Be Excellent To Each Other

Might paint my main office wall this shade of grey then make a desk out of two grey drawer units and a sheet of board and paint the board this shade of orange. Other walls would be a much lighter shade of grey or, if that's too cold (the room is north facing), something a little bit putty-coloured and warmer.

Dulux do a Tablet\Phone app that lets you choose a color and then see what it looks like on your walls

Found it useful when we were deciding what color to paint the new kitchen

Or you can go here and upload pictures of your space and do the same thing

https://www.visualizecolor.com/dulux#/

They do but the desk doesn't exist yet and also the app isn't very good. It struggles to pick out wall corners so has a habit of painting the whole surface instead of just one wall. Plus it doesn't show how the reflected light changes anyway. I think this is one case where old fashioned (ie tester pots) wins.

Very true, we ended up with a color called Rock Salt, as part of the works a wall came out between the kitchen and dining area, so I painted that with around 5 testers as well as using the app.

Found the app to be useful though, as aside from the visual side, it shows you contrasting and designer colors that go with the paint color you are looking at, many of those suggestions went on the wall as testers.

The suggestions from the app on colors also helped focus us on glass splashback colors, not finalized this yet, but when I go and pick up samples tomorrow at least the choices have been narrowed down!

Brilliant table idea. I’d pinch that idea if I didn’t have a table already.

Needs suit of armour and we are done.

A suit of armour would make it feel very Resident Evil mansion.

I like that grey. I am doing my main bedroom in a light grey (nickle), not sure if i want to a wall another colour or all grey and put some art up..

Boots on the shelf?!

Family back tomorrow at around 3pm and still some way off a finished kitchen

Have an army of people in today but so far no appliances back in and no worktops on.

Also, have 2 wall units missing as well as some poles for a pullout shelf,

Had to split the cleaner over 2 days as a result, so they are doing the house now and will do kitchen Thursday as well as the conservatory which has become the storage area for the fitters

The electrical wholesaler has taken the best part of a week to get my sockets delivered so will pick those up tomorrow, still within time but last minute.

So will have a few days of chaos when the family are back, my wife has been very good about it as she has sat the worst out in Dublin at her parents,

Major lesson learned is to order everything like hobs, sockets, lights etc weeks beforehand as long as you can store them

The whole thing won't be done until the end of the month, quartz worktops will probably go in around 15th September (the guy is on holiday this week) and the final thing is glass splashbacks which will be templated 17th and probably take a week or so before they are fitted.

Still will be worth it in the end as space and the new kitchen is great

He misheard someone telling him shelves look great with books on.

I like that Asfish and Gaywood think DIY is "pay people to do it for me".

Do It Oneself.

Did a shit load more in the garden this week. 6 tip runs of rubble and a tree. Ground levelled, stones sieved from soil, stone circle* down and grass seed sown then covered...

*bricks

Not entirely, once we're in the actual DIYing will begin. And if the dog wasn't sick we'd have been doing more at the new house on weekends over the last few weeks. But also: yes, I know my limits, which are not far away in DIY terms.

I've done a fair bit within my limits too, I ripped out most of the kitchen myself as well as protecting floors with hardboard which I laid myself

What isn't DIY is managing all of it, I've had to push them in directions nicely on a daily basis as I find builders get very focused on the task in hand and not on the bigger picture.

I started doing this when I noticed that they had blocked up and plastered a doorway in the kitchen, but on the other side the door is still there and nothing is blocked up

Its still like that!

As I was mocked for relying on 'Snappa for anything stuff that demands actual skill and care, I will now point out that for the new house I have:

a) fixed a broken sink overflow
b) changed the front door handle because its internal springs were broken and it was pissing me off
c) removed a Nest 'stat (from the old house, to take with us) without breaking the boiler

The overflow was amazing. It's a really cheap sink and the overflow flexible hose was just screwed to the overflow hole with a small washer in-between to form the seal. Except the washer was hopelessly malformed, the seal was non-existant, and there was clear daylight shining through -- the old owners must have just lived with the fact that every time the sink got too full it pissed water all over the inside of their kitchen cupboard. Astounds me what some people will put up with to avoid a ten minute job.

Fitted this with my bro for Mrs JC Sr this morning.



