Tag Archives: DIY

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[Home] When the music stops..

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This weekend has not been my finest, I had a couple of DIY jobs to do and some other jobs to get on with..

The short version of the story is me drilling through my ring main, and having to knock a rather larger hole in the wall than I was expecting..
Everyone is fine this is a tail of ineptitude not of mortal perils or bloodshed..

This means that I have been spending rather a lot of time trying to put that right so not looked at anything else that I was supposed to be doing.. arg.

In the longer story, I was fitting a new plug socket in the kitchen, and patching up a small section of wall which had been behind the cupboards which I took down, (or rather I had help taking down), so we could have a new fridge.
That should have been not that hard, I have done similar before..
Only I had miss remembered the exact route taken to get to the other kitchen sockets and quite neatly drilled through the ring main..

I knew what had happened, as the drill stopped and more importantly so did the radio and everything else..

So to fix that I had to chase out a section of cable so I could replace the damaged section, and move where I was going to site my new socket..
All of which resulted in me hacking quite a large amount of plaster off the wall..

Now the wall behind the new socket location was unstable, so I couldn’t drill into it to mount the new socket, so I had to mix up some morter and try and fill it in..

After leaving that over night to dry, I was disappointed to discover that it had failed to go off and was basically just sand.. which crumbled at the slightest touch.
So I had to hack that all out again, go buy some fresh morter and start again..

I now have a more solid looking wall behind the socket, I will have to leave it a bit longer before I am willing to drill holes in it to mount the socket back box..

Once that is in, I will be able to wire everything back up again and turn the power back on..
Oh and slowly start filling on the rest of my gigantic hole..

I will get it fixed, it is just going to take rather a lot longer than I was hoping..

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[Rant] It’s elf and safety mate..

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Last week, (sorry this post is horribly late) I visited a timber yard to buy a short length of window sill board.  I am finally getting round to putting a nice window sill in the kitchen..  It has only taken me erm years..

Anyway, after wandering about a bit I found what I was after, but as I only needed 1.25 meters I needed to get someone to cut it to length for me.  This is where the fun started.  The chap I was dealing with hadn’t been trained on the static circular saw, and the company safety policy prohibits untrained use.  Sensible enough if you ask me. 
So I ask who can use the saw.. which is met with a blank look..

At this point I also learned that it is policy that staff members can not use hand saws… But if I had a saw with me I could cut the wood for myself.  Sorry what!

Given that I am not a full time builder with a van full of tools, I didn’t have a saw with me, and the sharpest thing I was carrying was a pen..

This clearly identified me as a very strange person, clearly I was comfortable in a timber yard, I knew exactly what specific thing I needed, but I wore a suit coat had no discernable paint marks and had no tools with me..
What was worse, not only did I not have tools I didn’t have a van or a car having walked.

While I was quizzing yet another member of staff just who could use the power saw, my original helper returns carrying a hand saw, that he has borrowed from a slightly perplexed builder who is visiting the yard.

Apparently I am allowed to use a hand saw in their workshop, but they can’t.
So I set to and cut my own bit of wood, before returning the saw.

This has just left me baffled.  Clearly they have identified a safety risk with the use of hand saws.. one that is so serious that it can’t be mitigated by staff training. Yet untrained members of the public can be given a saw (that has been borrowed from some other member of the public) and allowed to cut their own wood in the workshop space of the timber yard.  Given that they have a duty of care to members of the public, I wonder just what would have happened if I had had an accident.

Technology

[Tech] That very recognisable crunching sound

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This evening I broke the screen on my phone.  I put a screwdriver in the same pocket, so I am not really very surprised that this resulted in a broken phone.

What annoys me is 2 things:

1) I put a screwdriver in the same pocket as my phone.  What was I thinking, ok I know that, I was being annoyed at some DIY that wasn’t working.]

2) This is the screen that I replaced less than a week ago after I dropped it.

I have had the phone for 2 years without breaking the screen, heck I have never broken the screen on any of the smart phones I have owned.  Before now..

Arg, just arg..