Hm. Upon re-reading this, I'm afraid I come off as some sort of insufferable Bob Vila. Oh well!
Plumbers, notoriously, make a lot of money off of people who thought they could just do it themselves. Or so they would have you believe, I guess.
3: Are you trying to get my digits, Moby?
One day, I decided I was going to redo the grout on the bathroom floor. In the end, I managed to buy a hundred bucks of supplies and take a four hour nap.
I had almost the identical situation where we were ready to pay several hundred, fortunately our plumbers were nice enough to provide advice over the phone without ripping me off. A screw fell out of a lighting fixture over the sink and jammed it, they suggested using an allen wrench to reverse the disposal, remove whatever was jamming it, and then push the red reset button, which fixed it. It was over a long weekend and would have cost an extra $200 just to have them come out, no charge for the phone advice.
6: I have done that disposal repair often, but not yet advanced to Stanley's level.
1:Bob!?
Someday soon, I am going to repair, in places, the thing around the roof, just under the roof, you know, like the 2x6s holding the roof up off the house covered by a thin wooden board. I am hoping you would know what it's called so I can google it. And I hope it doesn't require pneumatic jacks to work on.
Wise to call the plumber yourself. My property management company bills €35 fortaking and forwarding such a message.
Do licensed (iPhone spell changed lincenced to mincemeat ) plumbers have more fingers.
7:I have taken disposals apart. Look, it is a huge disposal that costs more than a plumber's appearance, and they take about 15 minutes to replace.
Trickier is replacing the spray thingy, or the entire faucet in the kitchen.
Called a plumber twice. Once to snake the entire house, and the other to repair an outdoor faucet, which required a wrench with a long extension to go through the wall.
14: I hope that is your problem. It is going to be much more expensive if it is something else.
The same is true of computers.
Also, nice dieresis.
I don't even have a garbage disposal.
I didn't invent the term and I'm using a phone to comment.
15:I hope so too. Fascia on front, soffit the thin board under, but I am thinking I have some damaged support (?) 2x6s. One site showed those coming off pretty readily to expose the horizontal attic boards 2x4, so I don't think I will need to prop up the roof. Will be very careful.
Serious carpentry though, and in this neighborhood, during these times, there are yard signs advertising home repair on every block. In English, even.
A lot of basic home- and car-maintenance issues are really rather straightforward if you're willing to dive in and get your hands dirty. And it's surprising how many people just want to punt when the sink gets clogged or whatever.
I usually assume that because of the financialization of the economy, by which I mean companies' reliance on fooling people into paying useless fees, I'll void my warranty or violate my lease if I try to do things myself. But that's no excuse for not calling the landlord and ASKING if it violates the lease.
9: My property management company bills €35 fortaking and forwarding such a message.
How can that even be legal, especially some place where they use Euros? Landlords are evil. Although the best landlords I ever dealt with were also the largest and most professionalized property management company. So, capitalism.
I'm about 2/3rds of the way through a bathroom overhaul myself. So far I have (with some help from friends): Removed the old light fixtures, stripped all the old wall paper, plastered, primed, reseated the toilet w/new wax ring, changed out the old cast-iron drum trap and associated pipe from the tub and replaced with PVC, painted the inside of the medicine cabinet, replaced a broken shelf in the medicine cabinet and replaced the vertical bar on the shower curtain rod so that I no longer need to have three sets of rings to get the curtain down to the level of the tub. It will be nice to be done with this phase this week, when I have all the walls painted. That will still leave the vanity, floor, tub surround and radiator to deal with at some point, but the difference in both appearance and function is already staggering. So far, other than some plumbing repairs early on, the only thing I've paid to have done is having a new window put in, as the old one was mostly rotten when we moved in.
Garbage disposals delenda est!
I never learned how to do any of the home repair/shop class/basic carpentry stuff, and very much want to learn (especially if my husband and I end up buying a place a year or two after we relocate). How the hell does one learn? Do community centers teach classes on home repair for dummies?
I may have mentioned this before, but I once put an entire turkey carcass down the disposal. Mom wasn't happy, especially since the guests were startled.
I think Home Depot does. This is an impression, rather than personal experience, but you might check.
23: Smug older neighbors and the hardware store people.
25: They still do here at least. I've never taken one, so I don't know how useful they are.
26: Actually, much of the help I've received is from my 27 year-old Xtian punk neighbor, who is a contractor. This summer I'm going to try to get him to teach me some more basic skills like toenailing, that I have never managed to pick up.
Also, and again not personal experience, but I bet there's a YouTube video or twelve up showing you how to do any minor home repair. If the first six you watched all did the same stuff, then it's probably pretty safe to take them as a model.
