What "man jobs" have you done today?

Four Euro locks replaced today with Avocet ABS keyed alike cylinders :)
I've gone from 6 house/garage keys on my keyring (4 large ones), to 3.
No fiddling in the dark trying to ID which key is the right one for the front/back door.

I'm going to replace the lock on the shed at some point for one that uses the same keys, and if only they did one for the garage door as well...

I need to fiddle with one of the locks a little when there is more light and I've got the time as it's stiff to turn when the locking screw is done up tight (it's fine if the screw is slightly loose), I suspect it'll be easy to fix, but at the moment it's as if the cylinder is being pulled slightly too far to one side for it's lever to move freely when the screw is tight.
 
my back door lock seized yesterday alas a snapped key with the cylinder partially turned. great.

youtube sorted it out got the lock out but the whole upvc door lock mech needed changing (the whole strip) you couldnt get the one i had of the shelf so it involved a bit of faffing around, all sorted now though :) i did saw my thumb a fair bit which hurt a lot
 
Werewolf said:
I just managed to swap out one of the basin taps in the bathroom.

I say one because what should have been a 10-15 minute job ended up taking something like 90 minutes.
Click to expand...

:D One of the hardest jobs I have ever had to do is replacing the bath taps for one of them mixer shower things. It seems like it will be a piece of cake until you remove the bath panel and see how little space there is to work in lol.
 
In this case it wasn't so much lack of space, as locked up solid and needing a couple of fittings that I didn't have in the tool box (which is slightly unusual, we've got a couple of boxes of spares for most common parts).
I ended up popping down to Screwfix halfway through to get some bits.

One of the main reasons I always say never do any plumbing work when there isn't a store that sells the bits open near you.

But yes, taps can be really nasty to work on due to lack of space, after having major trouble doing the kitchen sink a while back we went out and bought some additional bits for the tool box including IIRC long reach sockets, I also made sure to include ratchet spanners when I next did a sink
It's also part of the reason I have loads of different styles of torches around the house as there is nothing worse than trying to work in the dark in a tight space, except for working in a tight space whilst being blinded by a poorly positioned too bright torch.
 
I bought a themostatic bath/shower mixer to replace the standard one as the temperature fluctuations were bordering on dangerous (with three young children). Unfortunately, it required hot on right, cold on left and my pipes were the other way around. I could have used flexible hoses and crossed them, but as the existing copper joints were poor, i.e. leaking, I decided to rip the lot out and re-plumb in speedfit.

I would have preferred using copper, but soldering under a bath at arms length with barely enough room for a spanner, would have been practically impossible, plus it's all hidden anyway. As it happens, it was still a nightmare that lasted 5 hours, with aches and pains that lasted a week afterwards.

Job done and happy with performance.
 
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Finished redoing my under stairs cupboard. Went from basically having nothing done to it to being painted, tidied and with shelves and hooks for tools, ladders, brooms etc.

Such an improvement and everything that was jammed in there is still in there but organised and now have spare space.

There was no light and so I bought 3 little led lights with motion sensors to stick in there. £15 and enough lighting to be and to see stuff in there now.
 
Got the carpet up to install cables for rear AV speakers today.
All went ok until I went to fit the brackets to the wall.........managed to drill through a cable for the socket nearby :mad:
Really annoyed with myself for this in 25+ years of general DIY I've never done it before.

Sparks that came from it were impressive to say the least!

Managed to get everything up & running again, it tripped the fuse box fortunately, but got to now chase out the plaster to expose the cable so it can be repaired.

Also fitted new bulb to the security light in back garden this morning before today's little error!
 
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