Home DIY

Stylistically, I'd have preferred the exec summary at the start ;)

Best post on the thread. Sticky and shut it down.

Cheers. Just to check, you mean replacing the wonky uprights with stacked ply? My only concern with that is the extra time required. As it is cleaning and cutting the uprights to length is a small standalone job I can fit in. Measuring, going to B&Q, screwing and gluing, then fixing is four standalone jobs. That said it would look nicer.

Thanks for the plane(?) suggestion.

And @Nef thanks for the reassurances about fixing it.

Another vote for too bright. And for nef's the colour/temperature point.

This is not a space you'll spend 8hrs a day in, nor want to chill in for leasure. But dropping something and not being able to properly see it will be infuriating. Also adding storage and stuff over time will suck up the light. If it is too much you can always take one strip blub out, and it's just the waste of the cost of the fitting.

My outhouse is white inside with a bright AF strip light, the garden shed is red cedar with a dim outdoor light inside. It's so much better doing jobs in the outhouse when it's dark.

It's so much better doing jobs in the outhouse when it's dark.

Joyfully taken out of context.

Bolt it together with coach bolts. Consider a second spacer across the depth.

Edited to add: Your design happily makes bolts all the way through the wood a possibility. They will be more secure than screws. I used a similar approach to create some raised decking a year ago and it has stood the test of time.

Definitely won’t be buried! Great to hear your perspective on this.

@Sharkstar Again, just glad it hasn’t gone totally unread.

It was largely the result of pent up frustrations after reading so many comments simply slating all uk tradespeople on both Reddit and the Nextdoor app (I shouldn’t take them to heart considering how bad the comment sections usually are on both those sites). Doesn’t make you feel great though when it seems like 90% of people appear to think you’re simply a cunt or a fraud based on your occupation. While I’ve only been a dedicated tradesperson for a year or so, I’ve been involved in the trades on an off for a decade.
Just felt like it was worth giving a bit of context for the people who maybe don’t see what it’s like from a tradesperson’s perspective. Also, obviously I can’t speak for all tradespeople or clients, but I feel like it’s a fair rundown of what it’s like in the UK.

It certainly helps me put my experiences into perspective. I’ve long since managed my expectations on small jobs. I don’t expect plumbers or sparks to make good, and I don’t ask them to, which seems to be appreciated. I wouldn’t mind paying to cover time spent producing a quote but since this isn’t accepted practice it seems odd when I suggest it (which I have). This thread has been very helpful to me in terms of understanding pricing, and I’m hugely appreciative of the people in the trades that share their wisdom here.

All good points. I've gone long and as bright as possible without spending silly money.

Interesting read. I know I've expressed frustrations about getting people in to do work here, I'm not actually mad at the people we've had round who don't follow up with a quote or whatever. It's just reassuring to vent a little, see that everyone's in the same boat and know it's not that we have a total garbage house that no one wants to work on.

‘Small jobs’ seems to be an issue. If you have a builder on site doing major works, it should be easy to get small jobs done. For a tradesman to call at someone’s house to do a small job costs money - it is their time and time is money. A customer will rarely understand this and the associated costs.
It explains the popularity of this thread as people can do small jobs themselves generally but they need advice etc to do so.

As someone mentioned previously, thanks to the tradesmen who provide advice on this thread, I’m sure everyone will agree with that.

As someone mentioned previously, thanks to the tradesmen who provide advice on this thread, I’m sure everyone will agree with that.

100% this!

You could replace any/all of the parts with stacked ply. It's just a glulam beam at the end of the day. No need to wait for glue to dry, the screws should hold it all till everything dries.

Leaving centre boards long would even allow for mortice tenon construction. If you then leave a corresponding gap in the joining board. (Or lap joints, or finger joints etc...)

Chem bolts into the wall would be nice and secure.

You pays your money and takes your choice with any of these options. Time, cost, ease etc...

All good points. I work in an entirely different field but have the same issues with doing quotes. A good quote takes plenty of time to produce (that convention says you can't charge for), half the time it doesn't go anywhere and if you exceed the quote trying to get an increase is a real ballache.

The biggest issue I have with tradesmen is just all the comms ceasing and never hearing from them again. Taking ten seconds to email or text "sorry I'm busy for the foreseeable" would make things a lot easier for all involved.

