Home DIY

At least when I diy they're my mistakes. This whole process of getting people in to do stuff is one I hate, I procrastinated about getting the repointing done for fucking ages worrying about it being done properly.
Right now back to the door frame...

You can rescue the face of the bricks by rubbing them smooth with another brick of the same type.

Thanks for this, will give it a go

I think your bricks will look fine once they’re done. Those soft red ones often crumble to bits and have to be replaced.

By the way, once you’ve had the skin of your bricks cut back like that (as they are on my house too) they should be coated in Thomson’s Weatherseal or similar as it makes them porous.

Glass and paint borders are a nightmare. I've always managed to crack at least one pane of glass stripping with a butane torch or heat gun. Now I use aluminium duct tape on a piece of cardboard or stuck to the glass which is works for infra red. If you are looking to get the mouldings really clean I recommend cloth sand 'paper', there's a type (can't remember the name) which I swear by, the soft pads in an few grits 80 - 180 are useful too but they wear out fast.

Tape the glass with a decent masking tape to avoid scratching the glass all round the mouldings. Use a tungsten carbide scraper (very useful for all types of work), there are also moulding scraper sets.

Outdoor varnish over danish oil?

I've just picked up an old changing room bench desind for the garden. In the house I only have indoor floor varnish and dainish oil.

Which would be best as an interim solution to protect it until I get some proper marine varnish?

Pain in the arse of a job. I got one of those wide carbide bladed scrapers on mine, combined with a heat gun. Elbow grease gets it off eventually.

The red bricks are really porous anyway. If you put a new one in a bucket of water, it will bubble for ages.

If they are pointed with lime, it isn't a problem and I wouldn't put anything on them.

@hoefla
You need to be 100% sure they don't sneak in some cement into that mortar. It's common for builders to do that, as it makes the mortar set faster but you just end up with a cement mortar with loads of lime in it.

Lime mortar is either NHL and sand or lime putty and sand. Lime putty mortar doesn't have as much frost resistance as NHL mortar and isn't as strong. If you're in London, you'll be ok with a putty mortar, but out of town you want a hydraulic (NHL) lime mortar.

^ I'd guess builders will use NHL, as it's closer to cement to work with.

It's probably worth finding out though, if nothing else jsutbto check they aren't sneakk in a bit of Portland, as aunt_maud says.

But yeah - soft reds only really get damaged when someone has reported with a cement mortar.

Or that awful dyed brick repair crap that someone has slapped on my place

Just seeing this talk of red bricks, I don't suppose anyone has around 10 going spare? Need to replace some frost damaged ones

Anyone successfully replaced an element in a ceramic hob? Is that even the right type? glass top - not induction.

Nevermind, the outlet's fucked. Phew, easy fix.

Aren't you planning a big rebuild, and in need of a few samples to match the existing wall? (Before buying a few thousand, obvs...)

Spray paint primer and top coat for marine ply - what do people recommend?

Or that awful dyed brick repair crap

wat dis?
all the local brick repointing/restoration outfits seem to love a tuck pointing, but I think it looks kinda naff if done so-so, and if done perfectly (so you can't see the coloured mortar) it just looks too formal for an ordinary 1920s house.

in other more positive news, new adventures in heat gunning was moderately successful (I cracked a pane). finally ready to paint!

The neighbours at our previous house in Somerset had the builders in to do some re-pointing to the side of their house. They used bags of hydrated lime instead of hydraulic lime and wondered why after pointing the house for a week, the mortar was not setting.

Regarding the brick porosity, this was regarding the enrtire house and not just the red bricks which have been cut back. My understanding was that they'll be more likely to get frost damage once the skin has been cut back. You can see the bubbles/holes appear as you start to cut back buff bricks. If the scaffold is up at the time, then I think it makes sense to add a coat of water sealant.

I'm very wary of using anything impervious to water when dealing with brickwork that was put together with porosity in mind.

Water always finds a way in, and when it can't get out again, bad things happen.

If I wanted a design printed onto MDF (that had been laser cut out in some fairly intricate shapes) how would I go about it?

Presume there's nothing that can print directly onto it so it would be a case of printing to some sort of 'film' and sticking it?

Standard bit of vinyl printing, no? Had quite a lot of exhibition graphics done like that and applied to various kinds of board over the summer. If you wanted to get your hands dirty you could probably screen print onto the surface?

Laser engrave? It would probably need to be done at the same time as the cutting (i.e. without moving the piece) to avoid registration issues.

If you're wanting colour, dye sublimation printing is a possibility although the background colour of the MDF is likely to be an issue.

WRT my painting ply question- should I just buy the Zinser stuff?

I'm generally of the same thinking, which is why I've stripped all traces of external paint from my house and re-pointed in lime mortar. But the chap who cut the bricks back (who also does a lot of conservation work) suggested the bricks might get knackered from frost in the future without treatment. I guess time will tell.

the chap who cut the bricks back (who also does a lot of conservation work)

is this really a thing? I don't like the freshly sanded bright bricks look and just assume it's kind of anti-conservation to take off the face of old bricks.
it's only the red brick headers and the side reveals that have been ground back on mine, I specifically asked them not to do it to (the rest of) the wall and use chemical paint stripper (my poor garden... )

new question!
there are various wires attached to the front of my house. they look a bit messy. how I check which ones are still useful? it's not super obvious as they disappear into walls. a couple of thin telephone type wires, and a thicker one the size of an electrical lead. can I ask an electrician to check them?

The thin wires are how the Forum monitors you. The thicker one provides power to the Forum's server farm.