the new baby. We got stuck in... off came the old plaster board, up went the new. All that was left to do was to paint - no problem for my man who can be a bit clumsy.

During the marathon painting session, I decided to take a pit stop and let hubby take the reins. Not even two minutes later swearing was coming from the nursery to be. My husband attempted to walk down our hallway covered in paint. Yes you guessed it. He had knocked over the paint tray, which was perched on a ladder. The end result was one very messy t-shirt, shorts and jandals, not to mention the drop sheet! All looked very hilarious. From: Nadine


Times two

Having just completed the renovation of our bathroom, I decided to paint the ceiling in white acrylic. Because the manufacturer recommended that the paint had special properties, and therefore (or so I thought!!) it was unnecessary to prime the plasterboard ceiling, I decided to put two coats of the semi-gloss on. I finished the job at 10pm and awoke at 7am to find that the paint was peeling off. With the words of a "wise ol' soldier" (i.e. if you're going to do it right, do it properly) ringing in the back of my mind, I quickly peeled the paint off, rubbed it back down, sealed, primed and finish coated the job which now looks exceptional!!! My tip... If you're going to do something, do it properly the first time. From: Kevin


Complete knockout

Funny DIY StoriesOur first major DIY job was to totally renovate and upgrade a 1930's workers cottage in Onehunga. Having returned from a bit of shopping one day I stood chatting to my husband, Cam, who was in the process of dismantling the horrible kitchen cabinetry and investigating the plumbing behind. As he gently tapped at a stubborn piece of wood, the main pipe to the kitchen broke and water began flooding the area. Cam yelled at me to turn the water off, and as the kitchen was in the rear of the house and the mains water tap was out the front by the road I had to run down a footpath and across the driveway. As I ran, I suddenly slipped on some gravel -promptly hit my head on the concrete and knocked myself out! A couple of minutes later I came to, wondering grumpily why on earth Cam had not come out to help me, when I realised that he must still have his finger in the pipe trying to stop the flow of water. I crawled to the water mains tap and turned it off, at which time Cam came out the front of the house wondering why on earth it had taken so long to turn the water off. As soon as he saw the blood dripping from the side of my face and the beginnings of a shiner on my eye, I think he understood! Perhaps a tip might be: Never run on gravel in high-heeled sandals? From: Megan


Funny DIY StoriesWilting flowers

It was in the late 1980s and my mother in law was coming to stay. She was a compulsive cleaner and an even worse snob. All I can say is, it was late, I was desperate, so I rushed out to the Howick Resene ColorShop, bought some pretty flowered wallpaper and paint, and started redecorating my tatty lounge late on a Friday night. She was arriving the next morning at 8am. I did nearly all of it before my husband came home from the pub. He took pity on me, and said - "let me do the last bit of that wall corner for you, you look tired".

I got up early the next morning to clean the lounge again thoroughly. Actually, on first sight, all looked lovely. I remember the wallpaper; it was bronze and green flowers on an off white background... (well, it WAS the 80s!!). I put a vase of fresh flowers on the table and kept my fingers crossed.

Madam Hitler arrived, stepped in the front door, and within 10 seconds, said to me "why is your wallpaper hung upside down over in that corner?" My husband had hung the paper upside down and the bronze and green flowers drooped downwards,instead of up! From: Frances


Whitewashed

Never, I say never, buy your paint at the demo yard! Yes, I learnt a valuable lesson about three weeks ago, and all because I wanted to save a few pennies on painting the house.

My husband and I are buying our first home and I am the only worker in the family. Anyway I knew the house badly needed a paint job, but I wanted to save a few dollars. While wandering around our local demo yard I spotted several boxes of white paint at a really good price. You would have thought I would have had the brains to ask why so much good looking paint was being sold so cheap, but no, I was having a blonde day and in my excitement at such a find, all common sense went flying out the window.

To cut a long story short, I bought six cans of white latex paint and last weekend I decided to start the painting. I conned my eldest daughter into helping me and it all went wonderfully. We were amazed, the paint dried in less than an hour and we were able to do the second coat. We thought we were just the bee's knees, instead we were just delusional. The back of the house looked great, but three days later we discovered something about our lovely paint, it did not set. Just add water and watch it run was the motto here for the day. And now we have to spend more money to get it off the house and buy good quality paint. If only I had not been such a cheapskate. Well there you go, a lesson learnt the hard way. Still at least we can laugh about it and thank goodness we did not paint the whole house! From: Sharon


Indoor rain

So far the only thing we have painted in our house is the roof (I might add my husband has yet to put on the final coat, I fear I may be waiting a while). I was going out for the afternoon, and Evan my husband was getting ready to start the preparation for painting the roof. I left and everything was fine. He was climbing onto the roof and was going to waterblast it before painting. I arrived home a couple of hours later and he was still on the roof waterblasting. I yelled up to see when he was going to start painting. He explained he had just finished and was about to start. I thought great, so far so good. I walked into the house to find my kitchen slowly being flooded, water was gushing from the ceiling tiles. Out I ran and told him to quit waterblasting. It was then that I saw he had been waterblasting up the roof, not down. Subsequently he had filled our ceiling with water that we just had to wait to drip out. Our tip would have to be: always waterblast down the roof and never up! From: Sarah


Garden minefield

My Mum had just got out of hospital after major surgery on her back. She had to have 8 weeks off work and I thought it would be nice to do her gardens for her. The first thing I dug into was the sprinkler system, which I couldn't see. Then I thought it would be okay if I pruned a few trees I thought were too bushy. I found out afterwards that Mum had taken three years to get them that bushy. In the end I wish I hadn't started. She thought it was really sweet but I felt really bad as the garden was worse off than when I had started. Oops! From: Danielle


Funny DIY StoriesSublime lime

My granddaughter was told that Mum and Dad were going to paint her bedroom in the near future. She had been watching her father painting her baby brother's bedroom so she thought she would have a go at doing her own. She managed to get a testpot of paint and a paintbrush out of the laundry cupboard and started on her bedroom. The testpot colour was lime green and she had it everywhere -curtains, windows, walls, duvet cover, carpet... you name it, it was there! Of course, Mum yelled and granddaughter said she was only trying to help. At the time granddaughter was only three years old. To this day she has still not had her bedroom painted and she goes to school next month. From: Cynthia


Ghosts in the darkness

My niece started to paint our sitting room. She was all fired up and painted the white undercoat. She slept in our sitting room that night and woke up to 'see' ghosts of people in the sitting room and on the walls. Our walls have still got that one coat of paint on and we have not seen her in our house since! From: Bradie


Scraper rage

When we were expecting our first baby my husband decided to decorate the baby's room. We had picked out the wallpaper and were advised to strip back the original paper first before we even started. This should have been a relatively easy job -until we realised that there were five layers of paper on the wall and I am sure one of them was superglued on. We hired a steamer to help but all that did was drip a steady stream of water onto the carpet - the steam could not even penetrate the wallpaper. My husband then decided to get the metal scraper onto the wallpaper. He was, by this time, getting very uptight, angry, annoyed - you name it... he was feeling it. He dug the metal scraper into the wallpaper and pushed with all his might. Crack, smash - straight through the wall. Not only did we still have the wallpaper on the wall, now we had a gaping hole.

A quick phone call to my Dad to ask for help as to how to fix the hole and he gave us the best advice anyone could have given us. Why he did not tell us this at the very beginning I have no idea. He told us to get a professional in to do the whole job. Guess what, we did and the room looked lovely when it was finished. From: Sharlene


Water sport motivation

Funny DIY StoriesThree and a half years ago we decided to extend our house rather than shift. This was done with great enthusiasm and plans of having it all finished in ONE year. Alterations were made to nearly every room in the house. A big job you say. Yes it was but I was told by my loving partner we would get it all sorted and finished to my liking ASAP.

Three and a half years later we have finished one room - only five to go. This one room was achieved after lots of pushing and complaining. After a holiday at a beach over Christmas, we have now come home and completed another room. How did I get him to do it? Easy. He wants to buy a boat. I said 'No, not until my house is finished'. He now wants to get the house finished as quick as he can. Maybe this year it will happen. From: Sandra


Electric towels

If you are not an electrician I've found it's unwise to put in a heated towel rack - you tend to get a nasty shock. However I'm pleased to report that it works!!! From: Tony


Size does matter

We are re-doing our toilet and bathroom, and Mum and Dad decided it was easy enough for them to do themselves. Well the toilet looks okay - after we bought a new toilet since the one they bought didn't fit, was far too small and left a whopper of a gap in the wall and on the floor. But after the new basin was put in (even though it sprays everywhere when you turn it on) and the walls were all painted, and the second new toilet was put in it looks awesome. If only I could say the same about the bathroom. What a mess!! We bought a beautiful recycled rimu vanity top that looked awesome off, but when we went to put it on, we realised it was NOT going to work. The hole for the new basin had already been cut, and it was in the wrong place. If we had used it as it was, we would've had to take the drawers off the vanity unit because the basin was too deep. As I type we are hopefully getting a new one made in the shop!! Next there's the taps for the bath - I don't think even Dad knows what he did. The handles don't fit on, so we have a place for the water to come out. The tap fits fine, but there's nowhere to turn it on because the handles don't fit!!!

During our DIY renovations, we have changed all our bathroom and toilet fittings to chrome, the toilet roll holder, drawer handles, taps, towel racks etc and even a new tooth brush holder. Pity our tooth brushes didn't fit! Next time I think we are going to have to check everything fits first, before we buy them! Now all we have to do is wait for all the things we sent back to come back, and then there's painting - what a fun job, and I bet I'll have to do it! From: Alix


Something fishy

Just as Trev put the last finishing touches of Resene Limeade on our aunt's kitchen wall, the new fridge arrived. Once they installed the new fridge, Trev and the delivery bloke lugged the old one out onto the front porch. That was when Trev had his Big Idea to turn the fridge into a fish smoker and take it up to the bach. The big weekend arrived. The lads were suitably impressed with Trev's fish smoker. The weather was brilliant, and the fishing was superb. Trev stoked up the smoker with charcoal and manuka chips, and once the charcoal had reduced to a bed of glowing embers he laid the fish on the racks, just as described in the DIY magazine our Aunt had given him for Xmas. After a happy night of yarns around the fire with a few crates of beer, Trev and the lads hit the sack, or rather, the sleeping bags. It had been a perfect day. The night was not so perfect. At 3 am the lads were woken by a loud crash. The plastic shelf mountings in the fridge had melted and the weight of cascading fish mixed with molten plastic had caused the crash. Poor Trev... he knew he would never live it down! From: Briar


Lid licker

I was painting my kitchen and had opened the tin of paint and was in the process of stirring it. I placed the tin lid on the dropsheet. My cat came in to see what I was up to and walked on the tin lid, which of course had paint on it! She got a huge fright and ran through the house leaving paint paw prints everywhere! DIY tip: don't paint with animals! From: Rachel


Weatherboard stuffer

My Dad's friend had rental properties and didn't like spending a lot of money on them. He went to repaint the exterior and found a few holes needed fixing and plugging. Rather than going to the hassle of replacing weatherboards he would fill the gaps with newspaper and paint over them. We think he may have been related to Steptoe and son! From: Helen


Funny DIY StoriesSlippery when wet

My husband Richard climbed on the roof one morning with a ten litre pail of paint in one hand and a brush in the other. He didn't see the spot of dew just over the ridge. I heard an almighty bang and ran outside to see him splattered in paint with his feet resting in the guttering, which had stopped him sliding right off! He still had the paint pail in one hand and the brush in the other! He said he didn't want to waste any paint! From: Helena


A little goes a long way

There I was, painting my bedroom apricot - a very original colour for a girl! Anyway, I had these rollup blinds that had been around since the 70's that were a lovely brown colour. I couldn't help myself... the rollerbrush went swishing apricot over one blind. Except the roller blind snapped up inside itself and sprayed the carpet with lovely apricot paint too! As I was only planning to paint the wall, I had only put newspaper down under the blind and around the edge of room. The landlord who had donated the paint was not too happy. Neither were we when we found ghosts in the house (but that's another story). From: Mee


Handiwork

My parents had just painted the walls in the hallway in our old house a light yellow colour, when my older brother (at the time 2 years old) got a tub full of bright pink zinc and Vaseline, squashed his hands in the tubs and painted pictures all over the freshly painted hallway walls. My mum was furious. It just would not come off so they had to paint all the walls all over again. They hid the zinc and Vaseline on the highest shelves away from my brother's creative little fingers. From: Kelle


Roof proof

Funny DIY StoriesI have a roof with a 45 degree pitch and had a couple of minor mishaps whilst painting it. I put my extension ladder over the pitch so that the bottom rungs went down one side and the top rungs down the other. The only trouble is that it was a bit short, so I had to jump up to catch the first rung. One time, as I leapt up onto the rung, the bucket of paint ended up going all over me, leaving me covered from head to toe and stranded. I screamed for the wife, who threw me up a broom. I spread as much of it as I could, out of the gutter and back on to the roof. The only trouble was, that to get to the ladder that I had used to climb onto the roof, I had to, on my belly, crawl back across though the thick, slippery, wet paint, with my feet firmly fixed to the spouting for support - yes, some mothers do have them. During the same painting project, I also had a mishap when the ladder slipped and I ended up clinging to the spouting with one hand and the scaffold with the other. I had to let go and drop to the ground, while placing my feet through the rungs of the fallen ladder - a feat I pulled off while the wife was looking on (it was her job to hold the ladder, but she got bored, saw a weed in the garden and let go to pull it out) without coming to any grievous bodily harm. Unfortunately, these are true stories and the wife is having serious misgivings about letting me attack this job next time. From: Peter


Super saver

My Dad likes to 'fix' things. He is always pottering about the house, starting DIY jobs and never actually getting around to finishing them. At the moment, thanks to my father, we have a half dug up driveway, an old chevette station wagon (that doesn't go) sitting on the lawn, a trampoline with no legs gathering dust in the backyard, a laundry that we are all afraid to enter for fear of having a half finished shelf fall onto us, and a garage so full of junk you can't even fit a car into it. But, as horrific as this all sounds, home wouldn't be home without my Dad working on some project or another. And as for the junk, well, I doubt we'll ever fully appreciate Dad for his collecting and storing abilities, but I think we've all learned to live with it by now, despite the odd outburst of protest from my mother! From: Ellen


Last minute master

When we were fairly new to this country my Mum came for a visit. My husband thought he could drywall our spare room just in time before her visit. And indeed, the night before she would arrive he had the room painted and ready for me to clean and move the furniture back in. I was well impressed, until I dusted the walls... he had been so keen to get on with the painting that he had not sufficiently cleaned the walls after paperfaced plasterboard stopping. Luckily my Mum was so glad to see us she didn’t mind the funny paint effects on the wall. From: Hanne & Matthijs


Wot a stud

My husband had built a set of storage cupboards for the garage in our new home. On completion, and as they were heavy to lift, he enlisted the help of our son to lift them and bolt them to the wall. They carefully used a stud finder to locate the studs in the wall and marked the position of them. My husband then proceeded to hammer a couple of nails into the wall, top and bottom to indicate where the bolts were to go to attach the cupboards to the wall. Just then our son asked if we had a gas bottle in the garage that was leaking, as he could smell gas. Suddenly we could all smell the strong odour of gas and on checking the gas bottle decided it wasn't coming from there. We realised that the gas hot water cylinder was on the outside of the house right where my husband had hammered in the nails and the gas pipes were in the wall. The gas was immediately turned off, the holesaw was produced to cut a hole in the wall to survey the damage and sure enough, the stud finder had done an excellent job of not only finding the studs but also finding the gas pipes. My husband had done an equally excellent job of hammering two nails straight through the middle of the gas pipes. As it was a weekend and we had to get a repairman in to fix the damage the homemade cupboard job turned out to be more expensive than anticipated. From: Joy


Funny DIY StoriesHeavy blow

My wife decided she would like to shift the kitchen into the spare bedroom at the back of the house. She asked me what I thought as I was about to leave for work. I said we would look at it when I got home. When I arrived home there was this great big hole through the wall. She just wanted to see what it looked like looking out over her garden. Margaret had used my sledgehammer and knocked a hole through the stucco and plaster walls. It was now too late - we had to continue with the project. We now have this wonderful kitchen with French doors opening out onto a deck and looking over our beautiful back garden. It is great for entertaining and everyone comments on the improvement. From: David


The last straw

It was a cold spring day in the Wairarapa, when a small group of Gladstone farmers set about planning and building the world's biggest scarecrow. The face for the world's biggest scarecrow was made of wool bags and sewn together with twine at the pub on Friday night.

