Be Excellent To Each Other

We finally got round to hanging my TV from the bedroom wall on Saturday. Woo! Despite the bracket kit coming with just about every type of bolt known to man, we still had to go out and buy some long ones because there's a good 2 inches of plaster on the exterior wall*.

Annoyingly, while the wall part of the bracket was dead on by the built-in spirit level, the telly is 1-2 degrees off. Just enough to bug me.

Still, at least it only looks a bit like it's pulling away from the wall.

* This gives us confidence to try the speakers again, the 'um, how have we hit mortar with all 5 of these holes?' question having made us walk away slowly last time.

I'm having a carpet fitted on Saturday and before then, I've got to put down the carpet grip.

I have some but it's a concrete floor. The grip comes with nails pre installed but I reckon I'm going to break a load getting them into the concrete floor... This could be irritating.

I also have to fit the bit that goes inbetween my dining room and the hall. Having to do things on the evenings is rubbish.

Carpet fitters should do that for you, surely? I've never fitted my own gripper rods.

You give the orders, Davpaz does the doing:


Mod enforcement team, yesterday.

It's my way of saving money. The carpet sitters charge about 5 quid a metre for the gripper. I can buy the whole rooms gripper for about a tenner and fit it myself. I did the same in our bedroom but that was a wooden floor and therefore easier to nail them down.

And yes... it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I guess you could drill about a hundred holes and use plugs and screws, but I bet the fitter would just clean the concrete off and use No More Nails or something.

I've always had that sort if thing free with the fitting, and the door strips.

As long as the floor's not too old you should be alright, concrete's easy enough but older floors tend to have broken off pins stuck in them which makes it a total nightmare. Might be an idea to acquire a handful of long panel pins just in case.

Yeah, what Wullie said. If you're really concerned, get some masonry nails. Or a paslode gun, they're more fun

I'm going to give it a go tonight by hammering the fuck out the nails.

The floor has been down since the 1950's so wish me luck!

Kneepads!

Use kneepads. You'll thank me later

Word, bro' That's one hip floor.

I learnt this lesson while fitting a laminate floor in my dining room.

For those of you concerned... and I know there was a few, I managed to nail the carpet grip in.

It was a piece of cake! Wullie was right!

Yay!

I want you to come and do DIY for me.

I would pay to watch. Also... I might help.

Blaaaaady hell that took a while


But now the arty question... what colour to paint the walls?

Note to self: If your not sure about the condition of the underlying plaster, hack it off rather than feck about...

Buying a kitchen today. Focus is closing down and they have a pretty good sale on - getting this one: http://www.easier.com/87725-focus-diy-s ... units.html

Are you still working on that house, Kal?

I've been taking a break from it. But, it's at the stage where it mostly just needs interior decorating, so I should really get on with it and get it sold before the house selling season is over. Hence, kitchen.
I got quite a nice set of units on Freecycle, but not quite enough to do the job properly and I wasn't able to get matching ones, so buying an all new one seems sensible.

I wish I'd got pics of the house before/during/after...I got some of the rooms but the kitchen would have been one of the best I think. Oh well! I'll have to dig out the ones I do have so you can see how awesome my skillz are

Nice.

Kitchen: the beginnening.

is that unit level?

Also, working backwards...

Getting there. Will buy worktops and some sort of floor covering tomorrow.

Sink, oven, hob and washing machine all courtesy of freecycle.

We bought our house last year from a builder. He was a really nice guy and was very highly spoken off by other people on the street that he had done work for.
In his own house he was a nightmare, the heating was mess, the kitchen looked ok at first glance and mostly was aside from things like the kitchen sink, this had been dropped into the hole in the worktop, no silicon and no fixings, unless you count screws and bits of wire.

For DIY I know my limits so I paid my brothers father in law to work in the house for a week and put things right. He is a godsend and worth his weight in gold as he is good at everything.

He told me never to try to silicon seal my bath again as it took him longer to clean my last attempt off the taps and bath that it did to seal my bathroom.

Worktops in, it's starting to look more like a kitchen now. Still loads to do


What colour tiles, people?

how old is the house?