(Me, I call Tony the hereditary super, third of his family to maintain our building. He has kids, but we don't know yet if they're planning to follow the family tradition. But if I owned a house, I'd watch YouTube videos.)
23: Google + trial and error has always worked for me. i replaced my disposal a couple years ago. Super gratifying. Also a few light fixtures and a ceiling fan. Surprisingly straightforward.
23: There are several books on basic home repair skills and plenty of videos out there. IMO the essential secrets are muffin pans for parts and taking the time to document how you disassembled something. Get good tools too, they're worth the money in saved time and the minimization of visits to the ER.
When we first got the house and realized how bad a shape all of the plaster was in, I was a little freaked out, as I had never done any plastering or drywall work whatsoever. I watched a couple of Youtube videos, and consulted more experienced friends, and that got my confidence up enough to forge ahead. The thing I realized though was that in large part, just getting your hands dirty on the space you need to work on is pretty key. Especially with older houses of course, but I imagine this holds true for newer construction as well. If I had a nickel for every time I've taken something apart in the past couple of years and exclaimed "How could they fucking do that? That's the most completely useless and illogical attempt at a repair I've ever seen!", I would have enough money to buy three, or even four, lattes. So yeah, basically you just have to screw around with things and understand that you are occasionally going to waste some materials and/or time. Mostly time though. With regard to the plastering, unless you are dealing with a really nice or historic old bit of plasterwork, at this point I would virtually always recommend knocking everything off the lathing and just putting up Sheetrock instead. Don't even try to get fancy with repairing holes unless they're under like 2 square feet, it's not worth it in terms of aggravation. YMMV of course.
23:Home Depot has lots of books
What I found when searching for "soffit" and "facia" on the Web were several step-by-step descriptions of people repairing their own, with lots of pictures.
28: Stupid tsar and dis-enserfation.
So what was jammed down the disposall?
I am gathering up the nerve to repair some ceilings and one stretch of lathe and plaster wall that were damaged by a leaking, now replaced roof. (We have a weird set of dormers, and the valleys hadn't been sufficiently reinforced to prevent /protect against ice dams.)
I gave up on trying anything more than simple plumbing here because the house was built in 1912 and has various weirdnesses that make some jobs move to plumber-necessary almost immediately.
Books, sure, but I'm imagining that I'll need some hand-holding. YouTube, OTOH, might be more helpful. Is most the Unfoggetariat self-taught, or did you learn from parents, etc?
I learned from my dad and my father-in-law, but I also spent three summers as construction labor.
I had a really good run at Small College -- I was a maintenance man and installed a boiler following the instructions, as well as lots of small repairs and installations -- but I've mostly chickened out since then.
I mostly make things up as I go along.
39: If she wanted a legal opinion, she would have asked.
I did a lot of construction-type labor, including a whole damn lot of framing, and I am still not any good at toenailing.
One time I decided to see if I could figure out why the sink was clogged. That was the foulest smelling experiment of my life. Now I would call a plumber, except that Jammies wants to wrestle with these things.
I do know how to clean a fish, though. I spent a summer cleaning fish.
44: for fun or for profit, Heebie?
42: We used nail guns, so I can't toenail with a regular hammer either.
Working for The Man, man. Two hours of skinning cats buys an eight by twelve four-bit room.
I put up sheetrock in one room once -- taping, painting, and putting on molding. I was impressed by how convincing the results were even though most of the people working were completely unskilled, and I had a blast. But I've done very very little of that sort of thing lifetime.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, but no matter how, your parole officer won't like to hear about it.
47: knife goes in
Guts come out
That's what heebiez summer jobs about
My roomie first year in college volunteered during hs at the local medical research center. His entire job was killing rabbits and dissecting them to harvest their uteri.
Why would your parole officer care how you clean your catfish?
48: A real dry wall crew is a thing of wonder to watch.
I kind of felt like if I was going to eat meat, I ought not be squeamish about at least one path to the dinner plate.
One day someone left old lady glasses behind. I put them on the window sill, and popped out some trout eyes, and lay them so they'd be magnified through the lenses. Everyone kept jumping when they saw it. I was very pleased.
51: I think he would have been fine with catfish.
Who doesn't? The man had to change is name and flee.
Google, necessity and good tools are all you really need, but sometimes it helps to hire, say, a plumber for one job, just so you can see how they work. Since hiring a plumber once, I've power-snaked the waste pipe to the street and torn out and replaced the rest of the waste pipe in the house, so when I repipe I'll hit the trifecta.
