Home DIY

Noggins are good for drying tea towels over also.

did you get your licence to alter sorted, neil?

It's on the way, the manageing agent asked for a clarification but has said it will be granted.

I am looking at an ex council flat built in the 1930s. Instead of straight walls it has nooks and crannies which are meant to provide built in closet space. These nooks are made of brick unfortunately. I find this solution really inflexible and would like to straighten the wall and instead use freestanding storage units.

Several considerations:
1) Will Hackney council estates let me knock out and 'straighten' streches of brick wall about 60 - 80 cm wide?
2) Should new wall be brick or should I make it myself with wood and plaster board?
3) Would you have hired a professional to knock out 70ish cm of wall? I don't think we can talk about load bearing with such narrow streches, but perhaps there is some trickery where it joins the ceiling?
3) Price implications of the above rambling?

Like this wall indent wall or the inverse, wall buttress wall buttress?
....... _.................
__| || |___

Room

Yeah, if I understand your drawing right then that's pretty much the problem. Only, say the middle cupboard would be facing the room next door:

room

....... ___________........I I
__| |..........| |__I I

room

Plus I am not sure if they are *butresses *in between, they are just same kind of brick as the rest of the wall?

you will need a licence to alter and possibly party wall advice.

Started cutting through the redundant soil stack, felt odd resistance so decided to cut a little window out to see what was fouling the blade:

Now that's odd.

Let's cut it off above the crap:

Filled with about 3" of rust on top of the sand and builders rubble.

It wasn't even solvent welded properly- the joint came apart with a bit of wobbling:

I lifted the lower section out of the cast iron pipe that serves the downstairs neighbour:

That looks blocked, pretty efficiently blocked:

Now it's a bit of a shame that I just spent £55 on a Dirgo/AAV to cap that off.

What should I do with this?

Anyone?

take it back, explain the above, they should be grand

They had a number of signs, prominently displayed, saying "restocking fee 25%"

Also, I presume you don't council that I excavate that, then stick the AAV on it?

£55!!

wtf

tell the downstairs neighbour that you think you've found the source of their poor drainage then charge £300 per day to rectify it

this one?

I assume the downstairs is no longer using that connection.

As far as the plumber can tell, they are.

If replacing a leaking brick built chimney flue, what is the best material to use?

Rebuild it with brick, then re-line it with one of the ceramic sprays?

Rebuild with brick then get it relined with a flexible steel liner?

Rebuild with brick and then worry about the lining if someone ever re-opens the fireplace?

It's for downstairs, and they've filled in the fireplace and made it part of the wall

They didn't know that there used to be a fireplace there until I mentioned it.

It's more that one day they might put a fireplace back in.

Which I think is unlikely, btw

Yes and yes, 1930's purpose built flats.

We were initially told that open fires were banned as the chimneys were in too bad a state, so I cracked on with removing the flue.

Now they've said "fires are banned, but you still need a chimney".

Breast, I need to maintain the continuity of the flue (within the breast) from the flat below me to the flat above, basically.

Pics

Following picture shows the back of my (bricked up on the other side) fireplace, and to the left is the flue from downstairs:

Downstairs might accept an undertaking to reinstall the flue if they ever decide to reinstall their fireplace, but I suspect that they will not want that as they'd have to explain it to anyone who purchased the flat.

You gotta rebuild that sucka. Gonna be a bitch tying that in

Mad that you left the stack hanging above it.

Chimneys get taken down from the top!