If you have a stripped screw hole in wood you can fix it quickly and easily with a toothpick. Place a few pieces of toothpick in the hole and tighten the screw as normal. The screw will bite into the toothpicks and push them into the sides of the hole holding the screw tight. I have a bathroom cabinet door that has hung on for a year and a half with this tip.
That worked for me a couple of hours. 
Adding some carpenter’s glue made it work better.
A sonic screwdriver would help.
Even better, for a door that’s hanging off its wobbly hinges: golf tees. You can get a big bag of plain wooden golf tees for next to nothing. Hammer one into the loose hole, cut off the excess, and reinsert your screw. Tight as a miser’s fist.
Ah, ok. It’s unpleasant for sure, but for repairing rough spots it seems to me impossible to get it smooth without some sanding. I guess if it’s just seams etc. it’s doable.
The ideal do-it-yourselfer is somewhere between ADD and OCD.
Ain’t that the truth. I don’t know how that works; I suspect there are holes in the laws of physics that allow the things that you measured to actually change in size after you measured them.
Oh, no, it wouldn’t be anything as obvious as a foot - it would be just enough so that you’re debating whether you can just leave it or not, but big enough so that yeah, it is indeed noticeable.
A few things I’ve learned from 15+ years of home ownership:
Always budget at least 20% more than you think it will cost.
Don’t tile your bathroom (or anyplace else that needs to be waterproof) for your first tiling job.
Wide grout is your enemy unless you enjoy cleaning/bleaching/staining.
Accept the fact that you will spend several springs/summers pulling up grass weeds from any flower bed you make in your lawn.
Oil based paint trim looks beautiful for a short while but will become yellowed and marks easily.
Upholstering a couch usually costs more than replacing it.
A stud finder, and using it, is worthwhile.
It doesn’t matter how nice the deck looks, and how many compliments you receive on it, if it’s not sufficiently braced.
Water drains down. It’s called gravity and will bite you in the ass if you ignore it.
Usually the cheap, easy way to do something is not the best way.
Sometimes it’s better to hire a professional to do a job.
You will screw up. Everybody does. Just learn from it & don’t get discouraged.
I built a 250 sq ft deck last spring. Solid as a rock, cantilevered frame design to minimize the weight/torque borne by the house, decking boards were perfectly parallel for the 15 feet it ran from the house and matched up on the far end just as nice as you please. And one of the rails isn’t level. Everyone who sees the thing thinks its a work of art. I see…that goddamned rail sloping down like a very slopey-downey thing. I hate that deck.
Have a stash of various colored electrical tape around for color-coding (and even marking) various cords to inputs/outputs if you’re planning on reconfiguring or moving your entertainment center or computer station.
Sure, you can figure it out all over again, but this will save you a ton of time and, most importantly, actual thinking.
Another reason why it’s good practice is if anyone besides yourself needs to dive in to solve a cabling issue, they won’t feel as lost, or if they start unplugging things willy-nilly, you can figure out what your original setup was without hassle.
And despite newer cable tech, like HDMI, which reduces the total amount of cables, still most people’s entertainment centers look like a grenade went off at MIT.
Spend 70% of your effort on the stuff you won’t see. Spend 70% of your budget on the stuff you do see.
Structure, mechanical, plumbing electrical are all super important and a total pain to fix after they’re enclosed in the wall. Get it right the first time.
Tiles, faucets, light fixtures, paint, door knobs etc are what you look at every day. Spend the extra money and get stuff that you will enjoy using and looking at.
If you’re going to work on your car, make sure you are
a) within walking distance of the autoparts store
b) have a spare car avaialbe for the next day
When repairing copper pipes that have frozen and burst - cut back a couple feet further than you think on both sides of the rupture - this will help you to avoid trying to solder pipe that has been stretched and those little splicers will fit better.
I disagree. Sanding is a pretty integral part of the process. It’s nearly impossible to get a smooth feathered transition from screw head or joint without sanding. If you use primer before painting you will have no problem with the paint adhering to the wall.
