What "man jobs" have you done today?

Buffman · 19 Mar 2023 at 09:45

Anyone know how I would get "roman blinds" eg the below if one of these windows is fitted with a steel lintel rather than catnic lintel?

Restore Midnight Roman Blind | Made to Measure Roman Blinds | Graham & Brown

Capturing all the subtleties of our Wallpaper of the Year 2022, this dark blue roller blind is the ideal way to add a floral flourish and deep indigo blue accent. Restore Midnight is your chance to reconnect with Nature through a whimsical pattern of delicate botanicals against a midnight-blue...

www.grahambrown.com

I believe its steel from my cable detector going mad on the one that's behind the desk, rather than just the angle bead, I think it will pick up the roof timbers for the flat roof.

I guess it's a case of finding ones that are side fitted?
Edit: looks like blinds to go can be side fitted

{SAS}TB · 19 Mar 2023 at 10:16

Finger tip searched the vacuum cylinder for a "lost" earring ....

DXP55 · 19 Mar 2023 at 13:03

Just had a knock on door from a neighbour over the road - Been here 13 yrs and can't say I have seen her before -Know her lad.

She said "Have you got any drain rods we can borrow please- please- pretty please - I thought now that is an exciting job to do on Sunday afternoon - She said it's bubbling up everywhere. :eek:

Oh so glad I got mine fixed a few years ago.

NickK · 19 Mar 2023 at 15:01

Measuring out the featheredge fences and looking what needs fixing. Luckily not all needs doing at once and most of the posts have a spur already. Some of the arris rails need replacing (that normally means destroying the featheredges so..

Weeded the garden, cut back stuff that needed work etc so filled the garden refuse bin already. Not had to cut the lawn yet.. but I did give it some food.

vail3r · 19 Mar 2023 at 19:17

Built the front garden wall today. Pretty pleased it’s not perfect but my first time building a wall

Just got to carry on now between ours and next door

miller745 · 19 Mar 2023 at 19:37

2 coats of magnolia on 3 of the hallway walls. I skimmed them, or tried to...haven't done any plastering before. Not too bad a finish, bit rough around the tight areas.

dlockers · 19 Mar 2023 at 19:40

Had another family outing so couldn't get much done. Suspiciously efficient I did a first fix on the outdoor socket:

Sparky said he would hook it up for me to its own radial. Slightly safer than the 50m extension lead plugged into the shed that the current car charger is

Armageus · 21 Mar 2023 at 10:52

Strictly speaking not a job I'd done, but had a locksmith out to my UPVC door as was struggling to get the key to turn all of the way to lock it, even with the door open (and had to force it even)

Of course as soon as I demonstrated the lock to him it worked faultlessly!
Thankfully he did take the gearbox out and double check everything, and found a tiny piece of metal that had broken off. Gearbox replaced, keep adjusted for different type of gearbox (bolt rather than hook), door adjusted and all is good with the world again (Well apart from my wallet which is £150 lighter)

tangey · 21 Mar 2023 at 13:36

Cleaned the soakaway drains in the driveway. As long as I can remember, anytime we had significant rain we ended up with a swimming pool where I parked the car. I'd previously removed all the gunge from the bottom, but that didn't give water flow. I got a set of rods, but it was a tight 90 degree turn at the bottom of the gulley, and the rods were simply too stiff to go round. I could force it, but then it just kinked and the kink remained at the bottom of the gully. A stick that was just the maximum length possible that would make it around, told me that there was something pretty solid at "sticks length".

Bought from amazon an attachment that fitted on the end of the karcher lance, that was 15 meters of hose terminated with a nozzle that had a forward jet, and 3 rearward jets (also came with another nozzle that just had the rearward jets)

Started with the main culprit. With a lot of hoking and poking, a bit of back-and-forth slamming, and a bit of dredging, managed to get the hose in a good 2 meters, and took a couple of handfulls of quite sizeable stones/peebles as well as some clumps of moss from the roof out after about an hr. And then a quick test showed good flow. Second drain was also cleared this way. The reverse jets did a decent job of shooting the stones/moss back to within hand's reach. These drain had NEVER been cleaned (30+years), and at diffierent times the covers had got damaged and had major holes in them, so I wasn't surprised at the amount and the size of the things that were combining to block it up.

