repairing things

Had no idea about these smoke alarms.

Had one connected to the wall through ... RCA cables? Started beeping even though there was no fire. Pull it off the wall... and it still beeps.

Find the battery and remove it. Still beeping. So now I'm convinced I got one of those possessed smoke alarms. Threw it out.

i bet the possession is related to the whole "smart home" thing -- like, yr smoke alarm was taking orders or having an argument with someone's smart fridge idk

Fixed that toilet flapper no problem. Toilet works great. Husband was proud of me for attempting to do something "handy."

only things i have repaired recently were the squeaky bathroom lock, and the door handle to the front room. things i need to repair:
- dining room light wiring. i will get someone else to repair this i think, even tho my gf explained how to do it, she is much more practical than me and i would balls it up and die
- landing light needs fixing
- my favourite coffee cup broken, needs fixing

finally getting around to sorting out a couple of zips on jeans taht have been hanging around for months. But not touched sewing machine in ages. JUst not got it together to make anything this year. Started in about the first week of teh year and thought i was getting off to a good start but nothing since early spring.
Hopefully this is me starting to get back into things but don't want to talk too soon.

I bleeded my radiators the other day and then was pissing about trying get the pressure right. First the pressure was too low and the boiler wouldn't fire up and then it was firing up and cutting off after 10 secs because I'd put too much water back in. I just need it to carry on working until the annual service in January. I hate messing about with boilers because I try and act like I know what I'm doing but haven't really got much of a clue. Council plumbers tend to be such arseholes I only like to call them as a last resort.

yah i need to get mine serviced this year. its ancient but touch wood etc. i think it must have some leak somehwere in the system because i have a radiator that needs constant bleeding and is always making high ptiched squealing noises.

so much for "repairing things" the boiler is totally knackered now, the PCB won't even boot up and just keeps blinking on and off. It's getting a milder anyway but the missus has MS related ultra cold sensitivity and anything a degree below room temperature is like Siberia to her!

We had a lock/latch on back door stick in the closed position, meaning we literally couldn't open the door. I tried taking the door off the frame, but of course that couldn't work, because the latch was engaged in the door jamb already. So I got a bunch of pliers and screwdrivers and whatnot and went to work on what little I could reach after taking off the handle, but no use. I did manage to remove/destroy most of the exposed latch mechanism, but the tiny tip of the latch itself was unreachable and just would not retract. We finally had to call a locksmith out and he said I had the right idea, but it still took him a good 20 minutes+ of further physical effort to finally rip all the parts out to free the door. I guess the origin of the problem was that a tiny little piece of metal or something had spontaneously broken loose and clogged up the works? Anyway, pain in the ass, but fixed now. I suppose better to have a door permanently shut than permanently open.

wish I could repair my living space by having the racist morons who live next door permanently removed.
Hate sharing a street door with people who can't keep it locked and just leave it open for hours on end. We've had problems with people who have nothing to do with the building hanging around at teh bottom of the stairs before. Now hopefully coming to the end of a time when kids have been throwing fireworks around and into unlocked doorways.Still no cop on. Hoping mail hasn't disappeared.

we had a package stolen from inside the foyer just this week. deliver guy had a picture of it left by the inside door, but someone got in and took it. the lock hasn't been great recently, stiff because of the change of weather perhaps. and we've had druggies using the porch for shelter for the last few months.

You should do the humanitarian thing and build them their own porch.

so much for "repairing things" the boiler is totally knackered now, the PCB won't even boot up and just keeps blinking on and off. It's getting a milder anyway but the missus has MS related ultra cold sensitivity and anything a degree below room temperature is like Siberia to her!

― calzino, Monday, 8 November 2021 10:45 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ugh that really sucks im sorry, its so fn depressing when the most basic shit won't work

It's fine really, we've got a backup electric immersion heater and one them horrible electric fires that is just a heater fan embedded into an MDF fireplace that the council now prefer to gas fires, but it does the job. Plumber has ordered two PCB parts for tomorrow. It's living the dream in comparison to the shit people put up with in the private rental sector.

"Council plumbers tend to be such arseholes I only like to call them as a last resort."

8)

(my landlord's plumber broke the knob on the boiler during the yearly inspection two years ago but balanced it so that it looked ok until i touched it. last year he didn't mention it despite it still being broken - not much of an inspection)

some of them are very snobby little young tory lads and have nothing but contempt for council tenants

luckily my plumber was a very polite goth type which made a pleasant change from the tribal tatt goons they usually send. My conclusion is that my fault analysis that the pressure was the problem after bleeding the rads was completely wrong. The PCB was just shutting down because it was on it's way out.

I had someone call at the door from a claims company that specifically dealt with bad council repairs. It seemed a bit off to me, like shouldn't they be going after private landlords rather local authorities. Sure there are problems with social housing but the worst living conditions in this country are most deffo in the private rental sector. It seems a lot of these claims companies are going bust now, not specifically the type I've just mentioned but the 2018 amendment to the Civil Liability Act kicked in a few months back and they are dropping like flies.

this week i'm learning about "patching" "drywall" with "spackle" and "studs". messed up country.

