Thread: Don't you hate it when ...

A mate of mine decided to go into the built in wardrobe business many years ago. He was just doing it on the weekends.

His first job involved measuring up the room, purchasing the sheets, cutting up the panels on his new table saw. With his mate and the cordless drills and screws they went to the customer to install the wardrobe.

Unfortunately due to his inexperience he assembled the wardrobe on its back. All the panels fitted perfectly and the customer was very happy with the finished wardrobe. When it came time to stand the wardrobe upright the floor to ceiling wardrobe obeyed the theory of Mr Pythagorus. In other words, he couldn’t stand it up because there was no clearance for the diagonal.

My mate had to disassemble the wardrobe and reassemble it in the upright position. An easy but embarrassing mistake that he doesn’t mind telling the world about – good on him.

- Wood Borer

How's this for a balls-up.

Carefully measured width & height of 2 leadlight window frames on an old Victorian doorframe. Not once, not twice, but thrice...

She who should be obeyed (but never is) spends MANY (and I mean MANY) hours / days / weeks repairing / recreating leadlight to my dimensions...

Time comes to install - guess what - the new windows were 3cm too short !!! (oops says he - and shoots through real quick!)

Luckily, the timber supporting the glass could be removed & raised up by the offending missing 3cm. Problem solved (well not quite) )

Next step was to find some suitable timber to recreate 2 sections of missing beading (120cm x 2)... A quick trip to HOME Hardware, and I had a 3m length that just needed to be hand planed to give a rounded over look (like the originals). And yes, I know - where was my router... Well we aren't talking at the moment. (

Anyway... An hour or so of creating some very fine shavings on the floor (of my mates place - it was his plane) and some hand sanding, I had a reasonable facsimile of the original (circa 1860) beading - complete with 'hand made' imperfections.

So far so good...
Transported said beading 350Km to job site, grabbed old measuring tape (which due to a previous stuff-up was 10cm shorter than when it was made), and proceeded to remeasure the same window frame (just to be sure). 3 times are BOUND to be enough - right? Well not quite...

Off to workshop, beading & tape in hand, measured timber to 130, then remembered the missing 10cm - so marked at 140. Chopped beading on mitre saw & headed back to doorframe... Attempt to insert newly created beading, and what's this? It's too LONG ? (Huh). Oops... Must be a coincidence, it was the 10cm I added. No worries - back to saw, chop 10cm off. NOW it fits !

Grab 2nd (leftover) length to insert into other window, and guess what - this one's 10cm too SHORT !!! (HUH) ? How could I possibly have stuffed this up too ? (I said to myself)... Then realized the timber I purchased was not 3m but 2.4m. If I had measured it correctly just once (and cut once) at 120cm it would have been perfect (and a fluke). But no, in typical fashion, now we have one 'good' bead, and one 110cm with a 10cm join.

Oh well... Now you know why I just bought a new $35 tape measure (left handed) - but that's another story !!!

Regards, Greg.

Oh well Derek old pal I don't feel quite so bad now. Several weekends back I made 3 (THREE) doors for a built in wardrobe, complete with M&T joints and insert panels. Set up homemade jigs for everything, from mortises & tenons,to cutting lengths of stiles and rails. Checked everything and all was ready to go. All three doors look great THEY DON'T BL---Y FIT but they look great.
Somehow I have made them all 15mm out (undersize of course). I guess this is what keeps us coming back and why the timber merchants love us.
Measure twice cut once or was that measure once cut twice?????
As Wongo said "What did I do Wrong?"
Good luck
Bob the BooBoo:confused:

I think the quote you are looking for is

"Measure once, buy twice"