Castors

1. Castors for a table

One of the early jobs I did as a handyman occured when a customer called one day to ask whether castors could be fitted to a table to allow it to moved within a room. I happened to be in the office when the call came in, so was asked for my view. I said that it probably could be done but that, if the table legs were spindly antique ones, that might be difficult.

Well, my schedule the next day included the job to 'fit castors to a dining room table'. I arrived at an imposing house just off the King's Road, Chelsea and when I rang the bell was greeted by a housekeeper who then took me through to meet the lady of the house, Julia. She showed me a very large (and heavy!) glass-topped table in the middle of a large mirrored room and told me that she wanted to be able to move the table to the side of the room to provide space for her five-year-old's birthday party. I found that the glass table top, which was mounted on two box-shaped pedestals, was so heavy that I could barely lift even one end! We discussed the problem and Julia said that her friend Sarah, who was visiting, was 'very good at finding men to help with such things'; also that there was a large construction site nearby where she was sure that we could locate suitable helpers.

So Sarah and I walked up the road to the construction site and asked to speak to the foreman. When he appeared Sarah explained that we needed to borrow four men for a short while to move a table top, and four construction workers were soon found to help us. Back at the house the problem of muddy boots in smart house was soon solved by the housekeeper producing plastic bags for the men to put over their boots, and the five of us lifted the glass table top and placed in against a wall out of the way. The men were told that they would be needed again to put the table top back once I had dealt with the mobility of the pedestals. As the men left what seemed to be a significant amount of cash changed hands!

On my own again I found that the pedestals were actually filled with sand to provide more stability, so were in fact rather heavy. With some difficulty I managed to turn them over to see what options were available for fitting castors. I decided to fit a collection of furniture slides as I didn't think castors could be mounted strongly enough to take the load, so this is what I did.

Once the slides were in place, it was back to the construction site to collect the men again. Once again they came back to the house and put on their 'boot protectors', and the table top was lifted back onto the pedestals which I had re-positioned near the side of the room - they moved easily on the slides, admittedly without the additional weight of the glass top. I don't know whether it proved possible to move the table safely as a complete unit!

2. Bed castors

Once again in Chelsea, a customer asked whether we could repair a rather old but apparently very comfortable bed of which one of four castors had broken. A very well known up-market furniture company in London had been unable to obtain a replacement (and had apparently not been as helpful to the customer as she had experienced previously!).

On seeing the bed, the castors were mounted on substantial cast iron legs placed under the metal bed frame about 10cms in from the bed ends. The castors pivots were welded to a tube which fitted into the mounting bracket with a clamping screw to allow the height of the bed to be altered. It was apparent that a repair to the broken castor might only be possible with some careful welding and other work, which we are not equipped to do, so another solution was needed.

The solution was to fit a new castor directly to the wooden bed head foot (cut about 5 cms. shorter), thus making the original metal castor mounting bracket with the broken castor redundant. The work was done on a later visit, once we had researched and obtained suitable castors. We also needed to find some suitable wood to fix to the foot of the bed head to provide enough space to fix the castor mounting plate securely.

Judging by the 'original' Hoover borrowed from the customer to clear up after doing the work, she is believer in 'things not being made as they used to be' - she said that she had been able to have the Hoover repaired 'in the country', whereas everything else only seemed to have a limited life. She was clearly pleased to have her 55 year old bed made usable once more!

Slow burn job!

My first post in January 2007 was about doing a favour to a friend which was to help to erect/assemble and MFI built-in wardrobe in return for her helping me re-decorate my living room. The wardrobe was finally finished today only 18 months after it was started! Admittedly the unit has been in use in the meantime but the components needed to complete it had been sitting in my friend's dining room and occupying rather a lot of space. Not surprising given that the pieces were 2 metres long and there about 10 of them.

