What "man jobs" have you done today?

physichull · 6 May 2013 at 22:06

Dug up 6 deeply embedded pavers from the lawn, filled the holes with top soil ready for seeding. Turned over some soil where a trampoline used to be ready for seeding. Spent bloody ages raking the lawn trying to get rid of the deadened moss, grass and matted grass.

I also put up a curtain pole on the hollow wall in the main bedroom. Self drive metal wall plugs didn't work that well at first. I found that if you drill a 6mm hole as a guide to screw them in by hand works the best. If you just drive them in, they tend to crumble the thread it is making and end up spinning uselessly in the hole the created.

Then hung the curtains. Its been 4 months since being in my first place and its great to finally get curtains! So dark!!!!!!

memyselfandi · 6 May 2013 at 22:16

Ventured into the loft to look at the water tanks as one of the overflows has been dripping ... fortunately looks like it was a bit of grit in the valve rather than a float issue and after some fiddling seems to have been ok the rest of the day.

Mark A · 6 May 2013 at 22:31

Nightglow said:
Roundup.

More than likely Creeping Thistle, had it every where here.

Just googled Creeping Thistle and that's not the one, although we have had the odd one of them in the middle of the lawn.

These are pretty tall, with a long thin brown stem. They have very small thorns on the stem, and little leaf shoots all the way up.

I'll grab a pic tomorrow.

Derek W · 7 May 2013 at 08:10

Not really a man job but made a start on clearing the weeds and moss from between the block paviours last night before football. Should finish it off after work tonight. First bit of 'gardening' since moving into my place.

Mark A · 7 May 2013 at 20:45

Knocked up another door frame out of some 70mm x 45mm redwood for a second door on the back of my shed. Used my sliding mitre saw to cut the tenons and a 16mm straight cutter in my router for the mortices.

Just need to nail the cladding to it and then cut down the side of the cladding with my multi-tool next.

Should make it a bit easier to rip up long lengths of timber with my rip saw now.

{SAS}TB · 8 May 2013 at 10:58

Not today, but over the long weekend I spent most of it in the garden, with a few jobs done:

This and another wooden seat were clawed to bits by the cats and rotten

So were smashed up and taken to the tip. This is the "other" seat, carefully dismantled

The old "whirly gig " thing was looking a tad worse for wear :

So got a new whirly gig and post and concreted the post in:

And turf folded back:

Got a new hose and hose reel and slapped that to the wall

The Mrs planted some veg and stuff in the raised planters:

The garden furniture was brought out the garage and put on the main patio:

On Sunday I "trimmed" the hedge down the side of the garage (it was higher that the eaves of the garage)

But on Monday thought **** it and ripped the lot out :

Luckily there was some other "stuff" growing behind / under it

{SAS}TB · 26 May 2013 at 17:49

Day #1

So the Mrs has taken the kids to her Parents for the first week of 1/2 term. While she is away I have decided to sort out a problem in my eldest's bedroom.

It has a dormer window and the there was a loose tile and flashing, which I sorted at the back end of last year, but there was some bad damp which had got in in the meantime.

We had cleared the area to allow it to dry out, but looked pretty tatty, with a "free" few days decided it was time to tidy it back up ..............

This is the part of the wall in question:

AS you can see there are salts from the damp, the paintwork is flaking and the skirting and cill has also taken a bit of a soaking

The angle bead to the window reveal has also seen better days :

So, step 1, sand back the loose / peeling paintwork and smooth off the egdes where the paint has come away / been removed:

Yes, that's a pint of Bulmers

Starting to look better already and not that bad an area to sand back

After it was sanded back i gave the edges / gaps / cracks and exposed plaster areas a light covering of Pollyfilla

Including the gaping gap along the skirting

Also reformed the edges of the reveals to cover the angle bead the best I could

Once it had dried I lightly sanded over the whole area again before applying a damp inhibitor (Im sure the cause of the damp has been sorted and the wall has dried out, just don't want any residual damp in the cavity to come back through once ive painted )

So that's it for today. The inhibitor is 4 hours to "touch dry", but going to leave it overnight then another very light sand before repainting the whole of the external wall tomorrow.

more cider to be had now ......

Derek W · 26 May 2013 at 18:13

again not quite a 'man job' but decided to clean my windows since moving in September! :eek:

Its amazing the amount of light that now comes through my windows

Now its time to get back into the bathroom to get this finished off once and for all! http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18512121

Swordfish · 26 May 2013 at 18:19

Front Garden

Cut Grass
Trimmed trees (small pine)
Turned earth over in borders

Rear Garden

Cut Grass
Trimmed trees (small pine)

Washed car.

Watched Scottish Cup Final and now heading to pub !

Mark A · 26 May 2013 at 18:59

Done a bit of grass trimming with my new electric trimmer. i'm actually really impressed with it. i was expecting it to keep stopping when it got to the really thick grass and weeds, but it chewed through anything. Glad I paid a bit more for a dual line one now.

Also had my Bosch mower in bits to see why it makes a high pitch squeal every time the blade comes to a stop. I'm pretty sure its the motor cooling fan as it is loose, but not sure if it is supposed to be like that. I was thinking it might be a bearing, but they seem to be in decent shape.

