[Closed] Little jobs that escalate quickly

did you find the lost socket? 🤪

bobbyspangles

did you find the lost socket? 🤪

Bet it was a 10mm

My missis bought some new stainless steel bath and sink plugs once.

They came with wastes somewhat surprisingly.

That escalated into a new bathroom, including floors and tiling.

The last task I completed was to drop a cold chisel into the sink while putting my tools away. 🙄

I have a feeling this is all going to end with a severed finger wrapped in a tea towel and a visit to A&E.

Normally anything my wife starts that has a 'can you just' question in it.

Which turns into, 'i can, but I'd need to do that, that, that thing, and also that, to get it done'

Nearly always met with 'itll not take long' and away goes my weekend

"the washing machine is making a little noise" she said...
https://flic.kr/p/eixTya

Don't talk to me about losing 10mm sockets.
My beautiful halfraufs professional 1/4 drove socket set is missing the 10mm.
I dropped it between the rad and air con condenser undoing a bonnet catch on a mates car.
He promised to replace it as i was doing him a favour when his bonnet released cable failed.
Its still not been replaced years later

Could you just.
3 little words
If you say it faster the job wpnt take as long. Fact.

Didn't someone on here start with a little job on their Defender that morphed into a full nut-and-bolt rebuild?

This table what I done did started as 'would you be able to slightly extend the top on a table my husband made years ago?'
I must be a good salesman 😊

Not sure if they've binned the husband's table...

“the washing machine is making a little noise” she said…

Was it "daddy, please stop"?

I had a 1970s gas fire. I wanted a new one.

The fire and the back boiler were interlinked, to replace the fire I'd need a new boiler.

A new combi boiler would be incompatible with the "one-pipe" system, I'd have to replace all the plumbing.

Replacing the pipework, I should get new radiators throughout.

Whilst everything is in bits, the red and black rubber-insulated Victorian wiring is long overdue a rewire.

Total bill running at about 10k at this point, then I need to plaster and redecorate the entire place.

I wanted a new gas fire. I replaced it by leaving it alone and moving house instead.

Ever tried to patch old crumbling plaster?

Almost any plumbing related job in my experience…
And usually involves quite a bit of swearing

Ever tried to patch old crumbling plaster?

Evostik spray contact adhesive.. Blow out any dust or loose, then give it a liberal coating. Allow to dry and fill with plaster.

Glue soaks in and stabilizes it.

My house was built in 1895 and a few people have had a go at DIY in that time. I've yet to have a job that hasn't become massively more complicated when started. Most of this was when we moved in but we still find issues.

Move a light switch - turned out the wiring was quite old (cloth wrapped cables?). We had a downstairs light in the toilet that only came on if you had the kitchen and utility room lights on?

We had a problem with the oven and when we pulled it out it was fed gas with a rubber hose, which had partially melted - turns out this should have been metal.

Pave the back yard - we found the sewer pipe was a mixture of cast iron, clay and plastic in 2ft lengthd. Except the cast iron was nearly gone and the clay cracked.

Rotten sill on the back door. The joists extended under the door and were rotten?! Floor up and about 4ft repaired before we fell through it.

Bit of damp in the bedroom - quick prod and 6ft of cornice fell down along with some of the ceiling.

Got a chimney sweep in - removed 6 (six) rubble sacks of soot, clay pots and a few dead birds.

That and any quick job on a bike the night before a ride.

Mother in law asked me to check over her e bike just to check all is ok and can i fix any issues

5 mins later i find that 3 spokes are broken which she had no idea about, nobody knows when they snapped thus resulting in the rim rubbing on the brake block so much that the bike is covered in brake dust, the rim's wear indicator in the rubbing spot has completely disapeared and the rim is concaved in that area!

Just ordered a new rim, spokes and new brake blocks, will have to drive to her house on my way to work to collect the bike and then once ive rebuilt the wheel and checked the whole bike over ill have to drive it back to her which is really annoying as i like to ride to work everyday and detest using the car for work (car is only used for fun drives and driving to MTB spots)

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Everything in this house escalates

Ever tried to patch old crumbling plaster?

I swear I have PTSD from my living room. One wall was so bad I had to strip it back to brick. The dot and dab that replaced it is about 6" out from the wall in one corner. It can ****ing stay like that.

It's actually that bad I want to move house just to get away from it and that was 5 years ago. In fact that skirting still isn't finished.

Just like today, we have turfed half the garden on our doer upper house, today started turning the soil for the second part. Previously we have found a brick foundation 3 bricks deep where the flowerbeds wanted to go and thought we’d seen the end of the madness.

Nope, I get digging and discover a yellow GAS plastic pipe (our village doesn’t and never has had Gas) 🤣 so anyway we’ve covered it up, then I found a tarmac platform around 6 inches below the surface….

This all took time to do and was just meant to be a quick soil turning job 🤣

I decided to help mini 10 rebuild the Lego models he'd disassembled completely and dropped into his Lego box.

