Successes and Failures, Part 2

Today some failures WITH Successes...

When I moved here 30 years ago, there were some things lacking.  One of which were towel racks and toilet paper holders in the bathrooms.  So I bought some decent wood ones and installed them myself.  Some have come loose over the years.  I put up with a lot of minor stuff that is not perfect (there are only so many hours in a day for maintenance) but the main bathroom TP holder finally got so loose it demanded attention.

Image my shock when I discovered that (30 years ago) I had simply put screws into drywall!  OK, I know I wasn't "Harry Homemaker" back then.  Dad was a very talented D-I-Yer, but never involved us boys in his projects (well, quite frankly, he couldn't teach worth a damn and had no patience for helpers who didn't already know what to do).  But I didn't remember I was THAT stupid to try to hold things to drywall with regular wood screws!  The wonder is that they held for so long.

So I put in drywall anchors (ribbed plastic cones you pound into a hole and then the screw expands them tightly).  To be extra good about it, I squeezed some glue into the holes first.  The new attachments should outlast me.

The next complete failure is going to take a professional to fix.  There is a reason professionals hate amateurs.  Amateurs do really stupid things that "make sense at the time".  Well, I had some loose bathtub tiles.  And I had this can of spray insulation that hardened to "waterproof".  Seemed like a good thing to use.

The stuff does penetrate deeply while liquid.  What I didn't realize was that the spray foam expands before hardening.  Yeah, I blew out a dozen tiles all around the faucet.  In fact, no tile repairman will touch the job.  And the bathroom restoration people consider it too small a job.  I'm between a rock and a hard place...

I might actually have to damage the tile wall worse to get anyone to fix it.  I've done some really stupid things before (raise your hands if you haven't), but that qualifies as one of the dumbest! * Right now, I have a plastic trash bag taped over the loosened tiles so that shower water doesn't get into the walls.
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* The really dumbest was when I had a car towed to a dealership when I was 21 and being broke, I decided to walk home.  I didn't realize I lived 10 miles away.  And then I had to walk BACK to the dealership 2 days later to be shown an engine crankcase full of tar.  "Oh, you need to add oil".  Gee thanks Dad for not teaching me that stuff.  ("Do you know how to fix this? [to me at 15].  "Then don't bother me")...

The engine was completely destroyed.  I spent a year struggling with buses before I could buy a crappy used car.