Home DIY

Kinda think it's kicking the can down the road.. are you up for the danger of kicking it down from above? lessoning the having stuff fall on you

I use titan wet/dry vac all the time, its the only vac that should actually be rated for pet hair.

I’ve seen that today online! I’m much less sure about that. There’s loads of pretty old insulation and more dust up that I’m not quite got the access to deal with at the moment. We do have a quote to get a loft hatch put in nearby but… found out I’m up for redundancy in the next month so need to hold off and do as much DIY as possible.

Just came about as the image looks like lath and p skimmed with gypsum which isn't the best for either , a ladder would get yourself above the ceiling line through the first hole, if sitting on planks from above isn't the thing

We had a look out for this a couple of years back and ended up doing this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sX143elLdY

I looked for a while for a nice ding dong one - the best option seemed to be finding a used one somewhere - they’re not complicated and can be made to work. They were expensive and I was moving out so ended up with a discreet plastic box with ding ding chimes inside. I think the main brand is friedlander or something like that?

I picked up a vintage NOS Friedland Warbler 454 on eBay, like the black/gold one here:
https://www.electrachime.net/compact-door-chimes/friedland-warbler-t585/

The disc is metal but the actual body is plastic, although I really don't think that detracts. Sounds great and looks classy IMO.

Such a lovely website, thank you!

How have you wired up and powered your Warbler? Which push button are you using it with?

Carbon fibre for my foundation repair.
Right is pinned while epoxy sets, left not yet.
The guy installing says it’s 8 times stronger than the steel braces usually used.
Basement is now laterally stiff but vertically compliant.

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My Lidl has a bunch of the 12v tools at 50% off, maybe worth a look if people are just getting started

Absolutely brilliant!

I want to fit some curtains in a bay, I think the ceiling is just plasterboard (or old school plaster and lathe). I need to hang them from the ceiling really as I already have some Venetian blinds that that curtains will cover.
Is this possible? The ceiling looks a bit flimsy, should I be trying to fix some batons on their first and then screwing the rail on that?
Will my ceiling fall down?

Yes it can be done but lathe and plaster can be tricky because the lathe tends to deflect rather than allow a screw to get a grip (even if a screw grips it can easily split the lathe). You could use a bracket that allows you to fix to the wall and ceiling or run a batten around the join between ceiling and wall. There might be a joist in the ceiling where it meets the wall, sometimes worth finding out direction and position of joists and lathes before you worry too much about alternatives. Could be easy or near impossible depending on your house.

If it’s plasterboard some toggle type fixings should do it or you might easily find a joist as the plasterboard will be fixed to something at the edge of the room.

I'd use a strong magnet to locate the joists and screw into those. The laths will be attached to the joists with lots of small iron nails.

But we're definitely talking about a baton or some strip of wood to actually mount the rail to right?

It's going to be used with a Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro, so not quite a push button!

It will be powered by a 24w/24v transformer (overspecced to avoid the risk of voltage drop in cold weather) with a 24v relay (both DIN mounted) converting the G4's ring signal into the ding and the dong.

Doorbell will also be connected to the network with ethernet to avoid the potential of cold weather Wi-Fi issues which haunt the standard G4 somewhat.

This the result of considerable research and collaboration with @spotter !

This was testing the transformer a while back in 'warble' mode if anyone wants to hear it in action! I think we'll go for the standard ding dong...

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• 862634247-VID-20230923-WA0004 (1).mp4

It's surprising how some professionally installed curtains are just set to fail. As ever there are so many variables - the weight of them as the start, are they full length insulated blackout jazz + are they matched to the rails and opening closing mechanism. If the rails are only giving predetermined fixing points then you'll really need to know what plastering method they are going into.. there's always the old school pelmit to hide a multitude of sins

Has anyone experience of chimney balloons? Good job or not?

Assuming you're just looking to stop draughts? In which case I bought a chimney sheep; easy to fit, does the job and a bit more green.

Yup. Just the draught issue. I will look for a sheep. Thanks

You definitely want something other than just plasterboard to mount to.

Get a strong magnet into action to see if you can find existing studs behind the plasterboard to mount to. If you can then that's easiest.

If not, you could cut a hole, put some sort of wood behind the plasterboard, fix it in place, and then fix the curtains into the wood you've added. Then patch up your hole.

If you don't want to make and patch holes then yes indeed you could just fix some wood on the outside of the plasterboard using several plasterboard fixings. Then fix curtains into the wood.

I wouldn't have thought the wood would even need to be particularly beefy. If you were building this from scratch today, you'd probably just put OSB behind the plasterboard.

I really like how we're bothered while being blind to the situation... but if unsure by just looking then the ceiling lighting will have a hole going through the plaster construction, assuming there is no massive plaster rose in the way

Encouraged by the recent and unrelenting storms (during one, in fact) causing the leak-that-only-appears-in-heavy-rain to spout forth, I ventured outside one morning this week to finally see what the underlying cause was.

Ended up digging 3 holes and a trench in the front garden to find where along my drainage hadn't been connected by whoever installed it.
They had buried 3m of pipe from the house, and 1m back from the front retaining wall, but left a metre gap between the two for me to deal with years later. In the interim roots had totally filled the pipes, meaning I spent until sunset pulling the growth out with a drain rod before fitting new pipe to join everything up.

Good clean type 2 fun.

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That house plant looks sader than ours!
Good effort on the pipe.