Participant · 26 May 2013 at 19:48

Played with my new favourite toy: a cable access kit (£10 from eBay for a 10m version). Thanks to the fact that there's a massive cavity under my living room floor boards, I now have lovely flat cat 5e running from the router to the study and I only had to lift two floorboards.

FatRakoon · 26 May 2013 at 20:18

Robbie G said:
I now have lovely flat cat 5e running from the router to the study and I only had to lift two floorboards.

I have PCs in every room, plus 7 in the LAN room all connected via Ethernet all through the house and up the stairs and not one inch of cabling can be seen... The trunking is also painted the colours of the rooms ( don't use wallpaper ) so the trunking is also fairly hidden to the point that even to my own mum never knew it was there and she sees a cobweb from 300 yards!

And that's why god invented Trunking

[DOD]Asprilla · 26 May 2013 at 21:11

Yesterday; street gardening party. Spent a little time doing the communal areas in the street with all the other residents. Just an hour or so in the morning. Didn't have time to do the bed immediately outside my house which is a mixture of overgrown lavender and dandylions.

Today I removed the greenhouse. That's an ache. I'm not a green house person and I need the space for the kid's trampoline. Leaves the back wall a bit exposed, particularly to foxes so I'm going to put a holly hedge in.

Tomorrow I'm painting the woodwork in one of the bedrooms and I'm going to cut down a 20' blue Ceanothus. It's a massive shame because it's beautiful but can't be helped.

Shimmyhill · 26 May 2013 at 21:23

Removed the greenhouse

I was looking at them today, i hope you have sold it as even secondhand they go for decent money!

I have done lots of weeding today, a little sawing of wood and an attempt at breaking my little finger - it hurts lots and is twice as big as normal, worse thing is i cant type properly now!!

Participant · 26 May 2013 at 21:25

FatRakoon said:
I have PCs in every room, plus 7 in the LAN room all connected via Ethernet all through the house and up the stairs and not one inch of cabling can be seen... The trunking is also painted the colours of the rooms ( don't use wallpaper ) so the trunking is also fairly hidden to the point that even to my own mum never knew it was there and she sees a cobweb from 300 yards!

And that's why god invented Trunking

Trunking has its place. I'd probably have either done that or taken off the skirts if the floor had been concrete. The other option would have been to take it up behind through the stud wall, across under the floor boards on the first floor, then back behind the stud wall in the study.

For me though, trunking is a last resort unless I'm renting or something. We've just moved into a house that we're likely to be in for many years, so I thought I'd do it properly.

[DOD]Asprilla · 26 May 2013 at 22:47

Shimmyhill said:
Removed the greenhouse I was looking at them today, i hope you have sold it as even secondhand they go for decent money!

They go for about £50-£100 on eBay for a basic 8'x6', which this was and you'd generally be expected to dismantle it for the buyer for that price. I Freecycled it. Given it took the folks who took it three hours to take it apart and they sheared about a quarter of the bolts it wasn't really worth selling.

Blue160 · 27 May 2013 at 08:08

Re-roofed the shed. Turned out to be more difficult than I imagined! How on earth do you get the felt neat round the edge?

Destination · 27 May 2013 at 08:54

Meh, woke to hear a drip in the bedroom, not a good way to wake up.

Seems that some lead on the roof has been pierced or an edge of a tile at one of the valleys isn't quite right. Water has come in with the heavy overnight rain, run down one piece of wood, met with another and ran further, and then dripped through the ceiling into the main bedroom.
Seems to have dripped out between two pieces of plasterboard.
I've removed all the insulation, but can't get far enough in to see exactly what mess is going on, rain continues, so bucket down for now to catch the drips.

Doesn't actually look like much water has come in, might simply be the drip was exactly on a join in roofing plasterboard.
Wonder will it dry out and be able to be repainted or need the whole damn thing replaced?

Not a delightful start to my only day off between May and August.
I'll have to get a roofing man round, not good with heights and ladders myself.

Mark A · 27 May 2013 at 16:21

Hikari Kisugi said:
Doesn't actually look like much water has come in, might simply be the drip was exactly on a join in roofing plasterboard.
Wonder will it dry out and be able to be repainted or need the whole damn thing replaced?

If it doesn't get too wet and start sagging then it should dry out and you can then paint over the water mark with some stain block paint.

We had a leak in our chimney stack as 3 of the chimney covers had perished so there was just holes in the chimney collecting rain. This then hit a piece of steel that was holding up the chimney where it had been removed in the bedroom and then ran onto the plasterboard and into my room. We got the leak fixed and the plasterboard is fine now its dried out.

Looks like we might have a full week of rain, so might be a good idea to get it temp fixed soon. A blob of lead seal over the hole might cure it for now, just to stop the plasterboard gettig too wet.

{SAS}TB · 27 May 2013 at 17:19

Day #2

All done bar some caulking to tidy up around the cill / reveal and a few other spots - but ill do that one night later in the week as its shower then a few ciders me thinks

Al lot better than it was despite my shoddy decorating skilzzz

Edge is a lot better (just needs caulking to tidy up the edge / joint)

Again a bit of caulking and job done

The whole area is a hundred times better. The colour isn't an exact match, but it doesn't matter and with the bed against the wall, curtains back in place, poster up and toys back you prolly won't notice that much