Construction and Industrial Articles
posted on 27 November 2011
When I was 16 years old, I worked at a printing company where I had to be careful everytime that I had to do something near or inside the offset printing machine because it could have grave consequences. Before printing, the machine had to be setup by placing all the needed plates and to do that I had to roll the machine's cylinders by pressing a button while my hand was between those same cylinders, holding the plate. If anything went wrong, it could go from a cut from those sharp plates or even a crushed hand. We had some ppe clothing to protect us, but ultimately you had to be super-careful After that, I had to clean the plates with a liquid so active that I could feel my hands burning while handling the piece of cloth that was imbued with it. I tried wearing industrial gloves for handling acids, but they were easily dissolved. After loading the ink and the paper, we fired up the machine which printed around 10.000 A2 pages per hour. The problem with that is that the same cylinders which can crush a person's hand were spinning while being completely exposed, because there weren't any protecting grids to cover the machine and we had to get on top of it to check the ink while our feet were mere 15 centimeters away from them. And when the machine finally stopped, we had to remove the plates, and clean the cylinders while slowly spinning them. It doesn't sound bad, but when there are several works to print on the same day, all of that has to be done in seconds, which is why two people from my family had their fingers crushed while cleaning them. Fortunately, that never happened to me, and I can thank that to the person who taught me inside that company. |
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posted on 2 November 2011
I moved into my 4 bedroom semi-detached home 2 years ago this week and while my home on a whole was nearly perfect and I had no problems decorating each and every room my sitting room's bay window left me a little stumped at what to do with the space. The bay window was rather large at approx. 8ft wide by 2ft deep - I had installed lovely wooden venetian blinds so the area had privacy but got direct sun for the first half of the day so thought a seat would be idea for morning coffee oer even a read of the paper. I looked on line and in various furniture stores for a day bed to fit into the space but all were either too wide for the space or just were very expensive. I looked at light curtains that had velcro fasteners. In the end I asked a local carpenter to review the space with a view to creating a window seat with storage underneath, I also measured the space and contacted a local upholstery company to have a custom cut piece of seating foam covered in a neutral coloured covering. The overall end result was fantastic I have a beautiful window seat that offers a comfortable area to relax in the morning sun but yet at only 50% of the cost of an equivalent day bed from a local furniture store. |
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posted on 17 August 2011
The biggest cleanup operation I have ever been involved in was definitely the time we knocked down our bathroom. Forget oil tank removal, tank cleaning, or any professional job I'd done - this was the toughest job, and it was in my own home!
To start with we were just going to put new tiles on the wall but when we took the tiles down and found the walls crawling with insects and mould operation knock down bathroom was inevitable. The mess was unbelievable, plaster, wood and tiles strewn all over the kitchen (which the bathroom led on to,) pieces of the toilet, sink and shower all over the back garden and to make it worse a thick layer of pink plaster dust seemed to get in to every nook and cranny in the house. I didn’t think we would ever get the house clean. But armed with scouring brushes, bleach, brooms, dusters and polish 6 of us put on our marigolds and set about restoring the house to a mess and dust free zone. It took a while and for weeks our cat seemed to be walking little pink plaster dust paw prints around the house but we did it. |
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