You don't even need rawl plugs any more. Just bolts that go directly into the brick. Amazing.

go on give us a clue.... which item I am guessing door

Yeah man the front door. She had an oak one (that looked very similar) but the frame was literally 3/4" out all the way around and they solved it by filling the void with putty. Which dried, and cracked. So it leaked cold air like crazy.

Shame, because it was a beautiful door (even if it needed maintenance every year or so) but it was so cold in the porch and the lavvy in there that it needed doing. We did her shed door with a PVC jobby a couple of months back now, so she's all sorted.

Wood burners. Any "watch out for this!" things?

Fire

Mske sure the chimney has been swept. I got dime decent glives too. Will find the link in a min.

Edit: PORTWEST WOODBURNER GLOVES HIGH TEMPERATURE STOVE LONG LINED WELDERS GAUNTLETS LOG FIRE https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MRDF9K0/ ... MBbB9T8APG

Ffs. Since my phone updated ive lost autocorrect.

"They" will tell you that you can't burn any old shit on them, don't listen, burn what you like.

But wait until its gone dark so they cant see the smoke.

Just don't live downwind of some stupid cunt who burns any old shit in their fucking log burner. I don't know what the the house down the road are putting in theirs. Fortunately we only have to inhale whatever shite it is when it's an easterly which isn't usual.

The inedible bits of the bodies.

Multi fuel give you the option of using coal too. Check out the output, ours is 5kw and is plenty for a large room, heard of people going for 10kw and finding the heat is oppressive.

Don't burn any plywood/mdf or wood that's not properly dried. Can fuck up your flue.

Tall ceiling? Get a stove fan too. Helps to warm the room up evenly/quicker.

These are brilliant for cleaning the glass: https://www.amazon.co.uk/TROLLULL-WOODB ... B00YYUFSVI

Oh! and I can recommend the excellent installers who did ours, based in Liverpool too! Did everything, ripped out old gas fire, removed old feeds from a back-boiler that was once there, capped chimney, installed flue, stove, hearth, oak beam and plastered too.

Oh. Yes please

Thank you

I'm aching and sore from labouring for my brother this weekend, back garden and out buildings are getting there now though.

Did some pointing on the top of my garage too! It looks awful but will do the job and is very high up.

Probably another couple of tip runs of rubble/tiles/mud/old brackets once all the work is done...

It's these guys: https://www.facebook.com/multifuelstoveinstallers/

Contact them through sinister Facebook.

Noticed last year our kitchen was cold. Realised it was the extractor hood, but we'd just moved in. Did a bodge job with tin foil and card board to stop the draft and then promptly forgot about it.

It is getting cooler again, so realised it was still on my to do list.

Took off the tube, it is just a gaping hole in the wall!

How normal is the completed unfinished hole? I would have thought a conduit of some sort would be a good idea?

Even with a baffle in place, the insulation is still exposed.

You need a tube of some description. Usually it’s 4” flex hose or even standard SVP (soil vent pipe/drain pipe). This is to prevent all the steam and moisture that the hood is extracting being condensed and turned into moisture that will seep into the brickwork and cause damage. Personally, I’d go flexi in case the hole isn’t regular enough to get svp through.

On a similar note, I noticed the other day that our conservatory was about 1-2cm away from the wall in places, letting in a fuckton of cold air. I've filled the gap with foam shit for now but it wouldn't surprise me (given the standard of work elsewhere in the house) if it hasn't been built properly or something

Nearly sorted, just need to get an in-line flow shutter. But certainly better!

Your hood extractor is in an actual cupboard, that's a bit weird.
Put a shelf in it, and you could put your tomato ketchup and eggs in there too.

Not what I was going for, but sure.

Title

Yeah, it's a bit weird. I'm going to do the kitchen as it is completely old lady, but we've been doing other stuff this year.

Here we are. It took them 2 days to fit it.

Once again, blurring the lines of DIY. Looks nice though! I bet it's warm.

Looks nice, I hope that flue goes right to the top and not just past the register plate!

Nice!

We have spent the weekend trying to clear up the garden. Only a couple of 'mid job' before today photos unfortunately.

Great work Jazzy!

We've done some gardening this weekend with help from my folks. It's been in a state of neglect for a long time even before we moved in, so we dug up some flowerbeds today, planted some plants and bulbs, and I took down an ugly wire fence that I assume was there to keep their massive dog in.

Have some incorrectly aligned pics.