I'm such an idiot

It's time for a little self-deprecating humor.

A few years ago, I decided to replace an exterior door- the one leading from an attached garage to the house. I'm not much of a handyman, but it was a job I figured to handle.

I was home alone (wife out of town with the kids), and I got an early start. I read the instructions carefully, and proceeded through each step without a hitch, constantly double-checking all that I could. After a few hours, I finished the final step (puttying the nail holes in the frame). The project went perfectly!

I cleaned up around the garage, and then reached into my mini-fridge for a beer. I sat in the garage drinking the beer admiring my work. I was really proud of myself.

A few minutes later, I tried to enter the house and my new door was LOCKED! The new keys were safely inside the house. Unable to find a better way in, I grabbed a chisel and started to chip away at the frame to extract the finish nails that were below the surface of the wood. After about four more hours, and more setbacks along the way, the project was finished.

I've never told anyone this story before. It's funny now, but I was really pissed at the time.

Not sure if anyone can top my stupidity, but please share any stories here.

Pretty good!

another good true story is the guy I know who needed to have a bedroom door cut since he was putting carpet in a room that didnt used to have carpet. He figures he can save the money by doing it himself. Takes the door down, carefully, carefully measures it and cuts it just so. Then when he goes to put it back on uh oh he has cut the top of the door instead of the bottom! I guess doors can sure get ya; in this case, once off, the top looks pretty much the same as the bottom.

As I was reading your post I was sure the ending was that you installed the door swing the wrong way. Anyhow your resulting extra work was about the same.

Your story did remind me of the time I was doing some electrical work in my basement woodworking shop. It took most of the day to run the new wires from the electrical panel to the shop and make all the connections.

I finally finished all the work a little after dark and moment I threw breaker to restore the power to the shop the entire house went black.

What the hell did I do to cause all of the house to lose power?

Not only our house, but the wife is yelling at me that the entire neighborhood was also black. In that instant I had all sorts of thoughts on how many thousands of dollars of damages might be my responsibility for causing the neighborhood to lose power.

However, it only took a few minutes to find out that a nearby transformer blew at the exact moment that I
threw that circuit breaker.

That happened about 15 years ago and to this day I get the same sick feeling when telling the story as I got the moment I saw the entire neighborhood had no power and thought it was my fault.

Wupper, not fer nothin', but an exterior door should always open in, so that you should have been on the hinge-side of the door if you were in the garage. I guess you never thought to just pull the pins out of the hinges and remove the door that way?

Someone once told that she had a handyman install a faucet for her. He hooked it up so that the hot water line was on the right and the cold was on the left. When she complained about it his excuse was that he was left-handed.

In fifth grade, there was a girl in my neighborhood I had a bit of a crush on. One summer evening I was riding past her house on my bike and she was outside. For some strange reason, I thought riding with my hands off of the handlebars would impress her. I hit something in the road, lost control and landed head first in the street, giving myself a concussion.

HAHAHA!

deleted

Quote: tsmith

Wupper, not fer nothin', but an exterior door should always open in, so that you should have been on the hinge-side of the door if you were in the garage. I guess you never thought to just pull the pins out of the hinges and remove the door that way?

Someone once told that she had a handyman install a faucet for her. He hooked it up so that the hot water line was on the right and the cold was on the left. When she complained about it his excuse was that he was left-handed.

An enterior door is supposed to open in for safety's sake. The hinges are always on the inside of a door so that someone outside cannot defeat the lock. If he installed it properly it opened in AND he would have been unable to access the hinge pins.

Did it myself today. Been planning moving an air
conditioner to another window and had it all set
in my mind. Pull it out, into the wheel barrow,
hoist it up to the new location. Only I forgot
to prop open the window and when it was halfway
in the window came crashing down on it. I had
to hold the unit with one hand and try to open
the window with the other. My wife was at work,
I don't need a supervisor.

Luckily I had a big screwdriver in my pocket and
pried up the window enough to get the unit out.
My wife would have called me an idiot. When she makes
mistakes like that we don't mention it.

Quote:

If he installed it properly it opened in AND he would have been unable to access the hinge pins.

You're absolutely right, I had it backwards, sorry.

Quote: EvenBob

When she makes
mistakes like that we don't mention it.

Mention it?

Hell, if you're smart, you pretend you didn't even NOTICE it!

I fixed my closet door once in fifteen minutes using only a screwdriver (it didn't want to stay closed).

But I still sometimes go into the closet when I mean to go to the kitchen.... Fortunately the kitchen doesn't have a door :)

I believe in Quebec they install it with cold on left and hot on the right,not sure about the rest of Canada.I lived in Northern Vermont and had many French canadians install faucets like this.

