Home DIY

@kboy thanks so much. May just go one colour after all but if I do try 2 will definitely do that and post the result :)

We have a two tone wall in our hallway, we have done it with a dado rail to split it, so that has made it much easier. If you wanted to just do it without anything breaking it I would be tempted to hire a rotary laser level, set it up in the middle of the room and it will put a nice red line on the wall for you to aim with.

It's a little easier if you use a wide masking tape. Something that's designed to give clean edges under emulsion (frog tape does this but it's not wide). With a wide stiff masking tape it stays straighter. You need to be careful that the tape will not pull away the fresh emulsion you are creating the line against.

Pulling it off cleanly is a bit of a lottery. It does seem easier when the paint is quite fresh, maybe not quite fully dry and pull away from the line at about 45 degrees in both directions. Do it slowly. Some people prefer to roll it off (See "Better Call Saul" Season 3 for an example).

In the scenic industry I've seen guys do it by hand!

Light switches and plug sockets...to change them it's a case of turning power off, taking old ones away from the wall and noting which wires go where, switch to new ones with wires in corresponding places, putting them back in the wall and turning the power back on...right?

I should be able to do this all myself, yes? It's not something that needs a qualified electrician?

It's not a requirement to be registered. It's easy to go wrong though because lighting circuits cable colours can be all over the place. You might pull the switch and find 7 wires in there, the lighting loop and the switch drop. If you are careful and keep track of exactly what went where and your switches are like for like you should be fine. On the other hand you can search this thread for times where it's not straightforward.

As a safety measure you should always test any wires you are handling with a proper voltage tester. A professional would not rely on a contactless tester or a neon screwdriver. You need to know your voltage tester works. If you switch the power off to the whole house that should cover you in the event that you don't have a tester. This is especially worthwhile if you are changing switches in a hallway.

Don't twist the wires together in the terminal and make as sure as you can that all the connections are solid. If they're not you can get arcing which can lead to fires. Again a pro can but might not check the IR of any circuit they are working on, this would show them if there are loose connections. It's interesting if you have the capacity to check IR that you can correct weak joints by an extra turn of the screw.

As Airhead says (but I'm coming from the amateur side who's done it rather than Airhead who knows what he's doing) it's doable but could be painful.

The moment where you take off the existing switch with loads of terminals and try and work out how that ties in with your new switch with new terminals is the point where the job takes four times as long. Add to that stuff like the wires being too short/long, every wire being the same colour/random colours with various bits of faded tape to denote what they are, the discovery that one downstairs light is on the upstairs ring, etc and it can be a bit painful.

It's doable but don't rush it and be aware that it may well take much longer than you'd think. Take plenty of pictures and have something handy to mark the wires. Also useful to have some wago connectors for when you discover that some bugger has twisted some wires together and stuck a bit of tape round them.

Thanks both. May turn the power off and take a look before committing myself fully! House was built in 2007 and only had a few owners so I'd hope not too much has been meddled with...

I would guess you'll be fine.. I've done it myself in two different properties and each one was wire differently but you'll have modern switches so new bought switches should match up perfectly.

That sounds promising. My place is 100+ years old with at least one bodger in the past.

We have an electrician in at the minute, and following an emergency plumbing situation last week (plumbing and mains electricity I won't touch), I'm beginning to believe everything bar the brickwork on my mid 80s house is bodged.

Even then it was built in the mid 80s, so i don't have much faith in that either...

bodger

A friend of mine had a dodgy light switch in his kitchen and decided to replace it. This led to them having to fit a new kitchen. Previous owner had run speaker cables to feed 220v to different things back and forth behind the dry wall. Quite thick speaker cables but still.

Mains cabling makes quite good (and cheap) speaker wiring... I wonder if wires had got crossed there somewhere.

Punderful

anyone painted a bedroom two tone?

Too late to suggest sick fades?

I had loads of offcuts leftover from building the fence that I had been meaning to bring to the recycling centre, but this morning had the brainwave to use them to build a new step for my front door.

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Before:

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On an unrelated note, i have 3 bags of unopened postcrete and 1 back of unopened gravel if anyone needs them?

Will swap for some cans of craft ipa...

You say scaffold board...

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I say raised flower bed (wife currently staining)

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Any 'loft ladders' that are big/heavy duty that can be pulled up safely from the loft and unfurled up there? I want to have some kind of office space up there but can't afford a full refurb at the moment with a permanent staircase but don't want a ladder that can be climbed by a cat or 2 year old.

Obvs BCompact is the one but ££££ for a temporary solution:
https://www.bcompact.com/designer/all/bcompact-stairs/

wife currently staining

That's unfortunate. Anyone know how best to get stains off of wives?

I tried vanish, but now she's gone!

Finished flower bed:

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that looks nice

I’ve got one of these: https://www.laddersandscaffoldtowers.co.uk/acatalog/Concertina-Loft-Ladders.html

I’ve never tried to pull it up from the loft, but I reckon it’d be possible.

Thanks. Did look at something similar and reckon it'd be possible to pull up but not sure I could put it down when I wanted to get out of the thing!