I don't know about weird, but mine has been decidedly pungent of late...
andytherocketeer - Member
Also have some mysterious things in my current place.1 light just inside the front door that appears to be permanently wired to live mains. Only been here 10 years, and never found the appropriate switch. Currently fixed by having a bulb half screwed in, but not making contact.
this would be a better bodge to fix that mate - ww.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sound-Control-Activated-Light-Bulb-E27-Base-/251014278429?pt=UK_Light_Bulbs&hash=item3a719ded1d
the entire kitchen in this house was painted in tangerine gloss.
i mean the walls, ceiling, welsh dresser, doors, kitchen units, everything bar the quarry tiles on the floor.
took me ages to deal with that- couldn't paint over and it was two thick coats that had to be scraped and sanded off. the dresser went in my dads caustic tank though and is beautiful
Anyone else checking this thread for any memories from their, er, formative years in DIY? 🙂
Fotunately nothing found...
..The plumber who first tried to do the bathroom in my missus house managed to fit the bath the wrong way round so the drain went uphill and non of the tiles sealed.
Not sure I understand that one ?
The top rim of a bath is level (or at least it should be if its fitted right) so it makes no odds which way round it's fitted
And the drain can be at either end too.
Unless you mean he fitted it upside down, in which case, yes that may cause some issues 🙂
@jonah tonto: will check the ebay link later from home, but sound activated could be interesting. Just glad that here everything is E27 rather than bayonet.
Anyone know how useful those mains wire detectors are? mainly, how deep in to walls to they detect live wires? on the other side of the wall is an external light that's obviously on a circuit for the communal areas of the apartment block. And yes I have checked that my perma-light is not connected to communal leccy (would have been a handy source of free power). Don't intend doing any work, but would be handy to know what goes where.
Anyone else checking this thread for any memories from their, er, formative years in DIY?Fotunately nothing found...
Nope, I'm checking it in fear of what I might find in the house I've just bought (it's in need of a lot of work) 😯 😯
Well, I bought a house that belonged to a builder ...
All expelairs vented into the attic space
The bidet / bathroom stuff wasn't attached to the floor
The roof was only held on by 4 nails (and the weight of the roof, obviously) - we found out when we had an extension build.
When we had a new carpet fitted and the grip stip was nailed down, it rupture the central heat pipes going to the radiators - as they were only 2 mm below the concrete.
The roof has been made from an assortment of timber liberated from building sites
The was no external vent for the boiler ( BTW we rectified that- after 8 years)
All this was pointed out by the builder who did our extension - he did a really good job. But left a 30cm gap between the joins between the two roofs - I alway wondered why it sounded like there were birds walking around in the roof space ...
The roof has been made from an assortment of timber liberated from building sites
You should see our roof - built in early 1800's, let's just say the word 'straight' doesn't feature very prominently.
Have we had this one yet?
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The (in)famous Oxford 'shark' house 😉
100!
Move house 11 months ago and started to strip the wallpaper off a bedroom (future library) and found that someone had skimmed the walls over wallpaper and it all crumbled away. A 2 day job to strip the wallpaper turned into a 2 week project before i could put new paper up.
All expelairs vented into the attic space
Is that necessarily a bad thing?
ive had a house full of plug sockets in skirting board flush with the floor so you cant put a plug in..
[i]Is that necessarily a bad thing?[/i]
Very...expelling warm/moist air into the attic will cause condensation, long term could cause damp issues. Even opening the loft hatch can cause short term condensation.
someone carpeted over this
i think it was faeces, im not sure what went on in this bedroom, im not sure i want to know
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in the kitchen they built their own window sill, there was a whole breakfast bar made out of the same shit, i cannot find the pics, also the kitchen diner floor was raised 6 inches on wood and ply, then floor tilled over, 😐
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water feed for the bathroom, runnig up the inside of a boxed in tiled section on the kitchen, clearly found a box of piping and fitting
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everyone drills an RSJ for a speaker wire
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electric feed for a built in microwave (i say built in, they took out a section of supporting wall, put in a 60cm RSJ and slipped the microwave under it)
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Very...expelling warm/moist air into the attic will cause condensation, long term could cause damp issues. Even opening the loft hatch can cause short term condensation.
