AFTER NEARLY AN HOUR of "just a little more white, two squirts of blue, a dash of black, perhaps a tad more white," the paint-store clerk got my gallon to the exact shade I wanted. With a sigh of relief, he pounded the lid on."Now what do I do if I need more paint?" I asked.
"Don't come back here," he begged.
WE WERE STAYING at a country resort and became friendly with the handyman. "My neighbor has a nice little cottage for sale, case you're interested," he told us.
Despite its run-down appearance, we fell in love with the place and bought it "as is."
The day we moved in, our new friend dropped by. "You got a good buy, " he admitted. "Cottage needs some work though. Roof leaks, plumbing's shot and the well runs dry in the summer."
Dismayed, I retorted, "Why didn't you tell us that before we bought it?"
"Weren't neighbors then," he replied.
MY PARENTS, who are real do-it-your-selfers, were sprucing up their basement. They picked out bright orange shag carpeting and then spread it over our lawn in order to measure and cut it. The neighbors watched curiously. After a while, the teenage daughter of one neighbor spoke up. "Our family has taken a vote," she said. "I've been elected to tell you that if we have any voice in this, we would prefer you leave your lawn the color it is."
I LOVE TO WORK with wood and decided to carve a rocking horse for our unborn grandchild. As parts of the horse were shaped, my intentions became clear to my next-door neighbor. "You must be about to have a grandchild," he called over to me."Our first," I replied, beaming.
"I have six," he went on. "After the first two, you'll buy something plastic at Wal-Mart."
MY FRIEND JACKIE, a busy mother of five boys, frequently did maintenance jobs on her house. One day, after hours on a ladder painting the upper windows, she complained to her husband that she'd felt dizzy. For her next birthday she received some scaffolding.
A BLONDE, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood. She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for her to do.
"Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?"
The blonde said "How about 50 dollars?"
The man agreed and told her that the paint and ladders that she might need were in the garage.
The man's wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, "Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?"
The man replied, "She should. She was standing on the porch."
A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money.
"You're finished already?" he asked.
"Yes," the blonde answered, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats."
Impressed, the man reached in his pocket for the $50.
"And by the way," the blonde added, "that's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari."
"Sorry," the garage owner apologized. "I didn't think your car would last nay longer than that."
AFTER A TWO-WEEK VACATION, a man returned to his office and one of his fellow workers asked him what kind of time he'd had.
"I spent the whole two weeks helping my wife paint the rooms in our house," he groaned.
"Does she do that often?"
"Well," he replied, "when we moved in a few years ago, the guest room was nine by twelve. Now it's eight by eleven!"
A GUY WALKS INTO the local NAPA store and asks "can I get a wiper blade for a Yugo"?
The clerk replies, "Sounds like a good trade to me".
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR OIL
- Women:
- Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 since the last oil change.
- Drink a cup of coffee.
- 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.
- Men:
- Go to O'Reilly auto parts and write a check for 50 dollars for oil, filter, oil lift (AKA kitty litter), hand cleaner and scented tree.
- Discover that the used oil container is full. Instead of taking it back to O'Reilly to recycle, dump in hole in back yard.
- Open a beer and drink it.
- Jack car up. Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.
- Find jack stands under kid's pedal car.
- In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
- Place drain pan under engine.
- Look for 9/16 box end wrench.
- Give up and use crescent wrench.
- Unscrew drain plug.
- Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil; get hot oil on you in process.
- Clean up.
- Have another beer while oil is draining.
- Look for oil filter wrench.
- Give up; poke oil filter with Phillips screwdriver and twist it off.
- Beer.
- Buddy shows up; finish case with him. Finish oil change tomorrow.
- Next day, drag pan full of old oil out from underneath car.
- Throw oil lift (AKA kitty litter) on oil spilled during step 18.
- Beer. No, drank it all yesterday.
- Walk to 7-11; buy beer.
- Install new oil filter making sure to apply thin coat of clean oil to gasket first.
- Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
- Remember drain plug from step 11.
- Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
- Hurry to replace drain plug before the whole quart of fresh oil drains onto floor.
- Slip with wrench and bang knuckles on frame.
- Bang head on floor board in reaction.
- Begin cussing fit.
- Throw wrench.
- Cuss for additional 10 minutes because wrench hit Miss December(1992) in the left boob.
- Clean up; apply Band-Aid to knuckle.
- Beer.
- Beer.
- Dump in additional 4 quarts of oil.
- Beer.
- Lower car from jack stands.
- Accidentally crush one of the jack stands.
- Move car back to apply more oil lift (AKA kitty litter) to fresh oil spilled during step 23.
- Drive car.
While trying to change a washer on a tap, he went up into the loft to look for the stop-crock and disconnected two pipes, flooding the house. He later returned to the loft to look for the television aerial and crashed through the ceiling, showering plaster on his wife who was ironing.
When he wanted to lay a carpet in the bedroom, he knocked out the light bringing the roll of material into the house. He cut a large hole in the carpet rather than move the bed. Andrews once blacked both his eyes when a wheel brace slipped as he tried to change a punctured tire on the couple’s car.He ruined a kitchen work surface by trimming off so much of it to make it fit that it ended up far too small. In his hands the electric drill becomes a dangerous weapon. He cut his leg badly when he dropped the drill as he tried to rehang a broken garden gate. Then, while trying to put up a coat rack in the hall, he drilled through an electric cable sending out sparks that set fire to the curtains.
This made him more safety conscious. When he decided to put some speakers on the walls he turned off the electricity. Then, unable to understand why his electric drill had stopped working, he took it apart to see if he could fix the fault. Having failed to find anything wrong with it, he tried to put it back together again but by then he had forgotten where all the pieces went. He went out and bought another drill and was about to take it back because it didn’t work when his wife arrived home and reminded him that he had turned off the electricity.
Mrs Andrews, a job training manager, said she had had enough. "Chris will have a go at absolutely anything," she said. "But in his case DIY stands for Dangerously Incompetent Yob’."
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