Home DIY

Did I tell you about the time whilst living on the top floor of a block of flats we had an entire flat roof’s worth of pooled rain water enter our kitchen and then proceed in to the flats below?

Good times

I can only hope the paint spraying ends up as successful as my masking is questionable…

Will update later with the results, warts and all.

1 Attachment

Good luck. My first attempt was a drippy botchy mess and I had to use a roller to take most of it off

Yeah that’s gold, cheers. Will give it a bash.

Rooting for you but I also want popcorn

The good news is that I reckon that generally I managed to get a nice enough finish (for my low standards, anyway) - couple of notable droops, mainly around radiators with me trying to over-do it to get behind them.

The bad news is these these sprayer drink like a fucking horse! Only got one coat on about half the house when the plan was 2 coats on everything..!
That’s a 100sqm 3 bed terrace, and 30L of paint so far.

3 Attachments

^so yep, very nuch not the final finish - just to reiterate!

Good progress! Was it way faster than using a roller? It would be good to use a bit of filler to tidy up that window sill before doing the final layer

The windowsil will get an actual sill of sorts at some point, rest assured.

Definitely quicker - as others have said not necessarily ‘easier’ per se, but I found it far less physically taxing, and mentally makes a big difference to see progress so quickly (after all the masking and prep).

I used to know him and would bump into him when I lived and worked in Shepherd's Bush.

It's a good video but is limited, that technique is great for walls but will leave you in trouble if you are scribing to any skirting other than pencil edge.

If you do everything the same but get a cheap school compass like this one:

Then set the width so that the sticky out edge rests on the wall and the pencil tip is at 19mm (the thickness of the board) then you will be able to scribe much more complex shapes like ogee or torus skirting profiles.

Another Pro tip: if when you are cutting your scribed line you back cut by ~ 10 degrees it makes adjusting much easier with sandpaper or a plane as there is less material to remove.

EDIT also I don't use a jigsaw that often as I prefer using a fine tooth handsaw for walls and a coping saw for skirting it's almost as quick but you can usually catch mistakes before they become disasters (power tools do most things quicker including fuck-ups).

Oops. Sorry.....

Watch the videos linked to and if you need help applying them to what you want to do ask away. I'll do my best to answer.

I found half the paint ended up being stored in the damn hose. Wish they did an ultra short one.

I knew I held on to my school compass for a reason.

When you bumped into Millard, did he say, “Hi there, hope you’re well.”?

That’s actually a TOP TIP - power tools do most things quicker including fuck-ups

we have asbestos tiles under a carpet in our (approx 5m x 3m) dining room. Want to remove them, have quotes from 2 (apparently well known/regarding) companies.

1 is £300 + VAT

1 is 1300 + VAT

Question 1 - why is there such a big difference?

Question 2 - Slightly complicated by wanting to sand down the wooden floor underneath the tiles after the asbestos has been removed. Is that going to be a problem? Will 100% of any asbestos be removed?

1. At a guess different methodology, however, £300 seems suspiciously low to me given that they would have to pay to dispose of the asbestos at commercial rates which, in my experience, can be expensive. It is worth noting though that my only experience with asbestos removal is on large commercial sites.

2. In a commercial setting it would be written into the RAMS that the company removing the asbestos would set up air quality monitoring while the removal work was underway. This system would be left in place for at least a couple of months after removal work had finished and while subsequent work was underway to make sure there are no more nasty azzy related surprises. I don't know if this would be the case in a domestic setting but it may be worth having a word with the contractor that you choose. If they can't or won't do this you should be covered anyway as part of the work will be to thoroughly vacuum the area with an H class rated system (these, of the top of my head, trap 99.99% of particles they suck up.)

If you have concerns speak to the potential contractors and ask questions about how they will carry out the work. Professionals especially ones who do work like this should not have problems explaining what they do to potential clients.

Have they detailed, line by line, exactly what they are going to do? I imagine the £300+Vat one hasn't!

£300 seems suspiciously low to me given that they would have to pay to dispose of the asbestos at commercial rates

Yes, you can't help thinking that for £300 the tiles will end up rolled up in some carpet in a layby.

Thanks, folks. They've said they won't do an air test afterwards as they are not legally required to do one, but if we want, they can do one for an additional 300 + VAT

I've asked them for a fully detailed breakdown of what the work looks like.

Are they vinyl?
If so the asbestos in them will be very inert as it’s bound to the vinyl. No chance of dust.

When I did ours I went into the top of the wall to save some space. I used posts with threaded bolt already mounted in the base although this was just convenient as it's easy enough to fix threaded rod into posts.

Dredging this post to ask how you would fix the threaded rod if they weren't already done? I could potentially get a chippy round the corner to drill some holes all the way through as mine will only be about 600mm but is an access hole in the side to tighten a nut usual method, or threaded insert a better bet?

Drill a hole slightly larger than 10mm and epoxy the threaded rod in would be a 'professional' approach. By that I mean likely to last long enough without having to understand the really long term effects on the wood of the epoxy+threaded rod.

If you drilled a 9mm hole you could probably get the threaded rod to thread into it with a couple of temporary nuts in place.

I would only drill part way into the post. It's kind of tricky to drill into the end of a rod as you can't fit it in a pillar drill. Fortunately you can bend the rod to straighten the post once it's in place.

Nice one. I might try and use these chunky brackets I have but good to have a backup when I realise how hard the rocks I'm drilling in to are.

yeah, vinyl chrysotile

is there a chance the glue below is a danger?

Not from asbestos but it’s possibly nasty stuff in it’s own right.