Home DIY

can anyone recommend a motion activated, mains wired light? It's for an internal coat cupboard - so I want the light to come on when the doors open.

Any tips on the best adhesive to stick a sheet of rubber to a bit of quartz worktop? Making some chunky quartz cutting boards.

Did you rescue it from the skip?!

I used adhesive rubber feet when I did similar (presuming this is for base). In combination with the weight gave plenty of grip, and slight clearance from worktop makes them much easier to pick up when you are want to move.

Start with contact / impact adhesive and work your way up from there?

You can get switches for this purpose which might be simpler, designed to turn off when the door is closed: https://www.toolstation.com/white-flat-plate-mortice-door-switch/p52171

Then just wire in any light fitting that suits the space.

See also mag switches and smart lighting with a motion sensor and a rule to switch on when motion is detected.

Buy a bog standard light base and a bulb with a built in PIR sensor.

smart lighting with a motion sensor and a rule to switch on when motion is detected

If you want your coat cupboard lighting to require the internet, sysadminning and security patches, sure.

quartz cutting boards

sad for your knives

Back on the tools!
Boiler is dead and the engineer can’t get on the fittings underneath to fix it so now it’s tiles off the wall and take a section of brick wall down.
DIY never really ends does it?…

Ah shiet! Stuff like this is my nightmare, I tried to design in as many access panels & ducts as possible to be able to service shit that’s buried, but a lot of ours has ended up being inaccessible without ripping the house to bits…

Good spot, nothing in stock nearby but managed to sketchily get a fair priced one back from T&P.

It’s going to be rejigged when the kitchen is done, there is a big void where an old hot water tank was, the flue is boxed in on the bathroom side so I’m thinking pull the whole kitchen wall down and then have a grid of stud work and panels round the hob splash back in whatever wood/formica the unit doors are made from and have them removable so the new flue and most of the bathroom pipes are accessible.
Will cost more but legally you need flue inspection access and would likely cost more to get access to a leaky joint in the void

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I was only offering it as an alternative. Pretty sure the IKEA system is completely offline and the webthings system can operate purely over intranet without internet access.

workshop stud wall finished. door reveal not as neat as the other one but literally nothing about the plane on which the wall sits is square with anything else. door has plenty of room to expand and doesn't swing by itself when open so that'll do. won't be decorating this side of it and the other side will be plasterboarded when i get round to sorting that room out at some point.

next up build some kind of franken-bench on the left there for my 3d printing stuff to live on and figure out what to do with the poxy paint cans that are in my way constantly but i daren't dispose of.

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Anyone laid self leveling. I've got to do it next week. Floors about 10mm out. I've watched a lot of YouTube but any tips welcome. Slightly concerned but quite aware that it's not really completely self leveling.

I have. Found the stuff we used did self-level, so long as you put enough down. I only needed a couple of mm, but found I got a much better finish once the thickness got closer to a cm - think it was just the mass overcoming the surface tension. Below this it took some care to get a smooth outcome. Found plastering trowels useful, the spikey rakes not so much.

Not an expert, but it came out ok. Oh, and very much a task to do with someone. One person mixes, one pours and levels.

Cheers. I got a spiked rolled but also planned for a squeege. Why was the roller not so good?

The dip is one end of the room into the centre, so I can mark that out with screws and level to the other wall. I hope

On the spiked roller, it just didn't seem to do much. Understand they help break the surface tension to help level, and remove air pockets. It may have removed air (and I would use it again, just in case) but it didn't make much difference to the levelling.

It's honestly ok. Kinda like icing a big cake, where the icing wants to co-operate.

Cheers. Fingers crossed.
Been avoiding it but can't do so anymore. And it's more out of level than I thought it was.

It's been suggested that I put drip channels in the underside of my exterior windowsills to stop water running back to the wall.

Is this just a matter of running an angle grinder an inch or so from the the end or something more sophisticated?

Essentially yes. Closer to the edge (and further from the wall) is better but obviously there's the reality of the situation. Maybe try 12.7mm?

You've probably seen this, but just in case... you get different types for different depths so get one that is matches your 10mm depth.

Also if you have the option of a longer set time go for that one. I chose mine based on what was available from screwfix for my depth and had to work fast as even though it says x min work time it gets harder to work as time goes on.

Definitely not hard, but definitely the sort of thing you want to be organised with. I was only doing a small patch, but in a hard to reach spot and Ymmv, but I found it useful to do a dry run of the physical motions of how I'd pour it, verify I'd reached the required hieght, etc.

Thanks. I got something (mapei ultra plan eco) that's 1-10 and thus more flowable. There is a small area that's 18mm below finished level but from the instructions I understand I can do that area, leave it for 3h, then come back and lay over it doing the while floor. .
Intention is to screw the floor at intervals to mark needed height.

Did you rescue it from the skip?!

Not me, no. In the end they managed to reuse one of the four pieces, decided that one was potentially reusable, but the other two weren't worth keeping due to the cut-outs for the hob and sink, so they made them into a couple of chopping boards for me to make up for having cocked it up first time round.