What "man jobs" have you done today?

[jaybee]

A place to list all of your man jobs you have achieved or are working on. The more manly the merrier. Pics welcome.

So today I've just finished a cat5 ethernet run from the cupboard in the lounge to the furthest bedroom away. It goes via the loft so I can distribute to other bedrooms. The loft today was so hot, within 3 minutes my glasses had steemed up and I was dripping.

My to do list is huge at the moment. Week off work = spend it doing general DIY and projects etc. I got car stuff to do, sort my gargae, shed, decorating (urgh) electronic stuff....atleast the weather is good!

 

[jaybee]

Raaarrr, keep em coming

 

[jaybee]

I painted the house today. The whole thing. Kind of need a girly jobs thread though....

 

[jaybee]

Wow, thread has got popular.
The person that posted the playhouse they built. Cheers for that. Good to see. Been toying with converting our shed into one. Hmm.

How do you guys distribute cat5 throughout your houses typically? Say you want to link lounge to upstairs, do you go out and up an outside wall to the loft and then down into bedrooms, or do you go direct up a lounge wall into upstairs flooring area?

 

[jaybee]

Undercounter lights went it tonight after I got back from work, You got to love LED Strip Lights!

How did you hide the wiring and where are they powered from?

 

[jaybee]

Last week or so I've been off work. I feel like I've done about 1% of all the stuff that needs doing. But these things always end up taking time when I take on a job. Complications creep in!

1: Started with sorting mine and the wifes phones. Took pretty much most of the day! Hers would not update basically to the OTA latest update so I force updated it then did two more updates. First I backed it all up of course. Anyway...now running nougat and all good. I then did mine. Then I put a brand new posh tempered glass screen protector on her phone. Spent ages getting it perfect. You know whats coming...
She brings the phone back to me the next morning and greets me with, "you know you really love me"....
At which point I reply "what have you done".
She's smashed the phone...but it's ok...only the protector! Random coincidence she does it the day after I put a new one on. So then I put a whole new one on.

2: Did the rear brakes on my car.

3: Uninstalled an old security light and crappy wiring and re-did a whole new wire pull and installed a new LED one. The new security light came with only 1 meter of cable. So I bought some new stuff and pulled it through the wall. I had to take the new light apart and wire it up inside using terminal blocks then re-seal it to make it weather proof.

4: Fixed my lads BMX.

5: Fixed the rear view mirror on the car. Was wobbling on a worn mount inside all the plastic housing surrounding it.

6: Installed speakers in the front doors of my mate's car.

7: Wall mounted the bedroom TV and moved the previous virgin cable running down the wall to inside the partition wall. At the same time put all TV cables in the wall including 3 new spec HDMI cables to semi future proof against any additional things I ever connect up to it. At the same time did 4 cat5 drops from the loft down to the same area again to future proof once I finally get the house fully networked.

8: Replaced the exhaust manifold on my other car as it was blowing.

9: Installed a call blocker as I can't stand the time wasting calls on our landline anymore.

 

[jaybee]

I forgot I made this thread. Wow. It's huge. Going to spent some time reading it and then add some content myself. Since I made this thread I've done too much to list including a house move. Pretty poor on my part as didn't take many photos.

Anyone had any experience with Howdens? I hear conflicting info as to whether they will only deal with the trade or not. I want to get a kitchen cabinet door, an end panel, some edge stripping and some worktop to match what our kitchen already has when we moved in. Do I need to find someone with a trade account? I hear the prices for trade literally go down by more than half of their "normal" advertised brochure prices often.

 

[jaybee]

Thanks guys, not sure where to start with this though. I don't know how old the kitchen is. I would say within the last 5 years but I don't know really. Could be ten years old. It looks good and I want to get the same worktop and cupboard finish to match but I don't have any paper work for it at all. I have managed to see a couple of codes on the underside of one of the pieces of worktop and on a leftover door (too small though this one as it's for a slim cupboard). I literally don't even know what to describe the colour as, but from a quick google I think it might be a "cashmere". Kind of like a cream/grey/sand colour wood. EDIT: TO be clear the existing one is a howdens one as I saw it written somewhere on a piece of it lol.

I only want to make a little single floor level wide cupboard and small worktop area in a corner to house a tumble dryer and hide it away. I can do the work myself. I don't even need to build the cabinet inards so to speak, I just want to use battens on a back and side wall to mount the worktop to, and on the far right side it will be supported by the matching end panel, which is essentially a piece of wood with the front vertical face edged nicely. Then I basically need a cupboard door to also match and possibly a single piece of wood for the hinges to mount to on the left side and hey presto, a matched cupboard with worktop top, for the tumble dryer to hide in on the other side of the kitchen. I don't care too much for the worktop not to match the age of the old one massively, since I will probably at some point end up sanding them all back and refinishing to all match as the other ones are quire marked in places.

Wonder what the shortest length of worktop would be?
Wonder if our kitchen style and finish is already discontinued.

Perhaps I will try to make an account. So once I get an account, do I get a login and can checkout online?

 

[jaybee]

Worst part of it for me was as i am painting (day off cos of the rain showers) and its over an existing orange paint finish I wish i had done a base coat of black first prior to the grey finish that I'm looking for as I have to apply at least two coats and probably three in some places!

