D
dontbelieveawordofit
turned up in a van with the word ‘carpenter’ on the side
Bodges, scrimping and Friday afternoon jobs
turned up in a van with the word ‘carpenter’ on the side
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He must have used a kitchen knife instead of chiselView attachment 199376 View attachment 199377
turned up in a van with the word ‘carpenter’ on the side
Must be one of those "carpenters" who uses a bucket of odd pre-used screws.
Seen a job where all hinges had different screws, and I mean not one screw was the same as the other.
I don't know how they managed that as a spare hinge left behind had chromed screws included
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D
Deleted member 174758
That puts the house as late 1940s/early 1950s - a time when building materials were on strict rationing (I believe it ended in 1954), so it's hardly surprising thast there was a make do and mend approach by some builders at the time.
As an aside there's a one or two places (generally toilet blocks) where we've had to put in the odd stud wall with the 3 x 2s "flat-on" (making a 2in thick wall) because someone boogered-up the measurements on the drawings, so the bricks edge on makes sense if you are desperate for space
When we moved into the current house I had to lift the attic floor so that the sprayer could treat the timbers (mortgage requirement as we'd found some minor woodworm damage, although there was no frass and the treatment guy reckoned it was all very old) - anyway, I found some old loose electrical cable under the floor. It was lead sheathed and the wires inside the sheething were wrapped in what looked like brown, waxed paper and hessian. Pulled the first three bits out, but when I grabbed the next bit it turned out to be live. Muscule reaction kicked in and I was knocked to the floor, putting one foot through the ceiling below whilst fortunately detaching myself from the errant cable (although the fuse blowing might also have helped). God alone knows why this was still connected to the mains, but I tracked down a 1920s Bakelite connector block beneath the floor and sorted that out before getting the whole lot ripped out and replaced. Once bitten, twice shy
The houses were built straight after WW2, the first ones in 1945 and mine completing in the summer of 1947. I think the wall in question was done deliberately the more I think about it. There was no recorded shortage of bricks (LBC bricks) in my area at that time.
What a story on the old wire still being live after all that time! I found cotton-wrapped wire behind a wall in my front room which is still there.
Time to paws for thought ?
D
Deleted member 174758
On a roll today, Bernard
Stripping my walls and prepping for a plaster skim coat, I’m finding when removing the cheap PVC cladding on the ingoes that the majority of the windows are held in with nothing but the external rough cast render, magic, thoughts and prayers.
Some of the other stuff is just as insane, the original wood chip walls had timber battens with a plasterboard finished with more wood chip… not too crazy except the battens were fired up in any old random pattern and seems to be whatever they had lying around.
The timber studs on the “new” stud wall they built at one time has a small 300mm length wall area… the stud on the left isn’t fixed at the bottom, the one on the right is in three separate lengths nailed to the stud on an adjoining wall.
The previous owners who had bought the property as a flip, found some old carpets from somewhere to put down… didn’t seem to have any carpet tacks on them, so they screwed it to the floor instead. Why not, eh?
Some of the other stuff is just as insane, the original wood chip walls had timber battens with a plasterboard finished with more wood chip… not too crazy except the battens were fired up in any old random pattern and seems to be whatever they had lying around.
The timber studs on the “new” stud wall they built at one time has a small 300mm length wall area… the stud on the left isn’t fixed at the bottom, the one on the right is in three separate lengths nailed to the stud on an adjoining wall.
The previous owners who had bought the property as a flip, found some old carpets from somewhere to put down… didn’t seem to have any carpet tacks on them, so they screwed it to the floor instead. Why not, eh?
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D
Deleted member 174758
Probably got the idea from our local handyman service, as advertised on BBC's Rogue Traders, messers Bodgit & Scarper
The most annoying thing about the stuff they did is that it could have been done right and for not much more money at all… a lot of the stuff just seems like intentional taking the ****.
I plumbed in a gas fire in our first house. Was pretty pleased with it too - it worked. When we had central heating fitted the following year, they tested for leaks at the gas meter when they had finished. The gauge dropped like a stone. Turned out that me using dry compression fittings for a gas pipe that I’d threaded under the floor wasn’t a good idea. They charged me £40 extra to take the floor up and run a new pipe with proper soldered joints and they also did something with the bit of tin between the fire and the chimney.
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Hold my hand up to a small bodge today. Was re-fixing a loo roll holder where the screws had worked loose. It is a Paramount with plasterboard plugs.
I don't know if the kids were swinging on it, but I took it off and decided with two of the fixings to replace them with collapsible anchors.
Well, burger me, but they somehow broke as I was tightening them up and wouldn't screw tight. So I dug around in my drawers of bits and pieces and found two very slim plugs.
Hammered them into the stricken anchors and they did the job splendidly!
I don't know if the kids were swinging on it, but I took it off and decided with two of the fixings to replace them with collapsible anchors.
Well, burger me, but they somehow broke as I was tightening them up and wouldn't screw tight. So I dug around in my drawers of bits and pieces and found two very slim plugs.
Hammered them into the stricken anchors and they did the job splendidly!
How were you tightening them?
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