Home DIY

Another vote for gripit here - I've used them for various tasks and haven't been let down yet

Most hire shops have jacks of differing types.

Depending in the shed construction, though, lifting it unevenly, or without enough supports, may have it pulling itself apart.

If you do lift it, you could slide under some a pair of treated 4x4s as skids, with a DPC strip between the skids & base (passing there's a concrete base).

Otherwise, maybe concrete pier blocks?

Levers would be your friend here. Get some extra floor bearers and sit the shed on those. My shed sits on top of bearers that have some damp proof course roll on top of them.

I have plenty of pressure treated 6x2 joists, could rip those down to 2x2 batons to be used as bearers. Stick those under the shed perpendicular to the existing floor bearers/joist, maybe even throw some damp proof course stuff over the new bearers and Bob's your mother's brother.

How wide is your shed?

Thanks for all your advice guys, I’m going for gripit plus fixing to the cabinet on either side.
I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions as the kitchen fit progresses.

I painted some skirting, architraves and a door with Dulux Trade Quick Dry Satinwood (water-based) but found it pretty tricky. It seems the quick drying water based paints are just a bit of a faff to get a nice surface - once they start drying you can't touch them without ruining the finish.

Also, it took about 4 coats to get an opaque finish. Is that normal?

Surfaces were stripped back with a heat gun, sanded smooth and then primed with the Dulux all purpose trade primer which is solvent based.

Should I have used a water-based primer? Is the Dulux just a bit like that? Internet hive mind seems full of misinformation and confusion. Next up is the bathroom door which I've already primed with the all-purpose primer but we're out of the Satinwood.

Before I go buying another tin of my Satinwood nemesis and spend the entire weekend painting a single sodding door, is there something else I should look at? Zinnser Perma-White looks too good to be true on paper, and maybe more appropriate for a bathroom door anyway. What do we think?

For bare pine try zinnser cover stain as a primer followed by an undercoat that matches the top coat, so in this case dulux acrylic undercoat would be a good choice. There are non specific undercoats that are good like Zinnser 123 but they have their own quirks.

You might need 2 coats of undercoat to get a decent opaque covering, don't rely on the top coat to do that. Then apply the satinwood (which is one of the easiest acrylic paints) quickly and thinly, then one final coat which should be much easier to keep even. Never try to get opaque coverage by overloading the surface.

Denib with 240 grit between coats and use an acrylic brush (Wooster alpha is a good one). Don't paint from the pot, transfer what you need to a paint kettle and don't put it back in the main pot. Always stir or shake or both before you pour some out otherwise all the solids will be at the bottom of the pot.

Them's some pro tips for you but there's no beating experience and that just comes with hours on the job. Acrylic paint is not easy, especially in warm weather.

Avoid the Perma-White, its not the right paint for the job and its even harder to apply without curtaining on a door.

Forgot to say, use a bristle brush for solvent based paints, acrylic for acrylic paints.

Fantastic, thanks. Sounds like undercoat will solve many of my problems. I'd been doing most of the other things.

The water-based acrylic undercoat is this stuff, right? https://www.duluxdecoratorcentre.co.uk/dulux-trade-quick-dry-undercoat
"quick dry" seems to be a Dulux euphemism for water based

Would you dilute either that or the satinwood? I haven't been

I think it's too risky to dilute it. Some people use a sponge and wet the surface they're painting, I've never had to do that, just keep moving at a reasonable pace and never go back over your work (difficult to resist when it's a drip on a door panel). You need to focus on completing the piece while keeping a wet edge to feather into, that gets harder to do with doors.

Quick drying often means water based, not exclusively though, and not all water based paints are quick drying. I have a few favourite eggshells, Little Green, Benjamin Moore & Ray Munn Porslin. For cheaper but decent finish there's Craig & Rose. Farrow & Ball is not too bad but the colour matching from tin to tin can be dodgy. Satinwood is not exactly eggshell though so you should probably carry on with that if you've started. I have Satinwood on a lot of my own woodwork but they had terrible problems with it ageing too fast in the early days and I'm not a huge fan of the slightly plastic finish it has, it's much more durable than eggshell though.

Just pondering:

We stripped our living room floors back to the original pine boards. Not our finest idea as they're a bit flimsy and bloody noisy but when we moved in the carpet was monstrous and we couldn't be bothered with a new carpet. Is there a way to make it less noisy? I.e. if we put a layer of foam or something on top and covered it with Karndean? Obviously not expecting to get a similar sound foot print to the solid floor in the kitchen but just when our son bashes the floor with his wooden toys it shakes the whole house.

Attach layer of foam to son's wooden toys?

My preference is burn all the toys but apparently "that's not appropriate" blah

Perhaps foam rubber toys?

Musical toys

You could lift the boards, fill the space with sound insulation foam?

Or buy them a PlayStation and stop being so middle class.

Any view on Wren Kitchens? Just been to a showroom, and they were much clearer in terms of laying out options than other places I've been. The gear seemed good, and they also seem very happy to price match.

Get a play mat

I've recently had an Ikea Almaren kitchen tap installed and I can't seem to find any garden hose connectors that will fit it. I'm after something like this but the internal thread seems to be 18.5 mm and this one is 24mm. Does anyone know if such a thing exists? If not I guess I will grab something like this one.

It'll need to cover the entire floor. He also climbs up on the coffee table and hammers that louder than I knew possible. Not always I hasten to add. Usually he's a quiet little beaut but one year old's gonna one year old.

Plan on having another kid? If not, I would think only of some kind of temporary, virtually free solution.
Get a bigger play mat.

I have finally finished our "library shelving". It took far too long and will be wildly inappropriate when our baby is old enough to climb all over it.

oh god I pity you for when that day comes :( Our bottom three shelves are empty and everything else is stacked on the top ones.

My nephew has had a really bad time with Wren Kitchens. Not with the kit, which looks good, but with the installation service which is appalling. They bullied him into accepting a fit date which was to early for the builders so most of the stuff had to come out again. The second time they were short handed and dropped and damaged the fridge, etc. If you go for a Wren kitchen get someone else to install it.

Thanks, have seen a few comments along those lines.

My parents had a kitchen from Wren, don't know much about them but they have given me a free Neff hob that was delivered to them by mistake. Make of that what you will.

Edit: also something along the lines of the fitters they supplied were not "their" fitters so when you have any issues they shrug their shoulders and say "nothing to do with us"