Laying loft insulation.
Itchy, hot, itchy, cramped, itchy, small spaces, banged head, itchy, coughy...down right horrible.
But finally, (only 18 months after finishing building the house!) I've just got around to finishing rolling out the last 170mm of mineral wool insulation through half the loft. Id given up half way through the job over a year ago. But my TV signal is fubarred so had to go up to waggle the coat-hanger around anyway. And that's not helped so time for the pros to come and diagnose 🙁
So what's the worst DIY job you've done?
pulling down old lathe and plaster ceilings.
Watching someone trying to unblock a drain using one of those compressor jobbies that drive pneumatic drills. Sh1t everywhere I tells you.
oooh, yeah. Done that too in the old house (lath & plaster, not shit bombing) . Fortunately it was only a small section to fit a loft ladder hatch. Wouldn't want to do a whole room.
un-blocking a toilet when the plunger thing doesnt work
I guess I shouldn't post this then Stoner: http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/bristol/paul-o-brien-solar-installations/5824426?nlp=&CID=UK_CRM_1_0_0_138&a=15
£19 to supply and install your loft insulation.....
Worse job so far is clearing the drains where the previous people had left a cover off and it had grown over, 3 sets of drain rods connected together's worth of blockage and hundreds of litres of shit backed up.
Only found the uncovered manhole by the fountain of shit halfway down the garden, which got to around 5ft high when I cleared one side of the inspection bay........
Wasn't nice doing the other half either.
Changing the leaky waste pipe seal on the toilet. Now that was seriously unpleasant.
pulling down old lathe and plaster ceilings.
This, I've done an entire top floors worth. The house seems to have a permanent layer of black dust, no matter how much I clean.
Blocked macerator. 8m of compressed faeces. Living the dream.
ceilings here, though crawling underfloor in my last victorian flat to do the CH pipes was a close second.
Another vote for cable runs through the underfloor - about 1ft clearance in my current home, not helped by my headtorch failing at the furthest point.
I did pull the hardboard covering the kitchen fireplace off at our old place.
there was sheet of iron covering the bottom of the chimney with a hole where the pipe from the old range would have gone in.
I tapped the plate with a hammer and the whole thing gave way.
It must have had about 8inches of soot on top of it 🙁
It really was like Laurel and Hardy - I was covered in it and the whole kithchen was under about an inch of soot.
My wife did the decent thing and laughed.
Oh and shovelling the rubble from my place to make this, wasn't fun either:
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Got another 20 or 30 tons worth now, but almost at the end of wheelbarrowing now.
Recessing sockets and light switches in lathe and plaster. Trying to do this without disturbing the surrounding plaster is a total PITA
sanding , filling and staining windows ..... i have my whole house to do asap..... before they get any worse !
Sat like a shiver cat, fixing a slate roof in the middle of a thunderstorm, watching the stapppings to my ladder work lose and the ladder disappearing from view!
Before mobile phones, in a remote welsh village, stuck for 4 hours, cold wet, p... off, never again 😉
richc, if you did that by hand, top respect...
Stoner, how's stoner jr? All ok?
Laying my kitchen floor, it was the work of Sisyphus.
All of the above at one time or another..!
All by hand (although had some help), with shovels and a wheelbarrow. A digger and dumper moved it the last 300 meters into a lane though as its up quite a steep hill!
Thats all the render, plaster and lath, plaster and some floor from a five bedroom house that I've been completely renovating.
We are at best guessimate 110 tons of rubble so far ......
[i]110 tons of rubble[/i]
that's nearly a whole house worth.
is the photo facing the other way of a solitary wall?
Nothing will come close to this...
We're taking over my folks place at the end of the month, its an old mill that they converted about 20 years ago - but never took out the original Threshing Machine. Number one job, and the room's above floor was built directly on to it.
For those who don't quite know the size of the problem, this is a Threshing Machine:
Imagine the wheels removed to be replaced by brick pillers and you get the idea.
Yes, its up against a wall that around 9 to 10ft high (freestanding)
That rubble pile has gone as I was worried it was going to push to wall over (it was braced on the other side though!)
Removing half a century of multiple layers of painted woodchip wallpaper from a house that used to belong to a smoker.
I'm helping a mate dismantle a nuclear power plant - just the 2 of us.
with a spoon?
TJ is getting rid of the reactor at last is he?
Old insulation removal at my first house. Loose fill vermiculite or similar that had to come out before flooring out the centre of the loft. No under tile felt in place and the prevailing wind from the sea had to pass the old power station there was 50 plus years of blown soot from before clean air act time under the loose fill. I went through 5 sets of disposable tyvek boiler suits getting it all out. Best of all was the huge has of nesting material in one corner full of old crap and feathers.
I was further encouraged by the thought of putting the new rock wool in afterwards as well.
At this house we hauled up the old broken concrete drive to get ready for the new paving one and wondered why the soil was all slimy. Turned out the DIY genius before me had cracked the clay soil pipe underground and then attempted to seal it with a couple of hundredweight of concrete with waterproofing additive. Thank god for Wickes holding supplies of clay pipe adaptors on a Saturday afternoon.
Personal worst was finding out that I'm claustrophobic in the crawl space under my floorboards.
Crawling under the floor to run a TV cable and finding bare electrical wires from a previous owner.
Like this, but with less head room.
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Every six months unscrewing the trap under the shower and removing a gopping, stinking slug about a foot long of Mrs Gti's hair, mixed with scum, grease, dirt and all kinds of other stinking stuff. It makes me heave.
hand down the drain the other day to clean it out is pretty nasty.
The same but under the floor. Knock a hole in the wall, dig a trench under the floor to make enough space to move (Great Escape tactics). Fit insulation and make up a wooden frame to hold it in place. After one roll of fibre glass I changed to [b]recycled polyester[/b] which is the answer to insulating miseries.
at 9pm on christmas eve my Dad asked me to help fit the towel rail he had as a replacement for a leaky one. Just as we were doing up noticed a little steam. Pipe fitting behind the tiled wall was leaking piping hot water, checked we had spare tiles smashed 2 off filled with a towel. No hope of getting a spanner on it so went off to cut up spanners and reweld in a config that would fit. Tightened everything up and opened more wine. Towel rail still not fitted.
Every six months unscrewing the trap under the shower and removing a gopping, stinking slug about a foot long of Mrs Gti's hair, mixed with scum, grease, dirt and all kinds of other stinking stuff. It makes me heave.
Go to your nearest plumbers merchants, get some chemical unblocker, and rinse it all away.
Don't bother with the stuff you can buy in supermarkets, it's not strong enough, the professional stuff will get rid of it.
Anything involving sewers or woodchip.
b******d I had blanked the woodchip from my memory
Top tip - see that hair-trap under the shower? You're supposed to clean that ONCE A WEEK.... 😉
Be careful, most of the shower traps aren't suitable for using the chemical cleaners on.