Thanks for doing your own DIY Dad and nailing down the squeaky floorboard at
10pm tonight (the one that squeaked 10 years ago when I used to live there). I do not mind a 160 mile round trip to repair the cable and make the RCD and your central heating work again.Rant over.
Adam
Oh dear.
My advice to anyone with squeaky floorboards is NOT to stick a nail in where there appears to be one missing. There is usually a reason why there is no nail there, like there's a pipe or cable underneath!
How do I know this? :-(
Rick
ARWadsworth wrote - apparently at five past three in the morning(!):
Ah, but at least you have someone to seethe at. The *real* self-eating rage comes when you yourself do the idiocy. "Best" is when you trace a cable run in a house you've just bought, find that the upstairs ring feeds through a cunningly-placed hole drilled just under the top step, think to yourself "well, we'll reroute that soon, but for now I'll replace that board with 4 screws, one at each corner", and then once you've put it back "optimise" the screwing to two at the back corners and one dead-center front. Bang.
Hypothetically speaking, of course...
You can always blame the sparks/plumber for putting the obstacle in such a stupid place :-)
Yebbut when you *saw* the cable with your own eyes, noting exactly where it ran, not 5 minuted before you drill the screw pilot hole right through it... it's hard not to allocate blame to the fool doing the drilling!
Hypothetically of course ;-)
Rather like when you drill through a wall adjacent to where you drilled trhough the same wall a couple of weeks earlier. The intention being to feed through another phone cable next to the other one. You then find that although you are one inch away from the wire on *this* side of the wall, there is only one exit hole on the other side of the wall (with some broken phone wire in it)!
Hypothetically, that would rate several growls on the "damn the fool who's growling" scale. As would - hypothetically, of course - picking up your f-off Big masonry drill (a mere 14mm diam, so not really a Man's tool girth ;-) but seemed big at the time), carefully measuring distance from floor and distance from corner of room, aiming to come out somewhere in the hall cupboard to feed through a Cat5 or two. Measure twice, drill once.
Drill slowly, to make not too much mess when breaking through.
Break through.
Wonder about the source of the *daylight* now in flesh appea-a-ring.
Realise that the room you're drilling in does, of course, stick out about two feet further than the wall around the front door behind which lies the hall cupboard you were aiming for.
Umm.
Well, since the Telewest monkeys were coming to fit a new cable phone line into that room, decide that you'd always intended for the hole you just made to be the entry point for the new Telewest line.
Hypothetically, as always. And in any case it was at least ten years ago.
LOL But he still loves you. :-) LOL
*LAUGH*
Marvellous, thank you for that.
Things not to do Christmas morning;
M-I-L comes to stay for Christmas. Radiator in spare bedroom not working due to jammed TRV. Remove thermostatic head, grasp pin with pointy pliers and wiggle firmly back and forth (this is the third one I've done this morning.)
Too firmly, since pin comes out and evil black water starts to piss out of hole. Stare in horror at little fountain of black goo. Curse violently. Put finger over hole to stop water until panic subsides (and before water gets too hot to permit this). Wonder how to explain to plumber that I want him to come and fix my stupidity on Christmas morning. Wonder how to explain to *wife* what I've done. Sudden flash of inspiration; look at pointy pliers in other hand, with pin still gripped in them. Take finger off hole (black fountain resumes), stick pin back in hole. Black fountain stops. Let go. Pin stays in hole. Quickly screw thermostatic head back on, check that there are no leaks (there aren't). Heave sigh of relief and return to duties in kitchen.
Phew.
But how did you explain the mess from the little black fountain?
'Nuff said...
Easy, eh Huge? That will have come from one of the myriad of little bottles and potions that MILs habitually cart around with them. (Best not to let on to MIL, though, it will only upset her...)
David
Fortunately, SWMBO has just redecorated the spare bedroom and we have not yet recarpeted, so it didn't matter. Most of it mopped with loo roll anyway.
What, you mean like standing on the outlet pipe from the brim-full 70-odd gallon loft tank and pulling it clean out of the tank when you're alone in the house?
Then colourfully describing what a pipe wrench looks like as you would rather like your dearly beloved to fetch it - if only you could remember where it had hidden itself in your shed?
Even allowing for the head of steam that was building up, I can vouch that the water feels bloody cold after your arm is immersed up to the shoulder, with your thumb in the outlet for more than 30 minutes, while waiting for her to return from the shops! Shouting at her didn't improve the situation in the least.
Could you not have stuffed a sock in it while you looked for something to fix it?
Oh I'm sure these are all only hypothetical... I mean who among us would be so totally stupid? Erm, well.... ahem :)
By the way, on a totally unrelated note, why do people get so upset when you chisel or drill straight through live wires? Never understood that.
NT
Think I'd be worried about marking the pin and therefore possible damage to the seals. Either tap it with a soft faced hammer, or use a bit of wood and an ordinary hammer, after a soak in WD40 or similar.
*laugh*
I keep 2 or 3 corks of various sizes in my tool box for this very eventuality.
*applause* What a good idea!
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