On the side of a cold hillside the scarecrow's head and face were assembled. His hat was made of bright yellow nova flow pipe. The framing was steel welded together by the local engineer. The group of swandri-clad farmers wrapped the nova flow pipe around the metal to form the hat.

The sun broke through the crowds and a group from the community assembled down at a large old barn. They laid out 15 metres of shade cloth 5 metres wide. This was the fabric for the clothes for the scarecrow. The Resene paints had been bought and the lid of the first pail was opened to reveal bright orange. Accompanied by a cheer the group set to, with paintbrushes and pottle filled with paint. Young and old painted the scarecrow's shirt that was laid out on the grass and held down with pitchforks at the four corners. Hours later white paint was used to paint white circles to be his three shirt buttons. Black paint outlined the bowtie that was filled in with bright pink with blue circular dots. A group stood watching and making suggestions as the team painted, a farm dog pitched in, walking the orange paint on his paws across the white of the middle button.

The nose for the face was a blue plastic barrel that was attached to the sacking and it was decided to paint his eyes with bold black paint one eye open and one shut, his one open eye iris was blue. Ruby red paint for his mouth. The torso and vest for the scarecrow was near completion when the rain started. At first it was only light then very heavy. Like ants carrying a piece of bread the community got underneath the sacking lifting it above their heads and hurried the canvas into the woolshed to lie the scarecrow's shirt outstretched.

Some of the paint had run and fused with other colours so when there was a break in the weather and the sun once more poked its head back through, the workers lifted the body above their heads once more and hurried it back out onto the grass to resume painting, and fixing his figure. While some painted, others were making the scarecrow's hair and arms. His arms were made of windsocks, his hair of binder twine. It was long hair with the intention of having it flowing in the breeze with the view of hills and valleys behind.

The following Sunday at 6.30am, a helicopter lifted the bright yellow hat onto the one hundred foot high water tower that was to be the body for the scarecrow.

A group of farmers hauled the body and face of the scarecrow up the one hundred feet high tower, using ropes and pulleys on four sides. The scarecrow creaked and moaned as the farmers hauled on ropes as a fierce northerly wind pinned his body to the tower. Yet the scarecrow remained smiling down on the men as they grimaced and strained to haul this majestic sight to the top of the tower. The scarecrow stood short of the top of the tower by a few metres but the exercise was deemed triumphant. The orange ochre vested thin giant stood towering over the sheep, the native bush and the legends of the valley, his one eye open taking in a view as far away as Carterton and Masterton.

The next night his gay colours had washed away. Winds of sixty miles per hour had raced through Gladstone ripping his arms off and laying bare his body to be pressed against the slimy old tower. The tower had stood there sixty odd years against the elements of the wind but the new fella wasn't brave enough to bear it. His blue nose (a 40 gallon plastic barrel) had been torn off and had completely disappeared, while his two arms flapped in the paddock below.

Somehow he just wasn't built to last. From: Jayne


Double trouble

Funny DIY StoriesMy husband and I were expecting our first baby, and had moved into our home. We were erecting a fence around our property, and Steven was using a double hole digger (petrol powered). Not being able to use it properly, I decided to give him a hand. I was eight months pregnant, and no matter what he said I was determined to have this fence up before my baby was born. For some reason, he let go of the digger, and I was left holding on to it, being swivelled through the air. He finally managed to stop the machine. Because I was dizzy, I fell into the ready-to-pour-cement, butt first. Amazingly neither our baby nor I were hurt.

On another DIY occasion, we were planting shrubs on our hillside and I told him to get his footing right before attempting to dig holes. But does he listen? No, so he is left scrambling, trying to get his footing. All the dirt is falling away, and he actually looks like a cartoon character trying to hang on for dear life. I, in the meantime, am laughing. He told me not to laugh, but does a wife ever listen to her husband? From: Makere


20:20 vision

While renovating our home my wife said that my painting left a lot to be desired, saying that I missed that bit and this bit, you get the story. I said to stop being picky, that I did a wonderful job, and it all looked great -that was until I got contact lenses. I was more shocked than my wife. Result = Apologised to wife, ate humble pie and repainted the lot. From: Todd


Bruise black

My husband and I had just moved into our first flat (just before we were married) and while he was at work one day I thought it would be good to put all the new things away. We had been given an electric knife as a present and I thought that I would put it up on the wall in its bracket. Not having many tools I decided to use the hammer instead of the screwdriver I was supposed to have used. First of all I got the screw in wrong. Then when I tried to take the screw out the hammer slipped, and I ended up with a black eye! From: Julie


Paper wars

Welcome to my DIY nightmare! My husband and I have just moved back here from the UK - the country where everything seems to get done when and more importantly - how you want it. We bought a house that was in desperate need of some TLC, having been in a rental for the previous four years. From day one, it proved to be a nightmare!! We started by ripping off wallpaper and tearing up carpets -easy enough jobs, however we decided to get the professionals in to do our wallpapering and painting. After mulling over colour schemes for ages, we finally settled on colours that we liked and it was all go. I came in one day and it was all going well - looking good. I came in the next and the paperhanger had decided to go with a totally different paper in one room - seemed he didn't agree with what we had planned. After shouting a bit, crying a bit and pulling my hair out a bit, I discovered the reason why - the shop had run out of the paper that the rest of the house was done with. Since then, well, where do I start? The wallpaper has shrunk and you can see all the joins, it's peeling and it's only been up two months, I have paint on every surface imaginable, and a prominent balding spot on my head!! From: Jeana


Not so mellow yellow

We had spent the previous Sunday selecting the appropriate shade of yellow from the paint chart with the intention of painting during the week. It looked a nice shade of sunshine for a dark hallway. "Hello honey" said my husband in a surprise phone call to me at work, "I just wanted to let you know I've done a little something to the hallway. Thought you might like the warning before you got home." This was a cause for serious concern. Much DIY had been done on our 30 year old house and it had always been left as a pleasant surprise for my return home.

When I opened the front door, the most amazing wall of yellow fluorescence hit my eyes. Friends (planted conveniently so I could not damage the husband in public) suggested unconvincingly that maybe we could get used to it or it would look better in the dark. A week's worth of the strongest willpower didn't work. Thank goodness for understanding paint store assistants who have seen it all before! We are now the grateful owners of a Tuscan gold hallway and addicted to testpots. From: Kim


Funny DIY StoriesRunaway trailer

Had taken on a 50 year old neglected bach and garden. There filled up the trailer with rubbish as you do when you have just taken on a 50 year old neglected bach and garden. There were three of us and one of the others (the only male one actually) suggested we take the trailer off the car to turn it around. I said I thought it might get away on us... "no, no it will be fine...". Needless to say it did get away on us, almost went through the side of the mansion next door (what a way to meet your neighbours) BUT I managed to wedge myself between it and a tree to stop it!!! I'm now sitting at home with broken ribs looking at all the things I could be painting!! From: Kim


Just starting?

My partner decided to do up his lounge and kitchen area at least 5 years ago. It all started when one day he became keen and stripped the lounge of all its paper. Rushing out to buy the paper required, he hung up 2 strips of the paper around the newly installed fire and decided to wait and see if he liked it. 5 years have gone by and the two strips remain. Naturally they have faded and now become a little less trendy. We are now left with 9 rolls of the unused paper. Then about 6 months ago he also decided that it would be great to knock out the old fire and put in French doors looking out onto an existing patio, extend a couple of walls and add downlights... the end result... I now have French doors but step out into the hole left by the old chimney, no cornices, still no paper, no stopping and to top it off, when the downlights were put in the ceiling roof has bowed from where he walked on it!!!

I have now decided that it is not really a good idea to let tradespeople loose on their own house unless you are prepared to wait at least 20 years to have anything actually finished. People wonder why I start laughing when they come and visit and ask if we have started renovations! From: Nicola


Funny DIY StoriesBehavioural modifier

Some years ago my father painted the kitchen. At the end of the day he began cleaning up. With a fairly full tin of paint in his hand he made his way to the washhouse, tripped on the groundsheet covering the floor and literally threw the tin of paint at the fly screen door!! What landed in the porchway could be cleaned up eventually, but it took weeks to pick all the paint out of the little holes in the fly screen! We had to use a needle and it would take nearly an hour to do a 15 cm square! Dad declared then and there that he was not cut out to be a painter, and we kids behaved perfectly for weeks as the punishment for misdemeanours was 2 or 3 hours on "the door"! From: Maryn


Phone home

After deciding to put our house on the market, we knew that there was a bit of builder's bog in the window sill and we decided we needed to fix it up. We had bought the house from a builder who we thought would have renovated the house properly. Little did we know that this builder wasn't so honest. My husband started chiselling away at the bog only to discover that the "hole" was also filled with a 1997 telephone book and some plastic shopping bags. 1997 was the year we bought the house so no doubt it was the builder who we bought the house from who had put it there. TIP: Be extra careful when looking a buying a house from developers/builders. Some builders are only in for a quick sale. From: Sharon


In disguise

My Mum and Dad had decided to give their house a much needed facelift. Mum had been watching all the DIY programmes and buying all the magazines to assist with this transformation. My parents also both have two large black and tan dogs, both of which are a little hyperactive at times. One is a Doberman cross and the other is just nuts. Mum decided that the colour scheme for the hallway was going to be yellow with purple/lilac trim. Dad was painting away rolling this bright yellow on the walls with the paint tray lying on the ground and, yes, the mad dog stepped in it. If that wasn't bad enough, the shock made her leap into the air putting yellow paint over the carpet, which they weren't planning to replace and herself. She now has yellow paint on every paw somewhat resembling nail polish and big yellow tiger-like stripes across her side. From: Emma


Pool party

My Dad began installing a spa pool around the time I was 6 and a half years old, which was supposed to be finished for my seventh (7th) birthday so I could have a pool party. My Dad finally got it going on my seventeenth (17!!) birthday, but for one night only. The pump and heater unit, from years of disuse, blew up. The spa is still not finished and I will be turning 25 this year. My Dad has now started on the bathroom... From: Natalie


Rest assignment

Funny DIY StoriesAlways let the male of the house think you are useless. My partner and I are finally doing up his house after owning it for 3 years and doing absolutely nothing on it - before I came along I think this even extended to cleaning!

Anyway, I was given the job of colour consultant and off we went to Resene to get some paint. I was quite excited about getting my hands amongst it all. Paint bought we went home to start room number one. Not trusted to do a good job of preparing the room (believe me woman's lib hackles were up), I was however allowed to paint one wall. Thinking I was doing a great job of it, I proudly finished and displayed it to my partner who promptly held his head on a weird angle hard up against the wall and began to critique the job. Now I ask you, how many people come into your house and press their heads hard up against your walls? Since then I have been allowed to do the middle of the walls (but not to go near any edges) and am hinted at madly about how I would be better off starting to cook dinner. Not such a bad thing as the extensive DIY project has now become ‘Vic, you-sit-in-the-sun-as-obnoxious-perfectionist-paints-away-madly’. I say leave him to it! From: Victoria


Dive bombers

My Dad decided to boldly go where many a man has gone before: up onto the roof to clean the top of the chimney. My Dad loves it on the roof - he can see for miles and nobody bothers him. In fact if you put the TV up there so he could watch the rugby league he would be in his element! It was a sunny Sunday morning and Dad decided to take advantage of the good weather and get up onto the roof and get the chimney cleaned. Mum stood in the kitchen and watched Dad carry the ladder around to the back of the house and lean it against the overhang. Mum came out and told him to be careful and that she would be back in a couple of hours from church. Dad mumbled an acknowledgement and Mum went to church.

Dad scaled the ladder and made his way onto the roof. But to his horror just as he lifted his foot off the top step of the ladder there was an almighty crash as the ladder tumbled to the ground. Dad had forgotten to put the safety clip on the ladder. Dad figured that he may as well start on the chimney and Mum would have to help him get down when she got home. Little did he know that the hot New Zealand sun wasn't the only hazard he would have to deal with up there on the roof.

Waiting in the branches of a nearby tree was a pair of myna birds who had chicks in a nest somewhere in the roof. They saw my Dad as a potential threat to the safety of their chicks and decided to dive bomb him to force him off the roof. The birds took turns plummeting down towards my Dad and swerving away at the very last minute. My Dad had to keep diving for cover behind the chimney so that the birds couldn't make contact with his now very sunburnt back. Two hours, a lot of sunburn, a newly developed fear of mynas and an incredibly clean chimney went by and Mum came home.

"Love?"called Dad from the roof. Mum didn't hear his calling and proceeded with tidying up and making lunch. Dad called and called and even banged on the roof wherever he figured Mum would be. Mum had been home 20 minutes before she finally heard him and came outside. She looked up to find a very sunburnt, very shaken husband and a VERY clean chimney. Once she had got over laughing she rescued him from the roof and made him a cup of tea. Note to all readers and to my Dad: Safety catches on ladders are there for a reason. This reason is so that (a) they do not collapse when you are on them, and (b) so that the ladder is still there when you want to get down!! From: Monique


Tipsy topsy

Funny DIY StoriesMy mother was redecorating her bedroom. She had been painting the ceiling in the morning and had left the job unfinished when her friends had arrived for a visit. It was a hot day and before long they had enjoyed a couple of drinks. After they left, Mum decided to continue with her painting. She had everything ready, climbed the first two rungs of the ladder and fell back into a pail of paint. She was fine, but laughing so hard that it was up to my brother and I to spray wash the paint from her backside. I've never painted with her since! From: Kara


The house that jack built

My Dad decided that it might be a good idea to put some downlights into his ceiling in his lounge, so he cut a hole in the plasterboard, only to find a beam going across the middle of the hole. So he cut another hole, and then another... the result - sure, he now has very nice downlights in that part of the room but they don't go that well with the areas where he's had to stick the plasterboard back in, plaster and then repaint (they're pretty obvious!) The irony - he built the house and he's an electrician! From: Rachael


Wife wins

We wanted to change the look of our son's room but my wife didn't like wallpaper and I didn't like paint, so I started wallpapering. The next day I found out that my wife had painted over the wallpaper with the same colour. From: Rick


Complete washout

Our neighbour used waterbased chalking compound to fill the cracks in his swimming pool. The moment he filled the pool the chalking compound just washed away! From: James


Funny DIY StoriesBird rescue

My kindhearted husband heard a bird tweeting and flapping inside the wall cavity. He went up into the loft and beneath the house and decided that it had fallen from its rooftop nest and was stuck. He couldn't find any other way to rescue the tiny sparrow so in the end he took to the wall with his Stanley knife, leaving a 4 inch square hole in the centre of the wall! The baby bird escaped and hubby felt like a thoroughly decent human being. He spent the rest of his rare day off doing a DIY repair job! From: Kathryn


Chicken feed

My father is a DIY nightmare. He is always building or trying to fix things and is just dreadful at it. He built a chicken house once and the chickens wouldn't live in it! Even they have taste. He has built a few gates around the section and they always end up falling down slightly so they drag on the ground. He is currently building a porch over our deck and my mother is cringing. From: Lianne


Mirror image

Here's a little girl DIY logic that would confuse any guy... it's a case of your eyes telling you one thing and your DIY sister-in-law telling you another. We visited our sister-in-law at her newly purchased home. As we entered she said "Don't take any notice of the walls in the lounge - I'm in the throes of considering a colour change and have just been testing colours." When we entered the lounge, one wall was painted navy blue except for a large rectangle in the middle that was cream. My husband said, "Oh, you're looking to go to a neutral cream colour?" She replied."No, actually I was thinking of painting the lounge navy but didn't bother to take the mirror down until after applying the paint!". From: Michelle


