Home DIY

I need to make a window frame to house a d glazed unit - is oak a good choice of material or overkill? It will be painted.

I've got a surface mounted 2 gang socket. I dropped something on it and the pattress box shattered. Am I right in thinking I can swap this out myself? And will any box of the right depth be compatible?

Am I right in thinking I can swap this out myself?

I think so.

And will any box of the right depth be compatible?

Maybe not. Most sockets need 25mm but some are 35mm

Cheers. I mean, will any box of the same depth as the one I'm replacing be compatible with the faceplate that I'm retaining.

Yup. Anything should be fine.

Any advice on how to fill this gap at the bottom of my garage wall (2.5-3cm) to make it neat? The wall surface is plasterboard, would concrete be ok?

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As recommended on here I had great success with bonding plaster for the big gap and then a bit of filler to tidy things up.

Not if you want to paint it. Redwood of whatever kind the builders merchant has in stock is a good option. Don't expect it to be straight if you are picking it up from a merchant. You need to go along and eyeball every piece you take and they will try to mug you off with anything if they get a chance! It's also very cold and damp in most timber yards now so it should be kept indoors to acclimatise.

Oak just doesn't like to be painted so there's no point in using it.

There's another wood being used in a lot of window construction but I've not found a source for it. Apparently it has a high percentage of stable resin in it. It is supposed to be quite tough on the tools cutting and shaping it though.

Sapele is the hardwood of choice for window makers. It’s incredibly solid and takes paint very well.

Tidy thanks, will give it a go.

Yep, that's what mine were made of. Felt like good quality and very solid.

I think Sapele is one of the types of redwood that gets distributed through timber merchants. The wood I've heard of being popular in eastern europe for window construction is different but I never seem to get the name into my head.

Some of the best redwood I've bought recently was from a branch of Selco.

Worth looking after your knees from an early age.

lol on a fixed gear forum.

Mostly in name only. And most will have at least one brake on if they ride fixed.

Laying a laminate/hardwood floor as part of a complete overhaul of a room...

Plasterers are coming early Jan, so won't have a flooring supplier queued up until... sometime after that.

I'd like the boards to go under the skirting, but obviously(?) we'll need to remove the skirting boards in order to do that. Given that the plasterer is also planning to fit the skirting at the same time, the skirting is going to have to come off in order to fit the boards.

Is the right answer simply to have the skirting prepared and painted, fit the floor and then have the boards fitted on last, just before painting the walls?

Or is the right answer to plaster, paint the room, fit the flooring and then put the skirting on? I'm presuming it's fairly standard practice for a flooring fitter to fit skirting?

Sorry, all dumb/first timer questions...

Isn't that regular patterned bit of steel an airbrick?

Ta. Have a selco nearby so will go look at their redwood.

Interesting about paint and oak, I've never tried it, what goes wrong if you do try and paint it out of interest?

I replaced a door in this house that was made of sapele, have used the wood from it for all sorts, but sadly not enough left to this window frame.

Yep, I'll be making a wooden frame of some sort to make sure it's not blocked. Thanks for the reminder.

The 2nd one.
You will need flexible gap filler between wall and skirting once fitted, so fit skirting, fill, touch up the wall and paint the skirting.

I’ve painted oak. Not a great result. Nor a great experience. It has an open grain, which the paint half hides but not quite, leaving with you with a finish that’s neither one thing nor t’other.

It's a relatively simple job to fit skirting but it should be scribed to the floor. Depending on the age of the building the floor, even a new one, will have some undulations. You should buy skirting tall enough to be able to trim the maximum amount that the floor varies from the base of the skirting. Then you decide what height the skirting should actually be and whether it should be level or level with the floor, (some victorian buildings slope quite a bit).

Once you have scribed it you can cut it with a jigsaw, it helps to trim it at an angle away from the face of the skirting so it's then easy to plane any small amounts off the cut edge. Now your boards should fit your floors. You can then glue them to the walls with solvent free no more nails or similar and fill along the top edge with decorators mastic. Now you need to paint the skirting, prime it first, the primer can overlap on to the walls, possibly add undercoat. Now paint the walls and then mask the walls and finish painting the skirting.

Really you should leave the plaster to dry for a few months before adding the skirting and certainly before painting it. Plasterers and decorators might disagree about this but decorators get to see the results years later where paint is not really bonded with the walls.

All these topics have been covered in some depth on this thread if you want to see more.

Like Sharkstar has said, the grain and structure mean it doesn't bond very well with the paint. Modern moisture vapour permeable paints might be better but it just isn't worth the extra cost and trouble if you're painting them. If you want a durable wood that can be left exposed or oiled oak is a decent choice.

I usually buy the big pieces of redwood and run them through a table saw. It works out quite a bit cheaper.

@Airhead thank you, this is very comprehensive! I suppose the implicit part is that the floor should be laid prior to any skirting going on? Rather than trying to fit flooring under/up to skirting (which I understand is possible, but not ideal)?

@bq thank you too!

Sapele is what is sold instead of mahogany, it is a bit red in colour but it's not a type of pine. (redwood)

You often see Sapele being used as the cill and rest of frame and casements made from softwood/redwood/pine species.

The guy who came to fix our windows a couple of years ago referred to the sapele cills as redwood. It's reddish, and it's wood, so there is that. The cills haven't held up well over the years. I wonder whether an actual redwood might have lasted longer, with its higher resin content.