Home DIY

Having stripped my lounge door of seventy thousand layers of paint including a couple of layers of water based paint, I discovered it originally had some oval bakelite back plates. Just purchased these on ebay. Need some nice handles now and can't decide if the round or oval ones would look better.

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Is there much of a market for used electric panel heaters?

Our house is not plumbed for gas, and originally had ceiling heating. It seems like it never really worked as our house had since been kitted out with electric storage heaters (as have most of our neighbors). Previous owner of our house was a little fancier and kitted ours out with ecolec wireless control heaters, whereas most others on our cul de sac just have ones with dials on the heaters.

However, I am thinking of swapping ours to the more simple ones our neighbors have because A) I don't really like where the radiators are currently placed and the sizes don't fit where I would like to place them (under the windows) and B) I don't understand the wireless controller. I also don't like that they have hard wired them into the mains, as I would have preferred the plugs so I could move them a bit easier, granted I am aware this is easy to reverse.

I've looked up the cost of buying the controller and radiators we have new and they come in at £1,389 before delivery, which is crazy money for 3 radiators (2 white panel heaters and a mirror panel heater) and a controller.

I was thinking of throwing them on eBay as a set for £500 in the hope a builder renovating a house on the cheap or something like that would snap them up, is that unrealistic? I don't really want to end up with unused radiators lingering around my house.

@rodabod and @Dugtheslug

How many switches control the existing

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and how many do you want once there’s another pendant installed?

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Re the ceiling-this is the one with artex, so I'm happy to drill and patch bits up, as it may end up having to be plastered.

Out out interest what sort of rough price would I be looking at for plastering a room and hallway totalling 8m²?

Plaster an entire room with 8m square floor space?

I’m from that way and might know someone - want to dm what you’re looking for?

No, just the ceiling.

I'm tempted to have a go depending what it's like when I've tried to strip the artex.

Incidentally how do you know when it's artex and when it's just stipple like plaster?

Plaster is brittle and Artex will be a lot harder to knock the tips off.

You could just knock Artex back with the edge of a trowel, paint PVA on it and skim it with Multifinish.

Dryline

6mm glass, just me typing faster than I think and I'm working with 6mm on a few projects at the moment!

Hard to know if that Artex will need boarding without seeing how coarse it is. And hopefully you don’t have a cornice if it does need boarding. But if I was to make a very rough guess without knowing how fast people work, I reckon you might get that done in two days by two people. So maybe £800 - £1k as a ballpark.

Ceiling.

Wow. Two days! For a 3.2m x 3.5m room.

I am minded to give a corner a bit of a block sand and see what happens.

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Again, why strip the artex? We (a plasterer) skimmed ours, similar to that.

Cost really. But also managing timings. If I can do it myself in the evenings then that would be preferable.

My rational for stripping rather than skimming is this:

• my plastering ability is low and I've only done vertical surfaces.
  
• assumtion that prepping the surface is not dissimilar cost to trying to strip the artex first, so other than time why not?
  
• general concerns about the plaster properly bonding with the artex
  

Our bathroom ceiling had that finish. 8.1m2, cost us £180 for prep (PVA skim) and plaster. Not in London mind.

Cheers. We're just outside London, so some things are cheaper.

I guess I should get a quote first. To benchmark the total costs.

Seriously, why not just dryline? Easier than plastering. Or just sand level (the plaster afterwards) ;)

Will there be issues with hiding asbestos?

dryline

Haven't heard of this.

Thankfully no asbestos. Getting the results is what has prompted me to action.

In more DIY Q&As (I'm on a roll)...

External stopcocks....

Without going into the details one of ours has been dug up around and I'm horrified to discover that ours (like our neighbours') is just filled in with a notion attempt to allow access with what is basically an old chimney stack.

I didn't take a photo of the hole, but this is what was over it. The internet didn't deliver any similar pictures as I guess people are too ashamed to post them.

Anyway. How would I go about making a neat job that's easily accessible with a hand?

In France they generally have a 50cm X 70cm concrete hole with the pipes neatly going in so you can reach them.

The area will ultimately be terraced over, so I'm happy with a steel cover or similar.

Our neighbour went for one of these which still seems like an odd solution. But all least his is deep. Ours isn't.

Even something like this would be an improvement on the ridiculousness of the current setup.

Even some decent search terms to put me on the right track would help. My first duckle mainly brought up gay outdoors porn.

Cheers!

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Ah, I thought it was 2x ceilings. Still, I reckon you may need two average plasterers to get the surface prepped or boarded and finished in one day. Pay them £200 ish per day plus materials....

I always think oval handles are nice

Seriously, drag the edge of a plastering trowel over the surface and knock all the spikes flat, paint with PVA and skim it with multifinish.......It's that easy and it's an easy days work for one plasterer chap.

Possibly on the edge of what might be considered DIY, but seriously considering installing a wood burner if the other quotes are anything like this one! No chimney, so would need a twin-wall flue. Quote: 5kw stove - £800 plus VAT, twin wall insulated chimney system in silver - £1700 plus VAT, if in black 20% extra, installation of this and heath and stove, signing off with HETAS certificate - £960 plus VAT.

This look crazy expensive to anyone else? I know that stoves can be had cheaper but £3240 just for chimney and a fairly standard through-the-wall-and-roof installation? In Cambridge - or London-on-Fen as I am now calling it.

Parts for a twin wall flue start to mount up fairly quickly. Mine was way more then the stove, about 15 years ago.

Geting the top of the flue the correct height above the roof ridge turned out a long way at £100 per metre. Plus a couple of elbows, inspection port, several brackets to support the weight, fire breaks, flashing, cowl, locking bands......

The hose to the bath mixer tap has corroded & split (red circle). We stopped it just in time (was dripping into kitchen but avoided full flood) I need to replace it.

Given width of bath I can only just reach the hose connector with one arm plus choice of spanner at full stretch. It (blue circle) needs two spanners to release but no way of getting under to use both arms to do this.

Any small twist on the hose fitting causes the pipe & isolator to turn, creating a leak from the bottom of the isolator valve (orange circle). The valves are too close to each other and to the wall to get a spanner/basin wrench in properly to tighten or loosen...

Guessing the only solution will be to remove the bath completely? Are there any narrow plumber spanners I could try?

Now I know how bad it is (shonky plumber a few years back) I'll be re-routing the pipe runs & moving the isolators to make these easier to work with in future.

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Maybe disconnect the water supply to the ball valve and take whatever will come off (seems like top half of the ball valve then reassemble with new flexible pipe and reattach. Pretty much anything you do would benefit from having the water supply off before that valve by the look of it.

You could use a bit of pipe taped on the handle of an adjustable spanner to get a bit more reach. Very long spanners must be a speciality item but still available.

Hmmmm. Fucking stupid expensive everything! Thanks for info.