Home DIY

This may not be very useful, but if you can get one good tradesman eg plumber, they should be able to get other equally good people. A good builder is really a godsend and they can get you whatever you need.

Its not the distruption its what way the boards go and lifting that floor and the one under won't be easy without fucking the engineered.

The skirting will be fine as will be the floor underneath but the engineered flooring is an issue.

I'm also guessing you cant crawl under there or can you as thats the only way to do it without disruption to the floor.

Were gas engineers and any joiners I know good aint interested in daft wee jobs like that and if they are charge stupid money.

Fuck me trying to get someone to price a alloy scaff tower has been a fucking nightmare and someone of the prices have been fuck off prices.

You pay for what you get sometimes. Other times, it’s robbery.
A plumber I know priced a job for a friend and the price was madly high. I suspect they didn’t want the job at all.
Good tradesmen are hard to get. I’m lucky I have a builder who helps me get things done but I’m in NI and the jobs are usually local for guys.

Suspect it’s laid out the difficult way so quite a bit would have to come up to get a floorboard out.

That’s kind of ok because there’s a defect in the flooring about half way through the room that id like to fix.

Assume it’s tongue and groove and glued so separating the pieces is destructive?

Yeah the floor there is back to front but how are the boards laid underneath probably going by your luck it’ll be the opposite direction so it’s hard to guess until you lift it and as you said if the floor comes up easy your onto a winner if it’s glued and breaks your fucked.

I know the cost of stuff but £800 for a 3rd floor tenement that will be up in the morn and down at night is a Fuckin rip off.

I only want to seal the flue and do the blow off, just gonna rent a tower myself and assemble it with a friend.

Any mileage in attacking it from the ceiling below? Kinda feels like cutting out a wedge of plaster then doing the work from underneath might actually be easier. Ceiling finish is shite too so a bit of money spent fixing that up wouldn't be quite so bad as a whole new floor just to move a radiator.

(it's possible the ceiling isn't original, it's been deprived of any texturing and decoration. But then there's a chance it might be lath and plaster in which case, no dice.)

Finally going to start on my work bench, as I've realised I can break it down into bitesized childcare friendly tasks.

Any comments on the design?

The orange lines denote what will be fixed to the brick wall of the outhouse. The idea being to use the building's strength.

I think I need supports at the bottom. But I started this design ages ago when I was teaching myself to use F360, so it may well be that I CBA to (graphically) make the supports for the bottom from unknow pieces - all the other pieces are pieces of wood I already own - one of the aims being to use what I have.

My main concern is any twisting or racking as it'll just be screwed together. I was actaully wondering about making spacers from dowels and screwing the uprights into the brick wall.

The cross pieces are 145x45mm and a bit under 2m long.

Constraints:

• The front wants to be open to take the storage I have.
  
• The uprights are not nice smooth/even pieces of wood and I don't have access to tools to make them perfect.
  
  

Cheers.

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Maybe add a couple of diagonal elements?

Generally, on the side, or on the back?

The thing about jobs like that is that any one tradesperson will probably be able to do all the work, but then which trades person do you get? You'd expect a joiner to do the best/neatest job of taking the floor up and putting it back down, but I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about them doing the plumbing - same goes for getting a plumber to do the flooring.

Even when you have a skilled tradesmen, the further you go from their speciality, the longer it takes them, and the harder the work is. The plumber will do the plumbing quickly and well, but most likely won't be anywhere near as efficient when it comes to relaying the floor (especially when they're used to working on boards that'll be covered). So they'll either work at their normal pace at the cost of the quality of finishing the floor, or they'll have to work slowly and carefully (which adds costs). Then factor in that it's a small job, which includes a trip to get parts, getting to and from the job, loading and unloading tools, tidying up and making right in an already finished house etc and it really starts to look unattractive as a job to take on. Compare that to replacing 8 rads in a house that's mid renovation: there's less cleanup, and generally more actual plumbing to do vs the amount of other stuff involved like loading and unloading, so the job will pay well and generally be a lot less of a headache, which is why jobs like yours become low priority, because the majority of your job isn't actually plumbing.

I've been having this dilemma myself with sparky work. A lot of small jobs are mostly problem solving, making right (plastering and painting), and there's a shitload of extra work to keep it all tidy while you're working - the actual electrical bit is piss easy even though that's what I'm mostly being paid for. Then you add in that smaller jobs always end up being harder to get paid for, and there's more haggling or endless "can you just x, y, z" as the job goes on - it all becomes a headache that makes me want to avoid the jobs in the first place.

Sorry, I know this doesn't help you in the slightest, and also keen to hear @konastab01 's opinion if the description of work above is true to his actual plumbing experience.

Going to upgrade the lighting in the cellar. Looking at LED batten lights instead of the single bulb there now. Cellar mostly used for storage, bike tinkering and DIY projects. Walls + ceiling will be painted white, grubby cement floor. Probably go for 2x battens in the main part of the cellar and a single in the narrow side-room.

