I remember working under a house several years ago replacing the main iron drain line with PVC. This drain line was like a large misshapen spider with its legs running to all the toilets, sinks and showers. We measured every piece and carefully placed all the pieces only to find out that we started in the wrong place in the middle, causing all the rest of the pieces and angles to be off. This was very irritating, time consuming and cost me a little bit of money.
A couple years later in my career (I didn’t plumb unless I absolutely had to) I ran into another handyman that was more involved with plumbing than I was at the time. We worked on another large plumbing job in a beach front resort in Charleston. He cut all the pieces and dry fit the whole system before gluing it together. This sounds like the obvious solution – lets have a unanimous duh…I don’t know why I didn’t do this the last time I had a large job, I guess it had to do with being lucky for a long period of time. When the complete system was dry fit and in place he used another great idea for the job. He marked each joint on the plumbing with a sharpie marker so that when we started gluing the pipes together all the angles would be facing the correct direction (this is probably the most useful thing I learned from this job.
It has been several years since I have worked on any PVC plumbing requiring many joints and turns. I was looking under my sink and saw the sharpie marks I left when I re-plumed the PVC in the back of my house…I thought it might be a good thing to pass along…I used to do this stuff for a living and I didn’t think about it so I hope my sending out this post helps someone out. If this is already an obvious solution for your plumbing I hope you get this out of the post: You can learn many tricks and tips from someone else, don’t get into the spot where you know so much that you will not slow down to learn something new.

Thank you for reading,
Luke

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Cut PVC With String!

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Just give that drawer a good yank, the thought is very harmless until all of your cooking utensils are on your foot. If you have an older house it is very likely that you have some sticking drawers. There are many types of drawers therefore many different ways to fix them. Fixing your drawers is a simple and usually quick project that will save you hours of cleaning up or worse yet emergency room time.

Object blocking your drawer or jambing your track

First, thing to do when you are fixing your drawers is to make sure that your they are not sticking because of some sort of trash getting inside the track or blocking its proper operation. This situation happens most of the time to my drawers…I put a utensil or other cooking item in the drawer that is too big and jambs proper operation, or a recipe on a 3×5 card falls into the drawer track and gets the wheel messed up.

Broken Tracks, Corroded Track Wheels, Missing Wheels

Second, check to make sure that the wheels on the drawer tracks are operating correctly. Sometimes the track wheels will lose their bearings or get gunked up from many years of continuous use. If this is the case with your drawers attempt to put a little oil (3 in 1) on the wheels to see if they free up for you. If the wheels will not free up, replace the tracks (the tracks are usually found at Lowe’s or home depot in the hardware dept.) Take the old drawer tracks off and bring them with you when you go to purchase the new ones. Ask an associate to get a close match to your hardware.

Drawer is Falling Apart, Drawer is Swollen

Third, if the drawer is falling apart or swelling (from moisture) you will have to do a little more mending. If the sides are falling off the front of the drawer, or back falling off the sides, you will need to find a way to reassemble it. The best way to do this is to squirt a little glue in the damaged joint then screw it together with small trim screws (pre-drill the sides with 1/16″ to prevent splitting). If the drawer is swollen from moisture, the wood must be dried before it will operate. – Place a 60W lamp in front of the drawer for about 8 hours to dry the it out (this will need to be monitored so that you do not start anything on fire). Carefully open the drawer (because it is hot), and let the drawer stand out for about 30 min. – sand with a orbital sander then wax.

Old Stuck Drawers, Wood On Wood Drawer Slides

If you drawers are sticking and you do not have tracks or wheels then you probably have wood sticking on wood. These drawers are in many old houses that were up fitted with custom kitchen cabinets. The best way to fix these old drawers is to pull one out and examine the colors on the sides and bottom, if you see any black streaks it usually means that the wood is rubbing in that area. Sand down the dark area with 100 grit sandpaper, then with 120 or lighter to smooth the surface. Clean all the sawdust off the affected area and rub some gulf (paraffin) wax all over the affected area. Put the drawer back in place, and check for operation. If it works good you are finished, if not go through the steps again. ** Occasionally the drawer will rub over the whole side surface, If this is the case then sand the whole area with an orbital sander, then clean and wax.

Hope this information helps you out

Luke Spencer

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