Home DIY

got the kettle too (and cork flooring) :D

first go a tiling done - time shall tell as to whether it all holds together.

just bought ready-mixed adhesive, and cut a plastic scraper into a notched trowelette.

the ply box, which was made of offcuts, has previously been coated in SBR (by the tilers who did the kitchen and bathroom, before we realised a was about 5 tiles short to do the box and had to order samples from various shops to make up the numbers)

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Extraction hose is probably a good candidate for boxing.

Attach 3 pieces of 2x1 to the walls, cover in 8mm wrmdf, paint to match walls.

I think there are rules about access hatches in the boxing these days, plumbers need to test the void or something similar.

cheers! Ian the joiner’s back soon to do the understairs doors, so might give him some more work - on the opposite side of the kitchen (same kind of run of wall units) there’s a copper pipe run from the boiler to upstairs that hugs the top of the wall and follows the ceiling pitch, so was thinking about potentially having a big ply panel using the nice B/BB stuff to cover everything from the top of the units up both sides. I’m a sucker for symmetry..!

If anyone needs one of these, I have 9 after a total cod piece of an electrician left me a back box with a broken lug (after he had used a cut off screw with mangled threads, which jammed, causing the plastic lug to break off) and therefore leaving a cable outlet faceplate secured with only one screw. I even pointed it out to him because he wired in the towel rad element before it had been screwed into the rad itself so I removed it, screwed it into the rad then rewired it. That's how I noticed the fucked lug, when I took the faceplate off and the lug came with it. How the fuck was anyone supposed to screw in an element when it has already been hard wired to the outlet? Even if it did turn enough to screw in, the rad was pre-filled so needed to be upside down when the element was fitted and the cable wasn't long enough to reach.

Couldn't buy just one. I also have 48 x 50mm screws as I didn't want to use the cut off one again and the other one was too short for the thicker faceplate I was adding for the towel rad controller (I tried to have the conversation with him about this and the fact that I wasn't too happy that the mirror light/shaver socket and rad were on the same switched spur so if I wanted the mirror light on I'd have to have the rad on too.... but he just looked at me like I had two heads so I just let him fit the dumb outlet and resigned to fitting the controller myself, which works how I wanted it to) and I could only get a box of 50 at short notice and the ones that came with the lug repair things were too long.

Oh, also, when installing new smoke alarms top of the house to bottom, he put approximately 3,000 holes in the walls and ceilings to run cables through. Luckily our builder who brought him in is making those good.

Double also, when I asked which circuit the smoke alarms were on, he said "why?" BECAUSE IT'S MY FUCKING HOUSE, YOU CUNT!!! Was what I wanted to say, but instead I went with, "I'm just curious".

What the fuck is it with so many pricks happy to take your money and then take zero pride at all in anything they do or entertain what you might want and try to make that happen and instead just do what they want?

Tl;dr - trades being bulbs, again, if anyone needs back box lug repair things and doesn't want to buy ten, I have some.

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I’m guessing a lot of builders are having to bring in people they haven’t previously worked with - and so are unaware of the shitty standard of their work and their bullshit attitude.

Yeah, I'm annoyed with our builders for doing so, but not enough to sully the overall relationship as they seemed genuinely annoyed by it too. I gave them half the lug repair things to use if they ever work with him again....

Just unacceptable work really. Blows my mind that people are incapable of communication in these instances.

Blows my mind that people are incapable of communication in these instances.

You've met people, right?

In my (annoyingly now vast/broad experience) the trades on here are not representative of 99% of the trades out there.

Watching trades on Youtube or Tiktok etc (don't judge me), most of it is seemingly in jokes and banter which show their utter disdain for clients and lack of respect for working on people homes. One trade playing pranks on another, deliberately fucking with something. Or just down right slagging off clients who have made what appear to be totally reasonable requests.

And I get it's a first world problem to even have somewhere to get people to work on in the first place and a rant that keeps getting played out here and in the Owning your own home thread. But come on, I'm constantly trying to do things right, engaging with people who are well reviewed, rated or referred. But there's just no end to the let downs. I don't even have high expectations anymore, don't chip anyone on costs and pay every invoice immediately (if work has been done or materials need to be bought). But still constantly left feeling like a mug.

All that being said, the two guys who are completely rebuilding our bedroom are gold. Their finish is not exactly something I'm going to share on some other threads here due to certain self important folks getting a kick out slating of anything they don't deem to be perfect or straight from a Modern House listing. But they are hard working, produce solid results and are genuinely lovely and respectful people. They just don't have the best judge of other people they get in. And I'm secretly enjoying the big one singing along in sweet falsetto to Magic Radio most of the day. And they finish each Friday with a bottle of Guinness Foreign extra and a bit of a dance while they're tidying up.

In my (annoyingly now vast/broad experience) the trades on here are not representative of 99% of the trades out there.

This is totally fair tbh. I always come out to defend the trades/myself but the majority really earn a fair degree of derision.

And they finish each Friday with a bottle of Guinness Foreign extra and a bit of a dance while they're tidying up.

Deffo legends!

I'm guessing the good, conscientious trades work for people with a lot of money

Or big jobs, not the kinds of stuff we are doing. A live in renovation, with a toddler (FML) where we can only realistically work on one or two rooms at a time.