Id say that is probably the easy thing to fix, the floors expensive and if it doesn't go back down which from experience never does your then at the expensive point of redoing it all because of a radiator.

You'll also be able to patch the ceiling yourself i imagine but then again there is so many unknowns to this job that you dont see until you start it and that sometimes is how its hard to go it'll cost £60 from a person doing the job. Hence how now we try and give ball point figures as ive been caught too many times with a price and ended up shafting myself via unforeseen things.

I've discovered that my door frame is, in parts, very rotten. Looks like the previous owners just painted over it and it's now fucked. The bubbly parts need replacing up to about a height of a metre or so. Am I able to just chop that out and replace with a new piece? Cheers

Would want to find out why it rotted before investing in replacing it. Any idea?

The cill is probably fucked if the vertical bit is too.

You might find that half of it has already been replaced with filler, like our back door!

Id say that is probably the easy thing to fix, the floors expensive and if it doesn't go back down which from experience never does your then at the expensive point of redoing it all because of a radiator.

Yeah. I was chatting with Hov last night and he thought the same; multi-tool out a patch of the ceiling then work from below. Replace the patch with plasterboard and try to make good. He seemed to think that even if it was lath and plaster it's still not too horrendous.

The engineered floor is a funny one because it's not what I would choose, but it's growing on me and it's everywhere in the house and it's mostly in fairly good condition. Plenty of meat on it too so it could be sanded back. Originally I thought in five years time we'd rip it all out but now I'm not so sure.

I would say I dont mind small job but in terms of what you've labeled its fairly accurate but the problem is that people dont realise the actual costs involved and wee small jobs and they sometimes see it as expensive. The way we work they jobs is that we virtually have all the stuff on the van to do the job as going away for bits is time wasting and fuckin lengthening out the job. I wanna be in, job done, customer happy and away but your right that bigger jobs have less fucking about and often are more money without headache, but another thing id say is that sometimes you have to manage the customers expectations, like the flooring howard is talking about. I think even a joiner will struggle to put it that floor down the way it is now as they floors aren't meant to be took up and put back down from experience.

I know you've said you dont really like doing the smaller jobs as you can have problems getting paid, I find usually people always have money and never question the pricing when it comes to paying. I think thats a different situation altogether and you have to be more on the "thats the price" pay up.

It's a weird one as, until about 18 months ago there was actually a porch (or so google streetview tells me) so that would have been an inside door. Saying that, bodging a porch on may well have resulted in it being damp and causing the rot.

Also no idea how long it's been there. Before the developers that we bought from had bought the place someone had lived here for 40 years or so and it was an absolute wreck.

Lightening up things with a ‘I’m an idiot’ post - I’ve been removing miles of wiring from an old obsolete alarm system from our house, bit by bit. Thought I was done with the hallway but found another bit today which I figured I’d quickly snip and pull out of the wall. Except when I cut it the doorbell went ding-dong and now I have to fiddle it back together. At least there was a little bit extra under the wallpaper (which I also hate and must do something about, any year now).

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Long live heatshrink. Bell’s working again!

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Don't forget to anticipate a load of crap coming down with the ceiling -deliberately added ashey stuff for mass as well as randomly accumulated crap that's fallen through the floorboards over the decades.

There's also the value factor.

Our boarder with a neighbour is mostly brick wall. For whatever reason the last section of a couple of meters down our alleyway isn't there and has a wooden panel. I won't bore everyone with why, but at some point it needs replacing.

We had a couple of quotes. One for ~£1k another for >£2k.

Regardless of whether that's a fair value for the amount of work the brickie is going to do, that is shit VFM for us. If we just took a number between the two that's a nice holiday for us, decent laptop, almost two month's nursery fees....

....or we could have a bit of a brick wall down the side of the house.

Frankly it's one of those classic shit jobs. Next doors paving needs lifting, a bit of a concrete slab that is cheekily on our land needs cutting back, then digging out, earth/hardcore/fence removed, reinforced section built, wall built, pointed, capped, little bit of backfilling, next doors paving relaid, tidy up, disposal.

But again, in terms of our use of the house it's still just a small section of wall down our alleyway.