Aren't lofts ventilated? Mine is.
mine isnt, the previous owed filled EVERY SINGLE GAP with expanding foam including between the joists
the attic,
expanding foam in all the gaps, - its had velux windows put in, and there is no cross members up there, we guess it was being used as a 5th bedroom as it has a strip light, a bunch of socket plugs on an extension and had a poly pipe feed for a radiator, although a radiator was not present, however it has no permanent stairs, its just a timber loft ladder
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A friends house back when I was a student had a light that couldn't be switched off - not a case of the switch not working, there was no switch. At the same time my shared house was one that had be sub-divided into flats at one time then merged back into a house, so we had three separate jerry-rigged plumbing systems using a weird array toilet cisterns as header tanks. When we first moved in a radiator fell off the wall (literally within minutes of getting the keys) sending plumes of oil black water up the walls. The heating used one of these cisterns as a header tank (perched tantalisingly out of reach over the stairs) so as the water jetted out it kept refilling. This prompted a rapid search of the 4 story house for stop cocks. We finally found one that stopped the cistern but in our panic had found and turned off stopcocks that in the following two years we never found again so we had sinks and a shower that were out of action from that day forward
More recently I took the plaster board off my brothers kitchen wall as I helped him renovate to find the wiring behind had been joined by twisting the bare ends together and sticking them into wet plaster on the backs of the boards
ive had a house full of plug sockets in skirting board flush with the floor so you cant put a plug in..
Take the fronts off. Rotate 180 degrees, and refit.
Not exactly ideal, but it works just fine 🙂
that spray foam must have cost a fortune? surely its cheaper to just whack some rock wool up?
my mate bought an old house , needs rewired.
he is going to dry line the external walls also .
im currently working hard on convincing him not to cheap out by running all the new wiring on the drylined walls as all the internals are brick and will need chasing like i spent my whole Xmas holidays doing last year and most of the rest of the year making it good again between offshore trips.
otherwise hes gonna end up with light switches in stupid places and plug sockets all in really inconvienant places.
loving the "b*llocks to kingspan" loft conversion
microwave feed - maybe could use that spare earth to bond the water pipes.
In the search for our first flat some years ago, Mrs Tyred and I saw some curious things. Winner by a country mile though was a tenement flat in the south side of Glasgow (nice, popular area) that we were shown round by a friend of the owner.
Everything was normal until you reached the lounge, which was generously proportioned with a high ceiling and bay window, commonplace in that type of building.
Only difference was the guy had constructed some kind of large indoor shed in the middle of the room - four stud walls, painted plasterboard, no windows, artexed ceiling of some kind (maybe 2/3 the height of the room itself), carpet nailed to the walls inside, complete with vertical chimney pipe straight into the ceiling. "This is where he likes to come and do his music" was the explanation. It just sat there like some weird giant box, with a few feet of space on each side, into which he'd crammed normal lounge furniture.
We squeezed around all that to reach the kitchen, which had a curiously heavy door. "That's actually a ship's door you know," remarked our guide. Behind it, the small galley kitchen looked like a Salvador Dali surrealist work - everything plastic (handles, cupboard facades, light fittings, oven knobs etc) had been melted to varying degrees and the ceiling was black. "He's had one or two fires over the years I think" mused the friend.
Aye cheers pal, we'll let you know.
Mine are minor compared to these.
My parents recently asked me to have a look at the extractor fan in there downstairs toilet which had stopped working - in the middle of the house with no external walls. House built early 80's. Extractor had no pipe on the back and it occurred to me I'd never noticed any vent on the outside walls. Sure enough it was just venting into the ceiling.
Dirtyrider that could of been a growing room
Agree with Pigface
There was a power cut at my wife's previous house, it was an old Victorian 3 story house, 2 floors were in darkness, the 3rd floor seemed unaffected.
