Home DIY

The crack is likely where a sand/cement mortar, (with zero movement accomodation)
has been used to fill the gap between the brick/blockwork and the wooden window frames,
and has delaminated from the former.
Is this property a 'keeper'?
If you only envisage being there a couple of years, your suggestion is valid.
If you see it as a long term home, maybe invest a little more in the materials.
The labour will not be too different.
Measure the crack.
Lets work with 2mm.
If your exterior filler has only a 10% movement accomodation, you will need a 20mm wide fillet of material.
The Soudal Fix All is probably closer to 40%, meaning a 5mm wide fillet.

It’s a keeper and yes I’d like to invest in materials / techniques to make sure I’m not back here in two years time doing the same thing again! So thank you for your suggestions and I’ll follow your lead.

😂

But also dying inside

Whatever you use, you will need to consider the relative porosity (as well as movement / contraction / shrinkage) versus the soft stone and softer bricks that you are butting against (you can already see some spalling where the pointing is cement and has exacerbated water damage on the brick face).

Modern stuff is great, and works great with modern bricks & cement - not so much on turn of the century solid walls with lime mortar.

I did mine 10 years ago with Toupret Fill-Flex. It took several applications because it shrinks but it's been stable and solid since.

Should add that I'm usually dealing with painted brick so it's easier to cover the differences in materials.

Is that in relation to this bit, which strikes me as particularly bad / embarrassing

double-post, oops

started dry-fitting and leveling the kitchen base units for the tiler to work to later this week, SO much quicker when units are pre-assembled (DIY kitchens as opposed to Ikea)

Also seems B&Qs all across the land have restocked the 10L Leyland Trade Hardwearing brilliant white, so got three tubs of that at the weekend.

Gave up on the once potential plans to sand and refinish the floorboards myself throughout the house (90sqm or so) - got two quotes right around 3k… but the last one was 9.5k..!! This is in the north-west too, bonkers!

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the last one was 9.5k..!! This is in the north-west too, bonkers!

Oldest trick in the book; don't want to be seen to be turning away work, but don't want the job? Put in a silly quote then if you do get the work you won't mind so much.

If only..! One of the other guys who quoted has worked for him in the past and didn’t have great things to say, told me to expect roughly 3 times the price and he was spot on.
One of their google reviews is about the price too, so perhaps they just roll with ‘do a third of the work, make the same money’..?

Oh one of those.......

Thanks I emailed them.

I am looking into at how (and where) to add a 2nd hall light.

The joists run front to back, but the new light location would be a few joists along. The res has dropped way down on this image, but sort of like this.

Are there any tricks?

We can't go from the top as there is laminate in the room above.

Cheers.

Ps any paint recommendations for ceilings?

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dry fit the bath before the tiler comes tomorrow - should I have put anything under the legs to spread the load at all?
floor is 18mm marine ply (sealed), and there’s 5 legs/points of contact

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That's pretty much what happened in our doorway - cement between frame & brick just makes for a neat way to let water in, but not out.

You should put 2x2 under the edge of the bath fixed to the wall and fill the gap with ct1 or similar. You should do this with the bath 'full' of water preferably.

I usually make a braced 2x2 frame for the open side, like you would do for a stud wall.

as in under the lip at the top of the bath? if so, it appears to have come prepared as there’s batons of sorts around the perimeter already :)

Fix the 2x2 to the wall and rest the bath on it. Not sure if you have batons that replace the 2x2 provided by the manufacturer, I've never had any come with a bath.

It's just that people started to install them with the legs only and they need to be stuck solid to the wall and have something to rest on.

It does depend on the household but you could be supporting quite a bit of weight and it's not unheard of for 2 people to be quite active in a bath so it needs good support.

CT1 is an adhesive sealant and you need that there to protect the wall when the decorative sealant between tiles and bathtop stops working. That way in the future you just replace the decorative sealant.

I get you - thanks!

It came with L-brackets to attach to the wall - but sounds like a belt and braces approach is worthwhile, especially as it’s a big tub (1800x800) - so will add some more support.

Appreciate the pointers as ever!

The reason I mentioned the 2x2 frame at the front is if you decide to do that to support your bath board you will want to cut your end support pieces short enough to get the frame in. I usually manage to get the 2x2 frame recessed enough to add a thin moisture resistant MDF board.

Defo don't scrimp on bath reinforcement.

4 years on our bath (beefier bath base than average) has developed an annoying creek, only way to fix is to pull all the tiles on front cover off again.
We built the hell out of it, so I'm figuring the actual joist or floorboard has sagged a bit allowing some movement somewhere.

Compared to a bellway home, its utterly rock solid and a normal person wouldn't notice it. But OCD creak finder here, found the creek and now I can't stop noticing it!

Ours, a 3 piece acrylic surround unit, was nicely placed in position and filled with water. Contractor then went downstairs, poked a few holes in the floor under where the bath was and pushed expanding foam in until all the space was taken - been solid ever since.

Apparently there was a mix up, I was certain the plumbers said they'd be back after tiling, and that bath fitting (bar water connections) was on me as they're not 'doing' the bathroom.

They came round this morning to fit everything properly and connected the taps/waste too, just in time for the tilers to start this afternoon - finally feels like something's going right here!

Suppose this shouldn't really be in 'Home DIY' after all..!

I've got a bathroom to fully redo, back to stud and start again job (easier than dealing with the disaster of various crappy trades apprentice practice work that it appears to be). Services are in the right place and at least correct so thats a start!

Tried to get a decent bathroom company to did it, the only one that showed up and quoted wanted £5k for the labour and consumables. And thats with the offer of me stripping back all the way and an empty house/easy option for services turned off whenever they want etc.

By my estimates its 2 guys who know what they are doing for a week absolute max, and a couple of K in actual parts (supplied by me as have a reasonable rate trade account which will be less than them supplying). I had decent plumber/bathroom fitters down as around £275/300 a day (a 7 hour day lol), so quite over priced. they also had good local rep, but no work they could show me which puts me off. Also they didn't seem particularly familiar with mains pressure hot water tanks which is the plan + beefy simplified pipework throughout to supply shower with a cubic fuck load of high pressure hot water*

Guess will be doing a bathroom next month then! Was planning on stud > ply sheet it > that plastic wall panel stuff all the way around, build a cupboard for the hot water system > click together UPVC ceiling for speed and durability.

But seen a bunch of folk use modern tile board systems and tile over with ease in the wet areas, then use blue plasterboard for the rest, certainly a lot cheaper now than plastic sheets (with 2022 pricing!) but more labour on my part. Planning a decent extractor and through roof with a condensate collector in it so not too worried about blue plasterboard in an internal bathroom.

*Absolutely cannot stand it when you see someone has just unloaded £mega on a new bathroom/boiler/plumbing, and then there is a pissy little 10kw electric shower that just dribbles luke warm water on part of you. Nope. Or even worse, they've gone to the effort of working out how to make a mixer shower work well, but have plumbed it backwards, or installed skinny piping throttled by those non full bore isolation valves in multiple locations and again, a pissy warm dribble is the result.

Ha! A lot of familiar feeling here - the plasterers doing work at ours are on 300 a day (each, two of them - though paying per room which works out cheaper than that tbh) - if they did 7 hours I’d be smitted, usually end up at around 4.5 on average with an uncanny knack of only ever being here two days in a row and then at least a week elsewhere which has held up bits here there and everywhere. They’re very good though, what can you do…

We just green plasterboarded the bathroom to tile on top of, skimmed where there’ll be paint.

Progress from today (caveat: not DIY, unless you count screwing down the ply subfloor before I add the forum’s favourite flooring)

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