Home DIY

Fuck that noise.

YUno pump?

Proper fit bit of shed action. Colour me jealous!

When I wired his new cabin in his garden there was so much faffing over little things. He wanted to make every tiny decision, despite the fact that his decision making process isn't really based logic or reason in any way, lol. He wanted to try and plan out every socket and switch position, every cable run - but because he doesn't have any understanding of the wiring, his decisions would make no sense in practice. Then I'd install stuff, and he'd want it moved 15cm up or down or whatever. And then I'd begrudgingly agree and do it, after explaining that it was pointless extra work. Then after I'd done it, he'd concede that it probably didn't need to be moved!

I only agree to do any work for him now if I can he agree to let me do it without input.

Another classic was removing the old raised bed (3x6m) in his garden to convert into 3 small individual ones. There was several tons of soil and rubble that he wanted bagged into small sacks until he decided what he wanted to do with it. I told him flat out that I'd load it into a skip or I wasn't doing it! If we hadn't got a skip, he'd have put himself into an early grave taking 100 trips to the tip with all the bagged up rubble. Months later his driveway still has 2 pallets of the old bricks he wanted to salvage that he's convinced he'll get £100 for on marketplace.

Never work for family!

Yeah, it would go comparatively faster with more people.

I’m in France at the moment and helping father in law build a storage barn. Approx 8x15 metres, 8x4 of it being on a concrete slab.

He had ordered timber before the price increases, and I moved about 2 tonnes of timber from storage to close to the site. Sadly given myself tennis elbow I think.

He is a pretty good at DIY, though I have suggested getting the concrete pumped in, he already has 15 tonnes of aggregate and sand available.

We’re building concrete padstones for the posts this week, maybe doing the concrete slab early next week and then putting the posts up.

I only bought my timber 2 months ago, but I just checked the price of 60x80x4000mm at the place where I bought it and it is now 30% more expensive. Absolutely nuts, well done to your FiL for the foresight!

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That's an awful lot of systainers you have.

Is that one off the shelf or your custom fabrication?

It's been made for me by a chap I found on eBay.

What did it cost in the end?
Wonder if he’ll start offering them himself.

Think I prefer the look of it to the shiny offering

What did it cost in the end?

I've not received the bill yet, but anticipating around £60

Wonder if he’ll start offering them himself.

He said he might offer them on eBay, and they definitely fill a niche

Noticed a small patch of flakey paint on the ceiling directly below this plug, which I think probably mean it's leaking. No access to under the tray, is it going to be a complete ball ache to fix?

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Do bears shit in the woods? Cut a patch out of the ceiling below. Try and cut in the centre of 2 joists at least. Use a multitool being careful with the depth. Keep the patch safely. Do the work and return the patch to the original position adding a couple of bits of wood across the unsupported edges. Then fill with something like easyfill and paint. If you're lucky and use Gardz to seal the filler you might get away with rolling just the area.

Admittedly the filling part is something you get better at the more you do it. Feather the edges with a sponge and maybe use plasterboard joint tape if you think you can handle not sanding through it afterwards.

Or just cut the patch out and tell anyone who notices it's a maintenance hatch which is a requirement for showers since new regulations came in :)

I was actually thinking an access panel might not be too noticable. Fairly sure it's a lath ceiling up there somewhere so lots of potential for it to be harder than you make it sound. Had a feeling that setup would bite me at some point. Going to sand the patch, and keep an eye on it for a bit, doesn't actually seem that damp, could just be a coincidence...🤞

I've done it with lath but lined the whole ceiling afterwards. It was a bathroom under an en-suite shower. One of the copper pipes developed a pin hole leak (usually from iron deposits in the copper). The leak went into the bath underneath.

You could use whatever you cut out and fix 6mm moisture resistant mdf to it to make a hatch, you would need to find the joists though. How often does anyone look at the ceiling anyway :)

Tidied up the hallway with some paint & IKEA shelving.

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We had an overflowing drain outside our bay window - Turns out that the drain was a) blocked, and b) cracked.

This may explain the cracks in the wall.

I could only find one person to quote for it (£500), and then they never bothered to turn up.

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Finally got round to doing something about it yesterday

Replaced the cracked gully and pipe with some plastic from screwfix, and filled in with a load of different types of gravelly stuff (which, apparently, has to be of specific sizes).

Now I'm faced with the problem of having no idea what to do to finish around the gully.

I don't want to concrete against the wall, but I don'tt want the thing loose either.

I'm thinking of just rebuilding the original brick surrounds up again (but not with all the concrete that was there before) - All it needs to do is keep the water from splashing out, keep everything reasonably stable, and still allow me to take the top off the bottle trap to rod the drain if I need to.

Does that seem sensible?

(The remaining hole will be pea shingle over the pipe, then backfill the rest with earth.)

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Your house looks cool

Our drain isn't overflowing, but I suspect it might be cracked as we have a lot of damp coming up in one wall and it's been a bit stinky the last few days. How did you diagnose? CCTV?

Better get your wallet out if your getting someone out for CCTV, if it was me. Id have an educated guess and dig it up.

I was going to ring round a couple of places tomorrow. How many £££ are we talking?!

My pal paid dynarod 4 or 5 hunner quid to come out and CCTV It then wanted more than that to fix the problem. Fuckin should have went into drains they are robbing bastards.