Renovating horror stories

I spent the weekend sanding back a table I had inadvisably painted bright yellow. (I actually wrote about this hue misadventure in my editorial in issue 63.) Underneath the three coats of yellow was another coat of bright orange. Four hours later, in the midst of a tangerine sunset of paint dust, I finally thought, oh this will do. Halfway through the first coat of white paint I realised it wouldn’t really do. But hey. I wasn’t going to sand it back again. 

Talking about my weekend, the Urbis team got chatting about DIY adventures and misadventures. In particular, everyone had a amusing (in hindsight, at least) story about a domestic spat. One of our art directors told how his heavily pregnant wife felt he wasn’t installing the underfloor installation properly, and proceeded in a haze of hormones to crawl on her back under the house in the heat for three hours to tell him how to do it. 

Do you have a renovating horror story? One of those tasks that you thought might take half and hour, and three days later you are still going (taking up vinyl tiles would be ours). Or perhaps builders that went awol? A laid-back partner who transformed into the window-sanding perfectionist?