DIY jobs that give you “The Fear”

Old plumbing. Fix one leak, create three more.

Reminds me of replacing the radiator in my brother in law’s Ford Escort. Replaced the radiator then water started escaping from the housing on the water pump.

2 hour job to replace the rad became 2 days of doing a cambelt. It’s amazing how much stuff can seize in place and how much of a sod a job can become being done on a cold day on a scrap of concrete in someone’s garden instead of a nice workshop/garage.

Wallpapering! Many, many,  years ago me and my wife tried papering the kitchen ceiling. We studied the books including the Readers Digest DIY guide. Got it started, me holding the broom, my wife the nicely folded and pasted paper. After about ten seconds it all started dropping off again, we looked at each other, opened the window and chucked it out. Went to buy killer Artex – it was the 80’s!

The stories of doing guttering and soffit boards on ladders scare me. I replaced all of mine a couple of years ago and the money I spent on getting scaffolding in was worth every penny.

I will never ever attempt to plaster a room again.

I was taught to plaster by a master craftsman. That old boy could effortlessly get a finish like glass.

And I am 100% with you in the “bollocks to that” camp. An entire room, it’d be easier to hire a plasterer than pay for a glazier after I’d defenestrated the trowel through a closed window.

Skimming, sure. Actual proper plastering, no ta.

Grouting or any attempt to revive grout. I’ve spent billions on products and I just end up in a rage as I angrily smear the entire tube out in one frustrated effort.

Painting generally but glossing skirting boards in particular.

Don’t do them. Just don’t. Leave them. If you ever sell the house, you can pay some geezer to come around and paint all of them effortlessly in about 20 mins. But otherwise leave them. No-one cares.

Skirtings and architraves need to be nicely done in white gloss.  Do the gloss first before the walls and without whatever you are putting on the floor – then you don’t need to cut in carefully indeed you can go a bit onto the wall then when you come to do the walls you can either cut in carefully and wipe excess emulsion off the gloss or mask up to get a really crisp line or just wallpaper if thats what you are doing.

I am not a huge fan of doing it – its tedious but essential if you want it to look good.  Mine all have 2 coats acrylic undercoat and two coats expensive trade gloss.  Finish is like glass

Fear the ladders. There’s a reason most sites don’t allow them anymore. Death traps.

Jobs wise it’s more hatred than anything else.
Nothing really phases me aside gas, which obviously I won’t deal with.

I hate all the rest of it fairly evenly.

Gloss can definitely get in the sea, especially if it goes yellow. I know a chap who does it for a living and he said he doesn’t gloss anything in his own house. Just paints wood work with water based stuff.
No idea what but I’d zoned out by then, as I hate it so much.

Oh and fences. Every time we get a storm I dread it. I replaced all the posts last year not that long after spending a new bikes worth on new fences, for next doors teenager to fire high velocity footballs at.

Gloss last or you get loads of misting from a roller on your gloss…

Roofing…. but only cos its high.

I dislike plastering.  I only ever get my eye in at the end

Silicone

Drives me to the very deepest cauldron of inner rage.

I’ll have a go at it all, nothing really phases me.

But, trying to get a neat finish on a silicone seal is utterly beyond me.

I watch, as my hands make an absolute mess and I’m powerless to intervene.

🤦🏻‍♂️

Gloss first.  If you use quality paints you don’t get misting / splatter and if you do get any you can just wipe it off the gloss.  Much easier to get a crisp edge that way

I agree about silicone sealant – its a pain.  Solvent wipes help

I don’t get the fear from anything DIY, although not a fan of heights. Although I guess part of that is knowing when to call in the professionals. Never tried plastering apart from small areas.

However I fully appreciate I’m crap with silicone sealant.

When the water meter ticks over but there’s no open taps. We have a 350m gravel driveway with a 44mm irrigation pipe feed to the house buried under the centre of the driveway. When we moved in there WAS NO STOPCOCK. One of us would have to go and turn the water off at the meter. What a pain.
Now there’s three, all located at points down the drive where a joint has failed after 20+ years or the pipe has rubbed against the stone. The worst thing is that no water wells up when there’s a leak, it soaks away, so we have to get a leak tester in to locate it.

Anything with and angle grinder or a paintbrush.

Don’t get plumbing thought, after a fun iceplig into the armpit to attempt an unbodging, I went to town on the heating system.

It was hanging a foot below the joists from old electrical wire with the only fixed points at the radiators, you could push the whole central manifold pipes up a good 8 inches so I chopped all the feed pipes and rejoined at a sensible level. The final piece…

Two days of happy Josh culminating in absolutely no leaks!

