you’re only human, it’s all right to make mistakes

If you do most things for yourself, eschewing messy decorators, useless contractors, and rip-off garages, then every now and again you are bound to commit one of the classic howlers.  Mistakes you could kick yourself for.  Really stupid mess-ups that leave you thinking; ‘how the hell do I get out of this one…..?’

I might admit to being guilty of some or all of these;

1. Painting yourself into a corner.  You can either walk on it or wait until it dries.
2. Touching a spark-plug lead while the engine is running.  If you’re healthy you’ll just get a terrific jolt, if you have a heart pacemaker you might get dead.
3. Opening the radiator cap on a hot engine.  Getting scalded hurts.
4. Over-tightening a nut so the bolt / stud snaps.  That is likely to be expensive to repair, unless you know how.
5. Sawing off the branch you’re sitting on.  The fall hurts.
6. Sawing off the branch your ladder is leaning against.  The fall hurts.
7. Taking off the bathroom door handle and closing the door while you’re inside, with no way to open the door to get out.
8. Putting up a picture / shelf by hammering a nail / drilling into the wall, and going right through a water pipe.  Flooding is expensive to repair, so is the big hole you’re going to have in the wall.
9. Ditto an electrical cable or gas pipe.
10. Not learning how to use a spirit level and putting up a shelf.

Today I was guilty of #7.  Just as well I took lessons from a master locksmith.

Some say that we learn by our mistakes.  And that necessity is the mother of invention.  All I know is that I can now build, decorate, install, make, repair….. just about anything ~ and I have the scars to prove it.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

I didn’t build that,

but I could