Enjoy DIY Today

I haven't done many refurbishment projects in my life, so when we decided to change our whole flat, i felt overwhelmed at the thought. During the recession my husband found it responsible to do the job ourselves. He wanted an extension building, the works. "It will be fun," he said reassuringly "flat refurbishment is my Thing. All we need to start is a couple of big hammers and a skip." What's the saying, famous last words?

We phoned around and finally came up with the number for the local skip hire. The gentleman on the other side of the phone was very amused when he found out it was for private use and that we plan to do the job ourselves. And when told that we were on the top floor of out block of flats, he laughed, saying there is no way we are going to manage taking all the rubble down to the skip. When we assured him that it's not candid camera, he said in a serious voice: "Your local skip hire company can not take responsibility for any injury or damage to person or persons working with or around the skip. The local skip hire company advises you to call in the professionals and go on vacation while they do the work." We laughed, agreed to the terms and conditions, booked our skip and gave each other a very confident high five.

So, on a sunny winters day in June, we put all our furniture in one room. It looked like a storage, with everything piled up to the roof. We figured we would be done with the braking down part by the end of the day, we could clean up, put all the furniture back and then only move them again as we need to.

Very exited we both ran towards the wall, hard hats in place, safety goggles on and armed like war warriors with our 10 pound hammers. The sound was dull and I could hear that the blow had little effect. We picked up our hammers and tried again.... and again.... Kevin got some paint and plaster down, but Ionly made a crack and my 10 pound hammer started to feel like a 100 pound hammer. Needless to say, we hired someone to do the job while we went on a short 3 day vacation to a spa. At least we got the discount from the professionals because they use the same local skip hire company that we did.