On professionals:

we had a guy in to replace/add some architrave, and it turns out that his work is normally restoring period houses, he was doing ours as a favour to one of the P&D we had in at the time. He insisted on doing “period Appropriate” which is fine, we agreed and what he’s put up suits the house decoration. We were also replacing a stained glass panel on top of the door at the same time. The next day he bought along a 19th C book with stained glass patterns, so again “period appropriate” he was vocal about the fact that the guy doing the glass design had included pink glass, which wouldn’t be…you guessed “period appropriate”

It’s become something of a joke between us, we need a new coffee maker…will it be period appropriate etc etc.

Unpicking former owner’s DIY bell-endery gives me the heebie geebies. We’ve lovely little surprises all over the place: lighting spurred off ring mains, kitchen units fitted by Frank Spencer; plumbing by a total moron.

Plumbing and electrical work, I’d leave it the experts.

I’m an expert. In cloud IT.

But I’ve got a week left to put a bathroom in here before the family get back from Center Parcs…

I did all the plumbing and electrics last week and replaced the subfloor. Now I ‘just’ need to board the walls with insulation, paint the ceiling and woodwork, fit the suite, and tile…

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Plastic exploding push fit junk can get in the sea.

If it helps there’s some copper push-fit available too. Used it on the shower many moons ago and it’s been great.

Plastering whole walls is something I won’t touch as I don’t have the patience (materials cost is low, the time investment to get it right is too high).

Ladders and heights…..just fitting cover slips to all my fascia board, by ladder. I feel much safer fitting eyebolts to the wall and tying my ladder to them as required. Roof stuff, wear a harness……..

Plastering whole walls is something I won’t touch as I don’t have the patience (materials cost is low, the time investment to get it right is too high).

Skimming is 100 times easier than patching. After the initial “where’s the plaster gone, oh, it’s on the floor” learning curve.

And what’s more ceilings are even easier than walls!

But, trying to get a neat finish on a silicone seal is utterly beyond me.

That was me.

Then I was advised to buy expensive silicone and use a warm water washing up liquid mix, to smooth the finish with your finger. Worked well.

Anything at a height have to get someone in, most other things I do myself. Sometimes I do wonder if it’s a good use of my time when I would rather be doing other things.
tjagain – interesting that you do the skirting etc first and the walls afterwards, I also do that, but I notice most professionals do it the other way round.

I also do that, but I notice most professionals do it the other way round.

1) they are probably better at cutting in
2) its quicker – emulsion dries faster so the gloss can go on without so much waiting

Electrical and plumbing I generally have no issues with, they’re just some degree of problem solving and in the case of electrics some primary school math’s. Closest I’ve come to disaster was re-wiring the central heating controls, turned out there was a previous bodge between the boiler and the cylinder so the wires I thought I was cutting weren’t the ones I’d isolated as they changed color somewhere in the void!

My only fear with electrics is getting it certified, the 4mm ring-main in the garage on a 32A breaker doesn’t know whether it’s been fitted by me or by the electrician, but the council does (for anyone losing sleep over my garage electrics, the electrician tested and signed it off).

Carpentry and decorating* are the ones I get frustrated with. There’s a degree of skill involved in getting them right, and 90% of the time you only see the results of “It’ll probably look ok once finished” once it’s finished and it looks crap. Most of the skill seems to be in knowing what’s good enough and I’ve spent days doing things right that’ll never be visible, and then got bits on show that I just can’t get right.

*paints fine, wallpaper is an invention that should never have existed. Our walls are knobblier than a teenagers face, yet look fine painted and then cast in a soft light. Put wallpaper on them though and it’s like looking at a magic eye.

I’ve spent days doing things right that’ll never be visible, and then got bits on show that I just can’t get right.

Do you then spend the next decade telling everyone about the crap bits?

Years ago I decorated my bedroom. It took twice as long and cost three times as much as I anticipated, like a really shit episode of Grand Designs. I was quite proud of it when I’d finished, when friends came round I’d take them upstairs to show it off and almost immediately go “yeah but don’t look at that bit, I couldn’t get behind the radiator properly.” It took someone else to tell me “why do you say that, no-one would have ever noticed if you hadn’t drawn attention to it!”

Silicone fearers – get a fugi profiling tool, life-changing.

Just changed the filling valve assembly on the loo. One of those upwards feed jobs with the hole at the bottom of the cistern.

Skill Level = 2

Consequence of Screwing It Up Level = 8

Anxiety Level = 9

The Fear = OFF THE SCALE

I was going to say this. Now. It’s a job I’ve done I think two or three times over the years. No biggie, exchange like for like. Until I tried with our upstairs ensuite. There’s no local isolating valve or tap, and it fills from mains pressure which is still very high three stories up with the overall taps for the house four stories down in the basement. Communication is only possible by phone, between the person turning the mains tap and the person witnessing the newly fitted valve fail with a high volume of water shooting into the ensuite and out to get under the suspended wooden floor of the entrance to the bedroom, causing some warping to require shortening the bedroom door.