Always obstacles

Always check where you are going to need electrical sockets BEFORE you do your stopping and painting. My ex-husband (the DIYer to end all DIYers) forgot to check where the extractor fan socket went. I had to pay an electrician to come in and shift it one metre up the wall! Not to mention the fact that he glued the kitchen units to the wall BEFORE the kitchen had been stopped or painted! Talk about an obstacle course! From: Elizabeth


Clear as mud

My cousin was helping his Dad paint the house. Everything was fine up until his Dad asked him to sand the windows. Moments later, his Dad entered the room to find my cousin sanding the actual glass! From: Geoff


Scratch test

I had decided to take on renovating my Mum's house. Thinking I could do this all in 18 months or so while working full time, has proved a bigger task than expected. Deciding that I would sand back all the windowsills to their original rimu state seemed like a good idea. Anyone who has sanded windows will know what an awful job this is. While showing a friend one day the progress I had made, he kindly pointed out that I had scratched all the glass while sanding! I now know to keep the sandpaper well away from the glass. From: Emma


Black tie

Our family recently replaced a large amount of fencing on our farm. It was my job during the school holidays to paint it all black with a spray gun. We had been having quite a few problems with the spray gun over the previous week and my father had been getting increasingly impatient with it. One morning while I was trying to get the gun cleared of hardened paint that I hadn't cleaned away properly the night before, my father stormed over exclaiming that he was sick of paying me (minimum wage mind you) and not getting any results. He had decided that he could fix it much faster. The only thing is that I hadn't told him that it was spraying in all directions due to the blockage. Well, next thing I turn around to find his full business suit covered in black paint half an hour before he was meant to be at a meeting. Needless to say he was not impressed! From: Jacob


Funny DIY StoriesDad's little helper

My husband and I rent a house off his parent's family trust. My husband, full of energy one day, decided to strip all the mouldy wallpaper off our former bedroom. Keen to join in on the action was little Miss 18 month old Megan - our mischievous daughter. In next to no time the pair of them had removed an entire room of wallpaper. Megan was so pleased with herself that, while Mum and Dad were not watching, she got an urge to start stripping the hallway wallpaper off the walls, which is relatively new. But she didn't just strip one spot... Little Miss Megan stripped wallpaper at a height of below 2 feet all down the hallway - just over her height. Ever so pleased with herself Mum and Dad are now stuck with the task of repairing the bedroom and also the hallway, of which my husband's parents who own the house are currently unaware of the 'toddler alterations'. From: E Taylor


Cover up

My dear husband was finishing off the odd bits that were in need of repair before we were to sell our home. He saw marks on the door frames and decided to get his ever handy Resene white paint out for a few touch up jobs. After completing those touch ups, he stood back and admired his work, then called the family in to admire it too. The potential owner popped around later that afternoon. After some small talk, she told how her partner had the gall to paint over some dirty marks on the doors, instead of finding a cloth to wipe up the mess. My dear husband looked sheepish and stood in front of his once admired paintwork and hoped she wouldn't notice. From: David and Sharyn


Freckle car

Funny DIY StoriesWhen the old man gets the paint and brush out I get that sick feeling of knowing what's about to happen. I cover up what I can and get told "Don't panic, you don't have any confidence in me"- yes, he's so right - I don't trust him. I still have the remains of paint on my lovely car when he was cleaning a paintbrush in turps and shook it all over the side of my car. He gave me one of those looks that he is so good at and told me that being waterbased paint it will wash off. Sure it would have, but not after it's been there a week or so! From: Anne


"The project"

Buying our first home - a do-up 1913 double bay villa - for the princely sum of $80,000 we thought we'd scored a bargain. The inspections and valuations were all great, the area was nice and it had a lovely section with sea views. Prior to moving in, we looked at all the right books, planned renovations, budgets and colour schemes, determined to do it the right way from the start - not ending up with a large unfinished mess like everybody else did. Now four months into "The Project" we have (with the help of professionals) successfully done the following:

Had a wall and coal range removed to make a bigger kitchen/dining area resulting in 2 uneven ceiling heights with mismatched batons and a large hole in between. This now means an entire new false ceiling must be made.

Taken out the old bath, only to find there was no floor underneath it and the waste drainage pipe went straight onto the dirt floor.

Fitted two new sets of French doors according to the instructions accompanying them, only for them to warp and now not shut properly.

Bought a new toilet to replace the old cracked one. The plumber had fitted the bowl and then got the cistern out of its box to find it was cracked through the middle and unusable.

We had to use a bucket for one week while they got a new one from Italy (because there were none left in stock).

Taken down the scrim in the lounge and exposed a large hole in the wall, which now constitutes free air conditioning (except we're in Dunedin and don't need it).

Started ripping up the lino in the kitchen to expose the floorboards, finding out after doing about a third of it that it is asbestos based and needs to be removed professionally (costing a fortune).

Started heat gun stripping the hallway skirting and architraves, resulting in a small fire on the carpet.

So to summarise, we have started four different rooms, none anywhere near completion and have just had to tell the builder to stop due to us running out of money. We now understand the complexities and frustrations of DIY, and have joined everybody else in the everything started, nothing finished department. Time to call in good old Dad to lend a hand I think! From: Charlotte


Bed rest

About 1 year ago I went into hospital for a check up and found out I had to stay. I was told I was going to stay for about a fortnight. On my last day, my Mum came to pick me up and take me home. When I got home my room was BRIGHT lime GREEN!! It was this time last year I was in hospital and I've just been back in there with a broken arm! I'm now wondering what colour my room will be when I get home tomorrow! From: James


Blind putty

Funny DIY StoriesA few years ago my husband was working on a fishing boat and was away at sea. In those days we had an old fashioned flush toilet. It was one of those metal cisterns with a ball and chain and was high on the wall. It had started to rust and would drip on you as you sat on the toilet. It had become so bad that you had to put a bucket on your head as you sat there! My husband wasn't due back for several weeks, so I decided to fix it myself. I got some underwater putty, shut the water off and drained the cistern. The gap between the top of the cistern and the ceiling was only about a foot, so I couldn't look inside. I just had to feel my way around. I found the hole and filled it with putty. I refilled the cistern and the leak was gone. A triumph or so I thought. Later when I went to flush the toilet, the chain wouldn't yank. It was totally immobile. I now couldn't empty the cistern at all! So I had to put my arm in under the water and grope around. It was then that the workings of the toilet became clear and I realised that I had puttied the base plate to the bottom of the cistern. I then spent a day trying to gently chisel off the putty, while underwater and rammed against the ceiling. I did eventually manage it and went on to do the repair properly. We have since got a new toilet but the old one was quite a talking point. Children could never work out how to flush it. From: Beverley


Aim to catch redhanded

Moral of this story: DON'T LEAVE YOUR PAINT IN THE CAR!! I did - all 20 litres of it, and at 1.30am I got a knock on my door. I opened it to find two large policemen asking me if I owned a black Subaru station wagon? Yep, someone had nabbed my car and used it to rob the bakery down the road. My boyfriend and I jumped into his car and spent all night driving around town looking for my car but to no avail. The next morning I went up to the bakery to find out what had been stolen from them. "Just $20 in coins from the till" they said. I said "great" and bought a doughnut to distract me from my sorrow - "but they found the car that did it two blocks over". The doughnut and I flew out the door. Sure enough they had found my car... minus the 20 litres of paint, which was worth far more than the slim pickings that the bakery had provided. Somewhere out there is a thief's wife with a nice freshly painted lounge - on me. It was Resene paint too. From: Lee


Bedecked

While painting the back portion of the house this summer, the wife having just finished one side of the sunroom, decided she had better move onto the other side. Instead of putting the lid on the paint to move the still reasonably full pail of paint while trying to avoid the very large plank of wood in her way, she carefully moved over the deck so as not to spill the paint. Unfortunately she caught her foot on the side of the plank, and before she knew it her foot had received a rather impromptu coat of paint as had the unsealed deck. After a few profanities and a very red face, she flicked the paint loaded shoe off the deck and stumbled to settle the paint pail onto the deck where it continued to drip happily.

The kids came running to see what all the noise was about and upon seeing the mess quickly ran the hose and gathered up scrubbing brushes as the paint rapidly soaked into the deck. There the little gems stayed busily scrubbing away at the paint and getting rather wet in the process... a great way for them to spend a hot afternoon.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for me), while all this was happening I was stuck up on the carport painting the eaves... a pretty safe place to be in respect to the steam that was rising from the deck area. From: S Elliott


In the dogbox

About a month ago my partner and I brought a new house in Wellington. We spent about 3 months searching looking for the dream home and somewhere safe for our 3 pets - 1 dog and 2 cats. We found and promptly brought our house. The only thing was, there was no sheltered area outside to put the dog kennel. So I set about building one. The posts went in and the frame went up, and all that was left to do was the Laserlite roofing.

After waiting for a fine day I finally got out to put the roof on. The first 2 sheets went on with no problems at all. The last 2 however, required me getting up onto the roof to secure them down. After swinging off the support beams to make sure they would take my weight I hoisted myself up and got to work. With one sheet left, my partner came out with afternoon tea (good girl she is!) so I stood up to stretch. One of the support beams under me promptly gave way and sent me straight down onto one of the main beams... right between the legs!!! All the missus could do was laugh as I straddled this beam groaning in agony. I'm pleased to say that the beam held firm and after a week's R & R, the roof is now finished. From: Bruce


Pain reliever

Funny DIY StoriesMy 3 year old son saw that the paint and wallpaper was peeling off the wall and so he got some sticking plasters and stuck them to the wall. When I asked him why, he said "house hurts mummy". From: Karen


Spitting image

Three years ago I painted my bedroom a dusky blue colour (even the ceiling). Well, my painting isn't really that hot, but I swear there is a picture of a man on my ceiling. Last year my current fiancé walked into my life - and he is the spitting image of my DIY blunder on my ceiling. I think it's fate. From: Kirsty


A shattering experience

Philip was 18 years old and two years into his Carpentry/Joinery apprenticeship. Like today's modern youth he thought he knew everything. One day while he was alone at the Joinery shop, the local farmer Sid came in and asked for old Bill. He wanted Bill to cut him some glass, a task Bill had often done before. Philip had never cut glass before in his life but he did know Sid gave old Bill $10 for cutting it for him. "It's no problem, Bill's not here but I can cut glass, no trouble at all," Philip said.

Sid had about 20 pieces of glass on the back of his truck and Philip was armed with a glasscutter he had been given, but never used. Sid gave Philip a number of sizes he needed the glass to be cut to then Philip started to work. Philip had no idea how the glasscutter worked. It did work over time, forward and backward, backward and forward but it didn't cut. Sid began to look worried and asked him if he knew what he was doing. Philip answered "don't worry it's all under control"... then the first piece broke, the second piece broke, the third and eventually they all had broken. Sid just looked at all the broken pieces with amazement and disbelief and so did I, because I had been looking on from a short distance away laughing so hard that I had started to cry.

The best laugh came last when Philip said to Sid. "Sorry they are all broken but I did try, so do I still get the $10?" To this day Sid has never answered Philip's question! From: Mike


Cracking up

Funny DIY Stories Our 6 year old townhouse, which we were so proud of, is fast becoming a mess. The trouble is, when we had it built we ran out of money and had to seal, plaster and paint the exterior ourselves. We don't know what we did wrong, but with all the heavy rain this spring/summer, our home has sprung leaks all over and the edges of paintwork and carpet corners are becoming quite water damaged. Yes, we've tried to rectify the situation. We've had another job done to fix up the exterior, but we still have problems. Halfway down the two storeyed house there is a crack developing, just like a badly iced cake. Now we know we are going to have to re-do the job... or, taking our DIY work history into account, have the job re-done. We need all the help we can get! From: Jim and Diane


In the dark

Birds eating tomatoes from garden. Went shopping, came home, hubby solving problem. Shade house erected approximately 3m x 3m, totally covering garden. Result: No ripe tomatoes all season! From: Jan


Speechless

My husband and I have been renovating our house since we moved in. When we had completed the wash house and toilet area, John thought that it would look good if he put three screws and little plugs in them just along the tub in the wash house. He was using his drill and drilling them in when he heard some water dripping. He had finished the first then went on to the second one and the water dripping got worse. He then decided he had better take out the screw he just put in. Little Luke was watching Dad. The water came out the screw hole and hit the toilet wall that had just been papered.

John yelled for help but I was at the clothesline and didn't hear him so he sent Luke out to get me. Poor Luke just couldn't get the words out! I managed to say "Does Dad need me?" All Luke could do was nod. I went inside to a flood. I got some towels while John ran and turned the water off. Needless to say it was then a quick trip to the plumbing shop for some pipe, connectors and glue. Luke had great news for Kindy the next day. From: Meriani


Volume control

Funny DIY StoriesBack in my varsity days, our landlord decided to do a bit of DIY around our flat. It was around exam time and we were all beavering away in our rooms studying. The landlord came and went and we pretty much had nothing to do with him. One particular day however, when he was beginning to paint the eaves of the roof, he bought his transistor radio with him, much to our disgust as we were all trying to cram knowledge into our beer soaked brains.

My flatmate needed a break and unbeknown to the rest of us decided to pop out and get some refreshments with the intent of annoying the landlord. She crept up below his ladder while he wasn't looking and turned his radio up to full volume, then ran away without him seeing. Instead of it having the desired effect of causing the landlord to descend muttering and cursing to turn the radio down, he just carried on seemingly unbothered. After about 5 minutes, my other flatmate, unaware of the events leading to the blaring radio, became highly frustrated and stormed out of the flat to give the painter a piece of her mind. How dare he be so loud, and inconsiderate, especially over exam time etc etc!!!! The poor landlord copped it well and truly, and the flatmate who had played the initial trick returned from the dairy to find a full on argument in progress! From: Anna


Whole hog

My husband and I bought an 80 year old villa with a wood panelled bathroom. As a first time DIYer and a perfectionist, I applied a small amount of paint stripper behind the bathroom door intending to 'test patch' an area before tackling what seemed like an enormous job. While doing this, the telephone rang. After a lengthy phone call with a good friend I returned to the bathroom to find that my 'helpful husband' had applied paint stripper to the entire bathroom. We soon discovered that there were approximately eight coats of paint that were literally impossible to remove - what a mess!! It took a lot of hard work to rectify his helping hand. From: Sarah


Getting a handle on the situation

We were staying at the bach and needed to get into the second garage. Pop had changed things around, but he's not the best DIY man there is. There was no place for a key and no handle. After two days of not being able to get in, the kids came up from the beach to wash their wetsuits around the side. At the front of the shed they found tape but no water. After some time we figured out that if you pulled the tape from the wall, a rod came out and this raised the door to the shed. Who would have known the tape was the handle to the door? From: Lisa and Gavin


Funny DIY StoriesWet wet wet

I was painting up our chest of drawers during winter for my 2 year old son in Thomas colours using Resene testpots. I had finished the job after sanding and masking to get all the colours right. As the weather was getting bad, I shifted the chest and drawers inside the garage from under the carport so they wouldn't get wet. Two days later I went to get it to put inside when I noticed the garage had flooded and all the chest and drawers had warped out of shape and wouldn't fit - it would have been safer outside. What a waste of a lot of hard work! From: Mark


Open home

Seven years of renovating had nearly come to an end. Just the finishing touches were needed like painting doorways, skirting boards etc. The decision had been made to sell our home in Melbourne as we had decided to move back home to good old Wellington to be with family. We had decided to sell at auction which meant open homes every Saturday and Sunday for a month leading up to the auction.

The first open home was being held on a Saturday afternoon at 1pm and I only had the laundry door to paint. At 12.35 the last lick of paint was applied to the door and we were ready for the open home.

As I lifted the tin of near white paint from the jet black slate floor the edge of the lid caught the handle and the tin flipped. The remaining half litre of paint then proceeded to flow evenly down the slate hallway, filling up all the rows of grout along the way!!

