Home DIY

[…] looking at Kingspan K18 […]

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Members of Kingspan’s technical team joked that they lied about the fire safety properties of their insulation, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has heard.

Taper edge obviously easier, but inevitable that you will need to joint a square edge.
Easifil 45 or 60, bigger area get the slower stuff, smaller go faster
For square edges use decent scrim (i prety much anyways just gyproc orange, quite chunky think they call it heavy duty?), and then cover the scrim only, thinnest and narrowest amount poss to Bury it. Let it dry. You will get a sag line sticking out down the joint. Sand that off and get it flat but without eating into the scrim.
Now do two a much wider slab of easifil either side. If you were looking at your work in a cross section, the two bits you are adding now form a giant, very very shallow triangle.

Have found using a small and then a giant jointing knife /plasterers knife is the easiest. Once tried with my best trowel and was a nightmare. Taper joints you can keep within the taper. Square edges maybe gonna be 100 to 150mm either side of joint?

Folk who are really good at it don't need to sand. For the rest of us, high quality 120 to 240 grit on an random orbit with a vacuum will get it looking decent. Keep moving, long sweeps otherwise it'll look like surface of the moon once its painted and got daylight against it.

We periodically get these black stains on our maple countertop and I can’t figure out what’s doing it. Any ideas? I think it must be some kind of reaction to either metal or food, but don’t know for sure. I can get them mostly off with a mix of salt and lemon juice, but I’d rather not get them in the first place.

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Oxalic acid might be a quicker fix. It’s the main ingredient in a branded product called bar keeper’s friend, if I remember correctly. Stains could be a result of cast iron reacting with the tannic acid in the wood, if you have cast iron pots and such. You could probably reduce staining by applying a food safe hard wax over the maple, but no doubt you have considered that.

Good point about using a taping knife rather than a float. I learned with a float so that’s what I stick to (Marshall town pre worn stainless finishing trowel for the interested).
But again, the pros seem to predominantly use taping knives.
Learning to widen the joint as you describe was a game changer too. And search on YouTube for how to feather an edge properly. If the edge is feathered badly it’ll be a dusty nightmare getting it smooth. Some people like to get it 90% there, then paint, then fill any small bits with a lightweight filler and touch up with paint again - as lots of imperfections disappear after a bit of paint - but taking the time to get it as close to perfect before paint has always been my preference.
Checking the surface with lights that replicate what will be in the room - angle of natural light and room lighting - is also a good idea. Nothing worse than thinking you’ve nailed it, only for the setting sun to pick up every tiny imperfection you can’t see when it’s lit from a different angle.

As a non-builder I was shocked at how much insulation was used in walls, ceilings and floors nowadays.

Tell me about it! No way can we get 120-150mm in some of these places, unless we completely change the windows.
Anyway, anything's going to be better than wallboard straight on brick and no insulation in the roof (and we're going to insulate under the suspended floors downstairs too).

We have the big hefty le cruset pans and if we leave them on the worktop wet then we get those marks.

Does anyone near SE6 have a mitre saw I could borrow for a couple of hours in the next few days? I can compensate you with beer/home made peanut butter/tat from the shed.

Walls you can get away with a lot, ceilings, any imperfection is always gonna be in the light from a window or a light every time, never in the corner above furniture that you'll never notice, just the way sometimes!

Corners are still super time consuming for me. When they are very close to 90 no bother, theres a tool for that. Its when they are like 100-140 degree kind of angles, takes about 1.8 billion retries to get finish plaster or easifil to sit right without ballsing it up again. Borrowed a mates 'adjustable' corner trowel. Nope. Its like the edge on it was the wrong shape, either just dragged plaster or cut in at the edges like mad, he said he'd never sanded the edge but wonder if someone along the way had and thats why it didn't work.

Went with stop bead and then just a jumbo trowel and was easier but always would leave a divvit in it somewhere that I'd have to revist when dry.

Recently managed to reconstruct the worlds saddest front door (flat internal), frame and surrounding plaster work. Was broken into twice, 80's and again in 90's and repaired with literal cement, polyfiller, any kind of tape you can imagine, expanding foam, bits of what looked like water bottle plastic. Remade the door, stripped the blue asbestos 'insulation' out of it, frame, all hardware replaced with new and repaired an original 1880's rim lock (jumbo 10" job) which fitted the door perfectly. then all the surround issues. Replaced most of door lining with Mahogany or Ironwood (or some other extremely dense jungle type wood that I was given years ago), then tied the side with the keepers way back with hilti bolts into brick. So good luck anyone trying to kick door in. Well, the door or hardware will fail first, but my epic plaster and door frame repairs will likely still have zero cracks.

Probably 5 days of work in it, but feck she works well now, clicks open and shut easily but firmly, no air leaks, no noise leaks, and actually looks decent. Easifil and creative use of scrim tape between layers of door frame to reinforce the actual fuck out of it to prevent future cracking.

Just back from Sweden and discovered this type of door bell. Sits inside the door itself, just needs a small hole drilled through. Usually from outside just a round surround with a bakelite or plastic pusher. On the inside of door a regular bike type bell.
in Swedish I think its 'Ringklocka Mekanisk', mechanical doorbell? But struggling to find much for sale. Asked in a lock shop in a town there and they say they are now rare.

Pretty good solution IMO, also means you can add bike bells to your front door.

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Some uncoated ferrous metal is touching this.

Yeah bottom of a cast iron pan, old cutlery, tin of beans etc.

Found out the hard way proper knives are obviously steel, and someone decided to wash them all, then leave in a pile on the wood behind the drying rack. All the knives turned orange, wood turned black. Thanks for that one lol. THat was in old kitchen that only had a cheap 'danish oil' covering. Current kitchen has various things soaked into it, mostly tongue oil then finished with Osmo clear, works well, even recycling cans left on it haven't hurt it yet

Also @Howard, thanks!
Yeah, wax won’t be happening, but I will check out barkeepers friend.

Thanks for that as well, I’d still like to find the bastard in flagrante delicto.

Had one a windup version of this in my old house:

This kind of thing
https://windupdoorbells.co.uk/products/brushed-brass-imperial-wind-up, but decades older.

@konastab01 thanks man! I’ll keep an eye on it after the last 3 rads are replaced and ask the gas chap to check it all. The boiler is very old - 15 years ish I would expect so I’m fully expecting needing a new one soon.

The boiler is very old - 15 years ish I would expect

Is that very old? Sounds modern to me.

Was gonna say, most of the boilers and furnaces that get replaced around here are closer to the 100 year mark.
Should say that it's mostly boilers that make it that far

I’m not sure TBH. Isn’t the average life span of a boiler around 15-20 years or is that just bullshit?

My cat is 18 years old and in the life of a cat she is very old.

For real! A boiler can last 100 years? Wow. I’d always thought they had a much shorter life span than that.

As mentioned a wind up bell is the closest but it is not like a bike bell in that you wind up a spring and pressing the button released the spring causing a ring. Used to have one on my first flat. Every so often you would have to twist the bell / metal cover to wind it back up.

Deptford close enough?

Get the stain remover rather than the scouring powder variant. Or just buy Oxalic acid solution from the Bezos.

Ah. Already got the powder.
Will attempt regardless.

Success!
Thanks, the crystals worked really well, removed all the older stains too.

Just had my boiler done at a meagre 12 years old, but replaced with a brand I'd at least heard of. I think if the boiler was built in the last 20 years it won't last very long, but much older boilers can last a lifetime.