Today's task was to fit coving profiles and fill-in panels between the wardrobe and the ceiling and wall, plus fit plinth trims. This entailed lots of careful cutting to make good mitred joints and profiling round an awkwardly shaped ceiling and uneven side wall.

As to why completion of the job has taken such long elapsed time, I have to say that it was not that I was slow but that my friend has had other priorities and only recently got round to ask me to help again.

Drain pipes

My jobs are advised to me by text and this one said 'change light bulbs and paint drainpipes'. The job was for a regular customer - Caroline - who lives with her family in a large town house in Kensington. When I arrived the customer wasn't there but I was let in by the gardener; also in the house was a housekeeper and a cleaning woman.



I started on changing the light bulbs and after a while Caroline arrived home. After letting her know that there were not enough of a special light bulb that she needed, I asked about which drainpipes needed painting (having earlier looked around the outside of the house to see if any looked in in need of painting and not found any).

Caroline showed me some large black drainpipes poking out from under steps leading down to the under street level storage area at the front of the house. She said she wanted them painted, two in red and white stripes in a specific pattern, and two in brown - she explained that they were to be pony jump poles. When I said that I would go down to bring the poles up to take to the garage for the painting Caroline said 'I'll need to help you as they are very heavy'.


We went down the steps to the pipes and I then realised that the three metre long pipes, some 5 inches in diameter, were indeed very heavy as they were made of steel! Caroline then explained that she had lazy pony which she wanted to train to jump. With normal jump poles, the pony simply hit them and knocked them off rather than actually jumping a bit higher to clear them. The steel poles, being very much heavier, would 'encourage' the pony to make the extra effort! I was assured that the pony's legs would be suitably padded to ensure that it wasn't hurt during the training.


Two hours later for new jumping poles were painted and, when dry, ready to take to the stable (in Windsor) for the training to begin. I'm looking forward to an update of the training progress on my next visit.

Rats!

Job described as 'Change washing machine connection'; arrived at the customer's address, a converted church hall; customer took me through a labrynth to reach his laundry room, on the way describing how his cleaner thought rats had chewed through the outlet duct from the tumble drier. As we neared the laundry room the smell started to hit us - seemed like an animal smell, and very strong.

In the laundry room, the tumble drier was stacked on a washing machine and the extract duct - a flexible plastic pipe - led through a couple of partitions then along a one of three shelves about 3 metres long. The shelves were stacked mainly with laundered towels and sheets, all in plastic bags. On the duct shelf some of these packages showed signs of rat droppings and damage caused by rats chewing them.

The customer said that he wanted the duct replaced with a metal one, and the area cleared out.

So I started moving the laundry packages off the shelves and separating them into undamaged and damaged piles. Then - yuch, I found the body! A large rat, well decomposed, with maggots crawling over it, laying on the severely damaged duct under laundry packages. It had obviously been living in the area (I later found the nest in the wall cavity where the duct led outside) and had died from the poison put down by the customer. The rat's body joined the pile of damaged (and badly contaminated) laundry in a couple of rubbish bags which ended up in the bins outside. The customer's vacuum cleaner then had a work out cleaning the remaining debris from the shelves, wall cavity and floor, before a new aluminium duct could be installed.

End result - cleaned out laundry area; new rat-proof duct but...still a very strong smell! I wonder how long it will take to disperse?

Wow, MFI built-in wardrobe kits are BAD! In fact the structure is alright but the instructions are really bad, and ambiguous. Question is, are they deliberately designed to be inadequate so as to force customers to use the, expensive, fitting service offered by MFI?

In the end, we got the main structure up in spite of a key component being missing - had to improvise to overcome this omission. I had to leave for a date after seven hours, leaving the owner of the wardrobe to install the wardrobe 'innards' and do further flat pack assembly. Glad to say she was happy with what we did achieve.

First post

This is my first post. Not doing real work today as it's Saturday but have agreed to help a friend with her built-in wardrobes in exchange for her helping to decorate my living room on another day. I wonder who has the best bargain!