Home DIY

that's the anguish an artist needs

There is a 22mm hole in this worktop which I need to be 26mm in order to pass a braided hose through- it feels like a ceramic, but is a thin layer on a chipboard backer.

Can I use a step drill to take the existing hole out by a few mm, or is this a recipe for disaster?

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Try shaving a piece off the edge around the current hole with a box knife to see if it's plastic or ceramic, whether it crumbles or shaves. The current hole should give you an idea of how easy it is to cut anyway.

The are hole drill shanks that allow you to put one size hole saw (in your case 22mm) inside a larger hole saw (26mm) so that the small one guides the larger one.

Starrett make them :-

https://www.starrett.co.uk/products/holesaw-accessories/accessories/smart-accessories/a19/

If it is a ceramic material you should use a diamond hole saw. But it looks a bit like a worktop type I've fitted before which has a few mm of laminate on it instead of a fraction of a mm. It was popular because you could rout it to put a recessed sink under the worktop.

Ah, interesting- it’s got a large hole for a sink cut in, but my assumption was that it was then faced with an edging strip as it’s definitely not the surface material that you can see on the right of this picture

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Without a close up that looks very similar to the sink situation in the worktop I installed a while back. The colour was brown though and the material has quite a plastic look/feel to it.

Test the hole you've got and see if the material can be shaved off with a knife, in that case you can cut it with an hss hole saw.

Will do- thanks

the effect of your blinds made me think you had carbon fibre window frames for a sec..! :D

Those are mesh screens to stop critters getting in (or, I suppose, out) when the windows themselves are open.

This should be standard in the UK! Save me adding some cheap ones to the windows.

Well, back home now and I was super wrong.

It’s a solid 1.5cm worktop of some kind of artificial stone.

The hole that has been cut is not concentric- not sure how they did it but I’m wondering about a diamond file to take it out a little.

Stupid idea?

What about a Dremel?

I have a dremel, so certainly could do that- cylindrical diamond head thingie?

What is the braided hose for? Can you feed pipe through the worktop and then attach the hose up top? Would probably be a lot easier than filing out the hole.

Mains water pressure for the coffee machine.

So you could feed a bit of copper through the hole, then fit your compression fitting onto the top of that (assuming that is what is in your original pic).

If you can't be arsed getting the pipe to line up nicely then use a flexible tap tail from the current pipe onto a short section of pipe which goes through the worktop, the fitting on the end of the pipe that sticks up will hold it in place. It's a bit of a bodge but would work and probably the easiest solution. Though compression fittings and copper are pretty easy to work with tbh so routing the pipe nicely wouldn't be difficult.

Edit: I am assuming you already have a T off a cold water pipe somewhere under the worktop? If not that's another relatively easy one to do.

I like your thinking, it had not occurred to me to transition to 15mm pipe to get through the hole- cunning.

Currently there’s 1/4” pipe running to the water filter (big white thing to the left of the coffee machine) from the mains under the sink.

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Could do it all with push fittings and plastic 15mm. The top pipe in the picture looks like it has a non return valve on it (to the left of the t joint).

That’s the feed for the kitchen sink taps- note that the single incoming mains feed is split in order to feed both hot and cold side of the tap. This continues to surprise me.

Was it this thread someone recommended a silicone finishing kit?

You're a s..

Cramer?

What’s the best way to repair this little tear in an armchair? The material is Dralon (and is c.60 years old) - it arguably needs re-upholstering completely but not got the funds at the mo.

Needle and thread? Patch it? Fabric glue..?

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Poke a patch underneath and sew onto that, it's a guess from me at every corner, but if the fabric is old and tired it may not hold without reinforcement. It may not be an invisible repair but will stop the progression , possibly small stitches and bend a needle to a curve

thanks very much - sounds like a plan!

Need and thread. I’d fold the two sides inward slightly to hide the fray. Slip stitch to hide the thread.