Getting Handy in 2013 - Man Skills

[Graham C]

Having little man skills myself, I'm enjoying this thread.  I managed to sort out my own leaky overflow the other day (thin I know) and it made me feel like I'd achieved something good.  It'd taken me about 4 weeks to get around to it, but nevertheless it's a good feeling being able to sort stuff out providing that stuff only takes a few minutes, I don't want to be bogged down with all day jobs that's for sure.

Keep up the good work.

[doubleup]

When I can actually get someone to find and repair the leak in the roof, I will have to sort this out.  What is the best plan?

Click to see full-size image.

[outragous76]

When I can actually get someone to find and repair the leak in the roof, I will have to sort this out.  What is the best plan?

Click to see full-size image.

get a plasterer in 

[ACE2M]

When I can actually get someone to find and repair the leak in the roof, I will have to sort this out.  What is the best plan?

Click to see full-size image.

My firend has one of these in his dining room roof, its been there since he bought the house 6 years ago, every time i go round he tells me about how he's going to fix it this way or that, procrastination ftw.

[RED-DOG]

Slightly scary Man-Skills task in progress.

Report to follow....

[kinboshi]

Slightly scary Man-Skills task in progress.

Report to follow....

Barry's skills have been showcased on Facebook and twitter today.  Hope he posts his accomplishment in here as well.

(It won't be as manly as the task you're embarking on Tom, I can pretty much guarantee that)

[millidonk]

I am abs terrible at this stuff. One day I was out shopping with the missus after a heavy night on the sauce, we saw a rather nice ceramic lamp which we ended up purchasing. Once home, I picked up the lamp and went to put the bulb in, obv being the genious I am, I had already plugged the lamp into the mains.. after about a minute of trying to get a bayonet lamp into a twisty slot, I couldn't work out what was wrong, so decided to put my finger into the hole to get a proper good feel for the thread.. skip to me being flung across the room and subsuquently dropping and smashing said lamp after having however many thousand volts rush through my entire body. After half an hour of listening to the missus pissing herself, I regained my composure, jumped in the car and bought the exact same lamp, this time with the correct fitting light bulb..

Moral of the story "Don't drink and DIY kids"

On the plus side I have a spare lamp shade for said lamp.

Also I am pretty sure I knocked about 10k of the value of my house trying to put up a curtain pole.

[DaveShoelace]

Yeah this is what I did today

[bobAlike]

Yeah this is what I did today

Lol but I feel I should report you to the RSPCA

[kinboshi]

That is brilliant!  Forget showers, this is where your talent lies Barry!

[Graham C]

Made me laugh, very good

[EvilPie]

You can glue metal to metal but it's a pretty terrible idea.

There's a reason that the top of the tap comes off. It's to make it accessible for maintenance. There's a little screw in there that does exciting things when you turn it.

If you permanently bond it then it's GG to ever getting to it again.

A couple of new basic taps will probably set you back £10 at most. Get them bought and pass the cost on to your landlord.

[RED-DOG]

Our caravan has gas central heating, (Don't get me started on the price of gas) but we also have a little electric fire in the 'living room'.

We don't use the electric fire very often, but it is handy to put on for an hour before bed on summer evenings when we don't want to fire the central heating up, or on these cold winter mornings as a source of instant heat to take the chill off until the radiators warm up.

Just lately though, it's been playing up. There seems to be a sort of safety cut-out that I assume is intended to switch the heater off if it overheats,  but it's started kicking in when it's only been on for a couple of minutes. Very annoying.

So I decided to take it apart. I had no idea what I was looking for, I'm not that hot when it comes to heaters (No pun intended) but the call out fee for an engineer is like ~ £60, plus labour, plus parts, plus VAT. More than enough to motivate me to try to fix it myself.

Click to see full-size image.

[RED-DOG]

One of the most difficult thing was actually finding a way in to the bloody thing. I couldn't see what held it together or what held it in place. Eventually I did spot a couple of tiny grub screws hidden behind a grille and we were away.

Here's a bit of advice for all you budding DIY'ers. Buy yourself a good inspection lamp. (I would never have found those grub screws without one).


Get a battery-powered multi LED one with a magnet and a hook. You should find one for around a tenner.





If I couldn't find any screws initially, I ceartainly made up for it later on. There were dozens of them.

Another tip for newbies BTW - Lay out all parts, screws and fasteners neatly in the order that you remove them. Then when you come to put it back together, you just reverse the process.


I know I haven't done that in this pic, but with experience, you sort of learn to make mental note of where things go.


That being said, this is always the point where I start to think OMG! Will it ever work again?

Click to see full-size image.

[kinboshi]

Looks simple enough