Kill drill or Bill
I took Friday as a holiday and got nothing at all done on the house as it was my birthday.
The day before my birthday I’d gone on a late night trip to the cinema and passed midnight in the closest picture house playing “The Revenant”. Come two in the morning it was a fifty minute drive back to my gaff before a short sleep and my treat no.1 of my birthday to take my little girl to school.
That done it was a haircut and an afternoon of doing little before picking her up again and then taking her to the cinema to see Kung Fu Panda 3. A trip to Pizza Hut, then a trip to my folks, put her to bed, a TV movie and it was another 3am finish.
The next morning I resolved that despite two late nights in a row I’d get up early and do a proper day of work on the house. Alarm clock chiming at 8am I jumped out of bed, threw on my warm work gear, my overalls and then downstairs for a mighty breakfast.
Sitting on the couch I tucked into my breakfast and in what seemed like a moment I woke up on the couch with a plate of cold toast, it was midday… How did that happen J a whole morning gone in one snooze, I’d remembered lapsing in and out of consciousness, a WWII movie, then lots of fencing, more fencing then a programme about reindeer. Whoops I must have been Timmy tired.
I started the day with some duties tidying around, doing the washing, sorting out the rubbish and then stopped for lunch, but time was slipping by quickly and I’d wasted the entire morning already.
Anyway after a late lunch I pressed on with the upstairs bedroom, I was to get the radiator pipes fitted and the electrics routed. To this end I lifted the floorboards in the upstairs corridor and started drilling some holes, a hateful job but it had to be done, I just don’t like working with flat blade drill bits in confined spaces, the drill does tend to buck and smoke. Hang on smoke! That’s not right… a quick inspection and all wasn’t right with my mighty Makita, I ran it without a drill and it still smoked, that flipping acrid horrible smoke of an armature or motor burning out smoke. I decided to let it cool down and had a cuppa.
A full half an hour later I returned to my drill, gave it a burst of revs and boy did it sound rough and boy did it start to smoke again. So there it was, my wonderful hard working drill… it was no more, it was an ex drill, pushing up the daisies…. Darn, I can’t afford this.
Anyway I had a corded drill to hand and I pressed on with this.
Wish I hadn’t.
90% of the way through the job I was drilling away merrily in another tight spot and I was plunged into darkness. Night had already kicked in and a torch wasn’t handy, but I assumed I’d done something stupid.
A rummage around in the dark and I rustled up a torch, torch in hand I returned to the job and found the drill bit shaft had an electrical cable wrapped tightly around it. I’d not drilled through the cable but I’d whipped one around the drill and pulled it taught and disturbed it’s connection to a ceiling rose. I’d had a close call, the builder’s rubber gloves, RCD and circuit breakers had saved my skin. I’m not certain but the corded drill I was using may have been the one my Dad was using when he drilled into a live cable and snapped his forearm. I think it might be a bad penny that drill or it could be that we were both guilty of taking our eyes off the ball. I think the latter is far more likely but it doesn’t stop me feeling uneasy about using that drill, I’ll have to find some cash and buy a new one.
It’s a bit worrying when you realise I work alone too.
Anyway I had to fix the wiring in the dark, it turned out that there wasn’t any damage, I think that the wrench had caused all the failsafes to kick in. I don’t like to think what would have happened if the drill hadn’t suddenly stopped turning.
Anyway the next hours were spent carefully routing the pipework, this was a nightmare too as it’s such a pest to pull it through multiple joists, it really does drag and it is very hard once the pipe has gone through a number of holes. A murderously tiring job, it’s hard to appreciate what a struggle it is to do.
Once this was done I gingerly drilled some holes for the electrical cables in the bedroom and then finished off the day by routing the cables ready for an electrician to terminate them.
Not a great day at all, it was all a bit scary too.