OT-Top 10 biggest PIA honey doo house jobs

Well, just got done cussing for the past 90 minutes trying to install a new bottom seal on 16 feet of f$%^ing garage door!!!

Sorry but it definitely made my top 10 biggest PIA honey doo list for the house.

The old one has been on since late 80's. Having never done this before I put the door all the way up which was the only way I could see me being able to slip the old one off and new one on with some amount of room at the end.

#1 thing that should have told me right away this was NOT going to be the 10 minute job I thought was when I started slitting the old seal in 2 so I could slip one side off at a time since slipping the whole thing wasn't working as chunks of old one would just get ripped off as I tried. Well as I slit it and then move a side the 25+ years of sand and dead insects flicked out at will and of course I got some in my eye...

#2 thing that told me this was going to be a shit job was when the new seal was too tight to fit in the aluminum channel. So I thought it was just a question of tapering the sides of the 2 "T"s of the seal to get it started. WRONG! the width of the T is just too wide so I had to trim each side of each "T" along all 16 feet of it with scissors. I thought machining and general work around the house had my hands tough enough now to resist any kind of blisters... WRONG again, apparently scissors apply rubbing at just the right place where my skin isn't as tough as I thought.

#3 with each slip of this damn thing once started it became harder and harder to get in. Must be the crap in there, or perhaps it has bent over the years, maybe the grooves have squished, maybe I'm an incompetent seal replacement handyman, or any combination of this list...

Bottom line with about 1 foot remaining I just couldn't budge the thing an inch further and that's after banging my elbow into the side of the garage opening 3-4 times, each of which made it numb for a few minutes before I could tell if I injured it more than just the minor bruising point.

Rant over!

I feel ya, brutha.

Last summer an old girlfriend called and asked about me fixing the one on her door. I had the same trouble as you did. Me and her son did the work. Once, I pulled it all back out... trimmed the "T" on the leading end trying to help it slide. I don't think that did any good.

I ended up telling him to go get some dish soap so we could lather it up and help it slide. It seems like there was some trick that helped, but I can't really remember if it was the soap or something else I read (and have forgot), but I think what really helped was having someone hold up the loose end and help guide it horizontally into the "T" track so it didn't snag so much as we drug it thru with little baby visegrips...

I wasn't worried about tearing it cuz I left it about a foot long... I can always trim it off, but it's hard to add more to it if you cut it too short.

I'm sure some former installer is going to come on here and tell us how the pros' do it and I'll feel like a dumbass!

Sanding drywall. I look like sir poppin fresh himself right now. Just sat down for a break.

+1 on JoeE. I'd get a bar of slightly dam hand soap and rub it along. THey have a special lube for pulling fiber optic cables and the like through metal conduit but you probably can't buy it in small quantities. In general I'd say this is the sort of job where you have to stop, take a deep breath, go inside and look at the internet to discover the collective folk

Speaking of bar soap, it works amazingly well on drawers that run on wooden edges. About 25 years ago I found this out and applied soap to the bottoms of the drawers of my sister's old bedroom dresser that became my parents' basement workbench drawers. (good old hippy built-in furniture from the early 60's.) I remember these and the identical drawers in my room were really stiff and gall-prone growing up, so you had to open them with two hands. Well I still use the workbench at my parents and those drawers still run nice and smoothly, 25 years later.

Things are pretty lax around my house but I think there is a real place for the highly organized tool storage formalism of the well run machine shop in the home kitchen. Create fixtures or drawer spots to hold all your kitchen stuff so everything has a place to go and it saves so much time on cleanup.

Cleaning the rain gutters in Autumn, especially if you are height-sensitive (me).

Changing out the water closet! Having to clean out the old wax, sh&t, crud, etc.....

"Cleaning the rain gutters in Autumn, especially if you are height-sensitive (me)."

Would have posted that, myself, but I have no gutters on this house.... for that exact reason.

What? You're griping about a garage door seal? Time to man up and tackle a REAL honey do job, son!