There is no Stevens but Cat Stevens. And Yusuf Islam, his alias.
Since hiring a plumber once, I've power-snaked the waste pipe
Oldest cliche in the book.
52: true. Roofers are also extremely impressive.
60: Yes. At 20, I could barely carry a bundle of shingles on a roof. They practically run with them. But, plumbers get all the lonely housewives. Porn isn't fair.
I am still not any good at toenailing
After a late-spring ski trip and poorly fitting rental boots, the nails on my big toes are black-and-blue. But maybe you're talking about something else.
61: despite the fact that all electricians are giant dicks, they *never* get the lonely housewives.
And the Maytag repairman was so lonely, he invented an elaborate fantasy world where he was Loni Anderson's boss.
Way to spoil the end of Newheart Moby Jerk.
Oh, and I'm three-quarters done with roofing. More, if you count the tear-down. I'd be extremely impressive if I were faster at it.
I've never but rented, and I feel great weariness at the idea of someday taking charge of repair and improvement work, even if it's just contractor selection and management. I'd rent my whole life if it weren't for the pesky fact that I might eventually desire more security of tenure. I suppose the best case is to find an SO for whom it's rewarding.
So what was jammed down the disposall?
A lot of things. But especially some broken glass. And the comment heebie made about the odor being foul: good lord, I gagged a lot.
66: Don't you live in the rain capital of North America? Is your plaster kept dry by felt and a prayer?
68: Did you have to remove the disposal from the sink, or just disconnect the drain pipe from it?
69: Tarps, on the unfinished part.
70: I removed the entire disposal. Surprisingly not difficult!
72: I've never tried, but I'm starting to wonder why you had to. In our disposal, I can get out anything from the top or by pulling out the drain pipe. Hard to fit my hands in the drain, but it can be done.
71: So, vinyl and low winds. Yikes.
73: I had to pull the whole thing because just going in from the drain pipe end or from above wasn't clearing it (though I did try that first).
To elaborate: the housemate responsible for the clog let it go for awhile and kept using the sink, leading to a significantly more complicated (and disgusting) clog. Since I'm not really around the house much these days, I was only peripherally aware there was an issue. But I happened to be staying at my house this weekend, and I realized it had gotten truly awful, and Captain Responsible wasn't going to be addressing it anytime soon (annoying? yes; but I once I started he helped and offered to clean up everything afterward).
I have found the Home Depot and similar guides to remodeling/repair/etc. fairly useful, although they tend to skew towards newer construction than my crumbling Victorian manse. Also, a lot of the step-by-step picture instructions tend to leave out a couple of fiddly little details that wind up making a great deal of difference to the finished product.
I also concur that having good tools is essential. Bad tools can really ruin a job. Also, having good tools does little if you don't also take care of your good tools.
Captain Responsible wasn't going to be addressing it anytime soon
Worst comic book tag line ever.
plumbers get all the lonely housewives.
That's why you should always call a union plumber.
plumbers get all the lonely housewives.
That's why you should always call a union plumber.
I've never been anything but a renter. I run a store that involves refinishing furniture and rewiring lights etc. and the lesson I've learned is twofold: a) many things aren't that hard and after seeing them demonstrated a few times you can probably do a halfway decent job but b) just hire that 60-year-old dude who can do it perfectly in 10 minutes and throw him the fitty bucks. he deserves it, the problem is instantly solved, we all go away happy. also, giving away free beer when the job is done improves morale.
I yanked off our garbage disposal
Nobody goes for the low-hanging fruit any more.
I guess this underappreciated skill has been beat to death on Unfogged already.
BR is house repair person in our house. She installed our garbage disposal. She installed a vanity, including the plumbing. Her dad didnt want her dependant on any man.
has been beat to death on Unfogged already
81: Sorry it took so long, we plucked a lot of low-hanging fruit in our youth.
Right now I'm sitting at my desk, so for many some values of "used to be", yes.
Nobody goes for the low-hanging fruit any more.
I guess this underappreciated skill has been beat to death on Unfogged already.
Yeah, how was there not a flurry of responses to "I power-snaked the waste pipe"?
We're so advanced we pick low-hanging fruit with our minds, now.
A friend of mine actually had the repairman porno scenario in real life. She had just moved into a new place post-divorce and needed some things fixed so she called a handyman who turned out to be good looking and got the work comped IYKWIMAITYD. So not only did she get stuff fixed for free she also got affirmation of her desirability, which was a nice thing to have right about then.
I guess what I'm saying is that Stanley didn't necessarily save any money, and may have lost out on an entertaining story to tell his friends.