The garage is painted but now I have to put everything back but clean and in the right place apparently.
The previous definition of 'right place' was simple, the nearest surface. This is no longer correct and also need to clear the work surfaces of 20 years of dust, bolts, fixings and screws that might be useful later. Everything except the dust should be carefully suited in the correct place so I can find it again if I need it.
Still haven't found the 10mm socket I originally dropped but have found 3 others and a second grass strimmer

Cycling from Prestatyn train station to Dyserth via Gwaenysgor. 😉

Just thinking about the loss of a 10mm socket probably the most common used one, I'd be distraught if I lost my one from my orange box Bahco 1/4 set bought for £20 about 15 years ago. One of the best tool purchase ever for me and I buy loads of tools

A friend was getting rid of their range oven, we'd always wanted a range oven but it wouldn't fit in the existing gap. Out with a cupboard, and then the rest of the kitchen, new units and sink back in

Our last house had a problem with ants in the kitchen. The kill them with ant powder approach escalated into breaking out the 1920s concrete floor, putting a new DPC in along with a joisted floor, full under floor insulation and expensive laminate.

I once went to replace one brake pipe on my Cinquecento. It ended up being off the road for 18months while I persuaded a much bigger engine, a different management system, multi point injection and a 6 speed gearbox to go back in.

This house! I moved in around 1983 ish I think, with the intention of fully refurbing it room by room. First time was mostly just a quick redecorate to make it basically habitable. It stayed like that for quite a few years then I eventually got my finger out and the rooms gradually started to get a refurb with sometimes long gaps in between(think in terms of decades). It has never been in a fully completed state at any one time, some rooms have had their second refurb since due to my cheap bodging at the first effort. Still got two rooms to go at before it will be complete. Actually one of them is half done, as it has been for the last five years! I often refer to it as my lifes work :-(.

Nearly forgot, the garden needs completely redoing as well!

Edit: Probably in the wrong thread, I just re-read the title and it has the word quickly in it.

Bathroom had a new fan fitted with a butterfly, so wanted to take off the old gravity flap from the outside vent to help with airflow.

Thought it would be a very quick job, but swiftly realised a few things were awry:

- Bathroom fitters did not re-connect the old vent hose so warm air going into the cavity
- Old vent cowl was only stuck on with silicone as the outside skin is not stable enough at the top to drill where the holes are
- Loose brick at the top could be waggled and a few others are also in a bad state
- New fan hole is ~15mm lower than previous, which meant the duct fouled the butterfly valve and does not slope outwards.

So had a panic, bit of a swear, took off the butterfly vent, connected the old hose, bodged in mortar to hold the loose brick and stuck it back on. 🤷‍♂️

Resigned myself to next year having to get a builder in to repair the loose bricks and in all likelihood brick up the hole before piloting from the inside and using a core drill from the outside. 🤬

https://flic.kr/p/2noBqeW

Living room wall in the house we are in now. Had some 80s fake brick hardboard panelling. Thought it would be easy enough to take that down and just paper the wall. Once the panelling was down it revealed striped blue velvet wallpaper. Started stripping that off and plaster started coming off in lumps. Ended up taking the whole wall back to bare brick and also opened up the old arched fireplace which had been bricked up when the back boiler was put in.

“the washing machine is making a little noise” she said…

Not anymore. Job done.

Last house needed constant renovation. It was lovely but the list was never-ending and I was thinking we should get a builder in to gut it and start again, with added insulation. Whilst I was contemplating financing this, my neighbour asked if she could buy a bit of our garden. Without considering what I was saying, I said ‘I’d love to but working out a price is really difficult. Would you like to buy the whole house?’. We now live elsewhere.

We now live elsewhere

Yeah France! That was a right result. And TBF, quite an escalation.

1812 house... pretty much every job ever that has been done here escalates.

First example, replacing a single mains socket in the lounge turned into relocating the wall mounted lights and rewiring the entire light and mains circuit for the room (yeah, floors up in the upstairs rooms to gain access) complete with numerous cable chases then some replastering and repainting the entire room.

Sweeping the chimney resulted in the liner falling down in pieces which escalated into a replacement boiler which then meant a replumb of ~50% of the pipework with a new water tank and replacement valve / control widgetry. Oh and the thermostate needed wiring in with cables chased and all the rest of it. Oh, and four new rads because some were shot.

Don't mention the shed, fixing the roof escalated into tearing down the entire brick built horror and completely replacing it with a wood built shed.

There's more but you get the idea.

My advice - if it hasn't fallen down - don't touch it.

All my "quick" jobs usually start with, "can we just. . ." ? Herself has had management training and describing what is needed to do the job properly is usually a surprise.

The latest fence was one of those "quick jobs" where I pointed out that the post spacing whilst ok for chainlink was a bit wide for featheredge and cant rail.

Every.Single.Job