I suspect that's right - or at least they work for project managers hired by those with lots of money. If you had the option to avoid dealing directly with uninformed, emotional and volatile homeowners I suspect you would.

Deffo legends!

The main dude bought us all (me, ms_com, our lodger and another guest who was staying last week) a bar of Grenadian chocolate as he was excited to see chocolate from his home country in Lidl. And they do things like call each other to let the other one in instead of ringing the door bell in case mini_com is napping. And they'll suggest non-extravagant things (so I know they're not just after a bit of extra cash) like when they were taking down the ceiling in the bedroom (totally fucked), they took out the old cold water tank from the eaves/loft through that and then put some boards down above the new ceiling joists so we could store shit like christmas decorations. And they suggested acoustic board on the wall between my office and the bedroom, and on the ceiling as ms_com's office is directly above. None of that was on the original job spec.

Annoyingly though, they did fuck the PVC trim of the 18 month old windows when hacking the plaster off the bay, but Everest are just going to come out and fix that under warranty. But I've given them a 70kg radiator to hang as penance.

uninformed, emotional and volatile homeowners

I feel attacked

uninformed, emotional and volatile

I know this is not a jibe but;

uninformed - yes, that's why trades exist, surely?
emotional - yes, it's their home
volatile - fair enough, home owners can be just as cunty as trades, and often moreso

For those that willingly work with us cunts, at least take the high ground and show a bit of pride.

/similarlyfeelingattacked

One of my upvc windows has a large gap at the top when closed. From previous discussions on here it seems that this can't be adjusted out and the hinges need to be replaced.

I've got new hinges but, with it being a first floor window, just wondering about the actual logistics of removing one set of hinges and attaching another without the window, and me, plummeting off the ladder and down to the ground. Any suggestions, cheers?

Just replaced a couple of hinges last weekend.

Actually not as heavy as you'd imagine, I found that removing all of the screws from the bottom and leaving one in the top until I had a good grip of the window frame meant that when I unscrewed it then I felt like there's no way i'd drop it.

Thankfully, the hinges sit within a lip in the UPVC frame so they don't immediately fall outwards, you have to grab the frame and pop the top hinge out of the lip before turning it sideways and bringing it into the room

Try and remember where the old hinge extended out to when it was fully closed, as in the butt of the hinge generally lines up with the seal around the window.

Edit: just read a mention of a ladder... You should do this from within the building and pull the window in through the frame once you've removed the screws

No action shots of the actual removal (needed 2 hands), but this was the area that I did it

Took a few days last week to fuck up my kitchen a bit with a mate of mine.

New ceiling and lights, and raised the lintel in there so we could get extraction for a range cooker. Then the weekend was spent taking the rest of the units out, and taking up the floor. Not loads of fun and stupidly dusty, but we're progressing nicely.

Still need to get a gas guy out so we can move the oven eventually.

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For those that willingly work with us cunts, at least take the high ground and show a bit of pride.

Definitely not a dig - I'm just trying to understand it from the other side. Talk to anyone in retail or a call centre and the message is that the "general public" (which includes us) is a nightmare to deal with. I suppose working in the building trade is the same at times, made worse by the high sums at stake.

trying to understand it from the other side

Admirable.

anyone in retail or a call centre and the message is that the "general public" (which includes us) is a nightmare to deal with

Hard agree. I have done both, a lot over the years. But at the same time anyone who can only treat all members of the public with equal levels of disdain, is shit at a very important part their job. If everyone was easy to deal with or uniform, rather than, you know, human, then there wouldn't be a need for those jobs. Everything could be automated.

I'm sure that for every nightmare client a trade experiences, there are 9 other client who do nothing to deserve the mugging off they receive because that trade couldn't give a shit. I make coffees, I provide biscuits, I even bought the shit spark a pizza when they were working after 6pm to get the bathroom finished (before I realised his shitness), I pay on time, I don't argue about extra charges (if they are obvious - like "this took two days instead of three because X was much worse than we could see before starting"), I don't micro manage, I'm clear about what I want but revert to a professional's opinion if I am out of my depth. Basically, I try to be a decent client that people will want to come back and do more work for (because there's A LOT of it here).

IME experience, the shit trades are cunts because they know they can get away with it.

For clarity, this is not me attacking you.

And this rant has been had many times before so I'll try to stop now.

I imagine in some ways it's worse than retail. What's the most expensive thing you own that you see every day and want to be perfect with no flaws?

Plus the works you are paying for are usually not cheap.

I want works done well but I'm not going to be an arsehole about how they are done unless this was agreed up front.

Talk to anyone in retail or a call centre and the message is that the "general public" (which includes us) is a nightmare to deal with.

I'm not sure this is true really, but I kind of understand the sentiment.

Huge resentment issues in both those lines of work that are often a projection of some other sentiments the worker might have. At least that's what I saw. People fed up their lot in life so taking it out in other ways. Or really fed up with the job itself/mistreated/underpaid so anything they had to do was seen as a massive ballache to them. And because the general public are seen as the ones asking them to do this work, they naturally got branded as the arseholes. These feelings then only got reaffirmed when they had to deal with actual arseholes.