What "man jobs" have you done today?

Soldato
Joined
2 Feb 2010
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10,769
Location
East Midlands
Not a one day job, but I tore down a stud wall, removed a stupid, wobbly, impractical, noisy deathtrap of a spiral staircase, and installed a proper flight of pine stairs which were ordered through Stairbox. I had the new stairs delivered in kit form and built them myself before installing, the work involved taking out the ceiling, extending wiring that run through that ceiling space to hide it behind the wall - I'm very happy with the result! Still lots of work to do, such as building new stud wall, cupboards under the staircase etc.

https://imgur.com/a/IUNgT0Z

N.B. The wall was made with stupid metal stud work, absolute nightmare to get out as it was riveted and screwed, any screws are almost impossible to crowbar out as the metal flexes and the heads of the screw were full of plaster so couldn't be unscrewed. 1/10 would not recommend.

Nice job.

We had a similar spiral staircase at our previous house. Never got round to replacing it though.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Jun 2020
Posts
48
Location
Aberdeen, Scotland
At the weekend I put together a wheelie bin store. It was a cheap-ish kit so as you can imagine construction wasn't IKEA precision/simplicity. Some fettling of door frames was required to get the doors to shut and not stick (as you can see from the wood shavings at the bottom of one of the door posts). Not the kit's fault but also had to cut a notch out of the bottom at the back due to a protruding pipe. Before then, the ground needed to be prepared (weeds removed, ground flattened, weed control material down then wood bark spread on top).

Bzah6yc.jpg

Haven't got around to giving it a coat of preservative, that's the next job on the list.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Jun 2020
Posts
48
Location
Aberdeen, Scotland
Also, from a productive weekend - painted the front of the house with my wife. Just finished touching up the little bits round door/window last night. Went from this manky/washed out almost grey green

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To f'ing GREEN

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As a bonus, had a slater working on the roof on Monday and he painted the chimney stack for us with the spare paint, no extra charge - what a champ. No photos of that to hand but it really finishes the job off. Glad to report almost universally positive response from neighbours :)

Total spend on project - £57 plus our time and some goodwill saved up by employing the same slater for the last dozen years ;)
 
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Associate
Joined
11 Aug 2015
Posts
207
Location
Stone, Staffordshire
The day has come - after 14 years in the current home, waiting to exchange on the new (but smaller) home, I took the week off to empty the loft. 14 years of "memories" shoved upstairs, 3 days later, probably 2 stone of weight shed from sweat (almost 35 degrees in the loft) roughly 30 packing boxes removed from the loft and sifted. One trip to the recycling centre so far (to get rid of three large boxes of VHS cassettes!!) another planned tomorrow and I reckon I have still got around 20 to 30 boxes still up there!

Can't move in our kitchen for boxes - have a skip coming on Friday; some stuff still needs to go to the recycling centre (couple of electronic type stuff) and the wife has a few things posted on that Shpock app thingy.

Was originally hoping to be all done and dusted by today, but jeez we've kept some rubbish in the loft. Hopiing to slim it all down to a couple of boxes for the next house.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Jun 2020
Posts
48
Location
Aberdeen, Scotland
Cheap? How much and where from?

Summer Garden Buildings, when I bought my kit it was £200 but it looks like they've covid-ed up the price to £269 now :(

When I say "cheap-ish", I'm basing that on the fact that you can buy a stack of firewood masquerading as a triple wheelie bin store from Amazon for £150 and most half decent looking ones are £300-400.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Aug 2013
Posts
6,616
Location
Shropshire
Before it gets too hot I have just ran a 10m USB cable up to the loft so I have access to CCTV DVR - ( lack the knowledge to set it up via network -believe me I did try for a month then gave up)
Having put 40mm duct from PC though wall and into the garage to loft years ago made things so easy.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
Posts
15,844
Well, as I'm now buying a house I can use my nice kitchen appliances from my old place in, I've been cleaning them up.

Cleaning the oven....that was pretty rank, but oven cleaner and wire wool have got it back like new.

http://imgur.com/a/Ihd7FDp

Second job was the extractor. That was rank. Completely dismantled it, soaked in hot water and scraped/scrubbed all the coagulated oil off it. Cleaned and oiled the stainless and re-assembled the whole lot. Disgusting job but it's all shiny now!
 
Associate
Joined
20 May 2009
Posts
1,857
Not today but over the weekend I fitted 2 pairs of solar panels, had my partners dad helping out which made it much easier. A pretty good 3 days work though and I'm feeling it now, I'm not used to crawling over a roof for 3 days straight.
Got the pipework to connect inside and 2 temp sensors to wire in then I can fill it up.

We have an east/west roof so west side first.

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Then the east side, I've kept these over the stairs and airing cupboard, it's less pipework and we're putting a Velux in the main bedroom which will go opposite the west facing panels.

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Had pretty good weather for it really, had a shower or 2 yesterday but they didn't last too long.

I'm impressed with the panels though, they're in-roof Solfex panels and I think they look pretty good compared to most others I've seen.
 

jcr

jcr

Associate
Joined
29 May 2011
Posts
1,816
Location
southampton
my partner wanted the loft boarded out so i spent the weekend bent over in a hazmat suit sweating profusely. im now aching and covered in bruises.
when i agreed to do it i thought it was a simple case of just nailing boards to the rafters... silly me!
had to roll back 200mm deep lengths of insulation, fit dozens of loft legs along the rafters to raise the floor above the insulation, relay insulation and then screw boards to the loft legs.
the heat up in the loft at this time of year is close to unbearable.

on the plus side, it gave me an excuse to buy a cordless drill and impact driver. having never used an impact driver before, i found the performance of the thing quite impressive.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 May 2007
Posts
10,734
Location
Location: Location:
Ahead of a bit of a logistical "faff" ahead of decorating / carpetting and finishing off the last two bedrooms and study as well as a new fitted wardrobe in the main bedroom I had to move the last two sections of (rather large and heavy) wardrobe left by the previous owners.

I have already disconnected them (he had fashioned his own version of fitted wardrobes) and moved them around the room a few times when we had the builders in last year and we're looking particularly shabby

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Moved :D

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Just need their final move to the tip now
 
Soldato
Joined
11 May 2014
Posts
5,472
Location
Edinburgh
Wasnt today, but over the weekend stripped all the buff from my front garden, removed all the random bushes etc that were and replaced with proper weed material and new stones.

Then repainted the front door as the previous owner just painted it with fence paint and didnt prep the door right. Will grab some photos but pretty boring. lol
 
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