Owning your own home

Yes. I am an idiot and managed to do it without breaking anything. If you are lucky there will be shutoff valves at the end of the tap tails. I had to slightly enlarge the hole in the worktop but as it was wood that was no issue with sandpaper.

Only thing is that some taps come with Euro tails which are a different thread size. Also LSX is your friend

Yes, we used loftzone. It was about £25 more than buying bits from amazon etc. It was easy to put together and wasn't affected by the joists in our loft being somewhat randomly placed apart.

Can anyone recommend someone who can refurbish/repair timber french doors and sash windows in west London, Ealing area?

If you turn your mains stop cock off for the cold it’ll kill the hot too, so don’t worry about that

Just seems to be a couple of copper pipes connected to 90 degree compression fittings. No valves anywhere to be seen.

Presumably those pipes will have something like this at the other end?

So unless I'm mistaken it's a case of undoing the compression fittings, removing the whole lot, swapping the tails onto the new tap (hoping that they're the same thread), fitting that and reconnecting it. And some LSX.

Sounds worryingly straightforward.

1 Attachment

Bad luck. Every time I’ve done it there has been something like this installed

1 Attachment

You don’t get values with taps and the person that’s fitted them previous hasn’t bothered to fit them. You could just unscrew they plastic fittings and refit the new ones the same way if they are the same length.

Yeah, have one of those but not specific to the taps. As far as I can work out it will isolate the boiler as well, so should be all good. Not gonna investigate further on a Sunday afternoon.

Don't understand what the red hose is doing. It goes in the direction of the washing machine and dishwasher, but I'm pretty certain that the washing machine is only connected to the cold (blue hose at the top) and the boiler doesn't fire when the dishwasher is on. Bathroom hot is fed from the pipe going out the bottom of the picture.

Always been curious why the white tap would have been installed. Temptation to turn it is enormous, even though I know what will come out.

1 Attachment

Whereabouts? We had some guys who were amazing. Think they are SE London mostly but can check.

Yeah, figured that much but they don't seem necessary in this case.

If there's any problem with the length (can't imagine tap bases vary much) I guess I'd replace the plastic fittings with a pair of these and replace the pipes with flexible hose.

Nah you’ll need the pipes that come with the taps but you can fit flexi or what ever. I personally wouldn’t use that 90 degree compression fitting you’ve listed and I’ve not even seen it.

That plastic fitting if you cut the pipes if that are too short can be reused. They are easy to rebuild the original polypipe stuff was the best.

Think I've just realised what that tap is for. After isolating the inlet it should allow the pipes between there and the tap/boiler to be drained instead of water pissing everywhere when the compression fitting is undone.

Cheers. North London, N15.

friends of mine completed on a house on that street 2 months ago

@swedeee random one - was walking home down this road earlier and I complemented someone's orange (kona iirc) 26 inch drop bar mtb with lovely polished guards. Had a brief chat about it and it was built by a bike friend - you? Haha

Scribed every piece to make a cornice and hide that gap. Mostly using custom made jigs of old wood. Took 4 hours. Worth it.

1 Attachment

That’s really good.

It looks a bit weird in that photo because all of the doors and cabinets have a protective film over them. In real life it looks 9.5/10

De-scribe your afternoon in one word

Always been curious why the white tap would have been installed. Temptation to turn it is enormous, even though I know what will come out.

Twiddling random taps can be problematic. Cycliste and I were staying in a hotel in Zermatt a while back, and there were some random taps on the wall of the ensuite bathroom which didn't seem to have any obvious purpose. I twiddled away with them merrily, and they seemed to have no effect on the shower, bath or sink. After a few minutes there was a banging at the door from an annoyed hotelier. It turns out they turned off the water to the ensuite in the room next door.

Sadly my Swiss German wasn't good enough to ask 'what the fuck are they doing in this room?'

haha no not me. guy who lives there has a very haggard blue singlespeed dawes...

You are smashing it! Looks great.

I just cancelled my Lusso Stone order of black taps, you lot have ruined everything.

Anyone have a recommendation for a plasterer / decorator in SE London (I'm in Forest hill)?

We had our skylight refitted a while ago and there is some damage round the edges and making good to do, but have struggled to find someone who'll do the plaster / paint work to make it look finished.

The wisdom of the crowd?

What you going for instead?

In other news, repainting Velux is a fucking ballache.