On any particular day, the are half a dozen broken things at my house. The irrigation system is not watering that one plant in the front yard. The lamp keeps flickering in the living room. And when the TV plays a DVD, for some reason it is like in zoom mode and it shows only the center of the screen, really large. Sigh.
But very first on the must-fix list is that the sliding glass door leading to the back yard is stuck and the rollers won’t move at all. Which means every time we need to let the dog out to pee we have to take her out the front door and go around through the gate to the back yard. Then wait a few minutes and take her back in the same way. I want my door fixed!
I am the fix-it guy at my house, therefore I can’t complain much but…(in order)
Need to really finish the deck staining project I started in May. I hate this job.
Sand out the patch jobs I did to the bedroom wall when we removed the drapes and then paint- I like this job but too many games on the tube! and now the world cup!!
Clean up my work bench area- still have the remnants from projects more than 2 years ago hanging around. I love to see the clean work bench! but… I guess I spend too many nights on the half stained deck listening to basesball to get to it!
My house is 121 years old and needs to be re-plumbed. Luckily, all the pipes are at one end of the house and are all accessible from the crawl space.
I’m really not sure how it passed inspection when we bought it. The last time we had issues, the joint that was leaking was held together with electrical tape and steel cable.
#1 - clean out the rain gutters. I’m pretty sure they need it since I can see something green and leafy growing in them.
#2 - Tear out and haul away the smallish (maybe twelve square meters) concrete pad and the timber edging material that marked where my home’s previous owner used to park his boat. I should haul away the gravel too but that’s a lot of work when you don’t have access to a front end loader.
#3 - Clean out the mildew in the free freezer I got a while ago, move it down to my basement from my garage and get it running.
3 months ago when we fist moved in the list was huge but I’ve relentlessly whittled it down to a thing or two. The guest kitchen is apparently where they left their dog for unknown periods of time. The doors and trim, even the floor trim, all show signs of scratching and clawing. At some point I’m going to have to yank and replace all that for about a 400 sq. ft. area.
The pool, spa and fountain lights need replacing but they’ll need to be drained down a bit so that’ll happen next winter when we use it less.
Lieu, Get as much done in those first months as you can! I’ve found that motivation and momentum are highest just after you move into a place. After a while you get so used to the ugly wallpaper or uneven tile that you don’t even notice it any more.
Kitchen ceiling - it’s starting to peel away in some areas, so really needs sorting. Much too big a task for me to take on though, so it’s into the hands of a local builder whenever I can scrape the cash together.
Oh, the list of things to fix/do at the house is constantly growing. Right now it looks something like this:
[ul]
[li]The kitchen is horribly dated and I would looooove to see countertops that don’t have a flower pattern on them sometime in the near future.[/li][li]The kitchen and bedroom require some touch up paint near the corners.[/li][li]The hall bath needs another coat of paint because the “disgustingly pepto pink” color is bleeding through the single coat of “lemon custard” that we painted when we first moved in last summer.[/li][li]The pool needs chlorine tabs and I think there’s something wonky going on with the pump and automatic cleaners, but I can’t quite prove it yet.[/li][li]I just dropped (read: charged) $500 for an A/C condensor fan motor repair and maybe it’s my imagination, but I SWEAR the A/C seems like it’s working harder and making more noise than it was.[/li][li]Needa pull weeds in both the front yard AND the back yard. Again. How the heck do these things grow in a Phoenix summer with no water?![/li][li]Need to trim at least two of our 5 large trees. Two others wouldn’t mind being trimmed either.[/li][li]The living room is still 1/2 tan slump block and 1/2 light wood paneling. SO and I cannot settle on a color to repaint this room.[/li][li]Aforementioned living room really needs new drapes. Currently rockin’ the 1970’s pleated drape look.[/li][li]But the worst, by far, is that one of our bundles of furry joy has peed somewhere in the bottom of my pantry closet. My CARPETED pantry closet. So Saturday morning I throw out everything on the floor of the pantry, rip out the carpet, clean the floor with Nature’s Miracle and replace the carpet with laminate tiles. Damned cats.[/li][/ul]
The kitchen tap - leaking like crazy. My husband is going to ask a friend (plumber but working as a drainlayer)
The chimney needs rebricking. Thats not going to happen so I want it either blocked off or stick pink Batts up it. trying to ge tthe Batts cheap through TradeMe.
Living room needs recarpeting. Doing this summer
I painted the French doors but need to get the paint off the actual windows. I’ll do next week.
Put down the petanque court. Should have happened last summer
Wooden trim in the bathroom. One bit needs replacing. I’ve been waiting years for this.
I have no electricity in my bathroom. No overhead light, no fan, no functioning outlets. All these things quit working over a month ago. The whole circuit is out for some unknown reason. This also includes the overhead light/fan and a couple of outlets in the adjoining bedroom. A large lantern type flashlight is now the only light available in the bathroom.