So yeah. Put the old valve back in and am waiting for the fear to subside before I do the easy change of the full unit. It’s been a couple of years now of preferring to live with a slow filling cistern, reason: fear.

I changed the filing mechanism in our loo recently , and after showing a plumber mate a photo of said jiggery-pokery, she told me which one to buy. Of course it wasn’t the right one, but I managed to bodge it and now it fills and stops, rather than constant trickle of water flowing into the loo itself, but now makes a wee squeak when the valve is closing which according to my wife “Is more annoying that constant flow of water into the pan”

Which is nice.

There’s no local isolating valve or tap,

Why not fit one?

Why not fit one?

It’s another job. And look what happened with the last one. It can get on the list at the back, somewhere behind “move house”.

Sometimes I do wonder if it’s a good use of my time when I would rather be doing other things.

I’ll paint, bleed radiators and put shelves up. Anything else and I’ll hire someone. Just doesn’t appeal in the slightest and time away from work is limited as it is.

I replaced the flush (I think they call it a ‘syphon’) in my mum’s loo not so long ago. It’s what prompted my ‘standards’ comment earlier.

Everything almost-but-not-quite fits. I suspect at some point there was some sort of metric approximation of imperial going on, or something. I had to take the first syphon I bought back to Screwfix (who were amazing) because whilst the outside diameter of the pipe was perfect, the internal diameter was a back door off. When I got the replacement for the replacement in, I thought I was going to shatter the cistern before I managed to nip it up tight enough to stop it dribbling.

I’ll paint, bleed radiators and put shelves up. Anything else and I’ll hire someone. Just doesn’t appeal in the slightest and time away from work is limited as it is.

See, I don’t mind electrics, plumbing, carpentry, building a log cabin, that sort of thing. Things that have a very definable scope, it’s clear what skills are going to be required, and an end point. I don’t even mind learning a new skill if I think I can do it better at my own pace than getting someone in who’ll throw it up quickly. e.g. I wish I’d done the bathrooms myself and just project managed individual trades as the plumber has made a right hash of the carpentry and a few other things. e.g. the windowsill and shelf near the shower really needed a slope so water ran off rather than pooled. And he’s glued together the units so if the cistern ever needs work the whole lot will have to be smashed up.

On the other hand the OH demolished the under stairs cupboard one day while I was at work which then lead to me having to learn carpentry, plaster boarding, various bits of electrical compliance that I really didn’t need or want to and it took 2 years to get back to (almost) presentable. If she’d just phoned a builder it would have been 2 days I reckon, almost all the issue were because I had to do it twice.

1) put up framing, realize it’s not right.
2) put up framing right
3) pull down framing, rebuild in 63mm timber as then the electrics are >50mm from the surface and I don’t have to run in armored conduit.
4) Plasterboard
5) rip out plasterboard as it’s moving with the stairs, board part of it with OSB, re-plasterboard.

Then there’s the whole debacle of her laying some reclaimed parquet. What kind of madman starts at the edges and works to the center of room when laying the floor! Especially as one edge is going to be hidden in the new slide out shelving unit. We could have done just the visble ~2m2, but no, she did the 6m2 under the stairs too (could just have cucked in some 9mm ply to level it), used the nicest bits for the bits that are on show, and used some of the spares to patch up elsewhere in the house. Instead we have badly fiting crap bits in the middle where I’ve had to sand and plane them to fit, there’s no expansion gaps, the surface is uneven by a good mm in places. There’s going to be a lot of very visible wood filler.

the last move needed 100% commitment as there was no reverse!

How do you get back down? I’m also one of those people who puts a bolt in at the top of the ladder to clip onto. Interesting to see that Openreach engineer did the same when he ran a new cable to my mum’s house.

I wish some stuff was covered in schools, along the lines of “a ladder should be your last resort but if you end up using one these are the important bits.” So many people have them at too shallow an angle and then stand on the top step.

@Flaperon, eyebolts in the wall at floor level and tie off to avoid going up an unsecured ladder and doing work. All our local advertising hoardings are thus equipped to allow one man to work safely.

Today I did a diy job that while not giving me the fear did give me the boak.  Unblocking the drainage from my kitchen sink.  It blocks every now and then simply because of the length of the run with not much fall.  It just about meets the requirements but as a 12m ish run with less than a metre drop its always going to be at risk.  3 right angle bends as well.  I put in rodding eyes to make it easier but the vile muck that comes out is ghastly

Anything involving mixing plaster or mortar and a trowel… would love to learn to brick lay and do basic plastering, but everything from getting the right materials, right mix and right technique is a little alien to me.

Gloss needs banning – eggshell or Matt for industrial style slap it on just change its colour approach to painting

 smooth the finish with your finger. Worked well.

Until the bacteria transferred from your finger turn it black a year or so down the line.

Get a profiling tool, they’re less than a tenner and will change your silicone life.