Are you using dry-wall tape over the seams? The aim is to have the boards as close together as possible, but a proper spackle job should be able to handle a small gap without a problem (unless it’s an old house that’s continually settling).
I fixed up half of our basement. Beforehand it was just concrete walls and concrete floor. Now there’s a wet bar and home theater room. It looks very nice.
Some lessons learned:
**1. **Unless you already have a lot of experience doing it, do not finish drywall or install floors. Chances are, you will screw them and they will look like hell. I hired a contractor to do my walls and floor. I did all of the wiring and plumbing myself.
**2. **Before doing a major remodeling job, spend LOTS of time learning about modern construction techniques and modern construction materials. Do not depend on you contractor to know the best way to do things. While your contractor may be a good and honest person, they may also be “old school” in terms of knowledge and techniques.
I ran into this quite a bit with the contractor I hired to help me with the basement. He was a great guy, but very old school. Had I left it up to him, the floor (in my opinion) would have been constructed wrong. I spent a lot of time online determining the best way to put down a subfloor, and am now very happy with the result. My contractor was also pleased that I showed him some new ways of doing things.
This doesn’t mean you should not listen to advice provided by your contractor; quite the contrary. I’m only saying that you should do your own research - lots of it - beforehand.
**3. **Pay extra and use “better” quality materials throughout. As they say, “When you buy quality, you only cry once.”
**4. **With the exception of lighting circuits, I ran 12 AWG Romex for all 120 VAC receptacle circuits.
**5. **All water lines were copper (not plastic!) soldered with lead-free solder, and then insulated.
**6. **No OSB. (I *hate *OSB.) I would only use real plywood or AdvanTech®.
Really good drywalling is an art. There’s a contractor who does a lot of remodels in our neighborhood & I can tell when it’s his drywaller - beautiful.
Friends don’t let friends put up wallpaper.
But if you insist, please do the job right and put up that backer paper first, especially if it’s going up on drywall. Lest the next homeowner curse your name every 0.045 seconds when she’s peeling chunks of drywall off along with the old crappy avocado gold wallpaper you put up in 1973.
Better yet, just don’t put up wallpaper.
Also, a cheap tool is not a cheap tool. I’ve been through about 8 $2 gardening pruners until I finally broke down and shelled out $25 for one really good gardening pruner that I’ve had for years. The cheap ones break, rust, fall apart, or are otherwise useless within a couple uses.
I have a rule that I don’t buy a new power tool unless I can think of at least three uses/projects for it. If I only need X for Y project one time, I borrow or rent. I bought a pressure washer to clean my deck and found all sorts of other uses for it, including loaning it out to friends. I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth and didn’t have to rush through the deck project because I owned the damn thing and I wasn’t under a deadline to get a rental back to the store.
If you get a minor cut that’s not bad enough to need stitches, close it with superglue. It’s the same exact glue the doctor/hospital will use and you’ll save the trip.
ISTR superglue was actually developed for eye surgery. Probably wrong though.
Suture self.
Closing up wounds in the battlefield…IIRC.
Nope - it was supposed to be a clear plastic to make gun sights from. Problem was it stuck like hell to the mold.
Let me see if I can find a cite…
ETA - what do you know!
If you’/re going to try to repair computers or iphones:
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Make sure you are working in a very well lit space on a clean surface that ideally has a lip all the way around to catch anything that might slip or roll away. Make sure your hands are clean and dry, consider using latex gloves if they fit well.
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Put all the screws in labeled baggies or bins, ideally in order of removal. Labeling is easily done with masking tape. IN fact that’s one way to do it: tape the screws to a piece of clear plastic with masking tape and write where they go. Pill dispensers also work well.
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Double check. Be gentle. Force nothing and look for bits of tape covering connections.
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Unless you are an elf, you will not be able to put things back together without a magnetized screwdriver, so don’t even try. The screws are ridiculously tiny and cannot be gripped with normal human fingers.
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GO SLOW. Seriously. Approach it as though it is some kind of Zen meditation. Frustration, anxiety and haste are your enemies.