Problems due to being into DIY

May 24, 2014 27 Replies

Going to someone elses house and finding:



Dripping taps.



Doors that need adjusting.



Paint on lightswitches.



(at least the old Vertical Hold doesn't need adjusting)



In pubs - press down taps that are impossible to use as they won't stay on for a few seconds.



Worst I saw after trying to shut off a dripping tap was that the Hot and Cold knobs were on the wrong taps.



Anyone with any others or have I got OCD?


No more vertical hold, but plenty of other adjustments on tellys I am tempted to correct.

I'm into DIY and I've got them in my own house.

I paid a plumber to fix the dripping tap but it drips again.

The doors didn't need adjusting before I painted them.

I'll scrape the paint off the lightswitches when I get round to screwing them to the back boxes. (I'm not the neatest painter.)

Owain

Wide screen TV sets being set to letterbox wide screen material is my favourite for readjustment.

It's also amazing and annoying how many hotel TV sets improve greatly just by resetting the factory defaults for sound and vision.

When I was a teenager at school, I went back to a friend's house. There was a radiator valve dripping upstairs, which was making a stain on the rather ornate old kitchen ceiling below. I proudly showed him how to tighten down the stuffing gland and stopped the leak. A couple of days later he came in to school not best pleased - when the ceiling dried out, it all came crashing down into the kitchen, which was regarded as entirely our fault!

There are various homes across the family which I tend to maintain nowadays - particularly my parents' home. When I'm there, I do a scout around for anything that needs fixing.

Paint on wiring accessories - don't get me started on that one! Professional painters, who can do fantastic straight edges where paint changes colour, always seem incapable of avoiding slapping it onto switches, sockets, etc.

Ah yes, joins in cables under beds using chock block and sticky tape?

Interesting use of self adhesive draught excluder to cover for twisted or warped fron doors. And that is just my house!

Brian

Wont it just scrape off when its dry though? Brian

I get OCD about my own work.

Until I see how the majority of professional is done.

Then I feel better...

Silicone beads in bathrooms at Premier Inns - functional, but very unpretty. Shonkingly bad electrics at other peoples places, especially shops! Etc.

Sounds like the average job to me :-)

Doorbell push buttons that aren't straight drive me mad.

I've also met some where the TV setup reverts to a default every time the room is shut down, and that default is totally useless.

There used to be a Holland and Barrett near here that had wiring for lights and sockets duct-taped all along the wooden ceiling beams. They did fix it, thankfully, about the same time they installed smoke alarms.

After I was shown to my room at the Shanghai Sheraton, I had to screw the hinges into place before the door would close.

Definitely paint on electrical switches, sockets etc. There is NO NEED for it!!!!!!

>

Can you tell that to my GF..... she had been painting an upstairs room's ceiling, and i went up there for some reason and turned on the landing light at the top switch, only to get paint on my finger,

She had painted the entire switch.... none of the wall, just the light switch!!!

I asked her if it was a joke to get paint on my hands, but she said in all seriousness that she had done it as the switch was looking a bit grubby!!!!

Mind, i should have known she was like that.... when i first met her, i noticed the bog in her flat was a perfect colour match for the bathroom walls,

then i noticed it was a matt finish, and she told me proudly that she had painted the bog, inside and out as it had stains in it that she couldnt clean off!!

Did you go there with the intention of screwing?

Bill

Assuming the settings aren't locked in "hotel mode"

And the silly buggers have locked out the HDMI port - found that in one place. Wanted to jack my phone in and watch Netflix.

Tiny shower cubicles that would work so much better if the shower head was mounted in or near a corner, rather than in the centre of one of the sides.

Premier Inn conveyer-belt toaster fed from a half unwound extension reel behind the tablecloth. Reel was hotter than the toast. I informed the Maître d'hôtel (yeah right) even told him I was an electrician (lies). He just blanked me.

Probably a rock star was in there before you. I bet the telly was bolted to the dressing table too.

There used to be a fad for chaining the remote control to the bed head with a telephone style curly cable. I fitted hundreds of them in hotels in Manchester.

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