Graham's Top Tips

[Penners]

You're creating a new shower room.

You thoughtfully fit all the hot and cold supply pipes with service valves and then connect them into the domestic water supply. Thanks to the valves, the water can be turned back on before the washbasin, shower unit and loo have been fitted. The plan is flawless, and you feel very self-satisfied.

You then continue with dry-lining and plastering the walls that will have the shower, washbasin and loo mounted on them. This renders the (closed) service valves totally inaccessible inside the walls.

Old age is a terrible thing.

 

[skier-hughes]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[AMc]

It's always possible to saw a bit more off - it's much harder to saw some back on.

 

[NT]

Measure twice cut once. And continue doing so, even though you get them too short every time.

BTDT

NT

 

[Nemesis]

When you turn off an upstairs radiator to remove underfloor pipework for repair, ensure you really have turned it off and not just on the frost setting.

Otherwise when it gets cold you find it turns on the water flow, which fills up the floor void...

 

[Gervase]

When you turn off an upstairs radiator to remove underfloor pipework for repair, ensure you really have turned it off and not just on the frost setting.

Ah, so glad to discover that I'm not the only person to have done that!
Also, when screwing floorboards back down, make sure that you don't screw straight through the water pipe you've just plumbed in for a new shower. Thankfully I discovered the hole in the pipe before turning the water back on (because I had to unscrew the floorboard to work out why it hadn't seated properly). I think I might have said a coarse word or three then .

 

[Nemesis]

Thankfully the ceiling was a nasty plasterboard one. It now has authentic looking wobbles...

 

[skier-hughes]

Also, when screwing floorboards back down, make sure that you don't screw straight through the water pipe you've just plumbed in for a new shower. Thankfully I discovered the hole in the pipe before turning the water back on (because I had to unscrew the floorboard to work out why it hadn't seated properly). I think I might have said a coarse word or three then .

In one of my shops I took up the floorboards to put some packing in and stop them from wobbling.

I'd put all the existing nails back and all was good enough.......... but you know the feeling........

I'll just put one more in there for good measure.

Straight through an electric cable, but no ordinary one..... one of those sheathed in copper etc......

By 3 in the morning I'd managed to take up all the floorboards again, found where the cable went to and from, replaced it with normal cable, get the floor back down and then the lino.

 

[Moo]

Never keep offcuts of wood.
Whenever you need a piece, you will find that any bits that are suitable will invariably be an inch or so short.
Which will mean a trip to the woodyard and one more piece to add to your store of offcuts.

 

[middi]

........and as soon as you throw it away it's sod's law you will need one a couple of inches shorter within a couple of days :?

 

[Penners]

Never keep offcuts of wood.

Moo - that's such good advice. And so utterly impossible to follow.

I can never throw away wood, and as a consequence my workshop is completely cluttered up with the stuff. I can't get to one of the benches at all, because of something that looks rather like a beaver dam.

 

[Moo]

But, as Middi points out.......

It's sods law either way.

 

[Penners]

Never place your cup of coffee near the paint tin into which you are regularly dipping your brush.

I don't believe it! (think Victor Meldrew). I did it again today!

 

[BMcD]

following on from this post
http://periodpropertyshop.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7573

after moving house, make sure you remove the transit bolts from the washing machine before putting a load on and going down the pub for dinner, leaving the machine to jump around the kitchen whilst you're out. Fortunately it didn't break free from its plumbing and flood the place but the hoses were taut.

 

[NT]

... and the owner was taut a lesson

At least, I taut so.


NT

 

[Nimster]

Where's the tumbleweed emoticon when you need it?

You forgot the "budum tish" at the end

 

[Aidan]

When dismantling any mechanism, the small components can be placed into a compartmented plastic box in the sequence in which they are removed. This will ensure that the assorted nuts, bolts (of different sizes and lengths), springs, washers (plain, spring, serrated), ball bearings, etc., are replaced in their original locations.

It is also helpful if labels are written and placed in each compartment to identify the components. The labels can be cut from plastic milk cartons and marked with an indelible overhead projector marker.

It is advisable to place the compartmented plastic boxes on a high shelf. If they are left on the garage floor one will find that, by stepping on the end of a compartmented plastic box, it can be made to spring suddenly upright like a medieval trebuchet, launching the nuts, bolts, springs, washers, ball bearings and plastic labels across the garage, to ricochet amusingly around the floor.

Prior to dismantling any mechanism, it is advisable to sweep the garage floor.

When reassembling a mechanism e.g., a Renault gearbox, it will eventually be found that the bits you had dropped whilst previously stripping a Citroen engine don't quite fit.

 

[sarahj]

I did this once with my bike as a kid - I took all my gears off bit by bit and placed them along a wall in our garden in the order they came off in. then I went in for my tea. When I came back out again my Mum had tidied them up into a bucket.

 

[skier-hughes]

My wife is forever doing that, but granted I do take things apart one day and then go to put them back several weeks later :roll:

 

[Moo]

Whenever my mother mended her Goblin vacuum cleaner she always ended up with at least one spare screw or washer. It went on working for years and years.