Home DIY

Looking forward to seeing the change!

What's the update on the internal walls? Anywhere near straight yet?

Yep going to be treating it all with kid gloves for sure.

Getting there. Never going to be straight with a level but visually will look alright.

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sounds solid. if you google 'matthias wandel bed plans' he is a youtube guy who has loads of free guides and plans for various types of beds made of 2x4s and the like.

Looking good. Does it need to dry out before the top coat?

Yeah. A week for the float coat. Then another 6 weeks after the top coat.

Lots of common problems with sash windows. Top sashes which don't close all the way on their own usually have broken sash cords. Sashes that feel heavy have often had the glass replaced with 4mm and not increased the weights. It's fairly easy to fit draught exclusion, you can buy all the bits from Mighton for example.

Cost of totally renovating existing sashes is around the same price as replacement. Either replacement or renovation is a fairly messy process.

Replacing a rotten cill should take a carpenter about 1/2 a day without the decorating. Lower sash rails are the most prone to rotting and Repaircare is the best way to fix them. If you are repairing cills and bottom rails with repair care + painting a couple of coats of Zinsser all coat it can be as cheap as £100/120 per window, ymmv, that's not for painting the whole window though. If they get prepped and painted properly when you do the exterior decorating the paint should last 8-10 years as long as you've painted them gloss white. 6-8 years for all other colours.

Since you are buying a new place you can pretty much bet that they've either not been painted properly recently or they've had a quick going over which won't last much more than a couple of years.

Don't avoid maintaining sash windows and they last very well.

Ta!

Thanks for that, will look tomorrow.

Good on you, your house will look right and have better ventilation when the windows are opened.

which company did you go with, if you don't mind me asking?

JOINERS - Windows Replacement Service
Address: 92 Alexandra Rd, Wimbledon, London SW19 7LE
Phone: 07428 915892

They were a recommendation from another forum member

Do you need them to be variable height frames or just different heights? Just thinking you could build a folding desk onto the wall.

1) If they're getting moved around a lot I'd go manual.
2) Probably depends on budget, loads of cool options.
3) I'd bolt it together probably with some metal plates/clamps around the legs. If the frames will be different heights then legs are probably easiest? If you could also fix to the wall would add to rigidity.

Yeah we'd both ideally like sit/stand desks and i think 'crafting table' height would be different to both of those sets of heights, and would be nice to have one extra large surface area that can all be the same height.

cheers!

What are the recommendations for fixing a bathroom cabinet to a tiled, plasterboard wall.

It'll be fairly heavy once it's filled. Cheers

Has anyone got suggestions for hanging a narrow shelf to put a few framed prints on that doesn't involve drilling into the wall? It turns out the wall we want to put them up on has shitloads of electric cables all over the place! Are the stronger command strips up to the job?

I have good experience with putting screws/rawlplug wall anchors in the grout and hang a small ikea cabinet from them, but the cabinet is not heavy. Can't lie, there was a bit of nervous sweating when I drilled into the newly tiled bathroom walls...

Follow the guidelines for hanging stuff from plasterboard - and remember not to crack the tiles when you drill a thumping great hole through them for the toggle bolts.

Sorry ;)

Monkey hooks would work in gyprock - or is your wall plaster?
Command strips come in different strengths, just get some that are strong enough to hold your particular pictures.

Can anyone recommend decent floorer/carpenter around Leyton? In need of some repairs to a newly laid floor with a pretty agricultural finish.

Use a tile drill bit to drill the tile. Switch off the hammer action :)

Depending on the depth of plasterboard you can get away with quite a bit because the tiles provide a lot of surface strength. Relatively simple wall plugs that are designed for plasterboard should work. My preference is Fischer. Once the screws are in place the shear strength is dealing with most of the weight unless someone grabs hold of it and pulls.

The command strips will work if you use them for the frames but I wouldn't use them for a shelf.

Cheers all. Yes, hoping I can get away with nylon plugs rather than drilling big holes for toggles.

I'll see what b&q has in the way of tile bits.

Fair play, we paid out 7k for decent PVC sash windows throughout (6 very large sash windows and 3 small normal ones) - wooden was going to be 20k! Keen to see the results up close (in photos that is, not about to pop round).