Grabbing about 10 towels, 3 newspapers and 2 daughters, we started the clean up. One large plastic bag was needed to hold the towels and paper and the 2 daughters were on bended knees with boiling hot water and sponges trying to mop up.

At 12.58 when the last drop of paint was removed one very paint covered mother and two daughters vacated the premises for the open home with the prospective buyers having no idea of what had just taken place. From: Jackie


Paint trail

Funny DIY StoriesWe had finished painting the interior of our bach and had quite a bit of paint left over. Our daughter decided it was just what she needed for her place, so my husband put two large plastic buckets of paint in the boot of her car. When she got home and went to get the paint out, it was to find that both cans had tipped over, and there was paint everywhere. The next day when we drove over to visit, we were puzzled to spot two lines of paint lasting all the way from our house to hers. Yes, it had dripped out onto the road and left a trail that lasted for absolutely ages. This caused great mirth to our family but great puzzlement to everyone else! From: Barbara


Decorative effect

I had stripped the yucky old vinyl wallpaper off the walls in our laundry of the house we had just bought. I was getting the painting done as a surprise for my partner who was away for the night. Since the temperature and humidity were fine I figured it was ok to paint late that night so I opened the window and got the painting done. When my partner got home the next morning I took him into the laundry to show him my proud handwork – we stared in amazement at the pristine white walls decorated with moths and all sorts of light attracted insects attached to the walls. From: Melinda


Colour picker

Funny DIY Stories My brother had told me again and again that, although desperately wanting to get his deteriorating corrugated iron house roof painted, he was awaiting his wife’s approval of a suitable colour.

Just a month or two ago, after FOUR YEARS of deliberation she had finally made a colour selection. The next day he (foolishly) announced "Right now that we have the colour sorted I’m off to buy the paint." She replied "Oh don’t be too hasty – I have been thinking overnight, that colour might not be right." He dropped the car keys on the table and dropped himself into the couch in despair.

You can imagine how delighted I was when my wife and I bought a house recently – with a corrugated iron roof in COLORSTEEL® – no roof to paint! A few days ago however fear struck my heart. My wife asked if I could paint our corrugated iron fence. Colour decisions!

I visited my local Resene ColorShop, selected ONE colour chart, went home, placed it against the fence and selected the colour swatch I liked best. Then I (tentatively) walked inside and braced myself for the ‘wife colour selection process’. With knees almost knocking I pointed to the colour I preferred. She looked up from the book she was reading, stared at the colour for no more than 3 seconds and said "Yes I think that will be fine." I am sure the relief I felt was written across my entire face.

One day later and the fence is already half painted.

The moral of the story is – avoid any stress over the selection of the colour for your corrugated iron paint job. Start years before, if you intend painting, select your wife carefully. From: Lloyd


Call in the professionals

The following story is one of those that if not seen it would not be believed. However it is true and without exaggeration!

I was living in Bangor Terrace, Dunedin. It was a warm day and late afternoon. My son and I were watching Sport on Sky while the owner was painting the roof. The house was brick with an iron roof. There is a pathway to front and back doors after coming up a long drive. The house was set back on the section surrounded by bush and not easily seen.

My son asked if I had heard a noise outside and my reply was no – a few minutes later he asked again and again my reply was no. A few minutes past and he said "Dad it sounds like a knock on the door." I did not hear it at first and then after turning down the TV I heard it.

It was a tapping sound and I assumed it was the painter so ignored it. It did not go away but got louder so I went to investigate. It was coming from the front door.

The front door was set in a wide porch and access was gained by climbing 7 steps 1.5 metres wide.

I opened the door and there it was. I burst into laughter and called my son to come and see what I was looking and laughing at. It was the owner, he was on his knees with a 10L paint bucket over his head.

In a very low voice which was just audible he was saying help, help, help me. Paint was running out of the bucket and he was covered. I, while laughing, pulled the bucket off him and the sight was one of disbelief. All I could do was get the garden hose and hose him down to get the paint out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

That was just the beginning. When I looked around I saw paint everywhere – over the path, the walls, the fences etc.

He and the 10L bucket had fallen from the roof while he was painting from the top to the bottom going backwards and did not realise how close he was to the edge. He landed on the garden at the entrance to the front door.

The bucket hit the concrete path on its base and the impact forced the paint up out of the bucket over a large area while the bucket landed on his head.

In that state he crawled up the steps to get my help. It was scary hosing him down as he complained about me trying to drown him. He would not let me get an ambulance for him – he wanted his wife to come and get him, which she did. She, while ripping into him about being so stupid, could not hold back her laughter which in turn made him angry.

The man was off work for 4 months with a back injury and I guess the motto of the story is, use a professional painter. From: Philip.


Safekeeping

Funny DIY StoriesYears ago while painting a bedroom ceiling, I found my ring had disappeared. I searched the room, carefully shaking out the plastic sheets that lay on the floor, but with no luck. I spent ages crawling on my hands and knees between the room and the laundry where we were cleaning out the brushes, but sadly still no luck, my lovely ring had just vanished into thin air. About a year later we were painting another ceiling in the house. The paint level was getting near the bottom of the tin when I noticed a lump sitting there. Pulling out what I thought was a lump of paint, I couldn't believe it when I saw it was my ring. After all those months there it was. I now make sure I don't wear any rings while painting, except the one that won't come off my finger! From: Jackie


My Dad is a DIY disaster

Don't get him to pick paint for you as he is colourblind. Don't let him paint it for you as he misses out patches that need paint and paints bits that didn't need paint. He can use his tools but you are lucky if he can find them in his messy garage which is probably a good thing as we are not sure what the results would be. From: Oliver


My Dad needs a "Round Tuit"

My Dad has great ideas about DIY, but I think he needs something called a "Round Tuit" to make them happen. Mum writes him lists, and he makes plans, but he's always saying he'll do them when he gets a "round tuit". From: Bryn


Only the wallpaper needs replacing...

My partner recently purchased a rental property in Timaru and assured me that the only work required was replacing the wallpaper in the hallway!!!! Yeah right! Three months later and we still have a builder working on kitchen, bathroom and the whole interior needs painting and decorating (previous tenants left their dogs inside and moved out - man it smelt!). From: Craig


My Dad's DIY disasters

My Dad is a great DIY person as he gives anything a go but unfortunately he has had quite a few DIY disasters. The worst one was when he was using a skill saw he cut his left thumb off while working on our house. He also had finished painting the top storey of our house; as he was getting down he knocked the paint container off the ladder and the paint landed all over our deck which was ruined. My mum was not impressed. From: Ricky


Painted patchwork quilts

Our Dad likes to gives everything a go and is of a generation who likes to save where he can. To avoid using too much paint he touched up just the defects on our old painted walls. The end result, a patchwork quilt on all painted walls. From: Gaynor


Unfinished

Before I was born my Daddy took a week off work to replace our bathroom for my Mummy's birthday. I am nearly 5 now and my Daddy still hasn't finished it! From: Harry


Almost DIY Dad

My Dad is almost DIY Dad. He is able but just doesn't quite get there. For instance my Mum wanted a desk. He didn't want to pay for one so got an old door and fashioned a desk. Sounds great but it was nailed to the wall with a two by four under it and still had the hole for the door knob. From: Louise


Sideways cats

My Dad fitted the cat door on its side. My cat is smart but not that smart. From: Michelle

Simonne’s cat had the same experience… My Dad put our cat door in sideways and the cat got very confused. From: Simmone


Cool Dad

I am 9 years old and my Dad lets me help with everything! When he is painting the house he lets me help - I was even good and painted the car at the same time but Dad didn't mind. He just said "cool, we should have gotten the car painted that colour ages ago". When he did up the bathroom he didn't care when I picked up the drill and drilled a hole in the pipe. He just said "I needed a shower anyway". From: James.


Not the way to thin

Dad bought some paint. It needed thinning down so I was sent to Resene to purchase a litre of turps and brought it home. He put it in the paint can but it didn't do the job so I was sent back, in fact three times, it still didn't work - so I read the instructions. Turns out it was waterbased paint! From: Maria


Ladder Dad

My Dad put the ladder up against the side of the house and started climbing up onto the roof. It slipped and went crashing through the window. From: Michele


Para cord and duct-tape fixit

My hubby spent many years in the army so everything can be fixed with para cord and duct-tape. So we have bits of the stuff everywhere. Drives me insane - for example... When our window was shattered in the night he was out there with a hoochie tent, duct tape and para cord and covered the window until morning, when we could call a glazier... (there is still duct tape around the window)... From: Rebekah


Pirate patches

My Dad is great at drilling holes. Especially in walls. My room has lots of holes thanks to Dad. He put a heater on my wall. But he didn't read the rules first. Mum did though. She's good at reading rules. Mum made him take it down and move it somewhere safe. Dad tried to hide the big holes with extra wallpaper. Now my wall looks like it's got patches - just like my favourite pirate! From: William


Bush silhouettes

Painting the outside of the house last summer, Dad decides to save time by painting round the lemon scented bushes planted at the front of the house... the bushes die and he pulls them out leaving lemon scented bush silhouettes on the front of house. From: Tracey


Follow those footprints

Mum was going to be away for a few days so Dad thought he would do a surprise. Dad got out the paint and went forth to paint the front and side doors. White paint. Mum returns to find white doors adorned with little streams of white paint plus little white shoeprints on the carpet leading into the house. Surprise!! From: Rosalind


An extra coat will fix it

The other day my husband set the kids up with their own paint and wooden objects right beside his work area where he was sanding and painting an old pelmet for the lounge. Unfortunately, this close fatherly love resulted in my son's black paint being flicked all over the white pelmet my husband was busy painting, but he didn't complain. He just carried on and painted an extra coat! From: Josh


Carpet cutter

There was the day I used the circular saw to cut framing timber in the lounge and cut through the carpet! Lucky it was listed for replacement - but had to be done sooner than expected. From: James


New paint is best

Dad, a notorious ‘recycler’ of anything that looks even slightly useful, had many cans of half-used paint in his storage container. We wanted to paint a hut and asked if we could buy some paint from the Resene shop. Needless to say, the cans of paint came out. One, he insisted, was a left over from painting the last house we had and we had to use that before buying any new paint. Obediently we applied the paint to the hut. It was a colour we really did not want to use, but Dad had spoken, so on we went, hoping it might look better when it dried. Later that afternoon, Dad came to inspect. "Who decided on THAT paint?" he exclaimed, "You have to paint over it, it is hideous and looks terrible. Why didn't you use the one I gave you?" "We did, Dad." Dad put on his glasses (always a last resort) and peered long and thoughtfully at the can. Unable to think of anything to say to lessen his embarrassment, he eventually admitted defeat and allowed us to go and buy some decent paint! From: Mike


Not the speed painting winner

My DIY disaster Dad loves doing all of the painting himself but takes about one month to paint each window frame! He does a great job but might not win a gold medal at the speed-painting Olympics! From: Joanne


Skillsaw after effects

My Dad likes to think he can do anything DIY and he usually can. But when he made some changes in our lounge he was cutting some wide bits of wood which were really thin and the skillsaw cut his thumb. He had to have two nights in hospital, a cast on his arm and nearly three months off work. Even with the cast on though, he was still doing DIY trying to finish the lounge! From: Jenna


Cats in the ceiling

My disaster Dad was doing up an old house and started with the kitchen. All was going good until he got up in the ceiling space and instead of standing on the joists he put his foot right through the ceiling!! Oh dear! well we had to put up with that hole for the next 2 years! while he carried on with the lounge and dining area (all in one) until it was all finally finished and painted! (it made a great place for our cats to appear from as they could get through the roof space from cupboards upstairs). From: Karen


Tool shed menace

Dad has always been a DIY and able to build and fix anything. He had the biggest tool shed when I was growing up and I spent many many hours, even as a tike, playing with bits and bobs. It was only recently (some 25 years later) while doing my first spot of DIY in the bathroom that I found out that 'olives' weren't wedding rings to put on my fingers, and PTFE tape wasn't for bandaging my doll's legs with. I rang Dad to tell him my discovery and he just laughed saying that I use to be such a menace in his tool shed. From: Louise


Shelves that (don't) last

I asked Dad to put a shelving unit up in the laundry for me. He rang me to tell me it was all done but when I got home it had crashed to the floor and was in bits!! From: Simonne


Much measuring

My Dad measures 5 times and cuts once and still manages to get it wrong. His motto when fixing things is ‘Bog it’. From: Dan


Happy DIYer

My Dad is extremely handy and will give anything a go - a real NZ DIY Dad. However his attempts often come with hilarious consequences, for example cutting a hole in the ceiling for a light where he ended up cutting a pipe and flooding the house, or helping paint - without his glasses - meant that his attempt at cutting in was like a two year old’s drawing - not one to read the instructions, not one for convention, but always one for a laugh. From: Sharee


A good starter

My Dad is a starter. He started painting the house summer 2 years ago, and has only got the outside doors to finish. He keeps saying he will start soon, but he has said that for nearly 2 years. He started to paint the fence 4 years ago, and only did one small section. He started to dig out a bank, last year, but only did about 10 barrow loads. He says he will redo the deck next summer, but I think he will just start it. From: Richard


No hurry

20 years ago, Dad removed the wallpaper from the corridor walls to paint. 2 years later with lots and lots of words from Mum, he hired a retired plasterer to put a skim coat of plaster over all the walls ready to paint. No paint yet because he says he still likes the smooth white plaster finish!

Then there was that hole in the wall behind the door knob. Dad said he'd fill in up and make it look good. Popped into a Resene shop, came back with a free kiddy Resene sticker (and a couple of free lollipops). No hole now, just a nice cartoon sticker and on the verge of diabetes! (lots more lollipops followed)

Built a new garage with textured plaster finish about 15 years ago. Rain stains and mould have been slowly covering more and more of the walls. He bought a waterblaster a few years ago and loaned it to various others but has not used it at home as yet! Bought 5L of moss and mould spray 2 years ago. Still on display in garage. Matched the paint colour two years ago but not bought paint yet. Now he stands out there, looks at the stains and mould, rubs his chin and says it has character!! From: Ashleigh


How not to paint a roof...

This is about my husband. We have been renovating our house entailing a full exterior reclad, extensions and interior renovation. We have a 2 storey house that was covered in scaffold and shrink wrap for the reclad. He wanted to paint the roof while the wrap was still on and he was trying to do this in the middle of winter - not really thinking how long the paint would take to dry. He first waterblasted the roof getting absolutely drenched as the spray just circulated around the wrap which had about 40-50 cm of clearance between the roof and wrap. He then had to shake off all the excess water off the wrap so there wouldn't be any drips. This all took about 4 hours and so far so good. Then came the paint. The roof is curved iron and slippery. He tried to use a roller but that was too hard as with only 50cm of clearance he couldn't use the extension pole. He then tried a brush but kept slipping down the roof as there was no room to stand to get traction (there was a scaffolding rail at the bottom) so he had to slide down the roof and use the rail to stop falling off. The rail was low enough so there was no chance of falling off. Each time he slid down he had to clamber back up - grunting and cursing. He finished the first coat at about 4pm and was rather satisfied that half the job was done. The next morning we went to the house (did I mention all 4 of us were sleeping in the detached garage just to make it extra fun!) and discovered that condensation gathered on the wrap overnight, dripped down onto the wet paint then wet paint dripped onto the newly painted house walls, deck, new joinery and skylight. A complete nightmare! It took us a few weeks to clean up and repaint the damaged walls. He will wait for some warmer weather to do the second coat. He is determined to finish the job himself! From: Roni


'Simple...'

Simple - I remember my Dad telling mum how simple it would be to remove the kitchen cupboards. He finally convinced her that he could do the job. As he removed the last upright there was a huge groan and it wasn't mum or Dad, it was the rafters coming down. What a mess! One builder later and all was fixed. Hours later and Dad was still cleaning up. The next day mum was going shopping and told Dad that no way was he to do any DIY. When we got home there was a big sheet covering the lounge/dining room/kitchen walk through. Mum and I pulled back the sheet and WHAT A MESS. Dad had pulled the edge of the old hardwood and baton ceiling to have a look and the entire kitchen and dining room ceiling had come down in one big wave. Dad was looking really sheepish, really embarrassed and the mess was MASSIVE. As the dust was still settling over everything poor mum was just standing there gob-smacked. There was even several bird’s nests. The place stunk of old dust and was gagging.

