Your worst job?

[DaveBrigg]

There are some wonderful experiences working on old houses: the thrill of uncovering some hidden feature; being able to look back at a job well done; sitting out in the garden on a sunny day enjoying a well earned rest.
But what about the rest of the jobs, that you hated at the time and would never want to do again?
I'd nominate loft insulation. Crawling through a hundred years of dust, cobwebs and Victorian birds' nests, and even with a face mask, trying to remove a crust of dirt from nose, ears and throat afterwards. All done in semi-darkness, in the knowledge that a toe or elbow out of place will bring the palster on the ceiling below crashing to the floor. Can anyone suggest anything worse?

 

[Gervase]

Hear hear - I couldn't agree more.
Loft insulation - the removal and replacement thereof - has to be the most bloody awful job. Particularly when done in a heatwave!

 

[middi]

Yep, I agree.

Removing a zillion old nails from a very old building is just a dodle compared to untimely loft crawling exercise.

Roof tiling in bitterly cold winter days comes a bit closer though.

 

[Penners]

This is the kind of thread where you professionals have a large head-start on us amateurs. For every rotten job we've done, you'll have done fifty.

As a general principle, I think I'd agree about loft insulation. However, the single worst job I ever did was hand-cutting a half-lap splicing joint in a 500-year-old oak corner post. This post had rotted away up to a point about 18 inches from the sole plate (how the building was still standing, goodness knows).

The joint entailed ripping the vertical post upwards for two feet. The oak was like iron and the day was at least 30 degrees. You really have no idea how difficult and exhausting it is to rip upwards with a hand-saw, until you've tried it.

 

[Pford75]

For me it would have to be either

1. Removing the bathroom carpet that was stuck to the floor....nearly vomited into my face-mask :-(

2. Clearing the pigeons (alive and dead) and their piles of guano from the loft of one of our barns.....dodgy floor....covered in unmentionable....danger of crashing through to the floor below....crunching carcasses underfoot....uuurgh

 

[glayzell]

has everyone forgotten about removing woodchip wallpaper?

give me an itchy loft full of cobwebs anyday!

I have spent the weekend removing the lime plaster in my dinning room ceiling and then cleaning it all up with a brush...i had a facemask, and wear glasses, but the lime in my eyes was a little painful. It was also very tricky.

 

[shelli]

Completely agree about lofts being hideous dirty hellholes.

The old boy who we bought our house from had cowboy roofers in about 8 years ago who didn't sheet up in the loft when they started and didn't clear up when they finished. - they knew he'd never go up there to check as was v frail. They let all the back pointing etc just drop through onto the loft insulation! - which was nice to clean up! there must have been a tonne of rubble etc sitting in the trays. At one point my other half was sitting 3 feet away from me and I literally couldn't see him for dust!

Cleaning it up turned out to be completely pointless anyway as all joists full woodworm and had to be replaced - Ho hum!

Shelli X

 

[Manny]

Oh great, two jobs I need to do this summer and putting a decent layer of loft insulation in (loft space being approx. 3 feet high max) and removing some woodchip wallpaper!

Worst job so far was removing layers of old paint and varnish from the floorboards with Nitromoors. Evil job, glass jars full of black flammable gunk and melted rubber gloves... by the end of it all I wasn't sure who I was or if it was even my house!

 

[middi]

I must admit that the worst job I have ever done prompted me to choose between life or death, in this particular instance it appeared to be a choice between a quick death or a slow one.

It was in the middle of a very hot, air very still, summer's day. I was following jut behind my son whilst crawling and balancing ourselves in a roof valley, ascending towards the apex carrying some ridge tiles. Halfway up the valley he dropped this loud and stinkiest f*rt anyone has ever heard of, as my nose was nearly touching his backside at that time,my choise was to jump off the roof or slowly suffocate.

That was frightening.
I will let him follow me next time.

 

[Penners]

I will let him follow me next time.

Oh, and I suppose (like the Queen) you never pass wind?!

 

[alice]

Cleaning and draining the septic tank when our leach field saturated.

First we had to find it, which involved a lot of digging of holes in caliche (solid rock that masks as soil) in the middle of a Texas summer (100 is a COOL day).

I'm now looking forward to the loft/insulation experience, now that y'all have described it so wonderfully for me. I was told our Suffolk house's loft needed insulation and was planning to have a peek and contract it out this summer as a job that a pro could do over the winter, when we're not there. Your vivid description makes even the "peek" part dreaded.

As an aside... I had read to avoid sprayed on insulation like the plague as it didn't allow the rafters to breath. Batt insulation with blown in loose stuff was the way to go. True?

alice

 

[Gervase]

As an aside... I had read to avoid sprayed on insulation like the plague as it didn't allow the rafters to breath. Batt insulation with blown in loose stuff was the way to go. True?

alice

True. The most important thing is to avoid the spray-on stuff. Whether you use rockwool, sheep wool, flax or cellulose, loose, in rolls or in batts is up to you. Just don't spray!

 

[alice]

Thanks! While I'm pretty good with DIY etc on the US side, I'm still learning about the UK side. For instance, flax and sheep wool insulation is simply not available here; it's all rock wool, so I don't know the difference in quality or cost at all. The spray on stuff isn't legal either (outlawed, I think, because ours had asbestos in it), but I had heard of it over there.

It's a learning curve for me to learn all the subtlies of DIY and renovation in a different environment (literally!), but very interesting, and that's why I'm appreciative of this forum.

alice