I assume karchers have some back pressure detection? With the nozzle in water (but not up against any sort of blockage) the karcher was stopping and starting. It doesn't do that when I'm washing the car and filling the buckle with the lance underwater, so I guess the thing bought from amazon isn't allowing full flow of water, and therefore any back pressure from being submerged is triggering shut-off.

Anyway, I was pleased that for once a new gadget that I'd never heard off actually was good at helping out, and it definitely solved my problem.

DXP55 · 21 Mar 2023 at 14:15

When I relayed my soakaways I put those gully things in with a muck catcher at bottom and slide in divider -Stops bits going down the pipe -Clean them out once a month or two -Most of it is moss and sand from roof.
It's amazing what gets in drains - The old ones were blocked solid for the whole length so didn't even bother with those - just dug new soakaways.

Duke · 21 Mar 2023 at 18:49

Along similar line to those above, a year or two ago I found the downpipe outside the front of my house was filling up all the way to the gutters on the roof. Turns out the bottom of it was just stuck into the ground! The smell of the water after lifting the pipe up a bit was vile. After a bit of digging in the ground I unearthed the drain its meant to be sat above, so just shortened the length of the downpipe, extended the drain cover up a bit and lined the two back up again. The drain was fairly full of mud and crud so that had to be cleared a bit as well. No idea how long its been like that, guessing since whoever owned it before had the facias and gutters replaced or something.

IvanDobskey · 22 Mar 2023 at 06:48

vail3r said:
Built the front garden wall today. Pretty pleased it’s not perfect but my first time building a wall

Just got to carry on now between ours and next door

Nice job, looks really good

ChrisD. · 23 Mar 2023 at 17:48

Decent weather this morning, I had my mates ladder in the garage and I'd been working some late days recently, so I took the day off and did some jobs. No pics of the steps, I'm bad enough up a ladder as it is, without fannying around taking pics.

Whilst up there, had a good look in the gutters due to recent heavy rainfall and all is well.

First up was installing a UniFi wireless AP in my soffit, giving ~400-500 Mbps across the garden. I like to sit out there and work and the sporadic connection has annoyed me since we moved in nearly 2 years ago.

I then put another hole in the soffit to run Cat 6 to the garage for a future CCTV install. 20mm ducting and into a gap between the wall and roof. Fixed the reason why the water was coming over leaving the dirty mark on the render. Inspection elbow at the bottom to make it easy installing a replacement cable (regretting I didn't run two, but whatever).

Next up was CCTV at the front of the house, again mounted to the soffit. This gives really good coverage and nice IQ. I plan on covering the garage in the future.

Final job was installing my newly acquired G4 Doorbell, this was a pig as I had to drill at an angle not to risk either blowing the render or blowing the internal plasterboard which is in the hallway, so I went at an angle to bring it into my office next to the front door, with the power cable neatly hidden away.

Lucky I started when I did, I finished around 1 and since then we've had a monsoon all afternoon. I then decided to move my Lack Rack mounted homelab kit over to my newly arrived Penn Elcom rack.

Before:

After:

Need some smaller cases! Took ages and a few jobs to finish up before I put the front on it and tidy the white cables, but as it took significantly longer than expected that's a job for another day and I'm going to treat myself to a Guinness.

Uhtred · 23 Mar 2023 at 18:15

ChrisD. said:
Decent weather this morning, I had my mates ladder in the garage and I'd been working some late days recently, so I took the day off and did some jobs. No pics of the steps, I'm bad enough up a ladder as it is, without fannying around taking pics.

Whilst up there, had a good look in the gutters due to recent heavy rainfall and all is well.

First up was installing a UniFi wireless AP in my soffit, giving ~400-500 Mbps across the garden. I like to sit out there and work and the sporadic connection has annoyed me since we moved in nearly 2 years ago.

