Worst DIY job ever...

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rich p

ridiculous old lush
Location
Brighton
...the competition is stiff but I spent 8 hours yesterday stripping a ceiling of 4 layers of paper and intermediate layers of paint using a steam stripper. Holding my hands above my head and scraping, in what turned into a sauna was torture in the end.
It was a favour for a friend too so I 'earned' a bottle of port and a bottle of Sancerre. I might just glug it tonight!
 

Hacienda71

Mancunian in self imposed exile in leafy Cheshire
Sanding Floor boards with one of those industrial sanders i will never do it again!!!:biggrin:
 
OP
OP
rich p

rich p

ridiculous old lush
Location
Brighton
Drain jobs are invariably horrible, Mark. apart from the smell nobody is ever going to say, " You've made a lovely job of that":biggrin:
 

HelenD123

Guru
Location
York
rich p said:
...the competition is stiff but I spent 8 hours yesterday stripping a ceiling of 4 layers of paper and intermediate layers of paint using a steam stripper. Holding my hands above my head and scraping, in what turned into a sauna was torture in the end.
It was a favour for a friend too so I 'earned' a bottle of port and a bottle of Sancerre. I might just glug it tonight!

I was told not to use a steam stripper on my dining room ceiling because it's lath and plaster. In the end I perfected a technique of spraying it with water but it took days and days because I've got weedy arms.
 
We had a (foul) drain blockage a week or two ago. Before calling in the rodding guy (who's used to that sort of thing) I tried to empty the access shaft (with a bucket on a string) and unblock it myself (with a stick). Failure. xx(xx(:thumbsup: Don't try it!

The rodder had it cleared in five minutes. :biggrin:
 

Brains

Legendary Member
Location
Greenwich
A previous occupant of our house had used the under the stairs cupboard to store coal.

Coal is acidic, so eventually the floor and joists rotted away and the coal fell through to the void under the house, and I guess they just piled more coal on top.

Fast forward half a century and we bought our ruin of a house. The single most filthy job during our 2 year renovation was removing that coal. The void is not high enough to sit up in, it's dark and filthy, and the manouvering space was tiny and I could only dig it out with a trowell, and then manouver each of the 20+ 20kg rubble sacks through a small space in between the floorboards. I have a photo from when I came to the surface, I'm black from head to toe, I now appreciate just how hard the job of a coal miner would have been
 

gbb

Legendary Member
Location
Peterborough
My worst...the only one job i ever gave up on...i just couldnt work it out was a car job actually, fitting rear brake cylinders on a Lancia Beta i had years ago.
I sat there with the manual trying to figure out how the self adjusters (that were incorporated into the cylinders) worked. Spent 3 days on and off on it...gave up and sold the car as spares or repairs.(couldnt afford to put it in the garage,,and it was getting old anyway)

Shame really, it was a comfy, sporty thing which looked way better than most cars of that time. I was sorry to see it go ;)
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
Removing horse hair reinforced lime plaster from a couple of rooms on an ancient cottage using a hammer drill type chisel tool thingy severely reduced my ability to grip anything firmly for a week or two afterwards.
 

buggi

Bird Saviour
Location
Solihull
guitarpete247 said:
A friend of my uncles had to replace his septic tank cover.
Only after he was showing off how strong it was.

PMSL ;)

my dad had to unblock the drain from the upstairs loo.. he took off the checker plate which was waist height, to have a look. the blockage was just below the checker plate, which meant as soon as he took the plate off... WHOOSH!!! my mum laughed so much she wet herself
 

BearPear

Veteran
Location
God's Own County
Before we were married I had a little cottage which the future Mr BP was helping me do up. One job he did was to remove the wall lights in the lounge. Not being an electrician he just turned the power off, removed the fittings and taped the exposed wires together. There followed a hearty coating of polyfiller to cover the gap, jobs a good 'un.

Some days later my dad is helping to wallpaper and he's up the stepladder smoothing over the freshly hung paper - cue bolt of electricicty up his arm! Oh, how we laughed later, much later when this tale was relayed at our wedding!
 
rich p said:
...the competition is stiff but I spent 8 hours yesterday stripping a ceiling of 4 layers of paper and intermediate layers of paint using a steam stripper. Holding my hands above my head and scraping, in what turned into a sauna was torture in the end.
It was a favour for a friend too so I 'earned' a bottle of port and a bottle of Sancerre. I might just glug it tonight!


Grim job, hateful. I've done three in this house using a steam stripper all on lath and plaster. I've also had to grind down the cracks, fill and sand.

8hrs is pretty good, I must get you round to ours, I can afford that going rate ;)

I think any DIY job where I'm working above my head is horrible.
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
Rolling out glass wool in the attic. Hot, sweaty and the stuff irritates your skin and gets in your throat. Also when I'm squatting on the beams under the low roof something locks in my right knee tendons and I can't unbend my knee for a second or two, which is unpleasant.

I once had to crawl into the space about 18" high beneath our floor and rearrange a WC soil pipe, which took about an hour of sweaty pulling and pushing to get the joints right while the stink of the sewer was flowing around my head.

Cleaning Mrs Gti's hair out of the shower drain is disgusting, it makes me heave. And yes, I've had to rod the drain twice when Gti junior has got a bit enthusiastic with the baby wipes and blocked it.
 
done the unblocking drains/sewers and the insulation (in fact will have to do some insulation in this over this summer !).. but probably the worst jobs are the ones where you think this shouldn't take long.. like changing a headlamp in a modern car. My wife has a C3 and it took for ages with skinned knuckles, wrist, and back of hand,simply because there is not the space to work for someone with large hands. There's been the other jobs working on a car and a nut/bolt/spring washer etc. drops down and you can't find it.. the garage is shut.. and you need the car pronto.. so those jobs where you're working to tight deadlines can be a bit of a barsteward.
 
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