DIY thread...

[Rex Kramer]

Yeah, cleaned out all the drainage pipes for the washing machine, thought I'd fixed it. Turns out it's not a drainage issue and the machine has just stared to catch on fire. If I'd left it running my house may have burnt down. Might need a new washing machine!

[Victor Mildew]

Fireinawaterpark.gif

Had a busy day of it today. Started modifying the ballustrade (if that's how you spell it), Sanded and washed that. Sanded and washed all the skirting boards (the wife helped put with that), pulled the landing and stair carpets up completely, pulled all the flooring nails out, replaced with proper screws to get rid of squeaks. Sanded and washed the stair area ready for painting. Now to repaint the entire stair and upstairs area (landing and 3 bedrooms), ceilings too. Also got new carpet being fitted soon, at a shitload of money but it's nice.

[Victor Mildew]

Yeah, cleaned out all the drainage pipes for the washing machine, thought I'd fixed it. Turns out it's not a drainage issue and the machine has just stared to catch on fire. If I'd left it running my house may have burnt down. Might need a new washing machine!

Also, never ever EVER leave a washing machine, or appliance like that on while you're out. A friend of the family went out for a meal for their anniversary, came back to the street being closed. Turns out their dishwasher caught fire and their entire house was gone

[Jenuall]

I leave stuff like that on all the time when I'm out, I'm sure most people do - there must be literally millions of hours of accumulated time where appliances like washing machines are left on cycles unattended and the number of incidents like that are incredibly low in number.

Spent most of yesterday on DIY jobs around the house. Finally removed the garish orange glass splashback that the previous owners had put in the kitchen, fortunately they hadn't gone crazy with the adhesive so it came off relatively cleanly. Had seen plenty of horror stories online of people trying to remove stuff like this and half the bloody wall coming down with it.

Once that was down my afternoon was basically filling, sanding and then re-painting the wall to make it look decent enough whilst we decide what tiles we want to put up there. I got a bit over-keen on trying to get the surface perfectly smooth after filling the holes so probably spent about 5 times as long on that than I needed to, especially as it will all be covered in tiles soon any way!

[Rex Kramer]

My next DIY project is going to be a little more small scale and hopefully get the kids involved. Decided to build a hedgehog house with a IR camera hooked up to a Raspberry Pi inside. Need to get it done in the next couple of weeks though otherwise I'll miss the hibernation.

[Green Gecko]

Once that was down my afternoon was basically filling, sanding and then re-painting the wall to make it look decent enough whilst we decide what tiles we want to put up there. I got a bit over-keen on trying to get the surface perfectly smooth after filling the holes so probably spent about 5 times as long on that than I needed to, especially as it will all be covered in tiles soon any way!

I basically lost my job as a gallery tech being slow like that, obsessing over smoothness of walls, but yeah if you're going to cover it up anyway

[Victor Mildew]

You know what really grinds my gears of war about DIY?

How it just eats in to your time

I've spent the entire evening now ordering gooseberry fool, for doing more time consuming gooseberry fool, which is going to eat yet more of my evenings.

[Dowbocop]

You know what really grinds my gears of war about DIY?

How it just eats in to your time

I've spent the entire evening now ordering gooseberry fool, for doing more time consuming gooseberry fool, which is going to eat yet more of my evenings.

Then you get "How long will this take?" and despite not being at all sure you get forced into putting a numerical value to it then something goes wrong and it wouldn't be an issue if you'd just been honest with the time despite you being honest and saying you didn't know but that wasn't good enough. That's my favourite part of DIY!

[Victor Mildew]

How long will this stairwell take?

Um, I should be done by 2 at the latest.

NOW IT'S 11PM HAHA GOODBYE WEEKEND YOU DIDN'T GET TO DO ANYTHING OF ANY FUN

[Jenuall]

Once that was down my afternoon was basically filling, sanding and then re-painting the wall to make it look decent enough whilst we decide what tiles we want to put up there. I got a bit over-keen on trying to get the surface perfectly smooth after filling the holes so probably spent about 5 times as long on that than I needed to, especially as it will all be covered in tiles soon any way!

I basically lost my job as a gallery tech being slow like that, obsessing over smoothness of walls, but yeah if you're going to cover it up anyway

My defense (to my own sanity more than anything!) is that I'm fairly confident that my wife is going to spend ages picking tiles to go in the wall so we probably are going to be looking at the wall for a while so I'd rather it was smooth!

[Green Gecko]

To be fair for tiling smoothness is important, or it's an exponential effect when you add adhesive, grout and consider movement of the tiles. Greater surface area from smoothness equals better adhesion. Or you get corners of tiles slightly raised and things like that when the wall is uneven, although using the right amount adhesive should level it out.

[Victor Mildew]

I'm about to cut the top off and flatten a full and half newel post in preparation for gluing a flat top on

Went and bought all the paint etc we need to attack the upstairs. Amazing how quickly you can spend a few hundred pounds.

[Green Gecko]

Paint is a killer. But don't use gooseberry fool paint. Look for reduction on some trade brands at Screwfix, for example I picked up some Valspar white gloss for a couple of quid off last time as I built an understairs cupboard that needs a gloss coat on my carpentry. (Which I still haven't done, it's all bare ) Just buy whatever you can find a fair price and the square meterage you actually need.

Screwfix No Nonense brand is pretty good value.

Don't use homebase etc. emulsions unless you want to repaint patches every other year.

[Victor Mildew]

Oh yeah, l learned the hard way about cheap paint years ago. Thought I'd been clever by buying a swimming pool quantity of white paint for about £5 back when I lived on my own. That crap took 4 coats to even look like it was on the walls, and in the end I just went and spent ther money on some quality dulux stuff.

[Drumstick]

There isn't much I hate more than DIY. I don't like that it takes so much time, I don't like that I'm crap at it, and I don't take a single shred of enjoyment from any of it.

Thus I pay someone to do it for me.

[Victor Mildew]

I hate it too. Such a waste of time. It's why we paid someone to do our an suite - it needed doing properly and to a high standard, so for me to do that myself would have probably taken 6 months I reckon. Walls came out, the lot.

Put the new newel caps on last night and re-glued the ballustrade bit. Had bungee chords all over it to ensure tension in the correct directions, it looks like BTK has been at it.

[Victor Mildew]

Oh look I finished painting at 10 and the entire evening has gone

Good thing I'm not going in to a fuckload of the most boring work of all time tomorrow, otherwise I'd really rue losing my precious evening

The painting I've done looks strawberry floating great though

[justlexi]

I have finished a couple of newborn yarn shoes for my little girl.

[Mommy]

My next diy project is a Cinema room at the top of my garden.
This should be fun...

[Victor Mildew]

I'm so sick of moving gooseberry fool from room to room for painting in stages, all becuase gloss is such a banana split and takes so long to dry.

Living like students at the moment, bed dismantled and stored, so we've got a mattress on the floor which we keep having to move from room to room