Home DIY

Cheers for the reply!
It’s going to be a stinker of a job.

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I've been having some success with an IR stripper on that kind of paintwork. Either that or a sharp chisel and hammer. Toupret Murex is quite decent for filling cracks and refacing rough stuff.

It is a nasty job but that's a relatively small area and it's not as bad as some I've had to do.

Cheers for the reply buddy!
It may look relatively small here but it’s pretty much the whole bay, will see what I can do!

Out of interest, what would you pain that with, once repaired?

A lot of folks on our street have terrible peeling paintwork around this area, and on the cill below, and friends of ours had theirs repainted that has since blown in the space of six months.

I’m kinda into that idea too but fear having to strip it all properly.
Will have it as an option depending how it all goes.

By small area I meant I've had to do entire fronts with spalling bricks and surrounds/cills of every window in much worse condition. It's enough work to sort that out though, especially off a ladder.

The toughest areas to remove will be those bits that had flaking paint removed and were then just painted. I don't like to skim over the paint on those bits because the skim can fail. Sometimes it's enough to sand to key it if it can't be stripped.

Over the last few years I've used Zinsser All Coat and it's held up well. Where I've seen failures it's where filler has been applied in thin coats on potentially dusty backgrounds.

Durable exterior work is hard though. I keep my eye on local stuff where I've seen progress and materials to see hows it's held up. Usually the quick jobs last a couple of years.

If you keep at it with a sharp 25mm+ chisel take off anything that's not bonded and use Fibrex / Murex for filling/facing you should be able to avoid removing anything that's bonded to the brick.

Often you'll take off 10-15% in chunks especially from around cracks that often go through the cement to the brick on surrounds.

You might still remove quite a bit but you can deep fill with those fillers.

I know the heritage methods guys will burning sand to make mastic etc. but I'm not seeing failures over 15 years with the methods I've used so I feel confident that they have some merit.

The area above the window is often way more solid, you'll be unlikely to crack large chunks off in my experience.

I've been skip diving on our street over the last few years and pull out every bit of sweet 1930s architrave I can find. It goes into the shed! Today, as we're about to start on the kitchen soon which has no architrave, I took all my accumulated treasure up to PJ Pine in Crystal Palace to get it stripped as much was in paint clogged condition. Watch this space.

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Thanks again! Do you have links to those recommended products? I’m only really planning an ok job, not a proper one, under no allusions of first timer ability, just want it to last 2 or more years.

Ta. I did mine with all coat at the same time as the window frames. It’s survived the winter…so far :)

Any pics? I fear painting sash windows.

Luckily, the paint on mine is so fucked it’s basically falling off by itself…

I want to square off the arch that divides my living and dining rooms. Would it be as simple as knocking out the unwanted bricks?

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• Home.pdf

No!

Or rather, maybe but don’t without asking an engineer. Arches are stronger than square openings, it might be that knocking it out like that makes the house fall down.

That's what I suspected. Thanks.

Please don’t, arches are awesome!

Safer to lower all your ceilings in the ground floor by 500mm. Cosy in winter too.

We had some arches like that, for some reason the hole was square and the arches formed by plywood and skimmed over...

Have a look at this page. They describe the use cases for each of the products. Fibrex is now called Tough Multi Filler, Murex is called Rock Solid Repair Filler. They are the 2 most popular in the trade in my experience. I have used the others for specific jobs but Tough Multi Filler is my go to exterior filler. Murex is useful for rebuilding edges of masonry, like the corners of cills. Skimcoat might suit what you have to do there though.

https://www.toupret.co.uk/professional-filler/category/exterior-surfaces

Er can do. It looks great...from a distance, like everything I work on.

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I’d be more than happy with that level of finish.
And thanks @Airhead for the comprehensive list of gubbins!

My skylights in my house don’t open because they don’t clear the box they’re built into. The frames are built on the roof beam/trusses and then they are boxed through the loft space. I need to take a 10-20mm out of the top of the box/beam at the opening edge in order for them to have enough clearance to open. You can see in this picture where the frame is set back from where they are boxed in.

Would an oscillating multicutter be the best way to do this in a confined space? Taking ~10mm out of a roof beam isn’t going to make my house explode is it? (There is also the thickness of the boxing to clear.) This feels DIY-able but if someone tells me to leave it to a pro I’d be happy to…

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How long have they been there?

Are you sure you want to open them now....?!

I've been spending a lot of time daydreaming about my new outbuilding that comes with the house we're currently buying.

to stop me getting my hopes up too much how realistic a plan is this? very rough measurements as can't get in to measure so going off the listing numbers.

plan is to divide into 4 small rooms, office (lower left), games/hobby room (upper left), workshop/3d printing space (upper right), yoga/pilates/hand weights type gym area.

currently there's a cable running to the building that carries power (overground and there's decking preventing a trench but no idea about current sockets or lighting other than it has lights up in the ceiling. ideally would like to make sure the power is robust as will be relying on it for a fair amount so thinking a secondary consumer with rings for lights/plugs/heating (electric rads)/future workshop kit. as we're putting up partition walls if we keep power to mostly those (and grandfather in any existing sockets on the external walls as well) i'm hoping it should be pretty easy to cable everything. would probably want some network cable run to ports in the rooms from a mesh router and if possible a run from the house to the router so i can backchannel the connection and not rely on wifi to link them.

making adjustments for the support pillar aside I'm not sure if the girders would have to dictate the wall placements or if we could just work around them, we'd need to seal up the rooms all the way to the roof to heat them but I'm not sure how.

we have money set aside to get the house done up a bit once we move in, but am I being over ambitious here? just trying to temper my expectations for when we get someone in to look at it and quote once we get the keys.

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