Forty plus years ago when I was a child, my parents replaced the kitchen faucet together. My dad was doing the work, and my mom was reading him the instructions and supervising. During the process, the phone rang, and this being the era before cell phones and answering machines, my mom left the room to answer it. When she came back from the interruption, she continued reading the instructions for my dad. However, she didn't quite start where she left off, skipping step 7. That happened to be the step that told them how to make sure the hot/cold lines were connected correctly. So they finished hooking everything up, and sure enough, the hot/cold lines were wrong; left was cold and right was hot. They didn't bother fixing it; we all got used to it. The family joke for years was, "Don't forget Step 7!"

Not on the same level as these construction-related stories, but I've managed to walk into the screen door on my girlfriend's patio twice so far this year. The first time it busted the screen door out of its track and we had to labor a bit to get it back in. The second time the door frame remained in place but I made a small tear in the screen. She was not happy.

I forget that I am taller than the bottom of the hanging light in our living room at least twice a week. It's coming down one of these days, it can't sustain these kind of impacts forever.

Quote: AcesAndEights

Not on the same level as these construction-related stories, but I've managed to walk into the screen door on my girlfriend's patio twice so far this year. The first time it busted the screen door out of its track and we had to labor a bit to get it back in. The second time the door frame remained in place but I made a small tear in the screen. She was not happy.

This reminded me of one from my childhood:

We used to play tag in the church basement before youth activities on wednesday nights. There was a blind corner that led to a 72 inch wide hallway entry that had a sheet of glass on one side and a doorway on the other side. The door was open, and my friend Andy ran right through the glass one week. Then, when they fixed things, they flipped the side that the door was on. He ran through the glass on the other side the next week. Poor kid!

To redeem myself from my door hinge faux pas, here's my idiot story.

My husband and I were coming back from one of our Tunica trips and we stopped to get gas and switch drivers. He started pumping the gas and I went into the store to use the facilities. As I was coming back out he walked by me on his way inside the store and said, "I left the (mumble mumble mumble)" I couldn't hear the last part because he had already walked past me but I figured he said "I left the keys in the car."

I sat down in the driver's seat and cranked the engine, and being the nice wife that I am, I decided to pull the car up to the door to pick him up. I didn't get 2 feet when I heard what sounded like a gunshot behind me.

It turned out he had been telling me, "I left the pump running," and I had pulled the damn hose smack out of the pump as I pulled away, and the noise I heard was it disconnecting and crashing to the ground. The hose was hanging out of the gas tank like a big limp sausage and I was dragging it with me and everyone inside the store was looking at me and pointing and laughing hysterically and my husband just stood there, mortified.

Quote: Wupper

It's time for a little self-deprecating humor.

A few years ago, I decided to replace an exterior door- the one leading from an attached garage to the house. I'm not much of a handyman, but it was a job I figured to handle.

I was home alone (wife out of town with the kids), and I got an early start. I read the instructions carefully, and proceeded through each step without a hitch, constantly double-checking all that I could. After a few hours, I finished the final step (puttying the nail holes in the frame). The project went perfectly!

I cleaned up around the garage, and then reached into my mini-fridge for a beer. I sat in the garage drinking the beer admiring my work. I was really proud of myself.

A few minutes later, I tried to enter the house and my new door was LOCKED! The new keys were safely inside the house. Unable to find a better way in, I grabbed a chisel and started to chip away at the frame to extract the finish nails that were below the surface of the wood. After about four more hours, and more setbacks along the way, the project was finished.

I've never told anyone this story before. It's funny now, but I was really pissed at the time.

Not sure if anyone can top my stupidity, but please share any stories here.

You know what I like most from this story? You were not afraid to post it, thank you for sharing !!!

Ken

Quote: tsmith

To redeem myself from my door hinge faux pas, here's my idiot story.

My husband and I were coming back from one of our Tunica trips and we stopped to get gas and switch drivers. He started pumping the gas and I went into the store to use the facilities. As I was coming back out he walked by me on his way inside the store and said, "I left the (mumble mumble mumble)" I couldn't hear the last part because he had already walked past me but I figured he said "I left the keys in the car."

I sat down in the driver's seat and cranked the engine, and being the nice wife that I am, I decided to pull the car up to the door to pick him up. I didn't get 2 feet when I heard what sounded like a gunshot behind me.

It turned out he had been telling me, "I left the pump running," and I had pulled the damn hose smack out of the pump as I pulled away, and the noise I heard was it disconnecting and crashing to the ground. The hose was hanging out of the gas tank like a big limp sausage and I was dragging it with me and everyone inside the store was looking at me and pointing and laughing hysterically and my husband just stood there, mortified.

Pretty good. Ummmm, I take it the pump had stopped or there would be more to this story?

I believe there's a safety disconnect valve on the pump and the gas stops flowing when the hose is pulled free and the valve is engaged.

I never did ask my husband if the tank got filled.