I am so pleased to say that my Dad has learnt heaps and has done so well. He and mum make a great team now at DIYing our house but what a disastrous start. Who'd have ever thought he'd carry on with it? Who'd have ever thought mum would let him? From: Joshua


Mobile Lusta-Glo

As many of us 'Professional Painters' know, Resene has a robust range of automotive and light industrial coatings – in fact, they even recently supplied the paint for a Virgin Australia Boeing 737-400. This is a fact which my much loved Dad is apparently unaware of...

This story is a current tale, although has a 30 year heritage. Stan, or 'Stan the Man' as he's known, recently purchased a second hand, run down caravan. As he did with the family bus, 30 years ago, it was internally converted/restored into a comfortable new living space. I believe the only thing Stan (Dad) didn't do was to sew the covers for the new cushions.

As you would expect, once the interior was all 'lushed out', the next project was the exterior. Well..., the 'Old Man' may not be aware of any bright red planes flying around with Resene paints holding on for dear life, but he sure knows ALL about some etching primer and Resene Lusta-Glo!

This was no lazy application, patience and timing were the key. While keeping an eye out for the perfect overcast still day, Stan the Man expertly masked up the areas not to receive a coating, with good old newspaper filling the spaces (no need for plastic dropcloth here!) and applied the primer. Then, on that perfect day, pop went the lid on the all familiar Lusta-Glo. And well, the rest is history as they say.

So next time you see a nicely painted, old caravan, lagging behind a Jeep Cherokee that is passing you, just remember, you may have just been passed the most mobile Lusta-Glo paint job in NZ.

Oh, and the Bus I mentioned... well that great old Yellow Banana was brushed out with 4" brushes, the new technique is now a mini-roller with skilled laying off. From: Tony


Scaffolding fall

My Dad used to work as a painter to make extra cash when they were trying to save for a house deposit. One day he fell off double height scaffolding. He landed on his feet first then crumpled into a heap. He couldn't walk so they took him to hospital for x-rays. They decided his heels were just badly bruised so took him home in an ambulance. But my mum was 8 1/2 months pregnant and he didn't want to scare her so made the ambulance drop him at the end of the street and he crawled home! From: Dianne


Our house has acne

Our house has acne thanks to our latest DIY Dad disaster. He is normally really handy about the house but this Sunday he was stressed out trying to get the house finished for photographing by the real estate agent on the Monday. Tragically he went down to a store and grabbed some paint he thought would match. Even though I tactfully suggested the paint was a different colour he hadn't been able to find a paintbrush so he used a roller all over the house in the areas he had earlier filled with GIB® Stop due to damage done by the grandchild. He assured me it would dry the right colour. But Monday morning the house was a spotty Pavlova on Quarter Pavlova mess. It had dried but not the right colour. We cancelled the photographer, he went to work and I went down to our friendly Taradale Road Resene Shop. The friendly saleslady suggested a testpot of Resene Quarter Pavlova and a brush. Sure enough it was the right colour. Back I went and got 4 litres which hubby then painted over all the dark spots. The photographer came and made the house look awesome. It is now on the net, we have had two buyers through and one is coming back again at the weekend. Thanks Resene. The house looks great! I have hidden the roller. From: Jan


Some funny accidents

Along the way my Dad has had some funny accidents. He once cut the Telecom cable, after he thought the strange box in the hallway was no longer in use, we had to go a week without a landline telephone. Another time, after renovating the dining room, he was bringing the dining room table back to the house on a trailer from the shed and didn't tie it down, he hit a bump and the table bounced off and broke so we had to get a new dining room table. From: Will


An inside tree

My husband has attempted many projects over the years, mostly unfinished I might add. The funniest one, but not at the time, was when he was trimming trees from a cherry picker, and cut through the rope holding the branch to be cut which then fell straight through the ceiling into the lounge. Not quite the feature he was looking for. Another time a toy was thrown from behind a gate keeping kids at bay which landed directly into the pot of paint, splattering the finished wall. From: Liz


Superglue Dad

My Dad superglues everything. If it wobbles, leans, shakes or squeaks he glues it. There are cupboard doors we still cannot open.
From: Melissa


Footpath footprints

My Dad built a footpath along our house to the front door with concrete. The only problem is that he didn't let us know he'd done it... So when we got home at night and he found footprints the next day it was hilarious!! From: Nasrin


Swiss cheese ceiling

He's a DIY Disaster! He tried to install a skylight in the bathroom, now the ceiling looks like Swiss cheese! Our living room feature wall is a feature for all the wrong reasons! From: Pauline


Dad's disaster

Letting the toddler outside with doors drying in the sun. Climbed on, scratched and streaked. A thorough job... didn't miss one!! From: Lauren


Never finished Dad

We love our DIY Dad for perhaps the fact that he is eager to make a start at every project himself but we think that is because he cringes at paying someone else to do it. Now we have an incomplete indoor window between the kitchen and lounge, a hole in the shower where he fixed a leak and couldn't get under the house and so had to cut the wall to get to the pipe and we are nearing the fourth year in waiting for our deck to be completed. Mum threatened that she wasn't going to come home from the hospital after she had the youngest child until the deck was finished and safe for the little kids. Dad improvised and put up sheep netting! From: Nic


Paint trail

My Dad is the ultimate DIYer! He has been working so hard on my house for the past year and a half, completely painted the interior and even done a spot of building and plumbing. He's just started prepping the exterior for painting. His disaster was when he was painting in my living room, he thought he could paint and chat on the phone at the same time until he dropped his phone in the bucket! Thinking only about his phone he pulled it out and ran outside with it... leaving a trail of paint on living room carpet and in the kitchen! Luckily he managed to get it out in time. From: Rochelle


Carpet cutter

Dear DIY husband (and Dad) decided to cut some MDF in our lounge. He put the MDF on some 4 by 2s to protect the carpet. Unfortunately he didn't check the depth of the circular saw blade. Yep he cut the carpet. He was not popular for a while! From: Annette


Wallpaper window

We redecorated my room and my Dad cut the wallpaper to fit around the window. But he cut it on the wrong side so it was the wrong shape. He was clever though, and used it for the other end of the window instead. From: Katherine


Water piper

My poor hubby has very bad luck with water when doing DIY. When he was installing some bolts in the ceiling to attach a shade sail, he didn't realise the drill was up against a water pipe. The friction from the drill melted a hole in the pipe: water all over him and shouting to turn it off at the mains.

After that I learned where the mains were.

Next up, he was installing some wall mounted cupboards in the laundry. He was driving a screw into the wooden wall frame and managed to hit another water pipe that had been run through the frame - a total fluke, couldn't have done it if he tried. Again, water off at the mains. We have some cupboards to hang in our new house, but he has been delaying. Can't imagine why! From: Karen.


Mad with masking tape

I had to laugh when I saw this 'DIY disaster Dad' - my husband is the 'mad with masking tape' kind. Rather than just touch up the knock, he masks them with painter's tape into neat squares... which wouldn't be so bad if they matched! But usually the shade/colour/finish is off... So there's super glossy squares on a matte varnished floor and funny painted squares all around the house! From: Sophie


An extra living room

Came home one day to find we had no garage anymore, but we DID have an extra living room!
From: Sandra


Saws that fall

He was making a cubby for the kids and went to get some tools from the shed; the circular saw fell on his head (why was it on a SHELF?!) and split his head open. Blood, ambulance, hospital and 10 stitches later... we bought a cubby after that! From: Sacha


Change a light bulb?

We went out to sport while he was changing a lightbulb. We got home to find bare wires hanging from a hole in the ceiling.
From: Lyn


Make way

Needing to renovate his rental unit which was attached to our house my Dad carefully sprayed the whole unit with wallpaper stripper in order to remove the wallpaper. Having got all the wallpaper off he piled it all in the skip he had on the driveway to dump the old bathroom etc in. However the wallpaper filled the skip up (even though it would have squashed down with the heavy things on top) Dad decided he would burn it to make way for all the other rubbish. Forgetting that he had put flammable wallpaper stripper all over it he threw a small amount of petrol over it. When he lit it the 'KABOOM' was heard all over the neighbourhood and the mushroom cloud that went up brought the neighbours running, fearing some sort of bomb explosion. Therefore when we decorate my bedroom in the next school holidays Mum is in charge and Dad will do as he's told.
From: Sam


Carpet painter

While helping us paint our house, Dad stepped in wet paint and, without realising, tracked it onto our new carpet. From: Karen


Before and after

My Dad has painted half the house and then quit. There's literally a vertical line of before and after. It's a wall of shame. From: Sherry


The colour of love

When I was pregnant with my first child fifteen years ago, Dad offered to help with all the painting for my newly furbished nursery. As I was constantly in and out of hospital due to health complications, he assured me that he'd do a wonderful job that I'd be proud of. Imagine my shock and surprise upon returning home from the clinic to find the nursery walls painted with Dad's favourite 'Sydney Swans' red! I must admit that Dad actually met my rather ambiguous brief about using "the colour of love". His unique personal style is one of a kind! From: Jenly


Just extras

Dad built my flat pack desk... I had 3 parts left over, which he said were 'just extras' and drawers that didn't open, which he said 'they are only there for show'. From: Krystal


Let the light in!

He tried to be a macho man and fix our roof himself. He then fell through and took the light fitting with him! From: Jaz


Not a helpful dog

Moving furniture in our newly charcoal carpeted study and a full open can of white paint on one of the tables got knocked by the dog who was getting out of the way and the paint went all over the carpet, dog and furniture!! From: Jo


Red door

In the 70s Dad innocently decided to paint the front door red! Unknown to him, we had moved into an established 'red light' district and he was wondering why we were getting people knocking on our door all hours of the night... until the penny dropped! His brothers never let him live it down and jokingly offered to install red lights to match the door! From: Belinda


Do as I say...

We were helping our Dad do the long awaited bathroom reno and needed to knock down the wall. To our amazement we found the cavity chock full of discarded cigarette butts. This was a few years after Dad (who preached to us about fire safety) supposedly gave up smoking. A funny aside to the reno process which is still going on years later. From: Keith


I can fix it myself!

My Dad is an 'I can fix it myself!' Dad. No matter the emergency, my Dad trundles off to his tool box and mocks up the most marvellous (often rather ineffective) creations. There was a point when we had to tap five times in very specific places to get the toilet to stop running. It went for a week before Mum finally called the plumber while Dad was away at work! From: Bethany


Fingers get in the way

My Dad falls under both ends of the spectrum. He's so talented he can build a pergola but also manages to shoot a nail gun through his finger at the same time. From: Kate


Carpet wrecker

My Dad kicked over a bucket of paint in the lounge room and ruined the carpet, so he moved a table over the top and didn't worry about it. A few years later we got new carpet put in. 'Beauty' says my Dad, rearranging the table to its original spot, in the process ripping the new carpet. From: Jacinta


What's inside a wall?

It all began a few weeks ago… when our electric towel rack stopped working. We told Dad that he would have to call an electrician, but that didn't happen. This all took place in our en-suite which has a sliding door, and you know how a sliding door goes into the wall when it opens… Well, it just happened to be on the wall where Dad was fixing the towel rack. And so when he drilled a spot for the towel rack to go, it went through the wall and into the sliding door. Now we have a huge hole in the bathroom door. From: Alex


Twice built

My hubby and I have just become parents for the first time. As a new Dad his first DIY disaster was the building of the cot - as he assembled it in another room not the nursery, and upon completion discovered it could not fit through the door. Hence pulling it apart and starting all over again.
Thanks to Rosalie.


Painting around

Nothing beats the time my Dad decided to paint the lounge room after he had a few beers. He painted around the Christmas tree. From: Michelle.


Pencils or coffee?

Making me a desk, only to not cut the legs the same length and while correcting ended up making me a coffee table through his mistakes. From: Mark


Drips and dribbles

With all the drips, we've nicknamed my Dad's paint-jobs: "An Ode to Jackson Pollock"... From: Tegan


The great unfinisher

The Great Unfinisher, no project left done, he will start anything, and finish nothing. A shelf without final paint, three nails through the other side of a wall left unpatched, downlights unswivelled, the shed with no steps, front of house painted, not the sides nor the window frames.... every unmade myth made reality. From: Tania


Check it out

Having just moved into his new house and eager to check everything out, Dad grabbed the ladders and headed for the loft.

The catch was stubborn on the hatch and needed a few whacks to open it. Little did he know that there was a large work-light (huge thing with a big metal cage on it) screwed to one of the A frame beams. That would have been fine if it was screwed into the beam, but the last guy had put a screw in, balanced the work-light on the screw and left it like that.

You can guess what happened: The whacking of the loft hatch moved the light, falling directly onto Dad's head full pelt as the hatch opened, which caused him to fall off the ladder backwards... catching the radiator on the wall ripping it out of the valve... water everywhere. Half on the floor, half on the stairs with his head bleeding, his light that he was planning to take into the loft clouted his eye after falling off the end post of the stair rail.

The first day in his new house sucked - a black eye, bleeding head that needed two stitches, small scale upstairs flooding and a destroyed loft hatch. From: Summer


A new cubby

My Dad tried to build my daughter a cubby house with lights and plumbing. While doing the wiring, he ended up burning the whole cubby house down. From: Marlene


Non-closing

Dad helped us put in an ensuite, and didn't calculate the door swing properly. We have to go to the toilet with the door open! From: Becky


Similar is fine

Finally found time to touch up marks in the kids’ rooms paintwork. Unfortunately he couldn't get the same shade so he just got something 'similar'... From: Caroline


Helpful fencer

My brother decided to help his grandparents fix the fences on their farm but needed to be rescued himself when he nailed his glove to the post. From: Billie


Cats have tails

Dad was painting the lounge and the cat came in and his tail went into the paint tray. He came down the ladder to grab the cat and stood in the paint tray too. The cat took off with paint flying everywhere over the carpet. Dad hopped across the lounge to clean his foot in the bathroom and spent the next 45 minutes cleaning up his and the cat's mess. The cat had disappeared. But it wasn't over. Dad finished painting and went to his van to put the paint stuff away only to find the cat in the van. The van was covered in paint too from the cats tail. He was not a happy Dad! From: Carlos


White stripes

My Dad wanted to help me paint my home and painted the timber slat wardrobes with my clothes inside. Let’s just say white stripes are very fashionable in my household. From: Christine


Preparation not needed

My Dad's DIY projects always end up in a huge mess because the word 'preparation' is not in his vocabulary. From: Joanne


Smiley face

My Dad starts painting then makes a mistake so he paints a large smiley face over the spot so he knows to fix it. From: Nicola


Back to front

Putting a corner desk together, ignoring instructions as usual, he made it back to front with the shelves facing inwards and no leg room. From: Jean


Colour blind

Went to work. Came home and hubby had painted bathroom green, our tiles were blue and navy. First time we knew he was colour blind. From: Lynda


Wood-peckers

My Dad built us a giant bird aviary when we were little but instead of making it out of steel he made it out of timber and our birds ate through it and got out!! From: Naomi


Snakes on the roof

Dad who is a DIY everything decided to paint the roof of the house. Imagine his surprise when he disturbed a snake that was living in our roof gutter. I thought Dad was about to do a superman and fly off the roof, but luckily the snake was more scared than Dad and took off. We haven’t seen Dad or the snake since! From: Josh


No power

Dad was cutting the 6 foot hedge with no safety glasses or gloves and ended up cutting the power cord to the hedge trimmer! From: Meg


Two left hands!

