Be Excellent To Each Other

The bottles that fit in that wine rack must be HUGE.

Mmmmm wiiiine

Ceilings usually are. They’re notoriously difficult to get level. Also, those noggins look quite far apart

600 centers! And 1200 dwangs, it's only getting plasterboard.
This ceilings the underneath of a tiered balcony so has about 7 different planes where it goes round the corner!

Behold the high-tech "hold the skirting in place while the glue dries" tool.

Reminds me a bit of the high tech "hold the windscreen in place while the silicone goes off" tool.

That looks like a pretty straight piece of wall. I had to screw all my skirting boards in. There was no way the glue was going to hold on one end when the other was about 3cms away from the wall.

Nail gun, ftw

Some actual DIY! Scraped off the old wallpaper and varnished the new skirting.

Tomorrow's job is sealing the new plaster.

Managed to get our first room 'done' last weekend. Everything is going to be done to a usable standard to be done properly in a couple of years.

Are you doing a mist coat?

Well done. Ad hoc solutions to stuff like that is always the best. What glue did you use?

That's what I'm doing, yes.

Same shit I stuck the mirror up with. You never know.

Window frames! About 3.5 meters long. We fucked up the measurements so the end ones are 15mm wider than the rest. If I hadn't told you, you wouldn't have noticed.

Kitchens near done. Not really looking forward to taping and filling. Much YouTube already watched in that subject

Fake wood store nearly there too. Seems like a frivolity but it's the details that make the difference and it's actually turned out to be really expensive and time consuming.

Is your fake wood storage made by storing loads of bits of real wood? If so, I think I’ve spotted the issue

Looks great, though. What a project!

Yes.

Though all the logs are 3" long and glued to a bit of OSB rendering them USELESS

That fake wood store is amazing. But...why?

It's to look pretty so the customers feel all warm and cosy and say "look at the beautiful decor"

It's not dystopia yet Mr. Utilitarian.

Why not real wood storage?

If they’re 15mm wider at both ends, it looks symmetrical and intentional, so only you (and we) will know.

Takes up 3x more space. And real doesn't look as nice as fake.

Quote "your windows are wonky" for a 10% discount!

Real wood store doesn't look as nice as fake wood store made with real wood. Got it.

I now have a pile of 100+ reclaimed bricks (Pre-war common, brick fans) to clean up over the coming weekends.

Are you going to build a fake brick wall?

It'll look 60% nicer...

I’d just like to say, at this juncture, that wallpaper stripping can get tae feck.

Almost, it's for my fake brick store.

Yep. What's the best way of getting the wall smooth so I don't have to repaper over the top? I'd rather just paint but it's all a bit ragged.

Plaster

We've just had the bottom half replastered, I'm not getting the top half done too. I just need to get the rest of the lining paper off. It's very stubborn.

Score the paper carefully, soak with soapy water, let it dry, repeat, repeat, keep repeating until it comes off with a scraper.

If you really can't be arsed, pay a pro

With all the money I have

I'll try this, thanks!

Pay a... cheap pro?

If there's lining paper up, it's likely that someone decided that the wall underneath isn't in great nick and needed lining. Get the lining paper off and you'll be in the same situation, either needing to plaster or put up more lining paper.

The problem is on one wall some of the lining has already come off so it all needs to come off. On the others it's fine so I'll leave it.

Oh sure - I just mean that there's limited point taking it off carefully because the wall underneath is probably a shitshow.

Yep, my walls were like this and I really went to town with a sander on them but when it was all said and done, you could still see uneven bits.

Lining paper is the best bet I reckon.

I prefer to think ‘rustic’ rather than ‘ragged.’

My son moved back home after splitting with his wife a couple of years ago and is ensconced in the small bed room. He didn’t have a huge amount of stuff to bring, but he did have a couple of hundred DVDs. After he’d been here a while, he put up two shelves that ran the full length of the room, but didn’t consult me about it. When I saw what he’d done I had my doubts about the shelves staying up; the brackets he used were too small and too few, and the shelves were bellying between them brackets.

Sure enough, one night the bottom one fell down and showered him in DVDs. I then saw that the screws he’d used were wayyyy too short. I really thought he knew better, as he’s done a lot of DIY, but his head was all over the place when he installed them, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He attempted to fix it, but it came down again a few weeks later, and the top one then came down too.

He’s away on holiday for a couple of weeks so Mrs. W said ‘we’ should sort out the wall, not least because there are a couple of patches of mold that needed investigating, although I was pretty sure they were cause by condensation rather than anything more serious, hence the paper stripping today, as I am also off work for a few days.

So, the paper’s off, the rawl plugs are out and all of the holes are filled, except one that was the root of the initial failure and can’t be filled in one session and I’ve run out of filler anyway. There was no mold under the paper, so I think I was right about the condensation.

The wall IS a bit rustic, but as it’s only the small bedroom I’m not going to paper the wall, just paint it.

Decorating is one thing for which I don’t begrudge paying, as I pretty much hate every minute I spend on it, BUT I also dislike having tradesmen in the house, so I bit the bullet and got on with it. He can always paint a Duckula mural on it, like he did in the hall of his own house when he first moved in. It was jolly good really, if you like that sort of thing.

WTF am I doing quoting meself?

is what I did, but I still didn’t enjoy it.

Or get a wallpaper steamer. They cost about £35

Oh yeah, a wallpaper steamer. I borrowed one off a neighbour when I moved in about 10 years ago.

I've still got it.

Yup, I generally throw them out after use, or give them away, as I know I won’t use it again for a decade. I think I might actually have one at the moment.

Get the kettle on