My brother who is a fairly proficient handyman, has been over a few times to try to see if he could resolve this issue. He is not an electrician but he knows the basics. He’s checked the outlets, the switches, the breaker box and replaced the GFI, all to no avail. The problem exceeds his level of expertise.
I have not yet called in an electrician because I have been unemployed for a year and finances are an issue. Enough of an issue that I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to continue making house payments. So for now, although this is at the very top of the fix-it priority list - it remains unfixed.
And my brother is not yet ready to admit defeat, retreating only temporarily in order to regroup, refresh and regoogle.
The good news is, at my age a dim light can be very flattering - when I look in the bathroom mirror now, I look twenty years younger!
Kitchen floor is rotting under the tiles. There are several where the tile has broken completely. The owner’s idea of repair was filling in the tile spaces with sheetrock mud. Well that worked a few months, but then it started crumbling. Now every time we walk over that spot little chunks come out and get all over the kitchen.
My solution has been to put a rug over the spot and hope the owner is able to afford to fix it before someone falls through.
This thread motivated me to do some of the fix-it stuff.
I got some construction glue and attempted to glue down the loose paving stones on the back patio. We’ll see how that worked tomorrow. I’ve never tried to do anything like this before.
I also replaced the solar lights that got destroyed by the snow last winter.
I’d like to replace the hardwood flooring in the kitchen and powder room with something more water-resistant. Especially the powder room, since the hardwood flooring there has no sub-flooring, and creaks alarmingly.
Eventually I will replace the white carpeting in the attic with some Stainmaster carpet in a more practical color.
My house (Hawaii) is built on piers. The piers that they built in the 50’s were called “tofu block”. (a cube of concrete almost exactly the size of a block of Tofu) One of the tofu blocks had silted up so dirt was close to the wood four by four on top of the tofu block and termites were getting in. I am off this week so I took off most of the lathe on that side and jacked up and propped up the house just enough to take the weight off the one four by four that went from the house beam down to that tofu block. Today I poured a two foot by two foot by about 20 inch deep footer and set a metal piece in it to connect to the new four by four. Tomorrow I should be able to put in the new four by four.
It is convenient that my wife went out of town today for a week because when you put in a new four by four beam, you must dip it in copper napthanate to keep termites away. I refer to copper napthanate as “chick repellant” because women can’t stand the smell of it. So when you get it on your hands, women won’t come near you. Ladies, keep this in mind. Put a drop or two behind his ears before he goes out with the boys. You can find it at any building supply store.
Two sets of tenants ago, someone had cats. Said cats used the master bathroom shower as a litter box. The smell permeated the concrete. It is barely tolerable when the stall is dry, but indescribable after the bathroom is steamed up.
Since this is a rental house, I don’t want to spend big bucks to repair this. (The landlord “solved” the problem by removing the tile from the floor of the stall, and then painting the bare concrete. Don’t know what kind of paint they used, but it was the wrong kind - looks all scabrous and flaky now, and the smell is still there.) I’m gonna remove paint, seal the concrete, and use garage floor paint on the concrete.
I was just going to chime in that this thread was depressing me.
Within the past three weeks:
Poured a new concrete porch; the old porch was crumbling into gravel before my eyes.
Central A/C broke. Had it replaced. 2 Grand.
Basement drain backed up sewage/sludge. Then it did it again. Had it Roto-Rooted for an arm + a leg. This was yesterday.
Yesterday as well: Mini-Mustard returned home with my vehicle and announced I have a flat tire. Tire inspected, prominent screw noted. Replaced with spare. This morning, to Belle Tire. Finally, some good news: they repaired it, no charge.
I spent a few hours yesterday trying to remove the wallpaper border from the master bathroom, which desperately needs repainting (part of it has no paint at all just now, only plaster). I hate wallpaper. But really, half the back fence also needs replacing, we just don’t have the money right now. Also so does the kitchen sink.
My husband has been working on the sprinklers for weeks–all the main problems are ironed out now, but it seems like another sprinkler head breaks every week.
My house was built in 1942. I have never not had a list a mile long of things I need to fix. In order of priority:
•Repair or replace the gutters.
•Fix the wood rot where the broken gutters have allowed water to rot the wooden siding.
•Replace both HVAC units, have the ducts cleaned and spiffed.
• Replace the screened French doors on the back porch
•Fix the roof on the greenhouse
•Move all the greenhouse stuff off the back porch, build a bar out there.
•Paint, paint, paint.
Having mowed the lawn, I guess the biggest thing I need to tackle is the storm door, which is sticking. It’s actually very easy to open (my three-year-old has figured it out: turn handle, pull inward, THEN push out), but my wife can’t seem to get the procedure down, and she fumes and gripes every time she has to open it. For the sake of domestic tranquility, it needs fixing.
