Luke

We've lived in our house for about 15 years now. During that time whenever we've gone to do any DIY or have any building work done we discover some absolute balls-up that was perpetrated by a previous owner in the name of DIY. From the time we were having the bathroom refitted and discovered the false ceiling had no insulation above it and a hole in the roof (which explains why it was so cold!). Also in the bathroom they'd knocked a hole in the wall for the wastepipe and done so by just removing 3 bricks and leaving it like that. Or when we went to have our kitchen extension done and discovered that someone had filled the whole of the kitchen floor in with concrete, which encased a load of the pipes, rather than try to properly put down a floor. Or the ventilation brick at the front of the house was just for display and not ventilating anything. The list goes on and on.

The last room left in the house to do any work on was our bedroom. We'd had the plaster skimmed and decorated then the next thing was getting new flooring put down. The guys came on Friday and started ripping up the old soundproofing boards that was nailed to the floorboards. However whoever had fitted them hadn't used tacks and had used full length nails. Which shouldn't be a problem but when one board came up suddenly there was a wet patch and water on the floorboards. Turns out a nail had been hammered into a water pipe for the heating system and sat there for all those years. We ripped the floorboards up there and grabbed towels and bowls to stem the flow then dashed to a neighbour that used to be a plumber but is now on furlough. He quickly got the radiators drained and the replaced the damaged section of pipe. God knows what we would have done without him. Well I do know: spend a fortune on an emergency plumber and have had to wait ages for them to arrive. Astoundingly during the time the nail was in there there had been no leak (as the there were no signs below where it was of water damage) but the floorboards there were really rotten so it seems some moisture had been escaping.

The flooring guys left for the day as they laid lino and didn't replace floorboards. Which left us in a pickle as we'd completely cleared our bedroom but putting everything into our son's room so both those rooms were out of action. We'd gone from a 3 bed to a 1 bed house! My wife decided she'd sort the floorboards out (we have an agreement not to do DIY together due to too many past arguments). Off she went to the local timber merchants with one of the removed floorboards. They were great, worked out what we needed and confirmed delivery for 7 days time. 7 DAYS?? To her credit she didn't burst into tears but almost did and they took pity and delivered the wood within 20 hours of ordering it. The next day (Saturday) my wife and a good friend of ours spent the day cutting and fitting new floorboards (using a circular saw borrowed from another neighbour). I was general gopher and made tea, tidied up, carried things up and downs stairs etc.

Job is a good'un but sadly the flooring people can't come until Wednesday to put the new floor down. So the sofabed for us for a few more nights. So grateful to have friends and neighbours that came through and helped us out; we also had various other offers of help we didn't take up.