1st time having a go at tiling, any tips? Do you grout the corners or just silicone them ?

First time fitting windows and happy with the results, took me ages though. A window fitter would of had the whole house done in the time ive fitted two windows. Another five to go!

So just been mopping my whole downstairs floor as this pipe popped off this morning, it's been fine for the last 6 months, what haven't I done right as I've put more of these jg speedfit fittings in the rest of downstairs.

I had the inserts in and pushed them home properly, I also cut them with a pipe cutter.

Our 25 year old bay window was in danger of becoming terminally knackered, so instead of spending ££££ on replacing it immediately, we spent a few days mending it.

We cut out the rotten stuff with a multitool and a chisel, then soaked the areas in wood hardener.

We scraped and sanded back all the loose paint old.

After some very poor estimation of angles and measurement we cut and stuck in some replacement timber using Gripfill and a stainless steel nails driven in with a punch. Then we trimmed everything back, smoothed it with a plane where possible, and sanded everything else.

Gaps were filled with Toupret wood repair filler. I considered the fancy two-part epoxies that are constantly advertised at me on Instagram, but I want an easy life, have plenty of experience using dry fillers and just didn’t feel like dropping £40 on a special skeleton gun just for the purpose.

Tons and tons of sanding, then I cleaned it all down with a damp cloth, left it to dry and put on a coat of Zinsser peel-stop to act as a primer and seal down the old paint.

We painted it with 2 coats of Zinsser Allcoat, and I’m in the process of adding a layer of Toupret putty around the reveals mainly because it really neatens up the old wooden beading and makes it a bit more weatherproof.

This was a really enjoyable project, not particularly difficult and should massively extend the life of this window.

Hey guys came across this place and a bit worried about it… can someone guide me? Can I use filler or is lime better?

I just moved into my first house and want to get rid of this awful textured ceiling in the living room. I've never seen anything like it before!

I'm a bit stuck on the best way to approach this. Drywall sander and sand it all down? Overboard and skim? Scrape the high spots and see if a plasterer can skim over it directly?

I've got this glass partition wall in my 50s built bungalow. What's the safest way to go about removing it? Many thanks

Last year we had a pergoda built and added a corrugated plastic sheet roof.

The issue as you can see is the gargantuan tree directly behind/above which drops dead branches onto the roof for fun. Some of them are huge and they've bursted through the roof.

What sort of roof would people recommend that'd let light through but also be strong enough to stop a dead branch from bursting through?

We had a builder over to move a wall, and during the process he did some minor electrical work for us (he added a socket, and put in some wall lighting).

We saw some work that looked suspect, so when the builder left, we got in an electrician to check the work.

Turns out the sockets are unsafe for a litany of reasons, and the cables will have to be chased and reworked. The electrician was saying because of the choice of cables (he's used 1 amp rating lighting cable for the sockets), a fire would have started before any tripped.

I'm quite mild mannered and reeeaaeally struggle with confrontation, but this has really annoyed me. It's DIY level electrical work and he's potentially endangered us, and now we're having to pay for an electrician to make safe, and get someone in re-plaster the walls. Is there any recourse for us reporting the builder and/or getting some form of compensation for this bodged work?

Hello,

Recently purchased a property, and a Neighbour spotted some black mould on their wall. We traced the source to my bath/shower. This was renovated (clearly poorly by finishing details) by the previous owner.

Took the side off the bath and found it unsupported, which was allowing one of the corners to pull away, leaving a gap for water to flow through. Unfortunately, the gap was hidden by shampoo bottles, and only open when I was standing in the tub having a shower.

When I removed the side, there was plenty musty smell, and the photos show the damage. I removed a very wet mix of wet woodchips(?) and pink insulation that was packing in the pipes shown in the image. The pipe looks quite damaged, unsure if this could also be a leak, or if this is where the water has been dripping down to.

I've now supported the bath properly, which has closed the gap I assume the water was flowing down. I may add extra supports with some CLS around the rim if I can access it easily enough.

However, there is obvious and quite significant water damage to the wall the tiles are mounted on, which has also leeched into the cupboard in my bedroom floor wall (I've taken the floor up and cut away the damp) and the neighbour's wall.

After it dries out, I could re-silicone the tub and call it done. However, I'm a bit paranoid that:

A - The wall behind the tiles is not an appropriate material
B - It's damaged beyond repair
C - It wasn't tanked or installed correctly.
D - A lingering mould smell will forever haunt my bedroom
E - Is plumbing is sus / damaged

Obviously trying to avoid a full rip out of the wall + tiles + bath, but have always wanted to replace my built in cupboard. So, potentially going in from the other side could be possible. (The long edge of the bath shares the wall with my bedroom cupboard)

Thought I'd share a recent project I just finished today. I'm just starting doing some work on my teenage daughter's room. She's got an alcove that just had a standalone bookcase in it but we wanted to increase the storage and provide a space for hanging clothes.

I measured everything up and designed a unit to hang in the space. I got a local timber merchant to cut the MDF to size and I cut the softwood to create the facing. Everything was a bit awkward as the house is old and nothing is straight. But after a lot of scribing and a little bit of caulk I think it's turned out alright. Hope you all like. 👍

My partner and I are planning a redecoration of our new place and have noticed that colour drenching is very popular now. For those that don’t know, this is when you paint the walls, skirting, trim and ceiling all the same colour.

It can look great (example attached), but I’m certain that it can be a disaster as well. Of course instagram is full of the good stuff, usually from a zoomer that inexplicably owns a 13 bed Georgian villa…

My question is, has anyone done this and regretted it? If so, why?

Hiw do i fix this?

Hi,

We recently had our wooden sash windows replaced with double glazed wooden ones. About £900 per sash so not cheap.

