Home DIY

The previous owner of the house was allegedly a joiner!
The cabinet was full of tools when the new owners viewed the house and it should have been removed but wasn't. I can now guess why.

Not long after they moved in, the sliding mirror wardrobe doors frame fell apart and the glass came out. A surprise which could have ended very badly.
There were holes for 3 screws in each corner joint, but only 1 screw fitted.

Have melted a hole in a plastic bath, and I now can't solder joints either.

Fuck that.

Have melted a hole in a plastic bath

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Yours or a client?

Hopefully yours, but either way fuckety fuck fuck

Now that would be handy.

GF.

The joy of 16mm copper pipe. Yes 16mm.

The joy of 1/2" copper pipe. Yes 1/2" which is nearly 16mm OD

You can get adapter solder couplings for imperial to metric. or some loose compression couplings will work with the correct olive

Not easily, bath now removed and French Sunday lunch consumed. It was snacks, osso bucco, cheese and sweet. Ricard as a starter. Nice nibbles, osso bucco main.

Log store build, 95% there

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What would be a reasonable hourly rate (Cardiff not London) to offer a labourer to help me dig out my garden? We have no side access other than through the house and it feels like a bit of a mountain to climb at the moment. Planing some kind of deck & shed so need to lower the whole 12x5m area by a decent amount as well as remove a patio.

£100 a day - maybe and that would be cash. We did a similar thing recently and had a mini digger in for a full day. I’d guess maybe 10 tons of soil out and 8.5 tons of stones put in. One guy on the digger and two with wheel barrows.
Have you a plan for removal of the soil etc?

Oh how I long for a digger! Do they make foldable diggers? Current plan is running through the trommel and taking the graded soil to the allotment where it's needed. Getting about 1 bag of rubble for every 5 of soil, so would probably get a small skip or a 1 ton bag for that. Have been carrying bags through the house but a small wheelbarrow might just fit.

That’s a fair amount to take out through a house, even if you’re only reducing the level by 30cm. I work it out at 20 cubic metres.

Are your internal doors big enough to get a wheelbarrow through?

You also need to consider how you’re going to retain the earth at the edges of the excavated area. You can put some basic retaining walls in yourself, but you need to think about how you’ll get materials in.

Pics would help.

Gonna asks again (final time):

Residential building surveyor - anyone have any recommendation for someone who isn’t just blindly following RICS processes and is capable of producing a useful and user friendly report? Context is trying to buy an Edwardian semi that on the face of it is in good nick - but would like to know what is going to cost us going forward and whether the existing mods - loft and small rear extension- are done as well as their appearance suggests.

Are you in London?

This was approx. 8.5m x 4m. I could not imagine taking it through a house. Are there no other means of access? Basically we were flat out for a full day with two wheel barrows. Sifting soil is time consuming as I did it for another section of the garden - maybe 2 tons of it.

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Yep London.

No access. Previously we had two 2x1m raised beds and another massive long one down the right. Were about -1' from grounds level at the deepest on the left there. That's all gone to the allotment now, huge 8x4" sleepers, each bed 2 sleepers high, I think the longest were 2.4m. Yes it's a ball ache, but what ya gonna do. The garden is well shaded by a massive Oak so not sure why the previous owners chose to put those in. The trommel had sped up grading a lot, with another pair of hands to spin it, it would grade the soil as fast as I can shovel it in.

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A digging party? Many hands make light work.
That looks like a tremendous amount of work. Personally, if time wasn’t an issue, I would do it myself. Hard to pay someone for that type do work when everything about it is awkward and slow.

K. I’m no use to you then. I had a similar survey done on my last house - it was very thorough but not ‘official ‘. The surveyor provided a report etc but it was only for my info. He specified that on the paperwork too. I guess it avoided him having to stand over any mistakes etc and the cost reflected this too. I was happy enough, the mortgage company did their survey too and I thought if they were happy it would be fine.
I would consider getting a builder to look at your property - a good builder should be able to advise you if things are right or not. Ideally both a survey and a builder but that’s more expense.

That's what I did to get the sleepers out. Don't think I'll get away with that again as one of them lives in London and the other has his own house now. In fact I probably owe him a fair bit of manual labour.

You may be right. I'll not be starting building anything until next summer now, so might just plug away as and when I have the time. Kinda wish I'd been furloughed as I could have had it done by now.

Ta. Builders. Hmm. I don’t know any let alone good ones. Gah. Not even sure what service id be looking for. Mind me asking what it is called?

Would

RICS Homebuyers + builders inspection > RICS Structural Survey?

You could have been hit by a wheel barrow shortage on furlough. Lol

What report are you getting? From the sound you are looking at a full report with exposure.

Turned the log cabin into a home office - getting a reasonable paint finish took longer than planned. Had to fill a fair amount and build it up with paint. And then the bad weather last week slowed progress (it was full of stuff so leaving it out wasn’t possible). Picked up the cork flooring for £50 and laid it yesterday. First time doing it and was easy enough just a bit fiddly at points. Getting a sparks into tidy the wires, lighting and add some outside lights and weatherproof external plug.

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