Home DIY

For the hassle of trying to jimmy bits of fragile plastic into a small hole in a tight space, I'd be tempted to replace it entirely for the £10 - £15 cost of a whole new mechanism.

After getting a quote for £350 to do this, I spent £60 on the stuff to do it myself. Took a couple of hours and was easy.

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After a minor disaster* moving a sofabed I ended up with a couple of gouges in a new floor. I've repaired with Osmo hardwax sticks and it looks pretty good, although I've still got a bit of a gloss sheen that stands out in the light against the matte lacquer on the wood.

What's the best way to sort? I've seen Konig do a matte touch-up pen, or should I just use a lacquer spray (or will it just dull down as I walk over it?)

*was helping get the sofa out for someone collecting it on freecycle - totally forgot the bed would fall out when tilting. Cue some high intensity awkwardness for all involved, while I attempted, and failed, to hide my clear annoyance (at myself, I've moved the sofa three times and knew it could fall out)

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I like your quilt.
It looks like the ones my mum makes.

Thank you - there is actually a story behind this. My sister made four of them using my late dad’s shirts, one for each sibling. She’s very clever like that. She made us all these of our houses too.

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Nice.

My mum uses scraps from things I remember from when I was a kid.

It’s very Little House on the Prairie.

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Love that. Great colour combo and pattern.

My sister made us all cushion covers from one of my late mum's old dresses (velvet maxi, very 70s, plenty of fabric). And has been patchworking herself curtains from childhood scraps during lockdown.

Yeah. She’s made one for each of my children -they used to be quite intricate but she’s pretty ancient now and small stitches and complicated patterns are beyond her.
😢

My other half quilts - one for every baby in existence, it feels like. There's so many fabric bits everywhere. Some of the quilts are pretty awesome.

We have various shirts from late parents which ear marked for future projects now that, hopefully, all of our siblings have stopped spawning.

Laid some vinyl floor at lunch. Defo harder than the videos made out, I made a real pigs ear of it and in the end took all the skirting boards off and hid the mess under them.
Threshold isn’t properly fitted yet but done for the day.

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Was also nice bumping into my new neighbour @Fox

I’ve asked before but ...
Does anyone have experience casting concrete countertops?
I’m planning on using GFRConcrete, casting inverted with an integrated basin, sprayed mist/slurry coat.
Possibly with Concrete Lab products.
It was intended to be a cheap and cheerful project but it’s getting more techy and complex.

Swapping an electric hob from solid plate to induction -diy or a sparkie?

You need to be careful about the current draw of the induction. If it is less than 13 amp it should be fine on a normal socket. If you have a specific cooker circuit you need to know the rating in amps of that circuit and check the induction is below that before connecting. You also need to check the rating of the cable you use if it's not supplied with the hob.

You can use ohms law to calculate the amps based on wattage if that's the supplied figure for current draw.

Depends on the power requirements of old vs new.
If they're the same then probably DIY.
If the new one is higher then it may need a 32A circuit for example, which may be new wiring from the consumer unit, and likely a sparkie.

Edit: beaten by Airhead, and I'll always defer to him on this stuff :D

It's one close to my heart because I installed an induction hob in my own kitchen many years ago and sweated bullets over it at the time :)

I've got one wrapped up in the basement that I could do with installing but needs the 32A circuit and I'm about to get enough other work done that it seems silly to do a quick fix for this when a new kitchen and likely complete rewire isn't a million miles away.

But it'd certainly be nice to have it instead of the little Ikea portable induction hob sitting on the side atm... :/

32amp is huge though. Mine needed 16amp max, just a bit too much for the 13amp socket but I managed to find a cooker that works on 13amp and switched the hob and cooker.

I've previously put a 16A rated oven on a 13A plug (and fuse) and it ran without any problems for years.
Not attempting any of that on a 7.4kW hob, but I got lucky getting a badly listed but brand new £900 Bosch hob for £200 on eBay so I'll store it for now.

That is a monster hob. The 16A rating of the cooker would probably only come into play cooking christmas dinner or similar.

If the induction comes with a plug attached, it’ll be limited to 13a and fine to just get banged into a socket. If it doesn’t have a plug on it, it won’t be limited to 13a and will need wired in by a sparky. This can be quite confusing as often induction hobs will be given 2 ratings - one for when supplied with a plug and a current limiter, and one for the model designed to be hard wired. It seems daft to me to get the ones with plug, but simultaneously I don’t know how often I actually have more than one hob on full what at one time. When you try and draw more than 13a (like with several hobs on full) it just splits the load between them.
How is the old hob connected?

How is the old hob connected

Wires underneath. I think my answer clearly demonstrates I need an electrician !

Tbh I’ve no idea it’s not my home. I suspect hardwired rather than a plug but I may get a look later and revert. Presumably the fuse box will show a separate cooker circuit with rcd?

Thanks all for the answers and advice.

It was intended to be a cheap and cheerful project but it’s getting more techy and complex.

Here you go: http://www.homemade-modern.com/ep87-concrete-kitchen-countertops/

I think that's pretty common now. My new hob is 7.35KW and a lot of the others I looked at were. On mine a "ring" can draw 3.2KW on boost so hitting that suddenly becomes not that outrageous.