My Dad always tries real hard but Mum says he has two left hands! He tiled our kitchen with mosaic tiles and they were mostly crooked (and a few fell off!). He put wallpaper up in our front room (but cut the wallpaper too short and had a couple of cm gap at the bottom of the wall). He replaced the deck covering but it was also too short so the rain leaked onto the deck! And when he cut down the tree outside he accidently hit himself in the head with the chainsaw (he's OK, just a few stitches to the head and Mum banned him from using the chainsaw again). From: Damian


Never again

My Dad tried to be a plumber and inserted a new unit himself but forgot to seal the pipes. A slow leak and 3 years later we found damage and mould in the bedroom next door. He's never attempted plumbing again. From: Anna


Painted windows

My Dad is a shocker when it comes to painting. Prep work should be 80% of the job but I think he heard 8% instead. He can scrape off old flakes but sanding is left to my Mum who definitely has more attention to detail. As for painting, Dad doesn't use masking tape and cutting in is a term Dad uses only when driving. Our exterior windows are still waiting for the excess paint to be removed off the window panes. That was a few months ago now and it will be nearly impossible to come off without hard scratching of the pane. From: Olivia


Finished by Christmas

Just one example of my Dad’s ‘DIY skills’ happened before I was born. My Dad got a digger in so that he could remove the old concrete ramp from the side of our house. He removed the ramp no worries, but was not so quick to complete the wooden stairs as planned. More than 13 years have passed and we still have a door that leads to nowhere.

My Dad’s DIY skills’can also be seen at the back of our house. Dad decided he wanted to paint our house a different colour. So off we went to Resene, returning with multiple test pots which we then used to paint patches all over the back of the house. In the end we never chose a colour, but after a while a local house painter saw all of the patches on the back of our house. He figured Dad wasn’t going to get round to painting it himself, and he thought he might be able to get a job painting it for us. He knocked on the door to ask, but Dad put him right. "No, we don't need any help thanks. We’re just taking our time to choose the colour." It’s been a long time Dad, those test patches have been there for years.

There’s many more stories to tell. The lounge wallpaper that took two years to complete, the time he removed the bathroom ceiling and we could see right through to the underside of the roof (spiderwebs included!), and the hole in the bedroom room wall that appeared when he was renovating the bathroom next door.

It’s not all bad though. Getting things finished isn't really his focus, but by the time he’s done the end result is always fantastic. We’re looking forward to the end of the ‘do up’ when we can all sit back and enjoy his workmanship. He says he’s pretty sure he’ll be done by Christmas… he just won’t tell us which Christmas he’s talking about! From: Emma


Wallpaper hero

The room was looking shabby, the walls of peeling paper were a sight.
Perhaps Dad will paint it cream and powder blue, or subtle shades of pink and white.
But no, he decided to paper the wall,
Lounge room, kitchen and the hall.
He chose a pretty rosebud pattern,
So my home would look like summer every day.
Like usual he did it without guidance or advice and spent the weekend papering away.
Yet Monday morning started with a frown, when he noticed every rose was upside down.

From: Wilma


DIY non-whizz

Amazing business mind, and computer whiz, but when it comes to DIY? - nope, no good.
* Get on the roof to nail, yes NAIL, a tile back on and smash 5 others?
* Get a new whipper snipper and proceed to ring-bark all the trees in the yard?
* Return the new lawnmower to the shop because 'it doesn't work', when all it needed was petrol?
* Build a brick shed using only sand and water as mortar? = shed falls down a week later.
* Concreting himself into a corner when concreting the back patio, leading to him having to walk back through what he'd already finished?
His next mission is painting the inside of the house. From: Michelle


Magic brushes

My dad was a master at putting masking tape absolutely everywhere and then used to try and roller the paint on up to the corners and everything. He went into your shop in Palmerston North and they told him about using a paint brush first around the edges!! He thought they were magic. I had been trying to tell him but he thought it wasn't a good idea!! From: Tracey


Ready to go

My dad built a house in 18 months but it took 12 years to decorate it. And when he finally got it to a finished state, he sold the whole property to developers. They then cut the house up and moved it away. From: Dan


Bathroom woes

We have been slowly working on renovating our 80s house. In the school holidays hubby stripped the bathroom only to find the floor needed replacing and most of the walls behind the bath. So he and his dad set to and did the work. Fast forward 37 days (yes, 37 days with no bathroom!) and my father in law’s ‘painting’ now needs to be stripped back and redone. He found some old paint in the shed and thought he would use that to save us some money, despite the fact that I had just bought a big tin of your kitchen and bathroom paint and a new dacron roller (knowing how great the paint is as we used it in our old house). The paint my father in law applied is rough in some places, smooth in others, huge runs down the wall in three corners, big blobs in others! NIGHTMARE! And poor hubby has to strip it all back and redo it... From: Sally


Doors please

Dad is great at DIY, except there are these sliding wooden doors that have really been his downfall. About six years ago he took down these doors to strip the paint off them and bring them back to their wooden finish. Those doors are still half covered in paint and are sitting in the garage much to mum’s dismay. Every winter we have to put up a temporary door (using a bedsheet!) just so the warmth will vaguely stay in the room. He's great, but I think we'd all like the doors back up please! From: Sam


What's in here?

Dad cut a hole in an internal wall to see what was behind it. He left the hole open for many months. He then decided to turn the hole into a cupboard rather than filling the hole. Did such a pathetic job on building the shelf that it stuck out at right angles to the wall! When I asked if he was going to fix the hole and/or unusable shelf he got very defensive and said "if you are going to be so hard on my efforts, next time I won't bother!" So I gave up and did it myself (sigh) which meant filling the hole and painting it so it looked like it had never happened. From: Sarah


No hurry

My dad thought it would be a good idea to paint the house and 'surprise' mum. Once he finished, he told us to have a look. Not only was there patches of paint all over the ceiling, there was paint all over the floor. It has now been two years and the house is still taped up ready to paint. From: Steven


Oh Dear, Oh Why?

My dad had finished painting the hallway and shortly afterwards he stood on a chair to change the light bulb, slipped off and put his knee through the wall. He made a hole as big as a dinner plate which had to be fixed and repainted. Instead of DIY in our house, when Dad does it we call it Oh Dear, Oh Why? From: Benjamin


Rainbow dad

My dad's the king of painting, there's not much he doesn't know about his brush strokes. He said that on the day I was born he was painting the baby room of course in readiness but when mum said she had to go to the hospital he got so flustered that he knocked over all the paint pots and my room ended up looking like a rainbow and so did Dad. Mum said he was a total embarrassment at the hospital, but she had a good laugh about it. From: Nicola


Alphabetic

Dad was very keen to decorate the new kid’s room and did a great job with the painting. He wasn't so good at hanging the decal up high made of individual letters though. It went A B C D E F G K L M N O P and had to be taken down again... From: Penny


Colour blind

My dad is normally very good at doing DIY stuff around the home and he would hate for me to be telling anyone this. Dad decided to paint the ceilings throughout the house. We told him to get a painter in to do it, but he always insists he can do these things himself just as well and save heaps of money. Anyway, he finished the entire ceilings throughout the house, and once we got home from work we noticed that the colour was a bit different - too scared to mention anything until it was dry we just thought it may be because it was wet. The next morning - it definitely wasn't because it was wet... Dad had painted all the ceilings within the house a different colour!

Goes to show that when you are part colour blind and a plumber by trade you should leave the painting to the experts! He had to buy more paint and redo it all over again. So much for saving money! From: Kelly


Perfectly painted shut

He's a perfectionist when it comes to painting and to be honest he does a great job, cutting in, just the right amount of paint on the brush, no runs in the paint for him BUT getting into a position to paint is a different story! Putting his hip out while turning at a difficult angle to reach in a corner, while up a ladder, led to a trip to the hospital by helicopter. When he did actually make it safely down the ladder on another occasion he stepped right into a pail of paint. We have sash windows in our house and Dad's done a great job of painting them... SHUT, so now most of our windows can't be opened. From: Bryan


Cupboard love

My Dad is renovating our house. He relined the lounge walls, covering an unwanted cupboard as he went around. Unfortunately when Mum asked where he had put the boxes of wallpaper. He had to admit that he hadn't looked in it first !! Then he had to cut a hole in my bedroom wall to get it out… And the hole is still there, though he has said it will eventually become my wardrobe! From: Tom


Just 'slap it on'

My Dad is a fantastic DIY guy and always has been for as long as I can remember. Many of my childhood memories are with my Dad in his shed helping him with whatever DIY project needed to be done. Over the years my Dad taught me how to build, weld and all sorts. But painting yeah nope that was never something my Dad was good at! Just slap it on, I remember him saying. As I got older I walked around his house with my son and could remember all the things Dad and I had DIYed together. I remember one day looking at a DIY project and standing there admiring all the paint runs, fat edges, flashing etc and laughing! Yeap the project itself was great but the final finishing touch just didn't do it justice... The words 'slap it on ran' through my head. Several years later I decided to change my job and had no idea what I really wanted to do, until those words just slap it on ran through my head. So I mentioned it to my Dad, Dad I said I'm going to polytechnic to do my painting pre trade. Boy did he laugh, painting that's easy, just slap it on hun.

I did it though, I went and got my pre trade and am now working full time as a painter and have been for several years! I love it and I owe it all to my dad and his words of advice. My Dad has since sold our childhood home and is now DIYing his new place. I have seen his DIY disaster paint job and the first thing I asked... Just slapped it on Dad? Sure did! Nail holes, no sanding and no sealer on plaster!! Since then I have been showing my Dad how to just 'slap it on' correctly. He has now realised it's not as easy as just slapping it on and now we are working together doing his place, father and daughter DIYing again, but only this time it's me showing him and we now get to sit back and enjoy our projects together with no runs, misses or fat edges. From: Lisa


Patterned roof

The last thing that needed to be painted was the roof and Dad hired out a paint sprayer for the day. He started with the roof and that was looking pretty good! But he was taking a long time to do it and Mum started checking metservice.co.nz to see if the temperature was staying above 10°. Mum and Dad had a little argument about whether or not the roof of the garage should be sprayed, and then Dad got up on the roof to start spraying at about 4pm because they only hired out the sprayer for the one-day and there was no other time to do it.

Mum was hitting the refresh button on her cell phone watching the temperature… It said that it was 12° and then it dropped all of a sudden to NINE DEGREES! Dad finished spraying the roof and we all looked at it hoping it would be okay.. From what we could see it was looking great - good job Dad!

Dad got up the next morning and goes to work. Mum gets up on the ladder to have a look at the roof to make sure it's okay… But it wasn't okay. The paint had FROZEN overnight and had split into different colours and was making these beautiful swirly patterns. Mum got in another big panic because the temperature was still low but she was saying that as soon as it hit 10° that paint would start drying.. The first thing you see when you walk up our driveway is that garage roof, and Mum was saying that nobody would want to buy a house with the crazy paint patterns on the roof. So… Mum gets up on the roof in her overalls and starts scrubbing off all of the paint with a scrubbing brush and the hose going on full. She looked pretty funny lying on top of the garage roof scrubbing and getting very very wet. At some point Mum comes down and yells at Dad on the phone, and all of a sudden Dad shows up home from work. They scrubbed off all the paint and got very messy. Paint was all over their hands and shoes.

What a mission they kept saying. Luckily they repainted it quick smart and sold the house! From: Zia


Lots of dads

When I was very young I didn't know there was such a thing as builders, plumbers, painters or electricians as my Dad did everything. I asked the neighbours who were renovating at the time why they had so many Dads. From: Michelle


Roof paint… and repaint

It was July and mummy and daddy were in a HUGE panic to finish painting the house so it could be listed for sale – they had already just bought a house so mummy was busy panicking about "owning two houses "… and something about "bridging finance"!

The last thing that needed to be painted was the roof and daddy hired out a paint sprayer for the day. He started with the roof and that was looking pretty good! But he was taking a long time to do it and mummy started checking metservice.co.nz to see if the temperature was staying above 10°. Mummy and daddy had a little argument about whether or not the roof of the garage should be sprayed, and then daddy got up on the roof to start spraying at about 4pm because they only hired out the sprayer for the one-day and there was no other time to do it.

Mummy was hitting the refresh button on her cell phone watching the temperature… It said that it was 12° and then it dropped all of a sudden to NINE DEGREES! Daddy finished spraying the roof and we all looked at it hoping it would be okay. From what we could see it was looking great- good job Dad!

Daddy got up the next morning and goes to work. Mum gets up on the ladder to have a look at the roof to make sure it's okay… But it wasn't okay… The paint had FROZEN overnight and had split into different colours and was making these beautiful swirly patterns. Mummy got in another big panic because the temperature was still low but she was saying that as soon as it hit 10° that paint would start drying.. The first thing you see when you walk up our driveway is that garage roof, and Mummy was saying that nobody would want to buy a house with the crazy paint patterns on the roof. So… Mummy gets up on the roof in her overalls and starts scrubbing off all of the paint with a scrubbing brush and the hose going on full. She looked pretty funny lying on top of the garage roof scrubbing and getting very very wet. At some point Mummy comes down and yells at daddy on the phone, and all of a sudden Daddy shows up home from work. They scrubbed off all the paint and got very messy. Paint was all over their hands and shoes.

What a mission they kept saying. Luckily they repainted it quick smart and sold the house! Mummy said not to look too closely at the roof though.... From: Zia


King of the tools

“My Dad is amazing
He's the King of the tools
He's capable of anything
And is super duper cool

He turns his hand to anything
It doesn't matter what
Sanding, painting, building...
He'll do the whole lot

My Dad is superb with sandpaper
And perfect with paint
He's daring with a drill
So spectacular you'll faint!

My Dad will tackle anything
There's nothing to big or small
He's a DIY rockstar
Strong, muscly and tall

He can build a great fence
And prune apple trees
He can drench our sheep
He's the best... Can't you see?

If I can't find my Dad
I know where to look
It's where the magic happens
It's inside his special nook

Once there was a power cut
During an All Black game
But never fear! Dad was there!
He should be in the hall of fame

He cranked up the generator
And invited the neighbours round
He fed them and kept them warm
He never fails to astound

Torrential rain and howling winds
Aren't much fun
But if there's a job that needs doing
My Dad will get the job done

My Dad is a superstar
He's definitely number one
He shows me how to do things
And makes it really fun

My Dad can do anything
He has a very clever brain
Nothing can stop him
Not even the rain

If every single person
Had a DIY Dad like me
Just imagine to yourself
How wonderful the world would be!”

From Charlotte.


Paint jumper

“My Dad was painting my brother's room. It was a very busy day and Dad was grumpy having to work on the weekend. My twin brother was calmly watching while I was not so calmly bouncing on the bed which was covered in the middle of the room. Dad was trying to tell me to be careful there was a wet bucket of paint next to the bed. Then somehow I managed to get one of my feet into the bucket of paint. Oh my gosh! Dad got ultra angry and yelled at me to stay still, carefully he lifted me outside and washed my feet. Man I was glad I didn't tip that bucket over. We laugh about it now but Dad didn't laugh back then.” From Samuel.


Mr Perfectionist

“My DIY dad is so perfect at painting it is truly painful. I'm not allowed to paint of course as I'm too rough, I'm not even allowed to stir the paint as I may spill it, or clean the brushes as I'm not thorough. We are selling our house and he is repainting the beams over the deck, right the way along the back of the house. He has waterblasted (painstakingly), scraped (meticulously), sanded (smoothly), undercoated and the day I got home to think I was finally going to see a topcoat I found him filling holes and blemishes in the timber... over the deck!! Omg, that was just over the top - all this despite my writing a note and leaving it on a window for him to see "we are selling"... However, he has finally finished, and it looks a treat. I do get frustrated by his fussiness but I'm always glad at the end of the job that he takes absolutely no notice and does the job to his standard.” From Karen.


Done done done

“We have been re painting all the house and have had to 'sack' Dad because we think he can't see too well or 'Just wants to get it over and done with". All his children are quietly laughing as he has always been a bit like this but getting worse since he turned 70. The latest was , we had all the windowsills primed and ready to finish coat when the light was good and while we were out he decided they were ready for the finish coat and thought he'd surprise us by painting on the finish gloss coat. 'Done' he probably said to himself. But the job was so so rough that we had to start again with a sand, undercoat x 2 sanding in between and another finish coat. We still love him and he is still the best of 'fixit' Dad's ever.” From Tony.


