Home DIY

I did some of artsy stuff (lamps) a long time ago in exchange for money.
I think 50 round hollow lamps with silicone mould, and hundreds of small stones/diamond things in moulds made of folded polypropylene.
It sucked.

YouTube is all MFC forms, isn't it?

I had a look at making some concrete planters at one point.
MFC forms, silicone in the corners, and some sort of coating to enable release (but I don't recall what is was).

Then slap a thin harling-like coat on first, and let it dry, to ensure a smooth outer to the thing.

I was going to mix the concrete with some sort of fibre (again, can't remember what, specifically) to reinforce it.

After that, it's all about removing air bubbles. Either grab your favourite dildo, or jury rig a palm sander to vibrate the form.

In the end I thought it was too much like hard work.

Any ideas on how best to address these gaps surrounding front door?

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Low expansion spray foam, there are ones specifically labelled for door and window.

And then cover with some form of plastic architrave?

Yeah you want plastic architrave.

Selco has a lot of that sort of stuff, so even if you don't have one near the website will give you ideas/something to reverse image search.

Nice. Local screwfix should have some bits if I trawl through the selco site

A bit different from the usual type 1 DIY chat, but my partner painted this mural to go around the headboard in our spare bedroom.
Our home's design committee (of which I am not a sitting member) often makes decisions which are a bit froufrou for me, but I think this came out well and she put a lot of work into it.
Excuse all the guff around it, that bedroom has now become designated storage while other DIY goes on elsewhere.

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Not my style but she clearly knows what she’s doing, very Scandinavian cottage imo.

Wow your table really screwed the forum rendering

I swear it wasn't like that before? I wondered what happened?

You've probably found a security hole in microcosm

I’d imagine scripts and styles are filtered out, so not a security hole. It’ll just be badly formatted/corrected table markup. Just an aesthetic hole 🙂

Sigh, recessed light fittings... we've been in this house for over two years and i've never changed one of the bathroom lights.

The housing is one piece and has been sealed. I can't remove the clear plastic.

What do i do to access the bulb? Cut out the sealant?

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Look like the standard metal circlip type of thing, so if you can remove the plastic cover, you can squeeze those two metal prongs (at 5.30 and 6 o'clock in you image) together and bulb will come towards you.

First thing I'd try is cutting round the silicone and twisting the white plastic to remove it from the light housing and expose the prongs.

If its too stuck, I'd try a screwdriver behind the white cover and try to lever against the ceiling to take out the whole fitting.

Obvs turn off the fuse for the lighting circuit if you're sticking your screwdriver into places.

Great, thank you! That worked and have a new one fitted. Just got to work out how to reseal the white cover without it falling off before sealing it again. Not helped by the fact that i now need to go out...

Noticed that there is a bit of a draught coming in the bottom left corner of this window. Not massive gusts, but can feel cold air on the back of my hand in the blue highlighted area. Hinge is on the right hand side. What’s the nice and simple fix?

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Should be an adjustment screw on the lock mechanism at the same colours point on the window pane, where it locks into the catch we can see in your photo.

If that doesnt fix it, a slightly less simple, but still very doable fix is to replace hinges.

Nice one, think that’s sorted. Thanks.

With the locking mechanism being two shootbolt rods and a central gearbox, are both rods moving far enough to fully engage in the keeps?
There doesn't look to be any wear marks at all on the keeps. So I suspect maybe not.

Is moving the handle actually moving the mechanism? If not, maybe the spindle has come loose within the handle and your not getting full rotation driving the gearbox.

Gearboxes sometimes fail because there's small idler gears inside, to change the direction of the two rods. Or the rods were just badly assembled in the first place.

With the window open, lock the mechanism. Check if the mushroom cam is actually going to go into the keep... or just touch the top of it.

If the rods are moving fully and tightening the cam has worked. Leave it alone

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Unless there's a gap in either of the two hinged corners. Replacement hinges would be unlikely to help with a gap on the handle side.
Likewise tightening the locking mechanism won't do much to improve knackered hinges.

The handle is definitely moving the mechanism, and the cams are going about half way into the keeps. I’ll see how it goes now I have adjusted the cams. Appreciate your thoughts.

Half way down the slots should be ideal.
There's probably +,-1mm adjustment by rotating the cam. If it had been adjusted fully loose, you can sometimes get a gap.

One light in my bathroom has died; it's a Diall 12V28W MR11 halogen bulb (it also says 15W43 and MR11 1291 but don't know what those are referring to). I have no interest in buying another halogen bulb (and will probably change the other out while I'm at it) - can I just buy a MR11 LED bulb and chuck it in or is it not so straightforward?

Also thought I’d get around to swapping this other dead bulb out in my shower, but the fixture seems to slightly resist unscrewing so just wanted to check if I’m doing something wrong before putting more force into turning it..

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Remove the whole thing, and replace with something like this:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/luceco-ftype-essence-flat-fixed-fire-rated-led-downlight-white-5w-515lm/253kl

Wire it directly to whatever junction box you have in the ceiling, removing any transformer that you may have (because of the MR11, which are 12v).