Home DIY

Sometimes it's just not easy to find and even your best efforts with a few techniques will fail. If I'm approaching a really tricky one I sometimes use an inspection camera, drill a hole for the camera and have a look inside the wall. Sods law you drill the hole on a stud though!

Ta.

Will try

Want to put algot up in a cupboard

When that render came off you should have seen the state of the bricks underneath.

The cement render that extends up the wall is over the top of lime render - the bricks that I have seen are just covered in lime mortar, but otherwise undamaged.

The foot of the wall has 10 inches of hardened cement rendered directly onto brick - I don't knows if this is a period feature, but a lot of other similarly aged houses have it, and it looks weathered - and removing this in bulk is going to destroy the faces of the bricks.

I'll render the side wall in lime again, but need to make a decision on the hardened cement parging - either remove it, damage the brick, and render in lime, or decide that it's period, supposed to be there, not contributing to the damp, and leave well alone.

Looks a nice clean job.

If someone has rendered the base / plinth in cement it's unlikely to be original. It's common enough, though.

@amey what's your guys contact details? I'm also looking to get some quotes for a new deck.

What circular saw is best circular saw for about £100?

Corded or battery? If battery do you already have drill etc that you could share battery with and just get a bare unit?

I have corded evolution circular saw and mitre saw and have found them to be decent and cheap.

100 or thereabouts should get you a Makita HS7601J.

Rhino flooring is good chap. Really good quality too.

I have a corded drill and that's really my only power tool. Would like the option of using the saw outside, which means battery as I'm on the 2nd floor, so maybe makes sense to settle on a brand and look for a few tools that can share batteries. Good food for thought.

Yep, always worth considering what you are likely to want in the future.

Obvious trade off between power\ runtime and portability when considering tools too. Depends on budgets etc. but you seem to get better deals buying batteries and chargers bundled with drills and then buying bare units for everything else.

I personally use Makita, but other people swear by DeWalt, Milwaukee or Bosch Blue, there are cheaper consumer brands like Ryobi, Bosch Green, Black & Decker but they seem a bit of a false economy at times for me. Then there is a step up to the best of the best like Festool, but that is more like £500 rather than £100...

Also depends on what you'll be cutting. Makita do a lovely battery powered circular saw which cuts up to 18mm, if you don't need a 40mm plunge saw then you can get a much nicer lightweight one that will cut 95% of what most people use a circular saw for.

Of course a track saw is what you really want to make the job a pleasure but you won't get that for £100.

I settled on Bosch, I've built up a mixture of blue and green DIY and garden tools and now buy bare units.

Thanks for the further advice folks. I had a butcher's on eBay, but you never know what you're getting exactly...

Are the batteries interchangeable between blue and green? Gives a bit more flexibility.

Green Bosch = Audi of powertool world

Unless you've got a freshly waxed Audi sitting outside, in which case just ignore me

All my greens (drill, saw, strimmer, hedge trimmers) are 18v which works with Bosch green and the garden stuff. Square looking battery.
My blues (multi-cutter, mini vac) are 10.8v stick type batteries which apparently won't work with the green 10.8v.
If I need a new bit of kit, I'm driven by battery compatibility so sticking to Bosch gives me a reasonable range to choose from.

We're strictly blue Bosch for the battery stuff at work and I can't fault it, except for the jigsaws which refuse to stay locked at 90 degrees. I use Makita for angle grinders, track saws, SDS drills, battery drills and routers at home, the rest is green Bosch.
I'd take blue Bosch over Makita for battery drills, but it is a quite a bit pricier (at least in Denmark). The Makita battery circular saw is really nice and their corded track saw is ok. If blue and green Bosch have interchangeable batteries, it looks like a nobrainer to me.

Do a 'disc brakes are dead' and choose the saw based on a specific blade.

Sadly I don't really know much about cars. Audis are good? My drill is Bosch green. It drills.

I always imagined Audis are for people who buy into the whole 'German (perceived) quality' thing.

I dunno, I suppose it depends on what you'll actually be sawing or drilling. My late Dad did an unreasonable amount of DIY and a Black & Decker handled all his drilling needs just fine. I have a nice drill, but it barely rotates in anger these days so I could just have well bought something cheap.

If you want what a value-minded professional might use, Makita's stuff is good quality and a complete 'system', as is blue Bosch. If money's no object, Hilti. If you're just sawing the odd bit of wood anything safe will do

My wife's kind of balked at the cost of these now, and as usual I want to spend as much as possible. It's initially just to saw up some wood to make a shelf inside one cupboard, but it was a good excuse to buy the saw (and a profile gauge!!). Now I'm asking my old man/father-in-law if they have one to borrow!

Green Bosch is decent. I have a few of the drills and a cordless circular saw.