I then put another hole in the soffit to run Cat 6 to the garage for a future CCTV install. 20mm ducting and into a gap between the wall and roof. Fixed the reason why the water was coming over leaving the dirty mark on the render. Inspection elbow at the bottom to make it easy installing a replacement cable (regretting I didn't run two, but whatever).

Next up was CCTV at the front of the house, again mounted to the soffit. This gives really good coverage and nice IQ. I plan on covering the garage in the future.

Final job was installing my newly acquired G4 Doorbell, this was a pig as I had to drill at an angle not to risk either blowing the render or blowing the internal plasterboard which is in the hallway, so I went at an angle to bring it into my office next to the front door, with the power cable neatly hidden away.

Lucky I started when I did, I finished around 1 and since then we've had a monsoon all afternoon. I then decided to move my Lack Rack mounted homelab kit over to my newly arrived Penn Elcom rack.

Before:

After:

Need some smaller cases! Took ages and a few jobs to finish up before I put the front on it and tidy the white cables, but as it took significantly longer than expected that's a job for another day and I'm going to treat myself to a Guinness.

I have a similar problem in our garden. What unifi ap model did you go for?

ChrisD. · 23 Mar 2023 at 18:26

Uhtred said:
I have a similar problem in our garden. What unifi ap model did you go for?

UAP-FlexHD. You can mount it to a wall, a drainpipe/pole, or with the optional ceiling mount to a soffit or similar.

iron_monkey · 23 Mar 2023 at 18:30

Had some free time today and as its getting warmer i ventured into the garage and started making some coin rings, making jewellery doesn't sound very manly but it does involve a blowtorch and a 6tonne press. I'll post up some pics once its finished.

gingergundog · 23 Mar 2023 at 19:11

iron_monkey said:
Had some free time today and as its getting warmer i ventured into the garage and started making some coin rings, making jewellery doesn't sound very manly but it does involve a blowtorch and a 6tonne press. I'll post up some pics once its finished.

Fire is always manly

iron_monkey · 23 Mar 2023 at 19:14

gingergundog said:
Fire is always manly

Ive actually made a forge with a pretty hefty burner in it, i think i have a vid somewhere of it running when i made it from some old pipe fittings and a mig welding tip.

gingergundog · 23 Mar 2023 at 19:16

iron_monkey said:
Ive actually made a forge with a pretty hefty burner in it, i think i have a vid somewhere of it running when i made it from some old pipe fittings and a mig welding tip.

Nice, love stuff like that. Post the vid if you find it

dirtychinchilla · 24 Mar 2023 at 10:37

ChrisD. said:
Decent weather this morning, I had my mates ladder in the garage and I'd been working some late days recently, so I took the day off and did some jobs. No pics of the steps, I'm bad enough up a ladder as it is, without fannying around taking pics.

Whilst up there, had a good look in the gutters due to recent heavy rainfall and all is well.

First up was installing a UniFi wireless AP in my soffit, giving ~400-500 Mbps across the garden. I like to sit out there and work and the sporadic connection has annoyed me since we moved in nearly 2 years ago.

I then put another hole in the soffit to run Cat 6 to the garage for a future CCTV install. 20mm ducting and into a gap between the wall and roof. Fixed the reason why the water was coming over leaving the dirty mark on the render. Inspection elbow at the bottom to make it easy installing a replacement cable (regretting I didn't run two, but whatever).

Next up was CCTV at the front of the house, again mounted to the soffit. This gives really good coverage and nice IQ. I plan on covering the garage in the future.

Final job was installing my newly acquired G4 Doorbell, this was a pig as I had to drill at an angle not to risk either blowing the render or blowing the internal plasterboard which is in the hallway, so I went at an angle to bring it into my office next to the front door, with the power cable neatly hidden away.

Lucky I started when I did, I finished around 1 and since then we've had a monsoon all afternoon. I then decided to move my Lack Rack mounted homelab kit over to my newly arrived Penn Elcom rack.

Before:

After:

Need some smaller cases! Took ages and a few jobs to finish up before I put the front on it and tidy the white cables, but as it took significantly longer than expected that's a job for another day and I'm going to treat myself to a Guinness.

That was a very satisfying read. Nice.