Meldrew moment.

[The Medway Handyman]

We ought to start a UK DIY rouges gallery :-)

[John]

I am working at present on a house where the previous occupantts son painted AROUND the curtains in every room.

Cheers

John

[Chris J Dixon]

Red-faced transgressors?

Chris

[RobertL]

hell won't the "pros" take things off walls and do jobs

In an office where I worked they had the walls repapered. They papered over the light switches and then cut a 'cross' on the paper over each switch and then tucked the paper in behind. That might have been OK if carefully done. but the switches all ended up with a X deeply cut into the surface.

Robert

[George]

over/around

I see you don't carry a magnet in your tool kit? would have shown which side of the flat the bracket was underneath the plaster.

[George]

So why didn't you use a sharp stanley blade to slightly score the paint around the switch/socket? that way the paint will stay. ;-) personally I have those finger plates around mine,looks much stylish than just the switches also helps to retain the paint not getting dirty from small grubby fingers. :-)

[Chris J Dixon]

I had a house where previous carpet fitters had carefully incised a neat line along every skirting board about 5 mm from the bottom, managing to get through all the layers of paint, which then began to curl and chip.

Chris

[Bob Eager]

Our last house had that, in one room. It was where I had fitted my first carpet :-(

[The Medway Handyman]

I do - but I didn't think of the idea! Cheers.

[John]

Finished for Xmas already TMH?

John

[Skipweasel]

We rented a house many years ago which had been rewired. They'd chased the wall through two layers of wallpaper then plastered flush with the paper and papered again over the top. Once we stripped the wall we were left with a ridge down the wall two paper-thicknesses high which was a bugger to get flat. We also found someone had removed a built-in wardrobe by force and left craters in the plaster which they'd stuffed with torn up paper and papered over.

Once we finally got it all sorted out I discovered the socket that the chasing was for was connected to the lighting circuit.

At least now we own a house any problems are ours.

[Skipweasel]

Aaargh - hideous! Everyone has gout, as the French say.

[The Medway Handyman]

Nah. Just popped home for some hot soup after spending the morning replacing fence posts. Piggin freezing out there!

Last job Xmas eve.

[John Stumbles]

Collect different types when you come across them! That's got me out of the sh*t before now.

[ARWadsworth]

>>> As reccommended by Adam Wadsworth. Only used it once, but saved me more

Any half decent professional electrician would swap the broken lug on the socket backbox with a good lug from the lightswitch in the same room. As the lightswitch has no "pull pressure" on the faceplate the customer would never know :)

Adam

[John Rumm]

Now that is worth remembering ;-)

[Mike Clarke]

That's assuming that the switches and sockets are in the same brand of box, probably not the case if extra sockets etc have been added over the years.

But why not just replace the back box? We're only talking about cheap dry lining boxes here and it's a quick and easy job with no plaster to cut away and repair.

[John Rumm]

It is not always easy to get them out. If the walls were skimmed after the boxes installed, then they are often set in the skim and you risk damaging areas of it. Also the wires may well be positioned so as you make actually withdrawing it from the hole difficult without chopping em off!

[tim.....]

> As reccommended by Adam Wadsworth. Only used it once, but saved me more

I was going to say that my dad had one of those (which he used to re-thread imperial to metric) .

When I acquired his tools he seems to have lost it and I've been wondering for ages if I could buy a new one.

tim

[Mike Clarke]

Good point. I've only had to deal with ones I've put in myself, where this wouldn't be a problem, but I see now that removal might not always be so simple.