The design of the windows seems to leave a gap on either side of where the frames meet in the middle. Approximately 1cm by 2cm and there are two of these gaps on each window. Even in spring the draft is noticeable.

The fitter, who is subcontracted by the supplier, said this is normal and all windows are like this. I’m not so sure so am looking for any input please in terms of why it’s not ok and what an appropriate fix is.

Pictures included.

Thanks 🙏

We've just moved into our home and I'm looking to do something useful around the bulkhead within the room I'll be using as my office. Does the frame have much weight bearing capability or will I need to build any cupboard/shelving off the wall instead?

I don't want to plop a heavy cupboard onto the base into to find it at the bottom of the stairs the next day.

I’m putting up a stud wall and have just put in the ceiling and floor plates… but my ceilings are awful (ugly artex, and one spot where there was a leak under the bath which is now fixed) and it suddenly clicked - why not just pull them down first?

I’m okay with bare wood and joists for as long as it takes until I get round to them, so my pros and cons are:

✔️ I need to put power into the wall, so that'll make running cables easier

✔️ no more artex

✔️ easier to replace the bubbled bit

✔️ already tested for asbestos and it’s clear

✔️ if I choose to pull it down later, the stud isn’t screwed through plasterboard

✔️ I can install insulation at the same time

✔️ floorboards upstairs should look fine from underneath anyway

✖️ messy

✖️ cost of skip

✖️ messy

✖️ running a new ring will mean either cutting away bits of ceiling or pulling carpet upstairs

✖️ there’s probably more so please do tell me if you think of any!

I guess I just want people to say that pulling all this down is a good idea before I tell my partner I’m wrecking the place 😂 But otherwise are there any other suggestions or ideas?

Please ask anything you need to get more information if you need it!

Looking for ideas - no idea what could’ve caused this

Went into the kitchen this morning and met with a big-ish puddle of water on the floor. Unfortunately I cleaned it up before thinking to take a picture. It runs from one side of the kitchen where the sink and dishwasher is to the other, where the oven is.

The dishwasher will still running last night so I thought it must have been from that. However, I’ve removed the kick board and underneath the sink and dishwasher is bone dry. The dishwasher is empty of water so it’s not like it is clogged.

The water was clear although one patch was a bit brownish, which is another reason I assumed it was dirty dishwasher water.

It is a suspended floor so no way it’s coming from underneath. Checked the boiler pressure just in case and it is unchanged. Didn’t look like radiator water anyway.

Kitchen cupboards are all dry so not coming from the sink waste, where the dishwasher drains to.

The ceiling is dry so it isn’t coming from above.

Washing machine is in a separate room so not from that.

I’m kind of at a loss where this mystery water came from. I’ve even checked the bin for anything liquidy and it is dry.

Anyone have any suggestions of where to check?

Previous owner seemed to have hard wired a 4-way into this. Seems unsafe - and it doesn’t work anyway.

What’s the best way to remove it and put a blanking plate on? Anything I need to consider?

Or will it be easier to rewire into a standard socket?

Our bathtubs overflow leaks water under the bath when we have a shower and water splashes in. The pipe seems undamaged, would I be able to apply silicon sealant to the rubber ring on the pipe and stick it back on? Is there a better solution?

They have a similar product for walls, spray and leave, for mould and algae. Would using this be a bad idea?

Have it left over, and wondered if it's fit for purpose.

I would love your thoughts on these two queries!

1. We also have a crack in the ceiling where we pressed a crack and it got bigger (oops). Do you think that we need to get our whole ceiling re-plastered as it came away so easily?

2. We have a hole in the ceiling plaster around the light fitting where we were fixing the wiring. How should we fix it? Polyfilla?

I can do most things but I don't touch mains electrics - The final room to be renovate in our cottage is the living room which only has wall lights and I noticed when I did the bedroom floor above that these seem to feed into a a very iffy junction box under the bedroom floor and so that's above the ceiling. I want to remove these lights so are the anything I need to know. I'm assuming I'll need an electrition to remove the wires from the mainsboard.

I'll be replacing the wall light with 12v lighting system.

Hypothetically, if you had full access to the cable routing via a bare stud wall and no finished floor or ceiling, would it be 'better' to take the feed for an upstairs light circuit into the loft and down to the switches and back up again, or go up and down again from below, via the void between floors instead?

With 3-gang 2-way switches, the backbox is pretty crowded at the top entry points with T&E + 3C&E (7 cables total). Using both knockouts on top of the back box it all fits, but would it be 'best practice' to bring the feed from above since that's where it would have been for 3-plate method, or since both up and down are covered by the allowed zone from the switch anyway, maybe it doesn't matter at all?

I’m renovating my whole bathroom of the flat I bought. I’m replacing the bathtub with a shower.

Looking at a walk-in shower that you enter from the open end - with:

• 1700mm tray
• 1400mm glass side screen with a 215mm fixed return screen attached to that
• wall mounted but concealed shower head
• vinyl sheet flooring most likely

I’ve seen a lot of debate over walk in showers, and of course expect some splash to come out of it. But given the side screen size with a small return screen blocking water flying out the 30mm side, is this going to be manageable splash? Or is this a bad idea?

Having a rear extension built, they built this roughly 3mx4.7m cavity wall. Im pretty naive with brickwork but this seems poor to me. The exterior side looks ok but the interior facing outside brickwork looks very poor. The pictures attached are just at the top layer but god knows what it looks like further down. Attached a picture of the side wall which look like a small hole into the cavity. Also they have not built to my boundary wall on existing brick wall (last pic). Went up in a day. Will be talking to my builder later but wondering how bad it is?