What Planet are they on?

[The Medway Handyman]

Grrrr!

Today I fitted 28 handles to IKEA wooden drawers and aluminium door frames. Two screws secured each handle.

The instructions glibly stated "drill two 5 mm holes at 448 mm centres".

Easy with a bench drill in the workshop, not so easy inside a walk in dressing room with little space & poor lighting, even with a home made template. Must be a simpler way with some adjustment surely? Could have been done in half the time.

Friday I put up several curtain poles. The fixing was a circular plate about 40mm dia with 3 holes. Not too bad in plasterboard, but the fixings are so close together they must weaken the board. Difficult in brick to get

3 accurate holes that close together. One single No 12 screw through the middle would have been easier and stronger.

Do the people who design these things ever have to put them up? Are they on the same planet?

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

So the drawers could not be detached from the unit to put the handles on where space can be accessed?

99% of curtain rail fixings are designed to affix to wood.

What planet are *you* on?

[The Medway Handyman]

WHAT?

[The Natural Philosopher]

My reaction too..

Ive put up many curtain rails in my time, but never ever on wood.

Brick/plaster/breeze block/concrete/steel/plasterboard yes...wood, no. Not until I hack out a section of plasterboard, shove some wood behind, re-plasterboard, skim, paint ....

..."surely it can't take two whole days just to put up a curtain rail darling?".....

[Weatherlawyer]

Nice to see you have plenty of work.

The handles would have been a doddle with a jig. A drawer front sized piece of ply for example. (Drilling from the back of the ply of course as there might be some difference in the dimensions front to back.)

Did they come with a pack of piddling 1 1/4" sevens and almost unusable nylon plugs an odd size below reds, too?

Always make sure the rail is longer than the lintle (and pray they put a standard length one in there.) There is nothing worse than hitting a catnic. You could always glue and screw a piece of 1/2" mdf as a backing plate though. But then you are bound to hit the steel -either the catnic or the rebar.

[dom]

I suspect they go to great pains to ensure that they will stay up in a flimsy, half-hearted fashion for a little while. What fool would sell a permanent solution?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'm looking forward with baited breath for the time anything designed for wall mounting comes with a suitable fixing kit. I've got a box full of those unopened packets...

[Dave Fawthrop]

|In article , | Weatherlawyer wrote: |> Did they come with a pack of piddling 1 1/4" sevens and almost |> unusable nylon plugs an odd size below reds, too? | |I'm looking forward with baited breath for the time anything designed for |wall mounting comes with a suitable fixing kit. I've got a box full of |those unopened packets...

Mine always come in *eventually* even 1 1/4 sevens.

[The Medway Handyman]

Im glad as well :-) The market seems huge.

I did use a jig for the drawer fronts, which helped a lot. I used a 6mm drill nstesd of a 5mm to allow a bit of 'play'.

You have obviously put up the same make!

Oddly enough I didn't hit a lintel, they had plasterboarded around them and all I could fix into was that. The SDS remained in the car.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)" saying something like:

Same here, and they're f all use for anything, being too skinny and useless plugs.