Here are some pics of an outdoor kitchen/pool pump house that my wife wanted me to build. 3+ years and about $35K later, it's almost done. I've reached the point that I will probably never finish a few little time items. My neighbor did the serious welding, and I farmed out the concrete and masonry work, and granite countertops. I did the rest myself.

I've got a ton of pics, but I'm just including the 5 allowed in one post. Don't intend to hijack the thread.












My current project is a new fence. I hope to complete the first section this weekend; about 40 feet long with a walk-thru gate and drive-thru gate, steel framework, cedar pickets, concrete footing, and all pickets undercut and overlapped. That leaves another 650 feet of fence to go.

Somewhere along the way, my wife wants a new greenhouse. I haven't found any kits that are of good quality for a fair price, so that means I'll be designing and building this myself, too.

After that, build a 24' extension on my barn, convert my house plumbing to Pex, re-do attic insulation, re-finish pool and deck, rip out and re-pour concrete driveway... Oh, yea, I did the garage weatherstrip about 6 months ago.

anything to do with drywall or paint!!

Pretty much anything else is better than that!

Oh great,a "chit-chat" topic.

Helping with dishes and cleaning the shitter.

My neighbor had some garage door problems -- sloppy install. Although I installed my own doors when we moved in, I recommended the local Wayne Dalton group. $75 later, they had both doors tweaked up and working fine. Seemed like a reasonable price for two guys, with all the right tools and parts right on the truck.

Sometimes the right tool for the job is a phone.

Chip, the guy that took three years to install 22 (really nice, sorta big) windows solo.

Chip Chester said:

Chip, the guy that took three years to install 22 (really nice, sorta big) windows solo.

Click to expand...

So, right when you finished putting the last one in; you started on replacing the first one again?


I hate basic vehicle maintenance. Do all you're own work on your car, and suddenly everyone has to have an oil change and brakes done.

The trick I use for pulling in long seals beside soap or silicon spray is to pull the rubber real hard both sides
It gets longer then but also the crosssection gets smaller

Peter from Holland

The dread words. " Honey, the tension on my sewing machine isn't working right. Will you look at it?"

Look. Do not fix. Touch nothing. The problems and fixes for home sewing machines are full of traps for the unwary.

Sewing machines are machinery all right but only trained and experienced people should go into their works. The computer controlled ones are even worse. No place for an excellent Mars compliant mechanic capable of making or fixing anything. Sewing machines are from Venus and working on them turns testosterone into ham-fisted stupidity. It's like electricity and smoke only 50 time worse. Screw up the wife's sewing machine and you'll eat cold-in-the-middle TV dinners and sleep on the couch for months.

So. Look at your wife's sewing machine. Balance your wallet with your happy home. Haul the machine to the offical sewing machine repair shop where guys suited up in full respirator PPE can safely work the mysteries without the hazard of testosterone trans-substantiation. You will be happier in the end.

DAMHIKT

I don't seem to have much trouble with the wife's sewing machines. yes 2, stupid expensive Pfaff made in Germany sewing machines. Like a real nice 10EE money. I ask why do you need 2?, she reply's why do you need 4 lathes. Enough said. The sewing machines are pretty reliable though.

"I can fix that"

Lets talk about something else.
This reminds me that I need to get back down in the basement and continue digging around the house like a mole knocking down the old blown out cast foundation walls and laying new footer and block.

Got so bad that the house was sinking past the cast septic pipe and elevating the commode into the air.

"Honey, whats wrong with the upstairs toilet"
"Oh, I can fix that".......

Trboatworks said:

"I can fix that"

Lets talk about something else.
This reminds me that I need to get back down in the basement and continue digging around the house like a mole knocking down the old blown out cast foundation walls and laying new footer and block.

Got so bad that the house was sinking past the cast septic pipe and elevating the commode into the air.

"Honey, whats wrong with the upstairs toilet"
"Oh, I can fix that".......

Click to expand...

Now that sucks pretty bad............

you know I have to do this thing over so I'll report back.

I'll need a week to get my right elbow to work right. It's swelled up a bit and quite bruised.

So I'll see if any of the tricks you guys talk about will help the second time around.