Home DIY

two doors have been off theirs hinges for nearly two years at home. The overpanelling/beading like my fireplace been insitu since 1977, today it was time to reveal..

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Paint stripping status at 1pm

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Status at 6pm today.. at least three colours since 1905, going to need two litres of nitromors to do this door and three days.. several white layers there after with over boarding, edges and reveals.. still need to do the other side, on the look out for that pair of brass door knobs once this is back in its door frame

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An afternoon swearing at picture hanging while the creative director constantly shifted opinions....

A half London, half NI theme. My countryfolk will appreciate one of the prints at least.

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Every place we have hired sanders from does sale or return on the belts.

So, we have about 2-2.5 tonnes of smashed up slate on our driveway from when we had our roof done (as my wife requested they leave it for some reason).
Can you just lay smashed slate as a loose driveway aggregate? I assume we'll need to break it down somehow. Is just tumbling it in a cement mixer a realistic plan? Or is this a terrible idea?

Sounds like it's your wife's problem to sort out....

Which means it’s my problem to actually sort out. It’s a slight bone of contention shall we say…

I’m less bothered if I can at least use it on the driveway. Seems like it would be v slippery tho. Can’t say I’m frothing at the prospect of chucking it in a skip either.

Also cleared a drain today that has been blocked for too long with this attachment on my Karcher K2.

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B014J18UT8/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_Z2K37E3KSK9ZE30Z8KAC

When we realised we couldn't reuse the old quarry tiles for our path, ms_com got quite upset. We then kept the old ones for "something else". I envisage 300 tiles sitting in a pile in the garden for quite some time...

See also: the bricks from the frankenfireplace

Any tips on where to get nice sockets and light switches? Probably just white plastic but without shouting Toolstation or being £40 a piece?

I mean, if you want white plastic, MK are hard to beat. Good quality, double pole, and they now do sockets with lever connections rather than screw terminals if you’re installing them yourself.

MK logic plus are what I usually keep in stock for installing. And the lever ones are called logic rapid fix.

Another vote for MK here

It all sounds a very familiar story tbh.
With the slate, it was all because it was worth so much money. I tried explaining that the new slate we put on the roof was expensive but the old stuff that was thrown off the roof was fucked, and therefore not really worth anything, and that was before it had flown down two stories and smashed into pieces.
Fun times. Hoarders gonna hoard.

Glad I waited for the Veto deals!
Thanks @konastab01 for convincing me they'd happen again. Need to find out when the offer ends tho!
https://its.co.uk/pd/AX3501-Veto-Pro-Pac-TECH-PAC-Tool-Backpack-_VETAX3501.htm
Edit: runs march-may or until stock runs out.

Just tell her that Hoarding old building materials is home owning seppuku

Yes you can use it for driveway aggregate or for paths etc but it does have a tendency to have sharp edges that like to eat things like car/van tires. The stuff sold for driveway aggregate tends to have rounded edges couldn't say if tumbling it in a muck mixer would achieve this.

Your wife's hoarding seems to be making a number of insect hotels.

Have you looking into door dipping services. It might be cheaper and definitely easier than DIY.

Maine Pineapple is now available in our local Tesco! But we still have the mineral man to fall back on 😁

Another vote on MK. For supply I use TLC. Be aware there are knockoffs on Amazon etc.

U/V strippers are a great option these days.

I should have looked into that, but the discovery of peeling away the layers was too tempting. But you are right. Dipping service would have been cheaper and more convenient. I will consider that for the remaining doors.

We had a couple of panels warp when our doors were dipped. There was a lot of paint on the doors, not sure if that meant they were in longer or something.

Which is fantastic for me as an arachnaphobe. Moving the bricks from their first pile was done one by one, with gloves, and a big stick close by.