Scarlet painter

“My old Dad was very innovative and a master of the Kiwi number 8 wire technique. He was locally reknown for his skills and was called on by friends and neighbours as "Mr Fix-It". My first bicycle was made up of bits and pieces obtained from the local town dump. However, when he started painting we could see disasters in the making. He once painted our old kitchen and dining area and, apart from the expected drips and splashes on the floor, etc. managed to make the place quite presentable. To add a bit of trim, he then painted (in a brilliant scarlet) a small area on each door to stop greasy fingers marking his masterpiece. It looked great! But Dad was not one to stop while he still had some paint left. So, ultimately, we had the front edge of the mantelpiece, the trim all around the old coal range and just about every nick-knack in sight all painted a brilliant red. My Mum was furious and muttering "He gets a paintbrush in his hand and he just doesn't know when to stop." One time that my Mum did put her foot down with a firm hand, was when he stated that he was going to install an electric heater on the toilet seat for the cold winters. The mind boggles.” From Don.


Wipeout

“Since my Dad retired about 18 months ago, my Mum has kept him busy with various home improvement projects. The house has now been mostly repainted inside and out, however last week Mum decided that all the internal doors needed a fresh look so it was off to the Resene shop for sample pots. "Whiteout" was the chosen colour, and a couple of days later Dad was heading into town so he volunteered to pick up a 4 litre can. He was on his bike so took a backpack with him and duly arrived home an hour or so later with the heavily laden backpack which he struggled to get off his back. Suddenly, it came free and fell with a loud thump to the floor, and, as Dad picked it up, the "Whiteout" started oozing out through the zipper. The "Whiteout" had become Dad's "Wipeout!" From Jessica.


Arms up

“My husband and father of our six children is a fabulous DIY guy. He is really particular about getting the perfect finish which starts with thorough prep. He turned our 100 year old shiplap ceiling with cracks, holes, stains and dirt into a pristine work of art. He spent 120 hours with his arms above his head. By the time it was finished he could barely lift his porridge to his mouth, his arms were so sore. Couldn't be more proud of him.” From Joanne.


From specks to superb

“My mum tells the story of when she went into labour with me (nearly 39 years ago). After I was born, he came up to the hospital covered in little white specks. He'd been painting the ceiling as a surprise to Mum but fell off the ladder with the roller spinning, coating him and the whole room in white specks of paint. Needless to say, his painting skills (and balance) have improved enormously and he helped me paint the whole interior of my house (ceiling included) a couple of years back. He did such a professional job, friends asked me who my painter was so they could get them in (he's not a painter or decorator).” From Shani.


High spec

“Dad designed a cubby house using his considerable civil engineering and architecture skills, right down to a Resene colour scheme. When we priced the cost of the cubby it was around $30,000. Needless to say the kids still play on the bits of wood nailed to the tree in the backyard.” From Gabrielle.


Not so a-door-able

“Bob decided to varnish all our wooden doors 20 years ago. He took the whole lot off their hinges and put them in the garage to sand. After 3 days of no toilet or bathroom doors, he copped an earful. He put all the doors back - unfinished!” From Sue.


Even the kitchen sink

“Ged painted the kitchen in Resene Black White, it looked great. He also painted the floor, sink , dog and oven. Kitchen looked fantastic, oven looks a little dotty, dog has recovered, sink...well it's camouflaged by dishes anyway!” From Ged.


Patience needed

“My dad is a DIY disaster because since we moved into our house 4 years ago he has managed to pull apart our hallway and not started painting. So far this ‘small’ job has taken 3.5 years and counting. He has now moved on to our bathroom which only has the toilet left in it. My bedroom which I was promised was to be next to be painted still has the white undercoat from the previous owner.” From Dylan.


Cornered

“My Dad made the mistake of painting the floor but started at the wrong end of the room and painted himself into a box he couldn't get out of without having to walk on the wet paint!” From Gael.


Handy dad

His garage is full of handy man things
Wire and glue, bolts and springs,
Timber and paint, nails and screws
All of which he knows how to use.

His toolbelt holds treasures for various jobs,
Tap washer thingamee's, rivets and knobs
His hammer, his drill, his jigsaw and knife
All feature heavily in every day life.

Mum has ideas for wonderful stuff so
Dad makes them happen, no matter how tough!
With paint in his hair and on his clothes
He leaves dusty footprints wherever he goes.

Building a fence or painting the roof,
He is the best, and I have the proof
Wooden swords to retaining walls,
He does it all, as well as being there whenever I call.

My Dad’s DIY skills are awesome you see
And best thing of all, he is now teaching me!

From Zac and Conner.


Sleep deprived

“My Dad is normally a DIY super hero, he has built me a bassinette stand and a toy gym. But the sleep deprivation must of got to him because two weeks ago with a 1 year old newborn in the house, my Dad was finishing off our newly renovated bathroom by placing the toilet roll holder on the wall. He drilled a hole in the wall next to the toilet and accidentally drilled in to the 'in wall' toilet cistern... toilet water was pouring out of the hole and we had to call the plumber to fix it... a hole had to be cut in to our newly relined/plastered and painted bathroom for the cistern to be replaced! The insurance company paid for the plumber and plasterer to fix it up and Dad painted it in Resene Quarter Surrender... now you would never know!” From Andrew.


No help at all

“While helping to paint the local community hall, first he lent against the freshly painted door with his new coat. Then wanting to stir some paint, he got a stick and thrusting it up and down into the 10litre bucket poked a hole through the bottom. To make it worse, he carried the leaking bucket through the carpeted area while loudly declaring, "there is a hole in it." At that point he was thanked kindly for his help and sent home.” From Quentin.


That sweatshirt

“My dad has a blue sweatshirt given to him about 30 years ago. He wears it for almost all his diy paint jobs. There's no need to have hand wipes or rags because every time he gets paint on his hands or face, he wipes it on his sweatshirt! Any drips on walls or floors, he gingerly wipes with his fingers and yup, onto his sweatshirt! Overpainting onto window glass? Run pointer finger, then sweatshirt. Still more, middle finger then sweatshirt, arrrrghhh yet more paint! Ring finger then - all together now... SWEATSHIRT!! Been through years of washes and lots of colours as permanent patterns. You should see the faces of people he meets and tries to hug with that sweatshirt on!! lol!” From Ash.


Colour blind

“My dad is brilliant at all sorts of DIY projects and makes awesome gadgets for the grandkids, including a tandem bicycle made up from old bikes. He is also very talented at painting... however he is colour blind and we've ended up with some interesting colour combos, including a rabbit hutch with a green rabbit eating a purple carrot painted on it!” From Cheryl.


Ladder (un)wise

“It was coming up to Waitangi day weekend. The weather looked good so Dad, as he is prone to do had the great idea of finally sanding and repainting the shabby peeling peaked portico at our front door... off down to the local Resene shop. Came back with the paint charts to match up old paint colour, sandpapers and brushes. We finally agreed on a colour so he popped back down and returned with paint. Up the ladder he went and started sanding away and nek minute realised that it was copper underneath! Back off to Resene and got some special goop stuff to put on to remove copper paint. It was a tricky job as the peak was quite high so at one stage he was leaning out a window above the front door as I held onto his legs so he could reach the tip. To do the sides he went up the ladder which he had leaning against the portico. The copper base meant a lot more elbow grease was needed and he was scraping quite vigorously and he reached over a bit further... and a bit further… til BANG!! An almighty crash and a blood curdling scream - it was sickening. So 6pm ..Waitangi Day... Ambulance called... 2 burly officers had to unwedge him from his position – a week in hospital and 3 months recovering. I am very grateful that it was not worse and he is alive but blimmin heck a year and a half on and the portico looks worse than ever!... still only half sanded and unpainted!”

Remember to ALWAYS check you are using a ladder safely before you climb it. From Mark.


Bathroom waterfall

“Painting the bathroom and didn't tell others. So when someone had a shower paint ran down the walls.“ Thanks to Tim.


Half done

“Dad is very handy at DIY and mostly the jobs get done, BUT, sometimes the jobs only get part way. He painted the outside of the house two and half years ago... ran out of paint for one wall, so that wall has had scaffolding and ladder in place up to it ever since!“ Thanks to Michelle.


Stuck

“Hubby was happily painting when I left to pick up my four year old from kindy. Picked up some veges and milk and came home my youngest runs into the new house and yells back to me dad’s stuck in my door. I go running to find hubby with his foot stuck in what was to be our youngest son’s bedroom door. He had stepped over the paint tray, tripped on a drop sheet and wobbled, tried to rebalance and avoid the full paint tray and ended up falling and getting his heavy work boot stuck in the door. He laughed and we helped pull his boot out, cleaned up the mess and he carried on painting.“ Thanks to Debbie.


Shed saver

“Dad loves to half build sheds (much to the annoyance of my mother)! It started out with him building a garden shed then mum gave him a list of jobs to do around the house and he said he would do them once he finished his shed. As the shed came closer to completion he decided to start building a second shed so he didn’t have to do Mum’s list. Three sheds later, plus fixing mine and my sister’s shed, he’s finally starting to tick off Mum’s list. The house is due for repainting soon so he will probably need another shed before that!“ Thanks to Kelly.


Paint freckles

“I don’t think I have ever seen my dad without spots of paint in his ever-receding hairline. I remember sitting on his lap as a child and scratching off the spots he had missed. It was our version of father and daughter bonding time. Dad is now 62 years old and let’s just say the paint spots are a bit easier to see. Not only because I am taller, but also because there is even less hair to sort through.

Dad’s English is comedically broken at times and he is forever making us laugh with kiwi slang gone wrong. Amazingly so, if you ask him anything about painting techniques and products he will give you the correct name with the correct spelling and give a breakdown as to why it is the best option.“ Thanks to Jana.


Ready to paint

“My Dad is amazing and will give anything a go. When I purchased my first house, he was there at the house before me when I got the keys. He was already measuring up the walls for paint, unscrewing fittings and writing a list of stuff to buy. No time for a celebratory dinner or glass of bubbles - we need to sand etc. By the end of the weekend we (dad. myself, daughter and sometimes son) had newly painted three bedrooms and the hallway.“ Thanks to Michelle.


Soccer ban

“While painting the main bedroom, my son was kicking his toy soccer ball up and down the hallway. When asked to stop doing this he kicked the ball to me, so I returned the ball with force but completely missed the soccer ball and kicked a full ten litre of Resene Lumbersider down the hallway. What a huge DIY disaster cost and clean up, nevertheless we all saw the hugely funny side. No more soccer balls inside.“ Thanks to Brian.


Paint v carpet

“Not once but twice he has had a paint versus carpet experience. The first time he was cutting in while holding a 4 litre can of paint and tripped over the small ladder and dropped the can on the sheet which of course went straight through onto the carpet. The second time he was rolling the kitchen walls when he felt a splash of paint on his leg. He looked behind him to see our cat covered in paint from sitting in the full rolling tray take off through the house in a panic, paint splashes running down the brand new yet to be plumbed in French door refrigerator, pussy paw prints from the kitchen, through the lounge, down the stairs and back up again, down the hallway and said cat was found hiding under the bed. It took an insurance claim and a vet to fix that DIY disaster!!!!“ Thanks to Paul.


Mr Impatient

“I will never forget my lovely Dad painting the front door of my house wonderfully. But alas he didn't like the colour so he painted a different colour on top without waiting for the first layer to dry. What a mess! Both colours ran down the front of the door. We often laugh at his painting skills and so did all our neighbours.“ Thanks to Jackie.


Wrong one

“Hubby was repainting our bathroom a light beige on the walls and white on roof. I had been in to purchase paint and being a typical male he did not ask which was for which before starting. Colours look a lot different in the tin compared to the walls. I then heard a fair bit of cursing. I found he had rolled out a large section of wall colour on the white roof... lessons were learned that day!“ Thanks to Laura.


One summer… or two

“My husband is an IT geek. That should tell you it all, but I will give you further details... on a whim he decided to purchase a cubby house for our then three year old daughter (now four...) with the intention of renovating it and giving it a fantastic paint job to match our house, then set it up in our garden, with its own mini garden and so on. In summer she could serve ice cream to her brothers from within it, like a small cafe. Well last summer has been and gone. One coat of paint is kind of on there, but when he did the white features around the door and window, he dripped paint ALL over the black paint... so more sanding and layers will now be needed on top of what he had planned. The masking tape has dried to a crisp, so chances are, that will need scraping off, and it is still sitting on our lawn, not even where it is meant to go. The next summer is rolling around soon and I think I might have to step in and get it done as otherwise Millie will be too tall to get into it!!! Did I mention he also has two paint splotches on Millie's wall where he intends to do a feature wall (it has been there a year and looks weird) and now has mentioned a feature wall in the hallway for a photo wall.... I might have to take control of that too!“ Thanks to Hannah.


Just right

“He's creative and a perfectionist, our dad. He's tried 50 different shades of grey tint to get the perfect coloured door. It has meant the door to our bedroom has been sitting in the garage for a year now but vision trumps privacy for him. Did I mention he cut a couple of trees down in the garden and then painted the stumps to make them 'look more aesthetically pleasing'? We now have a couple of large bright yellow fixtures in the garden that have sprouted new growth. Guests never fail to comment as they look upon them in confusion.“ Thanks to Gavin.


Hot stuff

“Helping my Dad paint our house roof one summer morning the roof was getting hot and asked my Dad whether we should stop as the paint was getting tacky. He said, No it will be okay. But when our brushes stuck to the roof he decided we should stop. That part of the roof never looked good. No shine, just a dull, washed out look. We both learnt not to paint a hot roof in summer time.“ Thanks to Bernie.


Burgundy orange

“My Dad thought he had found the perfect colour to paint our old hallway and was very excited coming home with a testpot in hand. He told us all about this really nice deep burgundy colour he found and proceeded to paint a lovely big patch on the wall. Dad's failure was he forgot he is colourblind and what he thought was a lovely deep burgundy was in fact a very bright burnt orange which would have gone well in a 70s horror house. It took several more years until the hall finally got repainted. In the meantime we had a daily reminder of dad's awesome colour choice.“ Thanks to Catherine.


DIY disaster

“My Dad is a DIY disaster...

  1. He was on a roof and fell of and cut open his arm (photos available).
  2. We live in a house that is two different colours because my dad only painted half of the front. He also only painted the front of our sleepout so that is two different colours too. Not sure what that is about.
  3. We needed a fence to keep our dogs in so my old man made one out of old gates, corrugated iron, string and spades. He also fixed a gap in the fence with a wooden bench seat.
  4. When we went away two years ago the lock on our shed hadn't work for a year. We couldn't leave the shed unlocked so he nailed it shut. It is still nailed shut.
  5. Our chickens could get into our garden so dad built the fence a bit stronger and higher. He used bricks, wire tree, branches, iron and a plank. The chickens still get in. 6. He walked into his shed in the dark to get a hammer. Let's just say his shed could do with a clean up. He stepped onto a plank with a nail sticking out and it went through his boot into his foot. My dad still hasn't cleaned up his shed.
  6. My Dad is a great dad. He is just better at playing than he is at working. “

Thanks to Hannan.


Black mark

“My Dad thinks he is a pretty good handy man. Not too long ago my Dad was going to paint our new fence in the hot sun with a big bucket of black paint. He had put the full bucket on the driveway and mixed it all up. Somehow he tripped on a hose and knocked the whole bucket over and it tipped out onto the lovely new grey driveway. He panicked and then his phone rang, he was on the phone for ages, it was his boss and he forgot about the paint problem. After he got off the phone he remembered about the paint. My 3 year old brother Nash had ridden his bike through the paint while Dad was on the phone. It was a massive puddle with tyre marks through it and the sun was very hot, he didn't know where to start. He tried scooping the paint up with a spade, that made it worse. Then he used the hose to spray it off. The spray from the water and paint went all over my Grandmas car and the paint puddle just got worse. He was very stressed! After a long time hosing the 10L of paint away there was a big black stain on the driveway and no paint on the fence! Since then my Mum has painted the fence a nice black colour.“ Thanks to Willa.


