Home DIY

anyone ever laid a brick patio? opinions on what to lay the bricks on to are very mixed.....

i was thinking of using compacted gravel/rock as a base then a mix of compacted sand and cement. lay the bricks on top then just brush sand into the gaps. thoughts? :)

I bought some Type 16 - 2 Grip It's to put up a bike hanging shelf on a plasterboard wall and they only have in a 25 pack so now I have 23 spare. Looking to sell the pack of the remaining ones for £10.

They're these:
http://gripitfixings.co.uk/original-gripit/

Used to hang things from plasterboard walls, they have flanges which open out to spread the weight, the type 16 - 2 ones are meant to have a safe load weight of 60kg.

I'd keep hold of them personally, you're bound to need some in the future.

Anyone know a supplier of melamine faced ply? I don't need much, just 2 x 350mm dia discs. Or offcuts I can cut to size.

I've just put a load of 200mm x 100mm metro tiles on Ebay, 8sqm of matt white with bevelled edges, 1sqm of smooth matt white and 1sqpm of gloss light grey with bevelled edges.

Please PM me if you're interested and I can send you a link and we can work some kind of extra forum discount out.

My Reader's Digest manual covers this. It's generally a very good guide for all sorts if DIY. I will try and take a photo.

When buying LED gu10 bulbs, is it a case of more diodes, better light, generally speaking?

Not usually. A single LED die is generally better.

Lamps with multiple LED's are cheap crap using off-the-shelf components that will fail quickly.

Gotcha, makes sense

Just make sure you check the angle they light - some (most) are really narrow, less than 45 degrees is quite spotlighty

The one I bought are listed as 120degrees, but in truth I think they're more like 45

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I had GU10 bulbs in my last flat. I ended up fitting diffuser gels to them to disperse the light a la pearl bulbs. I hate hard light.

I was recommended http://www.superflare.co.uk/F501-1/ as a brand but haven't bought any yet. YMMV.

Anyone know a decent washing machine repair man? Mine is leaking and it doesn't appear to be the pipes at the rear or the front seal so it must be something internal.

@NurseHolliday Might be the emergency drain hose at the bottom front if it has one?

Interesting! I'll have a look at that tonight, I pulled it out and ran it in the middle of the kitchen last night for a quick 60 minute cycle and it didn't leak at all, but there was a little bit of standing water down the side of where it was before. So either that small puddle was already there and I didn't clean it up properly, or an actual water pipe is leaking. So I need to pull the cooker out tonight.

Domex are good.

NEEDED URGENTLY - Painter and decorator, Finsbury Park/Seven Sisters Road area. Needed for mrs_com's work.

Any recommendations?

I have 6 of these flat plate brushed stainless twin gang sockets surplus after finishing my renovation if anyone wants them?

Really nice quality, new in boxes.
£30 collected from SE14.

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Er, dibs!

A question.
We currently have our interweb in our house. All the devices connect by WiFi. Apart from the desktop upstairs which we use those power line jobs for.

What would be the better option for connecting the pc upstairs to the home network.
Extending a cat 5 (external) from the router, going back out the house and then coming back in through the wall and in to the desktop?
Or
Putting a junction in the cable while it is still outside the house,running new cable externally and coming through the wall into the spare room, and setting up a new router, so 2 in one house?

Or
Not bothering and sticking with whatis already in place?

Is it broke?
Does it really need fixing?

@Ramsaye not broke. Just about to get an electrician in to put new sockets around the house. Would like a solid connection to the desktop. Though it's solid enough now through the tp link....
@diable yeah, that means lifting floorboards or miles of cable hidden around.

I think the discussion is leading me to leave it as it is....

In my experience having two routers on two networks is a faff so I wouldn't go with option 2. Option 1 plus a switch by your desktop so you can plug in both the desktop and a wireless extender would be my favourite.

On the other hand, I've been pondering this for a while (with what sounds like a simpler cable run) and I'm still making do with powerline adapters.

What about moving the router upstairs? You can get RJ45 sockets with cat5 and then plug the RJ11 phone connectors into the RJ45 sockets to extend the phone line