I've got some cuprinol silver copse to go on top of an old green cuprinol finish on our fence. I was hoping a single coat with a brush would do it. I'm not sure I can use a spray gun since we have plants and stuff in the way and some of the spots are really tight to get into.

 

[jaybee]

Did yet another Cat6 run. This time a dual run to our kitchen TV. One is hooked to the internet and the other runs HDMI over ethernet from the other rooms TIVO box. Excellent device and capable of 4K with no issues.

 

[jaybee]

8 years is acceptable. It's within limits for sure.

 

[jaybee]

My Mrs has been looking at the new ring piece...for the front door. Ring doorbell 4 advanced posh thing.
Installed it and realised I'd benefit from an angle wedge thing to make it aim more at the floor because it only captures tall people when up close even with wide angle lens. I was limited as to where I could put it as I wanted to cover up old screw holes on the frame. So I'm going to get a downwards wedge to add to the existing horizontal wedge to angle it in more. May also get a rain hood thing for it as sometimes the drips over the lens affect the image. Now deciding what to do about chimes and echo dots and device notifications.

Setup sons new mic arm.

Changed the filter on the hot tap.

Installed our new integrated dishwasher.

Tidied the shed.

Disassembled the chairs we got down and built for Xmas so I could put them in the loft another year!

I've got to do the bulbs on the car this weekend. I'll probably chose a time when it's dark, raining and I'm hungover...standard.

 

[jaybee]

The TV looks fine to me. Just get a proper socket put in behind the TV so there are no wires showing.

 

[jaybee]

lol

Finally got the right combination of incorrectly sized drills to drill through the 1880s fireplace and run a cat5. Just through the mortar so nothing sacrilege




I must have crimped thousands of RJ45 in my previous life. It's a bit like riding a bike I've found, you never forget how. I never used jackets as they annoy the hell out of me.

'Server' now relocated to the booze and spare cables side of the fireplace. I can now hard wire the TV and plug the server in using HDMI so I finally have a more reasonable 'worst case scenario' when Plex keeps buffering

I couldn't possibly condone no protection!

It depends where it's going. Sometimes the boots actually get in the way if it's going into the back of a TV or something.

 

[jaybee]

Hey guys. Anyone any experience with underfloor heating electric systems? Since we moved into our house I've always wanted to know the spec of the under floor electric heating matt/pad/coils in our downstairs toilet. It's obviously a very small room probably only about 1 by 1.5m squared at most. I've always shied away from using the underfloor heating in there due to me thinking it would cost loads to run. But that room gets very, very cold due to where it is in the house. Whoever did the install must have done away with the original very small radiator, opting for floor tiles and an under floor electric system. It works fine. Not as good as our kitchen wet system as takes much longer to get up to temp and warm the tiles and eventually the room.

I had a look online and I found some places that suggest a kit that is rated at somewhere between 50-200watts for that small a size of room and dependent on whether tiles/wood/concrete. I would think the electrics are directly under the floor tiles but I don't know as I'm not lifting them to check. They are very cold, wood look long tiles. It has a progammer/stat in the hallway to control it. I don't have a smart meter. Any way I can measure the draw of it when in use? I can't put a multi meter across any points anywhere on the back of the controller can I? That's only going to show the draw of the controller I guess?

Assuming worst case of 200w running 24/7, I guess it's still only £50 per month ish at the moment. We only would run it for the next couple of cold months. Might be worth it for a warm number 2. Little treat for the fam.

 

[jaybee]

Here we are rewiring cupboards and fiddling with the heating and this guy goes and builds a gable!

lol
Me complaining of cold hands up a ladder hanging my xmas lights...

 

[jaybee]

^ I gotta get me one of those green level laser thing-a-me-bobbies. Also one of those multi functional oscillating saw things. The amount of times both would have come in handy...

Most of my man jobs I keep talking myself out of and frankly waiting until spring as I'm not manly enough to be cold AF anymore. But one I can't really put off any longer, is my car is over due an oil change now. Literally my most favourite job to do in -2 degrees.

 

[jaybee]

I really want one as well. I'm just worried that the floors and ceilings won't be level and it'll cause other issues!

Might just be unlucky but my experience of all the houses I've lived and done jobs in with family/friends, is that hardly anything is level/straight! So yeah it might highlight what you already thought and didn't want confirming lol.
Those oscillating saws are pretty sick though. I've even seen attachments where the entire "blade" is in the shape of like a light switch, and you literally just push it onto the wall, but like a cookie cutter and it just sinks into your plasterboard and you pull out the shape! Completely unnecessary yeah....but cool.

 

[jaybee]

We got the Ava for the patio below, but then I noticed the moss on the roof above and figured I should tackle that first. Good thing too as the patio was caked by the time I finished.

Actually, I bought some patio black spot remover about 6 months ago for the patio, but to give it the best chance of working I told myself I should pressure wash it first, then I thought I should do the roof first, before I do the patio…

I feel like Hal in that scene from Malcolm in the middle trying to change a light bulb

Literally me on weekends. I love Malcolm in the middle. We have them all on our Plex server.
Today worked all day. Tomorrow.... Might tackle one of the endless Jobs. I usually end up doing a Hal and none of them get done, but I make progress on a couple and gain 5 more.

 

[jaybee]

I fixed our old Focus again treating it to a new alternator and wiper mechanism. Figured it would be good to have working wipers in the UK. Car just won't die. Hopefully the next thing to break is something big enough to write it off so I can get rid of the selfish ****.