"it's so simple is plastering, it's just like buttering toast" someone once said to me. yet again when you see people's DIY efforts compared to the work of experienced plasterers, those beautiful shiny smooth walls you see drying - it deffo takes time to get that good!

Ten years ago I wired a new cooker switch at my stepdad's house. His old one was a horrible wall mounted one from the 70's and the plastic was cracking up and it was electrically unsafe. I sunk two drywall boxes into the stud wall for his new one and had to knock a few holes in the wall to get the cable to the new outlet. I did this really fucking awful hack job on the patching and it's still there ten years later!

yeah what we need to do is definitely a step up from filling in drawing pin holes with toothpaste on moving out day.

we have about five 4"x2" holes in the ceiling that i really feel like i should be able to manage myself with these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073HQS59F/.

then there's big 1 ft by 6ft hole with a power outlet in the middle that i'm saving for last.

One of my favorite "repairing" stories from before we renovated our house was I was changing our sheets on our bed and made a big show of snapping the flat sheet to spread it out on the bed and hooked it on the ceiling fan above our bed (our ceilings upstairs are 7 feet or so) and it yanked the ceiling fan off the ceiling joist and onto our bed in a shower of 75 yo drywall leaving a hole up to our unheated and largely uninsulated attic.

I repaired the drywall rather quickly that week to keep the heat from escaping. Spackling is like herding cats.

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to. Lol they used to horse hair and that's often how electrical fires used to start. Also ignore me I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

black lime is most disgusting thing present in old walls next to asbestos. At least the latter is doesn't make you feel absolutely poisoned and itchy while it is fixing to kill you.

my problem is 80% i am terrible at the fundamentals of applying stuff to create a smooth surface and 20% walls are different in the united states and if i call my dad his advice makes no sense because it's stuff he learned renovating a terraced house in sheffield ca. 1985.

i've lived here for 8 years and am still unclear what a stud is tbqh.

caek I used those mesh things you linked to before and they really only work if they have something to hold on to. 6x6 obv bigger than 4x2, so it will work if you are just trying to get by for a little, but if you want it to last, you will need something to fill in the gap.

You could get a piece of drywall cut to just about the right size, screw it into the adjoining drywall on an angle, then use the mesh.

Another option would be to enlarge the holes so they reach the nearest joists. That would make a larger but easier job.

studs run vertically in walls, joists run horizontally in ceilings/floors.

if you can get a rough base of some bonding in there, then wack in a lot of polyfila as flat as possible and sand it down afterwards, it will look reet with a lick of paint!

sorry I'm not being helpful here, PBKR is talking sense

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

screwing plasterboard in is the correct approach with stud walls, or gluing it in if you cant get a fixing to some wood. Or even the cowboy option of stuffing the plasterboard in with screwed up paper!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

Ive a bit of drilling new holes and hanging a few shelves and repairing of holes meself to look forward too, i was hoping to get away with skimming tbh

a stud sensor will be your friend then because you don't want to be making exploratory holes to find them!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

very close to the same but plasterboard is specifically designed to be plastered over whereas drywall just gets joint compound plastered over the joints

https://www.hunker.com/12616166/differences-between-gypsum-board-and-plasterboard

xp those mesh things can be tricky on walls and might fall off a ceiling unless supported as PBKR suggests

last time I had to do a drywall repair I watched a bunch of YouTube videos ... many were not relevant to my tiny job, but I gained some reassuring general knowledge and was able to do a California patch that looks pretty good (it would look even better if we painted it to match the wall color)

xp the entire party wall is fuckin wrapped in some kind of foil, alas

Wonderful for insulation no doubt but the fuckin studfinder is useless as a result for anything along that part

Im just hoping that the yungfella who gave me the screws and the go ahead to start drilling into what he presumed was brick beyond the boatd knew what he was talking about, or else....

lol just use those spiral plasterboard fixings and don't actually put anything on your shelf ffs!

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 8, 2021 7:22 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've got loads of house horror stories.

i put little cable clamps down on my speaker wire in my new place, for the left speaker, running up and across a doorway, then back down to the other side and the receiver. felt pretty good because my friend let me borrow these little clamp pieces where you have to nail them in, and even my tiny skeleton fingers were big enough to get in the way of the hammer, so much. i was basically 80% hammering the nail and 20% hammering my thumb, on purpose, because that was the only way.

just throwing this in here because it was a Small Victory but also probably <.0001% of normal handy person skill for normal day-to-day things.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to.

This is the way we patched drywall holes. Stretch of scrap wood or two screwed across the hole, piece of drywall cut to fit, tape bed & texture. The mesh screens are harder to make invisible IMO.

I have hit ceiling fans with sheets on more than one occasion, it is a miracle I've never ripped one out of the ceiling.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

― certified juice therapist (harbl), Tuesday, 9 November 2021 00:47 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great another fuckin thing to worry about!

but the bonus is there that you've fucked up a plasterboard fixing but also found a solid fixing point!

hah hah unless by some bad luck you just happened to find a bit of the joist in a wiring zone and there is a steel plate on it or not!

oh god lol it's true

those plates have burned me more than once

Bad enough I couldn't sleep before this thread yiz animals