What's your most unpleasant DIY task

[Broadback]

I had to cut through a cast iron pipe recently, masked everything, made a polythene tent, wore a mask, cut it with a cutting disk. Ugh, the fine black dust got everywhere, including up my nose and in my mouth, the taste was awful, as it was a toilet pipe I'm sure I could taste the s*1t, not that I had ever tasted it before. Worse of all the iron in my mouth reacted with my filling, it was like chewing silver paper. By far my most unpleasant job what's yours? I think if I had to do it again I'd buy a reciprocating saw, whatever the expense.

[Rick Dipper]

Fitting rockwall, onto the underside of a floor when lieing in the crawl space. I would never do this again.

However painting is right up there. I got talked into "United Colors of ........." paints, 6 coats it took to get the ceiling vaguley right

• the days doing the walls. In the end I gave up, went and got some Dulux Profesional Colour Matched, and went over the top of the whole lot, perfect in 1 coat, and much less money than the orignal stuff, only took a day to do 2 rooms.

Gloss Painting could be used as a torture technique, its in my Room

101.

Rick

[:::Jerry::::]

Well you used the wrong type (class) of mask then, didn't you !... Duh.

[Ian Stirling]

IMO, nothing beats spending hours on something, getting a lovely result, and then completely wrecking it just as you finish.

Recent example for me would be after my monitor failed, I took it apart, spent a while finding the fault, fixed it, and went on to add a small low-speed fan to keep it cooler, and then replacing some caps on the board, as they were a bit old, and high ESR.

Turned it on to check it. Result!, slightly brighter, with no shadowing like it was doing, and better EHT regulation. Left it going for 12 hours, still fine. Slid case back on, and was met with a whooshing noise. A wire that needed to be in one position when out of the case, has to be taken off and put back on before you put the case back on.

It had caught on the board at the back of the CRT, and ripped the neck off the tube, making it utterly unrepariable.

For "nasty, smelly" jobs, I tend to skip the whole mask thing, and go for a full facemask with air supplied from a fresh source.

[John Borman]

Wished you hadnt said that I have the job in a few days of cutting through a cast iron soil pipe cant wait now :o) may leave it till after xmas, incidently what type of mask did you use? i have a P3 mask which is for fine hazadous dust alos how hard was it to cut through the pipe was it like a knife through butter or did it take some time, also I take it there were alot of sparks, the only reason I say this is because I have to cut the pipe in a small loft area with a very old type of rockwool and I can see the whole lot going up in flames. And if you connected a plastic soil pipe to it (as i want to do) where did you get he connectors

masked everything, made

[Fitz]

So far it has been stripping ancient paper off of a kitchen ceiling that hasn't been cleaned for years.

Imagine a room full of steam.

Imagine standing in a room full of steam.

Imagine standing in a room full of steam with condensed water dripping from the ceiling.

Imagine standing in a room full of steam with condensed water dripping from the ceiling, that hasn't been cleaned for probably... _ever_, since it was last papered - I reckon about 10 to 20 years and it's covered in congealed yellow fudgey grease.

Imagine standing in a room full of steam with condensed water dripping from the ceiling, containing melted 20 year old yellow fudgey grease and it dripping all over your face, your clothes, the floor, running down your sleeves as you hold the steam stripper up.

Don't imagine the smell. It's rank. Oh and the paper is blessed with a plasticy layer that refuses to peel off and refuses to allow the steam through no matter how many times you run the spikey three footed yellow hedgehog over it.

We had to bin the carpet at the end of the day because it smelt so bad. Yep. That's been pretty much our worst job so far.

[Lobster]

Funnily enough, I was going to say 'laying Rockwool' too; in a roof space where the pitch of the roof above was incredibly low and shallow, necessitating me lying full length on crawl boards wiith push-sticks to lay the stuff. But fitting it *above* you?? Yeuch - I think you've beaten me there!

David

[John Borman]

[Charles Middleton]

I like painting - especially glos as it happens. I get a sense of satisfaction when everything is gleaming white. Its the preperation I hate - espeically sanding. And as we are aware this is the key part of any job. When I moved into my house, the previous owners had rag-rolled the walls yellow with orange bits in the hall, stairs and landing. This had to be sanded off which with an electric sander took two days and a lot of sanding pads. This was by far the worst job I had ever done. Even wearing a dust mask I was completely yellow, had yellow ear wax and yellow snot for some time. CM.

[Mungo "two sheds" Toadfoot]

n'more.

Si

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup - the print head on my trusty old Stylus 600 was blocked, and no amount of cleaning cycles would cure it. I removed it and left it soaking in distilled water for a day or so. Then tried forcing water (gently) through it with a small squeezey bottle - the type ink re-fills come in. Linked to each ink input in turn with some sleeving. Some jets worked but not others. Soaked it in industrial alcohol. Tried forcing some of that through. More jets working. After a couple of days of soaking and forcing, eventually all the jets seemed clear. In jubilation I went to pull off the sleeving from the input - careful to do this in line and not break the tiny plastic pipe. But held the assembly wrongly, and pulled the thing apart - ripping off the ribbon to the piezo part. No chance of repairing that.

Anyone got a broken one lying around where the head might be ok? I bought a new printer, but it's not as good in some ways.

[Rob Morley]

Stripping the glue from a plaster ceiling after having removed the polystyrene tiles. I did one room, but the second is still only half done years later :-( Every so often I think I'll finish it, then I think maybe I'll strip the plaster and renew it as it seems like less hassle, then I put it off some more. The plus side is that as the dining room is a mess I use it as a workshop instead :-)

[Rob Morley]

Agreed. The output chip in my car stereo died, so I got a replacement chip from Maplin and fitted it. Hooked it up on the bench and it worked well, but then I knocked the metal case onto the circuit board and the magic smoke escaped :-( Okay, it wasn't hours of difficult work, just getting the chip and a few minutes soldering, but I was _well_ pissed off, and the stereo ended up in the bin - so near and yet so far ...

[Peter Scott]

Stripping the roof off an old barn is the worst lately. The pan tiles were fine but underneath was a thick layer of straw bound together with lime-based mortar. Impossible to stop it flying about. Wonderful drying effect on skin, especially in the creases.

Peter Scott

[Dorothy Bradbury]

Ammonia based cleaners (Windex) are good for Epson heads.

[:::Jerry::::]

Thanks, but what has that got to do with the question, or are you suggesting that cleaning an Epson head (what ever that is) is the worst possible DIY job ?!...

--

[BigWallop]

Dip the whole cartridge in metholated spirit and leave it for a day. Most inks are based on something similar to metholated spirit as their solvent, so it works wonders on cleaning the heads.

[Kalico]

I think these are the worst.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who regularly forgets to put the sleeving/collar/grip etc onto the cable before terminating it. This is especially a pain if I've just soldered the joints.

As for the worst DIY job, I think pulling a ceiling down after I had replaced all the tiles and batons on the roof above it.

Rob

Replace 'spam' with 'org' to reply

[Rod Hewitt]

":::Jerry::::" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

It is also almost impossible to find Windex in the UK. I think that is what makes it one of the most unpleasant DIY jobs. All that swimming...

However, the very similar window cleaning product Sprint seems to work as well in the UK as does Windex in the US - on Epson print heads.

[Colin Wilson]

I was in a shed the other day (Homebase) and they did a rockwool / insulation roll that came pre-wrapped in a plastic film, so its only when you actually cut the roll to length that you expose the fibres. There appeared to be plenty of expansion room to the film, so it should fill out fine.

Jobs like this might never be quite as bad again :-)