Has anyone done similar? How bright is too bright? I was thinking of going for single 40W 1.7m battens at 5200lm. Or would it make more sense to go shorter and brighter (e.g. twin 60W 1.4m battens at 7200lm)?

If it's fixed on 3 sides to the wall, I reckon that'll be rigid as owt.

Yes I just clocked that, duh

How bright is too bright?

How blind are you? I'm fucking blind in low light, so I never regret good illumination. I'd also make sure the colour temp is right. 4000k is a lot nicer to look at than 1000k. Painting the walls white will deffo help illumination.

If you're working on bikes down there, I'd deffo want to err on the side of more light. Doing fiddly things in poor light makes them a lot harder in my experience. I'd also opt for having longer batons so the light is more even.

Not that blind, but it's not like my eyes will improve over time. All seem to be 4000k so hopefully good there. Will go for long+bright, worst case I'll pop shades on.

Vaguely on topic, but here's a big post I typed up for elsewhere that was never really seen. Trying to explain why getting tradespeople is so hard at the moment, and why the whole business of interacting with tradespeople is so difficult in the UK. Understand that it's not very well written, and it was mostly down as a cathartic process more than anything, but worth saying I thought.

I'm not going to defend all tradespeople, I'm not going to defend all customers but I hope this sheds some light.

Tradespeople are very busy and demand is high. Wanting quotes is asking people to turn up for nothing, while also telling the tradesperson that they're probably just going to provide you with a figure to compare against other quotes with. If most people get 3 or more quotes, it means that the majority of the time, turning up to quote won't result result in actually getting the job and this makes it a low priority for a lot of people - only one person gets the work out of the three providing quotes after all. Putting a proper quote together also takes a proper chunk of time, especially at the moment where material prices are changing by the month (many guys I know only guarantee prices for a single month right now as a result).

Personally, I do small jobs and I avoid quoting jobs at all, it just isn't worth it. On the flip side: is it ok to no show with no warning? Of course not. Poor communication is a pain in the arse for all involved. I'm not making excuses for people, but I can see why certain tradespeople put quoting as a low priority - it's fairly low reward, and when there is already a high demand, people prioritise paying work over speculative stuff. But again, I stress that it is shit to no show or ghost customers.

I've also said I'll do work for people, and then they've gone totally quiet on me. Or they send a very speculative text, with very rough details, then get annoyed that you haven't taken it as a confirmed booking. No one is really in the wrong, but if I've got a load of jobs booked in, and some pretty flakey half interested text messages, I'm definitely just getting on with the jobs before even thinking of spending a load of time trying to work out if potential jobs are actually going to pay. On top of that, the client wants an absolute fixed price for the job, despite being unable to provide the appropriate information that would make me capable of costing it accurately. So then I can either pull a figure out my arse and see what the client says, or spend time figuring out a competitive price (which takes time and energy, and is still largely speculative) - neither of which are ideal, but if I tell them I'll have a go and charge for how long it takes, the client wants nothing to do with it. They want absolute certainty about the cost, and I can only do this safely by overcharging by a margin so I don't get caught out if it becomes trickier than expected, and then the client thinks you're taking the piss with your price.

Getting a load of quotes and selecting the one in the middle isn't always a good strategy either. You need to do some research and try and get a ballpark idea of how much it should cost. If you're spending 10k on a car, by god you're going to research what you should get for that cash: so why wouldn't you do the same when spending the same on work on your house?! I do not understand how people don't do sufficient research about the work they need done. Is this an extra pain in the arse? Of course it is, but surely it's not unexpected. There are generally guides online for most jobs to help you understand how much stuff should cost, what the specific costs are and just general information about the nature of the work. When getting quotes for our roof, we got some insane quotes - with a bit of research it was easy to see that the middle quotes were unrealistically low, and this was from a preselected list of vetted tradesmen. But once we'd done our research, checked the companies and their credentials, it seemed a lot clearer as to which quotes were realistic in terms of what we were asking.

You can greater ensure the quality of work by getting tradespeople who are certified, members of professional bodies, who's work is insured, and guaranteed for a decent period of time. Unsurprisingly, these tradespeople are expensive and in demand. This shortage of highly skilled tradespeople creates a gap in the market for shittier tradespeople who promise the same level of work for less money - they won't have the same certificates or stamps on their van, but they say they can do it, so people believe them. No matter how important a job is, lots of people will always prioritise saving money over guaranteeing the quality of the work done.
The price of getting certified work done is simply beyond what the majority of people want to pay any way. Partly because in this country there isn't such a high importance put on getting things done properly, and then there's also a market where the price range is so extreme. Being certified, insured, and a member of a professional body adds costs, and being a total cowboy massively cuts them.
And lots of people just want to pay the absolute minimum, regardless of how unwise this may seem.

