General: DIY Disaster stories needed by Monday, September 25th

Wanted to pass this along to housebloggers...a GREAT opportunity to get some new readers for your houseblog!



Plus, seriously, I think we can top these stories. :)



This is Keith Pandolfi from This Old House magazine. I am wondering if you'd like to help me out with a story I'm writing for our January isssue titled "Great Moments in DIY History." It's basically a tongue & cheek awards thing with entries sort of like this: The "Gone, Daddy, Gone" Award: While giving his father a guided tour of his very first-ever remodeling project, TOH Contributing Editor Mark Feirer pointed out a just-installed skylight. "Dad obligingly looked up," Feirer recalls. "Unfortunately, he didn't notice that, at the same time, I had deftly stepped around a still-open crawlspace hatch. In a moment, he was off the floor-and down the hole." The "Making Lemons into Lemon-Aid" Award: Cleveland, Ohio resident Joe Jancsurak was scrubbing his charcoal grate in a laundry room sink when he was suddenly distracted by his two young daughters playing in the yard. "They looked like they were having so much fun that I decided to go outside and join them," says Jancsurak. Thing is, he forgot to turn off the water in the plugged-up sink. flooding his laundry room, adjacent kitchen, living room and family room. "Thankfully," he says, "our homeowners policy covered the cost of new flooring and carpeting, so my disaster ended up being a home improvement." The "Coulda Been Wayyy Worse" Award: While installing a window air-conditioning unit, Patty Collins and her sister-each mistakenly thinking the other one had a firm grip on the unit-dropped it out of a third-story window. After the worst crashing sound you could ever imagine, they heard the words: "Whoa. Cool!" When they nervously looked out the window to assess the damage, they found a group of young men playing basketball just about 5 feet away from where the AC landed. We'd like to hear about some goofs that you may've made during your renovation-especially things that went wrong due to, say, absent mindedness, not knowing enough or cutting corners. Let me know if you have anything to add. We would, of course, mention your blog in the story.



You can send your story to Keith Pandolfi at This Old House magazine.



To: Keith_Pandolfi@timeinc.com

Subject line: Houseblogger DIY Disaster Story

I guess it's only funny when no one gets hurt. This is a stereotype about DIYers that one gets in over your head and look at the crazy zany screwup- ha ha ha. Honestly, we've never had anything remotely dangerous happen in our work. We are VERY careful and use all safety precautions- goggles, respirators, gloves, ladder stabilizers etc... If something is beyond us, we get outside help.

Handyman Magazine sometimes has funny anecdotes but usually they involve cleaning up a mess rather than a near miss with death. I can understand your point.

I actually sent them a cute story about one of our dogs, who as a puppy fell down a hole in the wall into the basement.

CPDay, we have this same problem with our stories. They all seem to involve someone going to the hospital or someone nearly going to the hospital. I'll just list them below, by injury:

Dad fell off the roof. (after much physical therapy, he's been great for 22 years)
Dad caught fire. (ditto, but with skingrafts, 24 years)
I electrocuted myself - age 3. (no hospitalization required, but it was a darn good thing that we'd installed a circuit breaker)
Mom bitten by Brown Recluse that fell down the back of her workshirt. (she still has a scar - 20 years on)

And, of course, there was my uncle who was actually killed in an accident on one of his jobsites (he was an architect and professional restoration contractor until his death in 1976).

I fail to see the funny here, too. But it may just be our family history.

OTOH, there are some very old family stories about my great-grandfather, after he'd been forced to retire (after WW2), being called in to consult on some jobsites. He actually walked up to one framed-in house, tapped it with a hammer, and knocked it over (my mom saw the whole thing from his car), then told the guys on the work crew how to put it back up so it would be sound.

That is a funny story, but nobody got hurt, and it's not about renovation.

Maybe it's my family heritage, but "near miss" stories have always been told around the dining room table as edutainment. Not always funny (as in ha HA!) but always educational in a "learn from my mistakes" kind of way.

If someone tells me, "always make sure that someone has at least one hand gripping the air conditioner when you are installing it," I might think, "Well, duh!" I'd go on my merry way and never retain the advice. However, reading the story about the "near miss" that the two women had will remain with me longer and might even come in handy when I'm thinking through the process of installing my own window A/C unit.

Why does this work? Well, the research of Renate and Geoffrey Caine suggests that the process of making sense of experiences--even someone else's experiences--enhances learning, retention and connections. (Sorry, remember the geekiness of which I've spoken before? Yes, welcome to Brain-Based Learning, the topic of my graduate school thesis.) So, a common device used in many cultural learning styles is the sharing of these types of "near miss" stories. Often people will even employ "not so near miss" stories in order to pass along information, too, though those are not remotely entertaining, IMHO. (Ah, the memories of the film Red Asphalt, which my drivers ed teacher thought would be good for us. Yech.) These types of stories might be called cautionary tales or teaching stories if they are based in real life. Fables and parables can be partly or wholly fictitious and used for the same purpose.

I like to employ the benefit of the doubt, so I'm imagining that TOH is collecting the same types of cautionary tales that have been swapped around the dining room table, watercooler or woodworking shop for decades.

I'm not proud of the lessons learned while I have been working on this house, but if talking about them or reflecting on them out loud helps others to avoid my mistakes, I'm happy to oblige.

Are you still looking for submissions? It sounds like I missed the deadline.

Yes, please keep sending your submissions. My deadline has been extended until next week.
Thanks,
Keith

I don't subscribe to TOH.  Is the article online?

Oh, crap.  My ex-landlord probably reads that mag.  I wonder what the statute of limitations is on something like this.



I didn't know that my real name was gonna be used but, what the heck, we could all use some humility from time to time.  For those who don't know the story, this is it:



www.brooklynrowhouse.com/node/98



You'd think if I was the winner they could at least send me a comp copy.

I stopped by Lowes today and picked up that TOH mag.   The author apparently misunderstood that I knew exactly what I was doing: delivering a little payback to a troublesome landlord.  So I won in the wrong category.  I should have won Tenant From Hell.