Home DIY

So Drywall sanders - What would you get. Looking to sand some plastered walls that have had the paper removed so lots of gouge marks and poor fillering. So was thinking sand, then Easy fill then sand again smooth walls then paint. I hate lining paper.

Was looking at electric paint sprayers, are they any good? Looking to repaint a few rooms after the sanding white. Thought the quickest was was to use a electric paint sprayer.

Ive found that YouTube tutorials are better for this than normal searches.

I'm planning on making a table saw with two sawhorses, adding a crosscut and mitre jig.

If that works, I'll build in a router and belt sander. Maybe even a jigsaw as a band saw...

The only one I've used is my own Festool one which is a 225mm head and comes with a specific hoover designed to deal with plaster/filler dust. It's not that easy to use, pretty heavy on a long handle and you need to be careful with it. If you are using easy fill you can wipe the surface with a sponge and it will come up very flat, I know it doesn't seem like good advice but just try it and avoid years of sanding.

The other worthwhile product you might want to deal with your newly filled walls is Gardz. Well worth it for walls with patches of filler on, only problem is its only available in large quantities.

Paint spraying is all about masking and dealing with overspray, you spend a lot more time prepping and taping the skirting etc. Then you either have decent extraction for the overspray or risk covering everything with fine dust. It also takes time to clean the paint from the sprayer once you've used it and failure to do that will ruin the spray equipment. That process requires a fair bit of water too. If you are prepared to prep everything (all the rooms) that you want to paint then do them all at once with extraction you might be happier than using a roller but a 12 or 18 inch roller does the job so quickly that you may as well invest in a wide roller bucket, 18" roller and Wooster roller pole.

Spraying is generally worthwhile on surfaces like doors that you want a flawless finish and where they can be painted in a specific area which is set up to deal with overspray.

The Painters Pit Stop forum has a lot of threads concerning spraying.

Time to make a home for our wine collection. When we moved into our house we had a large mezzanine storage area built over the garage. It's a former stable so a very handy 3.5 metres tall.
I made some plans in Sketchup and made a Travis Perkins order.
Starting with 4 sheets of 2400 x 1220 x 18mm plywood, after a couple of days I had all the wood cut to size:

The basic frame was glued and screwed and cutouts made for the large pipe. The centre uprights are fixed and are glued, screwed at the top and located by metal dowels at the bottom.

The top was put on, glued and screwed, along with the last fixed upright. The movable upright dividers are just placed there to check for size in this photo. They are located with L shaped brackets so they can be adjusted to fit different sized bottles.

First set of dividers fixed, might as well try it out:

The pipe and wires will be hidden by some modified wooden wine cases that my local wine merchant is going to give me. The plan is to put some nice doors on this with metal mesh panels.

That’s a lot of Pinot Blush to get through. Need a hand?

I have pipe knock.
I am in my bathroom. I can hear pipes buzzing. Only the hearing is on.
Why when I step on a loose tile did the buzzing pipes stop buzzing?

Sure it wasn't the tile buzzing?

Suggestions for an ok but not too pricey wallpaper stripper...?

Anyone got one I could borrow for a month or so?

It stopped shortly after I posted. So I went to bed.

I have one you can borrow if you like...

Down in br2

Looking at Paper Tiger and that DIF spray stuff now, but thanks. I may take you up on it if this method doesn’t work.

No worries. Let me know

Back on the kitchen talk, any suggested sites for sinks? Specifically I'm looking for ones for a 400mm deep worksurface which don't seem that common.

Also, any recommendations for custom size cabinets that won't cost a bomb?

If your round hounslow/Southall there are a quite a few companies that specialise in fitted cupboards that could do it.

I missed this! It's smaller than yours - 2m by 3.5m so design will be trickier but fingers crossed we'll need fewer bits.

This sounds great - is there a specific Wickes you'd recommend? And how long did they take to install?

Paper tiger and dif is good.

Paper tiger and diluted fabric softener can also work well (and your walls will smell summer fresh too!)

I'm more North-East so not the nearest but may have a look at some point if I can't spot anywhere more local.

Went into our loft for the first time since we moved in (in Nov '15... oops) over the weekend. It's a decent size considering we live in a 1930s chalet style semi (oo'er)...

The ceiling is insulated and there are some boards down but the rafters aren't.

I'm going to insulate then and fully board the floor to make better use of the space. Can I just nail up some marine ply to the rafters to keep everything neat? Should i add some sort of moisture barrier?

We have just had a plumber in to quote us a new heating system for a 5 bedrooms house with 3 bathrooms in london. So far we have been told megaflow is the way to go for this size house but this plumber recommends that we install the storage boiler instead and that if we wanted to go down the megaflow route he would even turn the job down.
His argument is that he installed megaflow in his dad house few years back and it was great until the pressure dropped and made the megaflow system worthless. He thinks that eventually water pressure will drop in most part of town with new build being built at every corner. He reckons a storage combi boiler will cost half the money and do the job just fine. Any view on this?

At the moment we have approximately 3bar pressure coming to the house. Megaflow needs at least more than 1.5 bar pressure to fully function. Thames water minimum pressure is something is like 3/4 of a bar.

Personally we could do with the cost saving and a cheaper installation but the last thing we want is to struggle with 2 taps opened at the same time.

You'll need to ensure they can vent - it's in the US, IIRC, it's about a 2 inch gap between the insulation and the roof underlay to ensure good ventilation. Otherwise very straight forward.

edit: found this - about a 2" gap (50mm) - https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/tech/insulating-your-loft-rafters-a-step-by-step-guide/

Thanks for that. There's no membrane between the tiles and the rafters at the moment either. My thinking is:

1. Tack a membrane to the rafters
   
2. Use insulation board, leaving a 50mm gap between new membrane and board
   
3. Cover with marine ply
   
4. Paint if I can be arsed
   

You could do mega flow with cold water tank aswell. Would take more space and money.
I know some that has done this because he live on a hill and thus has the lowest pressure in the area.
My guess would be tht a combi would struggle, I had one about 15 years ago. Things might be better now tho.

How high does your ceiling need to be before you can use dangling lights? Are there rough guidelines?

I'd love to have some in my apartment, but I'm pretty sure I'd be walking into them all the time :(

How much would someone charge to clear gutters. Could do it myself with a long ladder but mine doesn't quite reach and reckless as I am I'm not sure I want to be at the far end of a ladder stretching beyond it's reach.

Mrs CYOA had a knock on the door yesterday by some guy who said he cleared next doors and would do ours for half price (30 quid from 60). I'd been talking about sorting it for a while so she just agreed - the gutters are indeed clean but we now have a neat stack of about 6 broken tiles sitting on our wall. She was looking after Baby CYOA but said she saw one guy go up the ladder and a guy at the bottom who, when he'd finished snooping round our garden, grab the ladder and slide it along the roof without the other guy coming down. So I assume he was crawling across the roof while this happened, knocking tiles loose.

So I guess the question is - how much to get a legitimate roofer to replace half a dozen tiles.