How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

Or refund via credit card provider rather than the sellers ‘return window’

Shed/gazebo/some sort of roof canopy.
What’s best for claiming some outdoor space to eat outside / be outside?
Budget is limited.
My kids prefer eating outside to inside because it’s calm and they don’t feel trapped I suppose.

canvas sail?
sister has a triangular one which seems to work well. two points fixed against side of house and one on the fence

one on the fence

Very high chance the fence won't be high enough, so you probably want an extension pole fixed to a support.

But a sail is probably the best budget option. I think ours came from primrose which had some very cheap options. Pro tip is to get all hardware from somewhere like TLC things like turnbuckles and steel cable are a fraction of the sail companies and cheaper than Amazon.

Is it up all year round ? What happens in “big weather “?

Ha! It's not up because it was a bit of a failure.

But that's because;

1. The shaded part was in the wrong place when we had raised beds - so definitely get an old sheet and really test it out for real (see pic, red triangle = sail, purple highlights = shade)
   
2. The 3rd support was on a post fixed to a raised bed, which got removed when we re-did the patio...which is how I know a fence post is too low on its own.
   
   

But now, if I get round to making a post it would work well because we've got an open area so aren't restricted to where the table used to be.

But it's a good question. We get really strong winds across the garden so I'd always take it down. It is very easy to remove as I thought about the hook layout when I installed.

I did actually see a review of a mesh type fabric someone used to make their own. They liked it because the wind can get through keeping it cool in the summer and stop it going mental in the wind. Also they made the point that it's easier to have rain get through, rather than pool, which I think can be an issue.

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I'd appreciate a bit of the collective wisdom from the hive mind on this one. The photo below is from the under-sink plumbing in my new kitchen. It seems to me that the plastic push-fit T-piece is being expected to do rather a lot of heavy lifting here, given the angles of the pipes. Too much for comfort, or am I getting overly fussy here?

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It might be fine, but I would also be less than pleased with what's pictured.

Also the vertical waste pipe on the left appears to be coming out of the joint at an angle, which would likely lead to leaks there.

Looks like no pride has been taken in their work tbh. Here's ours in comparison which looks reasonably tidy.
Are they actually a plumber or a kitchen fitter/builder? Not sure asking whoever did that to do it again would yeild any better result. Best to get someone else in.

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Overkill on the munsen clips there for sure.

do we think this is pine?

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Wacky birch ply

Also the vertical waste pipe on the left appears to be coming out of the joint at an angle, which would likely lead to leaks there.

It is at a slight angle left to right, as is the exit from the sink waste. Fore and aft it's even worse...

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Are they actually a plumber or a kitchen fitter/builder?

The plumbing under the sink was done by the kitchen fitter. However, given the total Horlicks the plumber made of fitting the new radiator, I doubt he would have done a better job.

These are the spacers which are supposed to go between the radiator and the radiator brackets. Which I fished out of the skip on Friday after a little light skip diving.

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Are they made of plastic or are they like silicon? If they are silicon they are a nightmare to fit on the brackets and constantly come off when you are lifting on the rad.

They're hard plastic. The brackets themselves are made of fairly thin stainless steel, so I assume one of the purposes of the spacers is to spread the load so that the radiator isn't resting on the edge of a thin sheet of stainless. Either way, the radiator's coming off. It's not vertical, it's not parallel to the wall, and for some reason (I suspect because one of the rad tails was too short) they've hacked chunks out of the plaster to fit the brackets into.

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Fwiw our ones aren't hard plastic. Not as soft as silicone, but not hard.

Well, whether they're silicone or plastic, I think they should be between the rad brackets and the rad rather than the skip!

@ectoplasmosis What made you go for an Ikea kitchen vs something like DIY Kitchen? All your choices seem well considered so keen to get your POV on this

They're all made from the same cheap shitty chipboard, no real difference in quality.

Went with Ikea Metod because:

• No service void, meaning more internal volume. Has the side effect of needing to set the cabinets 50-100mm off the wall if you need to run pipes behind them, meaning you end up with a deeper worktop, which for us was desirable.
  
• Short plinth, again resulting in more internal height and volume. If fitting integrated dishwasher, this will need to have a sliding door mechanism (all AEG, some Bosch/Siemens/Neff/Miele).
  
• Decent quality Blum hinges
  
• Most general builders/chippies have fitted them a thousand times before and know about all the foibles
  
• Really good returns/replacement policy; we returned a load of redundant bits months after purchase for a full refund, no quibbles.
  
  

The only slight qualm is the feel of the drawer runners; as far as I can tell, they use plastic ball bearings and are a bit rough compared to our Hafele slide-out bin runners that use metal bearings.

In an ideal world I'd have got the consummate #£40Kkitchen with metal balls all over the shop, but we managed to do the entire kitchen for ~£6K including all (nearly-new high-end) appliances, custom Douglas Fir fronts, fitted bench seating etc.

Thank you all valid points! I think I'd be happy with that, just need to sell it into Madame and also find a third party fronts company that has good looking but not extortionately priced options.

Top tips for the nearly new appliances?

In other kitchen news, the worktop people arrived this morning with the new quartz worktops, only to discover that the genius who did the templating forgot to add an overhang at the front of the worktops. So they're going to be cutting new 30mm quartz worktops to be fitted at the end of the week, and the existing quartz worktops (retail price >£4k) will be scrapped. FML.

they will likely go in the big pile of offcuts and be used elsewhere, there was a huge rack of quartz/granite at the place we bought our windowsills from, we very nearly used something from the pile but ordered a whole slab, our offcut is in the pile even though we paid for a whole piece.

any ikea kitchen owners know how hard it is to change drawers that are behind cupboard doors to proper drawers?

we're looking at getting all new fronts for the existing ikea kitchen (metod, not very old) but one of my must have is no more drawers behind doors

That's what I assumed would happen, but apparently if there's space in the skip, that's where they're heading.

In happier news, the electrician did at least remember to bring his tester when he came to test the wiring and new consumer unit. Unlike the last time...