Another point - anyone can start up a business as a tradesperson, which is INSANE. Because of a long culture of DIY here, anyone can go to a builders merchant, hire a load of equipment and have a go at doing whatever they like. A bit of plumbing here, knock through a wall there, add some sockets where ever etc. In lots of other countries you're not allowed to buy ANY electrical materials unless you're a certified electrician, where as in the UK you can buy everything you'd need for a full rewire down the local B and Q or Screwfix. We have really good regulations and standards, but what use is that if anyone can have a go, and there is little to no enforcement of the regs as work is ongoing? So then you have a split in pricing, you have the prices of the properly qualified and certified, and then you have the prices of the have-a-goers. If you could only legally buy the materials and do the work if you were qualified, the market for getting a tradesperson would be a lot more stable IMO.

It's also worth mentioning that if you contact building control and other relevant authorities, and follow the proper procedures, you could legally do pretty much whatever you want, which is cool but it also contributes to the massive grey area clusterfuck of who can do what. And this lack of enforced standards and mandatory qualifications and training just creates distrust, as clients are left trying to figure out who is trustworthy and who isn't, which just creates a massive culture of distrust on both the sides of the client and tradesperson relationship.
And just to add one final layer of confusion, even after vetting and checking everything, there will still be uncertified tradespeople who do good work for cheap (uncommon, but not nonexistent), and there will be highly certified people who do unsatisfactory work.

Which leads to my next point - our trades have AWFUL training. The apprenticeship scheme is a fucking joke. Too thick to go to uni? Just get on this apprenticeship where you'll be taught nowt, exploited for your cheap labour (you can legally pay apprentices fuck all), and then binned off at the end for the next load of fresh ones coming through. In many other countries, the trades are respected a lot more because their training is a lot more thorough and the standards of work are higher, where as in the UK tradespeople are absolutely derided (because of how common absolute horror stories with tradespeople are here I guess). People dislike the trades because there's such a huge variation in whats available and what gets delivered to the paying customer (and so many get fucked over). It can't be surprising that customer/tradesperson relations are so fractious here in the UK, the customer distrusts the tradesman because of unreliability, and the tradesperson resents the customer because they don't trust them! If we had better structured training for the trades, it would make a world of difference. Enforcing higher standards would benefit everyone. An apprenticeship is in no way comparable to an undergraduate degree in terms of the amount and quality of teaching. You can go and do a 5 week "Domestic Installer" course at a centre for about £2.5k, and apparently that's enough to get you started working as an electrician, it's INSANE. While on the flipside, the process to become an actually qualified and certified electrician is completely convoluted, unstructured and not particularly standardised. If there was a more straightforward and transparent system of training for the trades in the UK (and I mean transparent for both tradesperson and client), I guarantee the market wouldn't be such a shitshow.

Sorry about the wall of text, I genuinely could keep going but fear I'd just look mental. This will also clearly be buried and never seen by anyone.

TL;DR: Quoting is time consuming and unprofitable, thus a low priority for a currently very busy labour market.
Certified tradespeople are expensive, and people don't want to pay.
UK regulations for trades is high standard, but there are almost no barriers stopping people from carrying out work, so you have a HUGE variation in the quality of labour available, which creates a market of labour that is VERY difficult to navigate as a consumer, and increases distrust between all clients and trades from the start.

The thing about jobs like that is that any one tradesperson will probably be able to do all the work, but then which trades person do you get?

Yeah. My plumber hates anything that isn’t hooking up heat and water. He wouldn’t touch the floor with a barge pole although he’d probably happily smash through some joists to extend the pipes.

Good post

Part cross post from home owner's thread. Has anyone done a diy job of tanking/waterproofing their basement? Last two heavy rains we have had water seeping into the basement where the bottom of the brick walls meet the concrete floor. Two main spots, clear water and not loads, but enough.

Was wondering if there is a way to seal the join between the two surfaces, the first section of wall and the floor. Just to avoid emptying and drying it out when the water comes in. It's dry enough for storage otherwise.

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It’s a balance between cost and workmanship. I always work with word of mouth but I expect that may not be easy in larger cities etc.
My builder mate is now providing quotes which last 6 weeks as opposed to three months because of materials rising in costs. He mentioned that a few people have put off work to wait until the prices drop! That won’t be anytime soon if ever.

Glad someone read it! Typed it up elsewhere and then I don't think anyone saw it. Needed to repost it here for my own sanity tbh.

It must be an absolute nightmare time to be a builder. Can't imagine trying to deal with the material cost changes - especially when the total difference can be in the 10's of thousands on big jobs.

If you want straight edges I'd get a sheet of ply cut at your local b&q/other on their wall saw. Then glue&screw to the required thickness to get your boards. Paul sellers did a DIY woodwork bench in a similar manner on eBay.

If you already have the wood then £20 of Stanley no4 on eBay should get you close enough to flat.