Home DIY

Does anyone know if it is normal for door hinges to be used to hold together the main structural members of a timber-framed house?

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Could be a can or worms that, but also doable yourself.... couple of batons, bit of wood, expanding foam...

Ha, not really interested in doing it myself - but what would you be using expanding foam for? Surely it's a plastering job?

Might save a few hundred quid?
I just filled some old spotlights holes and the way I did it was...

Baton out across the hole.
Attach plaster board to baton to fill hole as close as possible (not very)
Use expanding foam to fill gaps to large for plaster
Allow to dry.
Cut off excess.
Sand.
Plaster.
Sand.
Plaster.
Sand.

But then again, I don't really know what I'm doing so...

Certain it didn't used to lead to a Priest Hole?

This hovel was never grand enough for priests to hide in. It could have been a hatch to shit out of, I suppose.

Finally finished fitting a wood floor.

Does anyone want the left overs?

6 boxes of 20mm herringbone oak flooring - each box covers 0.8m square. I’ll throw in the wood glue too.

Collection from Herne Hill

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And yes, that’s not herringbone.

Wow, ugly. Hope you get it sorted soon.

Does anyone have experience of fitting an egress basement window?

No experience with fitting, but either a tilt and turn window, or side hung outward opening window on Egress friction hinges would be suitable. Non locking handles for either, to ensure the escape can always be used without searching for a key.

It depends if you have space inside or out to open it, but my personal preference from repairing windows would be tilt and turn.

Is Repair Care Fix and Flex the goto option to repair a wood door threshold that's a bit rotten on one side? It's below a PVC door.

I'll also be removing the cabinet and splicing on a replacement end to the window sill in this post fairy soon.

It's not that complicated to fix but you're right, trades don't want to take it on on its own. It's easier if you are decorating the whole room but decorators might shy away from it. Plasterers don't really want to get involved for something that small.

I would do it by cutting the plasterboard back to the nearest joists and cut it halfway down the joist. Then add a piece of wood between the joists. Measure and cut the square from fresh plasterboard. Screw plasterboard to joists and noggins. Plasterboard should be roughly the same depth as the existing ceiling. Tape the joints with joint scrim. Use a filler like easy fill or even joint filler premixed if you want to be lazy. Lay that on fairly rough and let it dry, fill again when dry and leave to dry. Rub over with a sponge instead of sanding, if you're filling is good enough that will be all it takes, otherwise you might have to sand it. Paint with Gardz, then 2 coats of ceiling paint. You might need to paint the whole ceiling.

If you do that as part of a whole decorating job it's a few hours work, maybe 4 depending on the state of the joists. Problem is a decorator often doesn't carry the wood to put the noggin between the joists or even plasterboard, that can add an hour while they get hold of the materials. If you carry all the materials then you are only using bits at a time, my joint tape has lasted 4 years. Filler I always have. Gardz the same.

If you have to go out and purchase all the bits together it will cost you about £50 and you'll have a ton of material left over. So you've got a job that only takes 4 hours but would need at least 2 visits and even then you'd be standing around a lot waiting for stuff to dry, unless you throw in quite a bit more work and have someone around for 3 or 4 days so £500-£800 or so.

TLDR

It's probably going to add £80-£100 to a decorating job and that's pretty much the only way you'll get a decorator to do it. See my workings above :)

I've just had a bit of an epiphany about a ceiling replacement job that I've asked to quote for a month or 2 ago. !

No.

so, we had a leak from the neighbours above flat

You probably know this, but somebody's insurers should be dealing with this and paying for it.

Yes, there's only one competitor in the market and it's a little cheaper and a little bit less good. Timbabuild is the alt.

You should watch as much tuition about it as possible. The extra tools like a die grinder, ir stripper and flappy wheel sander are helpful tools to have but not essential.

Sometimes with a threshold it's easier to cut the old one out and use repair care to splice a new one in. Its not always necessary but you should decide how much rot you are dealing with early on and cut it right out by the quickest method. Allow about 3mm around the joints and you can add big chunks of wood leaving them to be planed off when it's dry.

Its helpful to use perspex as a mould in some cases. It just peels off the repair care once it's dry. If you use the perspex, plan the sizes before you get mixing the repair care.

Plan to use a lot of everbuild wipes. The repair care sticks to everything and you need a lot of wipes to stop sticky finger spreading everywhere around the house.

Why do plumbers put in multiple joints rather than replacing the pipe?
It would have been neater and less joints to cause future leaks to omit the 5cm section and coupler, going along to the compression coupling half a metre away.

If it was a soldered coupler and the painted pipe needing cleaning up, I could definitely see the point, but that just seems lazy. Am I wrong?

Excellent, thanks for the tips.
I haven't seen the door yet, so the customers idea of a bit rotten and what prodding with a screwdriver finds may be wildly different!

Have multi tool, palm sander, chisels and plane among other tools

It's like the emergency plumbers creed. Only touch that which is broken, never repair that which you have not been instructed to repair.

Yes, I love my clients to tell me how small and insignificant the problem is only to discover it's rotten as a peach. Budget a fair bit for repair care and let the client know up front. One guy I put on to it always charges for 2 sets, so around £120 on any job he's using it. He's not got time for splicing wood though. I don't use anything like that but you could reckon 1 entire set for most of those kind of door jobs if you don't judge it right when you are cutting out with the chisel.

There's a trade off between speed and saving material though. I wouldn't sand it too much once it's dry, use a plane. If you need a really fine finish you'll usually have to fill in some small imperfections with a finishing filler. They make one which does a good job but I've not seen any problem from using a wood filler like the brown pot of wood filler from Toupret.

This is really incredibly helpful, thank you. I've currently got tenants in my flat and I really don't want to impose my very slow, swear-ridden and ultimately unsuccessful bodging on them! Looks like I may need to try an wrap a few more jobs into a package and see if I can find a decent handyman? I've got plasterers coming to quote but from your message it sounds like they're unlikely to be particularly interested...

Cheers

After 6 months of wrangling, arguments and legal-ish letters we got them to pay the emergency plumbers fee! I don't have the time or energy to go back into battle for the 'make it right' costs, and our buildings insurance wouldn't be worth claiming against for such a small job...

Cheers!

Bastard neighbours!

Bastard massive housing association who own the flat above mine, yep!