Least preferred DIY tasks

[harry]

Best applied with a large paint brush.

[Muddymike]

Painting window frames. I'm thankful the current house has UPVC windows and doors.

Mike

[alan_m]

One thing I learnt early on doing DIY is never pick wallpaper with a strong linear pattern unless you want to show that walls are NOT "straight, true, flat, and at 90 degrees at corners".

[charles]

the otehr thing is to pick real wallpaper - not wall covering. Paper will stretch to fit - the platic suff doesn't, Very obvious in an older house.

[David]

Anything on the outside of a roof!

[spuorgelgoog]

Anything on the inside of a roof.

Hot or cold. Draughty. Glass-fibrous.

Owain

[Harry Bloomfield]

Jeff Layman was thinking very hard :

I love papering, luckily our walls are pretty straight and square. I'm just hopeless at cutting in with a brush with gloss and I never mastered the art of painting a ceiling.

[Chris J Dixon]

Stripping emulsioned woodchip off a ceiling using a steamer was pretty unpleasant, rivalled only by the subsequent recovering with lining paper.

Chris

[Halmyre]

I promised to re-level and realign the built-in dishwasher and washing machine many years ago. Still haven't done it, I just know it's going to end up in a deluge.

I also hate fixing dripping taps. I think the taps in our house are some bizarre hand-made one-offs that standard washers just don't fit properly.

[invalid]

8<

[alan_m]

Recently I've being using paste the wall paper (which doesn't stretch) which I've found makes papering much easier. The one thing to watch with this method is that the walls need to be sized thoroughly, irrespective of the wall finish, and to use a heavy duty paste sold for the purpose. The use of a large roller for sizing/pasting makes the task quick.

[alan_m]

My worst DIY was stripping distemper from walls and ceilings in a couple of rooms. It had been applied very thickly probably some time prior to

1940. I found the only effective way was to soak it with water using a garden sprayer and then scrapping off the resultant chalky gungy sludge. I finished off the remnants by applying an stabilising solution designed for exterior dusty bricks prior to painting.

As for lining paper on the ceiling I would now recommend paste the wall and using fibreliner paper.

Pasting the ceiling takes the weight off the paper when hanging so its feasible to use paper 1m wide rather than the standard 0.52m wide. No more trying to hold a heavy wet bundle of paper above your head.

I have a couple of cut down scaffolding boards that are the full width of the room supported on trestles for papering ceilings. This allows me to walk the width of the room unrolling the dry paper as I go and at the same time as initially brushing it flat to the ceiling.

[John Rumm]

Leas favourite job is working anywhere particularly uncomfortable and awkward to get to! Some have fear of heights, we me its the opposite - any job too close to the ground ;-)

Measuring and marking does not work for me either. I cut spacer boards these days, put the spacer in place on the previous runner, apply some hot glue to the back of the next runner, and then stick it in place on top of the spacer. The hot glue will hold it in the right place to punch (or drill with a Vix bit) some starter screw holes through the runners and get the screws in exactly the right place.

[tabbypurr]

I don't mind doing the contortionist bit no-one else wants to. I just always think how I'll get out if there's a fire.

Must try that next time :)

NT

[bert]

1 Anything involving crawling under a Land Rover Defender

1. Anything involving crawling around in the loft
2. Picking up cold wet dog shit.

[tabbypurr]

We should swap, I don't mind doing those.

NT

[alan_m]

No objection to picking up dog shit when taking friend's dogs for walks but trying to maintain somewhat of flowering front garden I object to the amount of cat shit because of owners refusing to keep their pets under control.

[tabbypurr]

Heh. Control & cats do not mix. It's great fertiliser anyway.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Dig it in. It is top class fertilizer

[bert]

Warm newly laid dog shit no problem Its when it's cold diar - can't spell diarrhoea - that greeted me yesterday morning when I got up.