About 150 or so.
edit: I mean wall tiles above the worktop, the floor is probably going to have to have vinyl for various reasons.

yeah, I guessed. What is the budget? If I remember correctly you are doing this up to sell, correct? Ifd so go for relatively plain tiles and then get a colourful splashback. Eg, when we did up our kitchen we used the currently in place grey/blue tiles, then bought a blue splashback from hereLike so:



Given the colours of the kitchen, maybe go for a green or a red splashback with lighter tiles of a similar hue.

Super kitchen
Thanks Bobby. Yes, I think you're right, neutral tiles, possibly plain white. I hadn't considered a coloured thing behind the cooker but that's a great idea. Perhaps terracotta-ish would work here.

Hmm, so it's just glass.. I have glass. I could cut a piece the right size, paint the back of it with gloss in the right colour, and screw it to the wall. For £0.. Hmm.

Due to the shitty weather over the weekend I got roped into repainting the feature wall of the lounge a lovely soft Duck Egg blue. Because it looked so nice and I had enough left over I did the lower half of the hall, stairs and landing 'below the wooden rail' in it too.

Crown paint covers very well, btw as I was painting over suede effect paint.

I'd have thought dog egg would be more your colour, Z.

It would clash with my garden.

kalmar, Bobbyaro:

1 - Where did you get your kitchen units from?
2 - How did you sort out the kitchen tops? Cutting them out and so on.

@ Kalmar, it is just glass, but it has a BS mark on it, probably required heat proofing.
@ IAW, B&Q. they were there IT range, they are pretty cheap, but it shows, not so much in the finished product, but the putting it together. It is really fiddly and annoying, they haven't drilled any holes, the material and screws provided are poor quality so can break, etc.
If you have space and are replacing the worktops I would recommend Ikea stuff, it is a bit cheaper, and is better quality, however, there are some strange sizes with their worktops and iirc, their cupboards fit all the way to the wall, making piping behind diffficult.
wrt the tops, as you may have guessed, I didn't replace them, they were already in situ and we just removed the cupboards from underneath. Made life cheaper and easier.

1) Mine are from Focus. They still have them, at something like 70% off the original price. This is actually the correct price though as they are not brilliant quality.

2) Yes, well.
I use a circular saw to cut them to length. If you don't have any corners to deal with, that's possibly all you need - just cut it off and glue the supplied laminate piece to the exposed end.
If you do have a corner, it's a bit trickier because obviously one edge has a curved moulding and the other is flat. The cheap option is to use a "joining strip" which is a bit of metal trim to fill in the gap. It looks a bit as though stuff could get trapped in it
The "correct" way is to use a router, with a special kitchen worktop jig and appropriate cutter bit. Then you mitre into one worktop, and make a matching cut on the one that will plug into it. You can probably see that on my photo. On the underside you recess two slots, which clamping bolts fit into, to pull the surfaces together very tightly. You also use a biscuit joint to align it, and a bit of silicone. Once this is done (it isn't on mine yet, so you can see the join line) it should be pretty much invisible as well as waterproof.

If you find a local supplier for worktops for a few quid per corner they'll cut them to size with really nice joins and cutouts routed in the underside with some bolts to hold them together. Also get some matching upstands and save yourself the faff of tiling.

Oooh, shiny.

I like the upstand idea. Thank you!

Actually I just want your whole kitchen.

Is that your kitchen Mark? Looks like it was nicked from a catalogue awesome!

oh, and if you do get a kitchen from elsewhere, and it doesn't include handles, again, get them from ikea. ~ 1/4 of the price of B&Q.

In case someone didn't know, Focus is going out of business and they stuff they have left is cheap.
We got a six-seat, £400 outside dining table, umbrella and chairs for £160.

Bargain thread?

Already did it, I think.

Good.

Did it again.

Even better.

Replaced windows yesterday, the ones on the front of the house - did the others last year (yes, this is dragging on a bit).
Had to use plastic for these too, as standard size wooden ones wouldn't fit, and custom size is very expensive and takes months

Wasn't too difficult in the end.