Pinky

“My Daddy was a diesel mechanic. I can count on my fingers who many times I've seen him with clean fingernails. When I was 6 years old he painted my room (millennium) pink (yeah, I was way beyond my time). There was an emergency breakdown and he rushed to work with pink fingernails and strands of pink in his long beard. Ever since he's been called Pinky. He hates it but pink is still my favourite hue.“ Thanks to Larisa.


DIYed

“Dad - your building skills leave so much to be desired.

Thank you for the deck you built, but unfortunately the top boards of the step fell off and our friend literally broke her leg. Thank you for putting flashing on our roof, I'm too scared to tell you that the leak is now worse.

That guttering you installed, it’s level meaning the water doesn't drain. So yes, it floods every winter.

Dad, the fence you built us is great! But the gates are too heavy for the hinges and we can’t get into the backyard very easily.

So now that we have started painting mum’s house, you understand why I had to hire a professional to do the plasterboard and plastering with me right?“ Thanks to Melissa.


Stripping for nothing

“For the last week my partner and I have been stripping day in and day out. Not the fun kind of stripping, where you dance and make lots of money, but the tedious kind, that breaks your nails and slowly chips away at your soul. Stripping wallpaper. You see Nick assured me that this was a job that had to be done. So done we did. It has taken us literally hours!

Now that we are nearly done (one small corner beside our very outdated backdoor to go) I emailed a plasterer to book him in for next week. I was curious about whether we really needed to spend all those hours stripping the wallpaper, (Nick and I had many discussions about this, but every time I asked he assured me it was the only way) so I asked the plasterer.

To my absolute dismay he replies and says we didn’t have to strip the wallpaper. I scream like a small child. How could this happen? All those quality hours I could have been watching Netflix and chilling while we had both kids in bed asleep (this is an accomplishment on its own).“ Thanks to Bobby.


All in one

My dad hates prep work, one of his favourite tricks was to mix oil based undercoat into high gloss for a sort of self priming semi-gloss... one day I dropped by and he was painting his windows.

"Where's the undercoat?" I asked.

"It's in the gloss pot" he said.

"Ok", I replied, taking a closer look at the windows," are you not even gonna give them a sand first?" "Oh, the sandpaper's in there too" he said and whipped a folded piece of sandpaper out of his top pocket, dropped it in the pot of paint and walked off with his nose in the air! Thanks John!


Any colour but the right one

My D.I.Y Dad Oh No. He’s done it again. Dad has started painting the house the wrong colour. It’s meant to be Quarter Grey Chateau, not Ghost! Oh, and what has he done now! Tried to fix the rickety old gate, but instead he has pulled it off its rusty hinges! My D.I.Y Dad can also be described as a walking disaster carrying a paint pot. A paint pot of the wrong colour, though it may be!!! Thanks Myla!


In charge

Our dad likes to project manage us rather than do it himself. He says that's where his skills lie. He tells us what we need for the job and how to do it while he sits back to watch. Thanks Marie and Michael!


Dog-gone

My dad is your classic kiwi dad, a real do it yourselfer. He has spent the last 11 years doing up our family home and over this time we have had some real DIY disasters (and after 11 years you would think the renovations would be over... but nope). One of his most recent DIY disasters came only a few weeks ago when he took it upon himself to paint our hallway and bathroom. The first mistake he made was using one of our mum’s kitchen cups to mix/pour the paint, and for the rest of the day he was either ignored with the evil eyes and or lectured about not touching her kitchen equipment. The next mistake proceeded not long after (approximately 1 hour) when he started to paint our bathroom and forgot the open the window and finally the same day as dad was painting the hallway our beautiful black puppy decided to rub himself up the whole one side of dad’s nicely white painted hallway. And not only did we spend the rest of the day trying to get paint off the dog but also repainting that one side of the hallway. So, as you can see my dad tries his best but doesn’t always have the best luck. Thanks Kobe!


Lockdown painter

We bought a 1904 Villa in November last year and Dad has been working hard ever since. It has a very high ceiling so the walls are huge and he has to sand and paint them all. It took him a month just to do the hallway. He has just finished our lounge (the kids lounge) which he calls the Corona Lounge because if it wasn't for the virus, he wouldn't have got it done. Thanks Clara!


Mum to the rescue

Dad thinks he's good, but he's not. Dad painted my room twice, and I didn't like the colours either time (and he got paint on the carpet). He painted Mum and Dad’s room, and Mum didn't like it either. She made us go away for a day, and when we came back, she had painted again without telling Dad. It looks good now. Dad likes to try doing things, but Mum usually has to fix it, or call someone else in. Our cat likes to play with the balls of masking tape he uses as well. Thanks James!


Bright spot

Dad is great with a paint brush but horrific at choosing paint colours! My childhood home was known as the house with the bright yellow roof, and there were often jokes about it being used to guide planes in for landing. He’s also known for touching up paint on a wall using the wrong colour testpot resulting in a polka-dot effect. He can’t understand that just because both paints have the word ‘blue’ in their name they don’t necessarily match. The good news is that once the right colour paint has been obtained, he will be the one repainting the whole wall to get it looking perfect.

My perfectionism and dad’s speedy style aren’t always the best combination to work together – sometimes his techniques with painting and plastering horrify me but he ignores my indignant squawks. And I can’t deny the end results are always great. He has recently worked out how to stop us clashing though, such as the time he arranged to help me and told me he would be there from Tuesday to Thursday. When I said that I would be at work then and couldn’t be around, he gave me a big smile and said, 'I know'! Thanks Tricia!


Wrong way up

I decided to put a mat on our small bathroom floor and finally found one that looked good with the Resene Lucky paint. It needed to be shaped to go around the vanity, so I measured it carefully and made a paper pattern before turning the mat over and drawing round the 'hole' with a felt pen. Then I cut it out and tried to fit it...but couldn't. I had cut the hole on the wrong edge of the mat. Yes, I did forget that I was a lady and said what anyone would who'd done this. Thanks Anna!


Pony paint

I was painting the white trims around my black house exterior. My full paint tray was sitting on a platform as I was painting up high, but then realised I’d missed a bit down low. I bent down to touch it up and didn’t realise that my very long pony tail was going straight into paint! When I stood back up I unknowingly flicked my hair back and my now full-of-paint ponytail flicked white paint all over my beautiful black house exterior and all down my back!

Not long after I did it I said to my partner that I’d have to send it in for the Resene funny stories so at least someone else can have a good laugh at my expense! Thanks Melody!


Wallpaper mishaps

We had our first home built and to save money we finished off the interior ourselves. My husband had never ventured into wall-papering before but had watched my father do an excellent job and he had told him how to gauge how much you would need, allowng for how big the pattern drop was. He also said to always buy an extra roll to have some over and allow for any mistakes. Well in this particular room we couldn’t allow any extra roll as we just made it with the amount they had. We took the risk and away he started. After he had done the first 3 drops, all matching perfectly, I took another look and noticed something didn’t appear to look quite right. All of a sudden, the penny dropped. It was a beautiful weeping willow pattern and I realised it was upside down. We had this weeping willow pointing upward! Father was not impressed to put it mildly but ripped it of quickly and with much difficulty got those three drops quickly back up but the right way. With a slight amount of patching he eventually got there with very little over. Thanks Rae!


Bad memory

At an open home we saw a pale lemon kitchen, everyone thinking how good it would look in our new home. To the colour charts we went, no one agreeing on his choice of shade, it being so much darker than what we recalled the kitchen looking like.

He went and bought the paint, leaving it for the painter. When we returned home from work the walls were 'calf %$#* yellow' a real eyesore especially first thing in the morning but finances being what they were we were unable to change the colour. Let's just say the colour was a real talking point not just with us, but visitors too.

But did he learn from this, that when choosing yellow you should go lighter than what it looks on charts because of how walls reflect yellow? NO, but at least we didn't have to look at his next faux pas every day. Thanks to Ann.


Black beauty

Been told to stir the paint regularly to keep the colour constant and stop the pigment settling. Left the mixer in the almost full bucket, thought that's risky but will be ok, then proceeded to put the roller in the bucket, seconds later the whole lot was spilled all over the driveway. 2 hours to clean up and a week of black stained hands, only bought the paint that day. Thanks to Andrew.


Lean on me

My Dad built a pergola bench seat. It seemed like an awesome idea, so that we could enjoy the outdoors by sitting and relax in the shade, this was not the case. Although the bench looked pretty painted in Resene Bali Hai it didn't envisage Bali, instead the Leaning Tower of Pisa came to mind. No one dared to use the bench with its leaning form! Thanks to Bethany.


Mr Fussy

Dad was so pedantic with masking off a painting job. Unfortunately he used the wrong kind of tape and left it on for several days. When it was time for it to come off… oh dear! Let's just say peeling off wasn't easy and left one heck of a mess to clean up. Thanks to Kim.


Pink surprise

My husband wanted to surprise our daughter with a light pink feature wall in her big new girl bedroom. He is not one to ask for help, nor is he big on preparation... so he loosened the lid and went away for lunch. Came back and shook the tin so it was ready to pour, forgetting the lid had been loosened. Dear husband covered the bed, carpet, toys and of course himself in pretty pink paint and not one drop made it onto the wall! Thanks to Emma.


Sticky stuff

Dad one time painted the walls and floor but laid down cardboard boxes on what he thought was dried paint but it wasn't and the cardboard got stuck to the floor! Thanks to Kate.


Mum’s helper

Dad’s a DIY nightmare. Truly. Shelves go up uneven, gates and carports have been erected all wrong... he has even used indoor white paint on exterior brick walls so you can imagine what the results have been... yes it peels off and looks like a shambles. Mum’s the DIYer in our house. She was painting the living room once and Dad said he’d help... he pulled up a chair and watched her paint.... I think she was thankful he didn’t pick up a roller! Thanks to Isabella.


Cornered

I watched dad paint the garage floor with a roller on a stick. He trapped himself in the corner on the last bit of unpainted floor. Stood there for 2 hours till it dried! Thanks to Peter.


Lights out

Dad thought we needed a new sensor light for when we come back home at night. He was very confident he knew what he was doing. Cutting into the plasterboard and then connecting a few wires to get the light working. He thought he had done a good job until he realised, he had stopped power going to half of the house! Not just that he'd left a big mess of the wall, the paint job and also had a power outage. We had to call a professional. When he got there my Dad told him how his neighbour had done this terrible job and how we needed it fixed. My Dad then went out. When the professional had finished my Mum thanked him and said, "thanks so much, my husband had no idea what he was doing." Sprung! Poor Dad. He should stick to what he does best... Painting! Thanks to Chris.


Jandals beware

My dad loves his ‘safety’ jandals and when he was wallpapering he dropped the sharp knife on his foot. He got a deep cut and spent the morning waiting to get it seen while Mum did all the wallpapering without him!


Long term bulge

My friends have just visited the UK for the first time and decided to visit my old home there – the current owner showed them around and let them video the house and she showed them a big bulge coming out of the wall that she told them was done by my dad when he blocked a doorway up! He did do the 'bodge job' as she called it (it was one of his first DIY projects)... but so funny he did that 28 years ago! (and we have not lived in that house for the past 18 years!) So hilarious that it is still mentioned now (and why have the other owners not fixed it?)


Knock first

I’ll never forget when I was around 10 years old we were renovating our family home. One night my dad must have forgotten he had ordered me to get into the shower before bed and proceeded to continue with renovations, smashing down the kitchen wall which backed onto the shower. We both got a fright when the sledgehammer came through the shower wall!


Tool time

My DIY dad has got a special relationship with tools – they practically obey his every command, except for that one time when the power drill took a detour through the wall. And oh, his ability to choose paint colours is legendary. We once had a 'subtle beige' that turned out to be 'psychedelic sunset.' But you know what? His enthusiasm is infectious, and he's turned our home into a quirky masterpiece.


(Not so) perfect timing

In the lead-up to a crucial professional house photo shoot in Christchurch, my parents were diligently preparing their home. Eager to showcase his handyman skills, my Dad, brimming with confidence, took it upon himself to paint the parapet from an exterior ladder. Balancing an old tiptop ice-cream tub filled with paint, he ventured out to embark on what he believed to be a minor task.

Perched atop the ladder, armed with a paintbrush and his makeshift paint bucket, all seemed well. But then came the moment when he needed to readjust his position. In an ill-fated move, he leaned just a bit too far, and the seemingly straightforward endeavour took a disastrous turn. Gravity took hold, and my Dad tumbled awkwardly from the ladder, crashing onto the unyielding concrete below. His pained moans filled the air as he clutched his head, frantically assessing the extent of the damage, and feeling the blood underneath his head.

The scene quickly escalated as my mum and I rushed outside, gripped by a mix of concern and panic. Given that he had been perched on the ladder moments prior, the worst was feared. With trepidation, my mum found him sprawled on the ground, his hand still pressed to his head. But instead of the anticipated sight of blood, there was an unexpected twist – paint. The trusty ice-cream container, which he had been using as a paint bucket, had effectively cushioned his fall, transforming what could have been a catastrophic injury into a vividly coloured mishap.

Following the initial embarrassment and the pain, my Dad's resilience prevailed. He recuperated over time and reached a sobering realisation: some tasks are best left to the capable hands of professionals.


Dog-gone

Guess who left a large can of WHITE paint unattended when we had our son's BLACK Labrador come for a sleepover? Said Labrador checked out the contents of the paint and ended up with a white mask – when we frantically told him to stay he duly scampered off, knocking over the virtually full can of paint and leaving a trail of white pawprints throughout the house as he frantically tried to find his way outside.


Interesting effect

Dad painted a room in my sister's house that reminds me of a third world prison. It looks like someone has painted with a chocolate bar then tried to clean it off with a nail file! Some people love it and some people are terrified LOL!!! And I'm not kidding!


Round tuit

He's always fancied himself as the Supreme DIYer, not that others always agreed with him. His brother-in-law called him Frank Spencer but it was the saga of painting the shed that led to him receiving not one, but four 'Round Tuits.'

As he never got round to painting the shed I started it but couldn't manage the top four boards which were out of my reach. And so the shed remained like this for some time. After receiving the fourth Round Tuit from neighbours, friend, and the milkman, he went into action but his painting left much to be desired – 3 coats later and 3 months later the shed was complete.

Over the years the tuits disappeared but providence has its way – one has surfaced when we cleared out the garage. Our current house and garage is waiting for a few more sides to be completed, first started November last year so this tuit is again on display – but this time it has brought a smile and a laugh. "At least I'm consistent."


Orange is the new yellow

My dad never lets a questionable colour palette stop him and somehow to this day swears that his orange doorway is yellow.


Bird brain

Dad was painting the guttering on the roof and somehow actually painted over A DEAD BIRD who had demised in the roof gutter.

Still laughing.


For the love of paint

Dad would always paint a lovely message to Mum on the wall and make sure she had read it, before rolling the wall properly.


Help wanted

Catastrophe Craig is a DIY liability. His artistic capabilities are better suited to his profession as a musician. When sanding the fire surround he put the sander through the wall mum had just patched up. When staining the framing, more stain ended up on the floor than the frames. Mum 9 months pregnant was busy running around trying to fix the faults and in the processes got locked outside and had to climb through a window to get back inside. If nothing else the neighbours got a laugh at the site. Everyone survived but a decade and three kids on renovations are required. Please help.


Patience is a virtue

My hubby has gone from DIY Zero when we married 30 years ago to DIY hero (notice it does not say superhero – just hero) In the early days he tried to paint our internal doors only to find after he turned his back that the Wellington wind blew one over onto a bucket he had on the ground and punctured a hole thru the door. Did I mention that he managed to do the same thing a few weeks later. He gave up on that project!

20 years later he has begun the process of painting our internal doors again and has set up a safe place in our garage ( wind proof and handling to a minimum) to stand the doors and achieve painting both sides without disaster!

Time management is still at a zero because only two doors have been done in 12 months – eight doors remaining – you do the maths.


If you have a funny decorating story of your own to share we'd love to hear from you - submit your funny DIY story.

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