Un-Handyman

[M_Six]

If there is someone in the world more inept at DIY stuff than I am, I pity the poor soul.

I just spent two hours out in this soupy heat trying to run a CAT6 cable through the soffits to the outside of the house so I can hang a PoE camera. I got the hole drilled (through 4" of beam) and after much trial and error I managed to get a string run from the attic near my network conduit to the outside. I tied and taped the CAT6 cable to the string and fed all but about 6' of it back through the hole. Once back in the attic, I started hauling on the string and saw most of the CAT6 was tangled up in a bunch. So I pulled it towards me to untangled it. As the mess got close to me, I saw the far end of the cable that had been outside. I had neglected to tie it off and as I pulled the tangled part towards me, the part I left outside got pulled through the hole. Argh. Now I need to start over with the electrician's snake and get the string back outside again.

Gotta cool off and eat something first.

[Car-Addicted]

As a fellow DYI I feel your pain.

[2000cs]

I solved that exact problem (well, potential problem) at my house by getting a battery PoE camera with a solar panel to keep it charged. WiFi back to my computer.

There are lots of ways to pull wire/cable; I’m apparently not very good at any of them.

My brother is so inept at home repair that I can say with absolute certainty he is worthy of the OP’s pity!

[edit: meant battery WiFi PTZ cameras. No more PoE for me]

[nazali]

try here

https://www.diychatroom.com

good bunch of guys

Originally Posted by M_Six

If there is someone in the world more inept at DIY stuff than I am, I pity the poor soul.


Gotta cool off and eat something first.

[Chappers 71]

Obviously this'll be of no help to you, but I used to know an electrician that kept ferrets. He trained one of them to run wiring, he'd made a little harness to hold one end of the cable that would go on this ferret & then he would send it along floor & ceiling joist runs & it'd pop out the other end with the cable

[R BMW]

Any job requiring attic work in this weather seems to always go bad.

[EezyBeezy]

Got to love it when a handy job only supposed to take X hours ends being XYZ hours and all the swearing lol

[Watching The World Burn]

I was redoing our culvert with an excavator (dug it deeper as it was super shallow ditch), laid some styrofoam underneath the pipe, bedded it with gravel and then buried the pipe. Took way longer than I thought it would take, but it wasn't until I was trying to pick up 500 lb armor stones with the excavator's bucket and thumb to place on either end of the pipe as a bit of a retaining wall for the culvert that I really lost my mind.

In fairness, I had not eaten lunch and it was about 2:30 in the afternoon, but as I dropped the stone yet again, I lost it. Many bad words along with just punching the excavators window. Which my wife happened to see, so she came out of the house to give me a time out. LOL.

Ate something and I felt a bit calmer about life. Still...I had to move over 6,000 lbs of armor stone with that excavator and I can't say I enjoy picking stone with it. It's not super hard, just delicate work and frustrating placing the bloody rocks.

So I feel your pain.

[bagekko]

No matter the frustration I hate hiring people and will suffer through almost any DIY project. In the past few houses it is frustrating dealing with prior owner crap DIY or even worse crappy contractor work.

Prior house swapping out dishwasher, drain hose connection is buried under the floor, not all drain hoses are the same...

Current house, measured rough in on 1 toilet, assumed all were the same and purchased 5 toilets, nope 4 were 12" & one was 10".

Current project is replacing 6 faucets and drains. Drains are absolutely disgusting, because there is almost no pitch on the main drain line out of the wall... oh even better the two in my master bath have negative pitch!

PO of current house was a horrible cheap DIY hack, zero business doing any repairs/improvements, anytime I work on something he previously was involved in is 3x the time and 10x the swearing.

[dreamingat30fps]

I "like" to do a lot of stuff myself. However it is always 100x harder than it seems. I love the Youtube DIY videos where they get the same project that takes me half a day done in 5min with no cursing or yelling. Liars!

That being said considering most of my relatives couldn't even change a light bulb I think I do alright.

