Home DIY

£s depends on the cause, type and age of property, and then how much your prepared to DIY.

Process to repair friends on the same. Could be a breached DPC, or no air bricks, or the path is too high, or a leaking drain, or rubllr under the floor. Anything is possible. Most are fixable.

Didn't explain that well, door is fine, it's the frame that's out. But now you've given me the idea of warping the door to match...

a damp patch in a victorian building. Most have one or 2 that are tricky or near impossible to solve.

110 years is a long time for people to fuck up perfectly good buildings.

I've just discovered that the slate tiles on our bay window are stuck down with putty. 60s bodging FTW.

I reckon most are fixable, but some fixes may feel like raising the Titanic.

It's certainly a long enough time for problems to appear. Pretty incredible that most of these victorian places are still pretty decent though. In my experience even a modest 4 bed victorian house will keep you busy of you want to keep it in top condition.

I guess my advice would be, don't rush into solving damp problems by throwing money at them. Some defy investigation and you just get lucky and work it out over time.

Agreed.

I'm working one wall at a time at the moment.

Cheers. That's the option I was trying to avoid but may have to go for. The door frame architraves are a bit of a ball-ache though so will have to see how motivated I feel.

A common fix is to make sure there’s a gap between the edge of the alley and the building.

But it might not work.

One end panel of my kitchen (worktop to ceiling height) will be painted the same colour as the walls (RAL9010, or “Shirting” if you want to pay lots of money for it). What should I make it from? MDF? Primed MDF? Don’t really want to get into plasterboaring etc

If there will be moisture which I assume there will be in a kitchen I'd go with Moisture Resistant (MR) MDF, which should also be nicer to paint than regular MDF. You can prime it yourself. I've been using high density foam rollers for my wardrobes and it leave a very smooth finish if you sand in between coats.

Will the end grain be visible? If yes, you'll need to give it a good sanding both before and after priming, and then prime it again, otherwise it will have a very rough surface finish after paint and suck up a lot of paint. MR board won't be as bad as regular MDF with that last part though so maybe only one prime of edge will be needed.

MR is a good shout. I'm lipping the edge in solid cherry so I don't need to worry about that. Hate painting things.

Hate painting things.

Tell me about it. I've spent more time painting and cursing these wardrobes than I did constructing them.

And then jokers like this
come and show you how it can be done in 5 seconds if you have the right kit.

Might get him to do it.

You mean you don't have your own base coat sprayer?

And top coat sprayer?

And spray room?

And drying room?

Will order that shit with my new amazon prime account now and be painting like a boss by the end of the day.

Any idea where I might buy these spares for a garden lounger....?

1 Attachment

We recently removed the chimney in our living room, previous owner had the gas fire removed and now there is a capped bit of pipe stick out of the (concrete) floor in the middle of the room (well, 60cm from the wall)
I need to remove it (not really feasible with it being concrete) or chop it to floor level so can be covered by new flooring.
How do I find out if the pipe is live?
If it isn't, can I just cut it down level?

Purchased a self levelling laser after realising that all 0 of 3 of my spirit levels were actually level. Used it to mark up the walls for soon to be installed picture rail.

Such a fun tool - much disco disco. Pointlessly took it around the house and discovered virtually everything is on the wonk though.

"I went to the doctor because I broke every bone in my body, I hurt where ever I touched, turned out I had broken my finger"

0 of 3 of my spirit levels were actually level

It depends on how you hold them, though.

#noneedtothankme
#hereallweek

Get a plumber in.

We had a pipe in the kitchen. It got cut down and sealed off (i hope). It's visible but is hidden by a cupboard.
I don't think I'd want it covered by flooring.

Has anyone used a CNC workshop in London recently? I'm just looking to get quotes on a few jobs coming up.
I'm previously used Alworth James and Bond and was fully happy with their work, but it can't hurt to have a look around to check their prices against others.
Had a conversation with Cutandconstruct.com but they only accept .dwgs of .dxfs, which is no good for my workflow at all.

Made a shoe rack.

2 Attachments

Clever! Did you use a router?

drilled the ends out with a forstner bit, then joined them up on the router, then rounded off the edges.

i asked ikea on twitter if they wanted to stock my shoe rack, they declined :(

Tell us about the work benches - they look self built