Be Excellent To Each Other

Yup, they're exactly what you want.

Plumbing: and upon that day, no fucks were given at all. Having already done all the pipework and shit I THEN tried to get the washing machine through the door. Door off, Top and door off machine and it still had to be smashed through the door frame removing the paint on both sides! Wheeeeee next, tumble drier.

Very neat. I like the bathroom colors.

need to finish the skirting

Also, how tattie is your chimney breast?

Don't know. In the room it is under wallpaper and I presume plaster. But given the botched job on the bathroom I should not be surprised if it needs redoing. Saying that, the urgency of action required if it might cause health damage has lessened of late

Next time, prise the door jamb off on one side

I thought about that, but wouldn't that be loaaaads more work? I'm not brilliant with wood...

Well, in light of the fact that the machine took the paint off both sides of the door frame, no.
To cut down work, run a sharp blade down the joining edge on both sides. Get a chisel in and prise it off gently, note where the nails are and place a block of wood over them to hammer it back into place. Should require minimal redecorating.

Cool, thanks got to get a tumble dryer in next so this may well be necessary

Diyin hard tonight, draughty doors no more and new (old) boiler in position.

And after 2 hours checking every outlet and appluance and replacing one socket later... the reason the RCD tripping on the kitchen ring was because some fucknugget had taken the mains twin and earth, spliced a connection box onto it and run a small transformer for cupboard lights straight from it. Happy with their work, they wrapped the whole thing up in electrical tape and left it sat on top of the cupboard. Now, muggins here has had to unfuck this, and will have to tidy it up sharpish. And, because that has been done that way, fuck knows what lurks beneath.. AND I wanted to watch The a walking Dead tonight.

Doing a load of work in my place this week, included was replacing all light switches and electric sockets. Not one socket had any earth wire on it. Also found one (that I plug a 10 socket extension for TV etc into) had been glued into place. Told the guy to leave it for fear of having to replace a plaster board wall.

After replacing all the lights the ring main wire is messed up so that's knocked out 4 other lights in the house

Saving grace is my brothers father in law is doing all the work and there is nothing he can't do, worth he weight in gold, so as long as problems happen before he leaves on Friday I should be ok.

Currently in the planning stage of doing a loft conversion. First meeting with building control this afternoon with all the schematics.

We converted our loft over the summer, 2 extra bedrooms and a shower room added. I hated it at times but the end result was so worth it and looking at photos now, it's so satisfying. We got professionals in to do the plumbing, electrics and skimming but we all the rest ourselves, including installing the staircase and all the plasterboarding.



Then, we built an extension with a dining room, en-suite and bedroom in. Same as upstairs, we did it all ourselves except the plastering, electrics and plumbing.

This was our kitchen on 25th November.



And then this was it by 19th December, we took a week off work from the 7th December. The plinths/cornice didn't arrive until the first week in January, which was annoying considering it was ordered in October. But it's all finished now!



Next, we have to tile the en-suite, hang a door and decorate the bedroom. It feels like it's never ending.

Did you do the brickwork / foundations yourself? That's pretty hardcore (pun!).

Mr. flis did the foundations. The ground is sandy/silt so nice, easy digging in a little machine and the excavations held themselves up well. He had to 'barrow in 4m3 of concrete in an afternoon by himself. I thought he'd be dead when I got home from work but he had my dinner on! No, I forgot about the blockwork! Mr. flis did all the mixing/loading out while someone else laid them.

Christ. That's some going.

Any photos of the finished loft conversion? I've been kinda tempted by that idea for our house (possibly hampered by the probable lack of room for a staircase)

Also you might be hampered if your roof trusses have a tie-beam (a beam that makes the bottom of a triangle, if you like), like mine

My loft has a massive beam right in the middle, around chest height. If I ever have my loft done, I think I'll just work around it.

Could build a "gaming table" around it?

Chainsaw. What's the worst that could happen?

In some instances, building regs don't require staircases and you can get away with a loft ladder if there's no space.

My lofts are only about 4 feet high, due to the design of the house.

I had a girlfriend that lived in an attic accessed by a ladder.

That's hardly insurmountable. I'll be replacing most of the existing trusses and having to put in 3 204mm section steels measuring 6.6m. 2 for the floor and one for the gable ends to support the roof and the dormer window we're putting in.

A diagram, you (don't) say? Why, of course!

Was she called Anne?

Fixed.

I'll see if I can get some later, I don't have any at the moment



Traditional cut roofs with purlins is the best case really but so, so many things get in the way these days, with the building regs being super amazing. We had to raise the roof covering to get enough insulation in, which we may have been able to get around had we not also had to increase the depth of the floor joists, which we tried to minimise by making wider instead of much higher. Ceiling joists are tiny compared to floor joists. We also had to move the door to the lounge and lower the level of the first floor landing to get the stairs in and be compliant with building regs.

It looks like the stairs have always been there now. The biggest (really minor) issue I have is the doors. They're quite low at their lowest point as they're to one side of the ridge but if we'd have centred them under the ridge and had a more open hallway/landing at the top, we wouldn't have got the shower room in.

Edited to add: I wanted a proper staircase, we could've had hit and miss steps or come up with something else so if space is really at a premium, there are ways around it.

It's not insurmountable, but it does make it (considerably) more expensive.

If space for stairs is a problem, a spiral staircase may suit you better.

A catapult to get you up and a fireman's pole to get back down.

Bring it up bring it up bring it up ring it up

You're right, it isn't cheap, but doing this mostly myself has reduced the cost by more than half from the original quotes. The value added to the house (yes, I know, London) is something in the magnitude of 10x the cost of doing the work — provided, of course, it doesn't go wildly over budget.

Or fall down

Is your council tax going to change?

Hmm, that I don't know. Not sure what the bands are, but even with the work done the house should still be comfortably under £2m, so hopefully not.

I see our council tax has gone up again by £50. It's £2,301 a year now

Councils have to claw back the cuts in funding somehow. Oh, like this...

Thought they were blocked by the government from doing increases?

My local council started charging £40 a year for garden waste bin collection, before you just bought it for a one off £35 payment.

I believe they've been allowed to increase by a small amount this year.

4% is the maximum each year I believe as long as 2% of that is spent on social care.

I'm having a 4% rise next year... But it'll still be half of what Grim... Pays.

One of the rooms down the street has had it done. As far as I can tell (from gawping through their upstairs window) the staircase was built by chopping the end off the master bedroom (stairs going up from where our bedroom door would be).

Same.

Very impressed by all the posts in this thread. Wish I was that creative.
Still, just paid a deposit for a new bathroom so hopefully by the summer I might have a toilet that flushes first time.

I initially parsed that as "I might have a toilet that flushes for the first time," which begged many, many questions.

Hey, it'll be indoors too!

Yeah, he likes olden days things so he just used to tip a bucket out of the window onto some passing urchins.

I have often thought if latrines would be more hygienic than the Turdises we use at events. Then I realise which private would always be detailed for that particular duty, and decide to stick with the devil we know.

You should promote yourself.