Home DIY

I can recommend these guys for lime based stuff too. They can colour match mortar from a small sample, or point you to the most appropriate off the shelf colour match. Just pop a piece in the post with your phone number and a friendly man calls you to discuss your options, good for small amounts if you don't want to mess around matching yourself.

https://steadfastspl.com/shop/

That kind of window porn needs a content warning. Lovely!

I have other sands! But point taken.
I'm really just looking for an excuse to use the tub of glazing putty...

woah! what a set of views! stunning!

This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel better about not being able to buy the place I rent.
Once you start getting serious with floors in old Berlin buildings it often gets exciting.

My portable belt sander is fucko-d and I've a floor to sand in a room that's too awkward for an industrial sander (eaves). What one should I buy?

I say fucko-d, it works, but the fireworks display of sparks coming from it are probably not ideal for a load of airborne wood dust.

Is that not the carbon brushes worn down to the metal? Can you replace them?

Anything with a brushless motor :)

Fuck me. Here I am again on a lovely sunny day filling and sanding fucking softwood.

Kill me. And this time it is my fault that it's softwood and it needs so much prep. Could ponied up for hard, but no....

Actually my neighbours probably will kill me for doing this shit on a Sunday.

Can anyone explain what is going on here, bottom of house render, been advised to remove bottom 6inches so that it’s not touching ground level. Getting an expert in but want to know what needs doing.

Appears to be multiple layers of render, one with slate between it?? Appears there is another layer of render behind the slate.

Holes are from previous owner injecting dpc

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What sort of walls are they - Cavity or solid?

The slate suggests solid, with a slate DPC (I'm very far from an expert though - I'm not aware of slate parging being a thing either), and a lime render, which has then been covered in a cement render.

This means that the lime render now acts as a wick for ground water, which helpfully also breaches the DPC.

Safest bet? Go back to brick and start again. Any render needs to stop above the DPC, and it's probably worth putting in a French drain along the wall to reduce ground water and splash back.

If it's solid wall, take that gypsum to the tip and use lime-based plaster / mortar / render.

Getting an expert in

What sort provenance does the expert have?

Holes are from previous owner injecting dpc

They may have buried dead kittens and puppies too, in that case.

Blarg reckon this is beyond me to sort. Looks like the box had rotted around the lower part of the external facing rail and had been bodge fixed with render.

What type of person sorts this kind of mess out? The guys who serviced the sashes missed it I think.

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They are solid walls, the gypsum is from a separate job and needs to go to the tip.

Ah so the under render looks like lime? Can I therefore leave the lime touching ground level and just remove the cement? Maybe all the cement.

Unsure on what expert yet but not doing it myself.

I couldn’t find anything about slate parginv either so a bit of a mystery.. next door also have it too (different style of building too)

What type of person sorts this kind of mess out?

In my experience of the past few years - absolutely nobody, unfortunately. Too specialised & too small for anyone to want to bother.

You can test if it is lime by dropping it in acetic acid / vinegar / other acid - lime fizzes, cement does nothing. It also makes a different sound that cement when you hit it with a trowel.

Can you post more photos of the lower walls?

I do, if I'm doing the whole job. That is back to the wood on everything, new glass etc.

Otherwise as @TW has said it's too small a job to hire someone equipped to deal with it.

Those don't look too bad but I have had to fix up some really bad problems.

Will give it a go with vinegar.

Current hypothesis- water drawn up between layers of render as it’s touching ground. Can’t escape through cement render, goes inside instead. We have v.mild damp at base of this wall.

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^ Are those 'holes' that closely spaced all along the wall?

Yeah. We elected to keep them and have them serviced rather than stripping the whole lot and have them replaced because they weren't too fucked.

What would you do in this case?

If I had to do it, I would be thinking

• gently strip back the render around the lower part of the rail
  
• cut out the rotted / decaying section
  
• splice in some replacement wood, somehow.
  
• patch repair the render, somehow
  
• fix the cracking in the render around the widow
  
• stand back and cry
  
• pub
  

No, seems pretty random. They’re just close here. Really went for it.

Did the Mortgage Survey/Report mention a chemical damp course?
Those holes look familiar.

They’re definitely chemical damp proof holes. The survey didn’t mention them. As far as I’m aware they dont really cause harm they’re just not the solution.

The chemical damp course would be part of the solution, (if, and that is a big 'if', it was correctly installed), and hadn't been bridged by the layers of render and the slates.

Use Repaircare epoxy to splice a small piece of pine in. The window surround needs fixing anyway so chip out whatever is loose and refill with your choice of gap filling compounds.

The system is quite expensive to get into. Depends how many of these jobs you might want to do in a lifetime.

I would cut out the old bit with a multitool or a die grinder.

I would expect a fix like that to add about £100 to a job. That's why it's too small to do on it's own. It doesn't mean that someone could do it for £100. Too much drying time.