I have also found a lot of frustration can be avoided by having the right tool for the job. Of course even though I have several tool boxes and closest full of tools... I'm inevitably always missing that one tool that would make the job so much easier and of course I usually don't know that until after I'm done cursing and screaming for half the day.

[UncleWede]

Similar wiring event. Oldest son didn't like the Wi-Fi strength at his end of the house, so asked if he could run ethernet from middle of house to his room, and put his own router. Fine, but *I* am drilling the holes in the ceiling in both rooms.

Get them drilled, son is up in the attic pulling cable, and wife/I go to dinner. We get home, and there is a 2'x4' section of ceiling laying on the living room floor. Apparently a 2x4 saving him from falling with it, by capturing his nuts. . .


Late last year, as I'm trying to repeat his feat to the kitchen so my firestick will have direct ethernet, I was THIS CLOSE to dialing 911 to come get me out of the attic. I was being careful to not step thru the ceiling, but at one particular transition the crawl space is pretty low. I can't even remember (blocked it out?) how I got my head and feet on one side of a rafter, but left my ass end on the other side.

[M_Six]

After cooling off and having lunch, I went back at it and got it done. Still managed to completely soak another set of clothes. Lost 4lbs as well, although I've been hydrating like crazy and had dinner, so maybe that's all come back. That would have been 100x easier with two people. Running back and forth between the front porch area and the attic was a royal pain.

I need to get wiring out to the back of my house so I can replace the wifi cams out there with PoE cams. But that won't be until I get a shit ton of FSB laid down in the attic so I don't have to try to step on just the ceiling joists that are hidden by insulation. And any further work in the attic will have to wait until it's much, much cooler.

[R BMW]

When you do jobs like that, it's always a good idea to pull an extra cable run or leave a pull string for future use.

[Car-Addicted]

One of the many mistakes I made with my present house was not running a conduit for future needs from the basement to the attic.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Car-Addicted

One of the many mistakes I made with my present house was not running a conduit for future needs from the basement to the attic.

My brother and I put one in last winter. I still haven't started on the network closet in the basement, so the conduit is there just waiting to be used.

[Sara]

Task rabbit!

[Alfisti]

I have sex fingers, everything I touch i fuck.

[bosstones]

Originally Posted by Car-Addicted

One of the many mistakes I made with my present house was not running a conduit for future needs from the basement to the attic.

Sooooo worth it to do it upfront if one has the opportunity to. During construction, I ran a 2" pipe from the breaker box in the basement to a junction box in the attic and also put in a PVC run (again from basement to attic) for LV.

I had Cat6 run for PoE at various locations as well but I want to add and/or move a couple and am dreading it. My excuse is that it's too hot in the summer so I'll wait until winter when it's too cold.

Originally Posted by Alfisti

I have sex fingers, everything I touch i fuck.

Is it considered rude or merciful if someone doesn't shake your hand?

[tturedraider]

Originally Posted by Car-Addicted

As a fellow DYI I feel your pain.

DYI?? Do yourself in?

I used to DIY, but I just don’t have the patience for it anymore. And I’ve never DIY’d in cramped spaces. Too much claustrophobia!!

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by tturedraider

DYI?? Do yourself in?

I used to DIY, but I just don’t have the patience for it anymore. And I’ve never DIY’d in cramped spaces. Too much claustrophobia!!

I hear you. I need to run a new dryer vent pipe down the crawlspace to the outside, but the crawlspace is 3'x3' and only accessible through a small "window" in the wall that's 5' off the basement floor. No way am I going to crawl up in there. I can just see myself getting a nasty hamstring cramp when I'm in there and not be able to do anything about it.

[Car-Addicted]

Originally Posted by tturedraider

DYI?? Do yourself in?

Or pay someone else to do it and then have to do it right yourself afterwards.

[tturedraider]

Originally Posted by Car-Addicted

Or pay someone else to do it and then have to do it right yourself afterwards.

I think you missed your little typo I was referring to.