Be Excellent To Each Other

I pressure-washed 3 years of crap off my decking yesterday. Does that count as DIY?

Oh.

Stupid no-fun ceiling.

Thanks, I will take myself off to the local hardware store and grab me a bunch.

Ooooh, I'll stop you right there before you embarrass yourself. When you go to the hardware store you need to ask for a "skettle" of plasterboard rawlplugs. The collective noun is not a "bunch". You'll thank me when the man behind the counter gives you a "you're in our manly man club" nod when you ask for them.

Get yourself a bunch of tartan paint whilst you're there.

And a long weight.

And some white LEDs.

DOH THEY ACTUALLY HAVE THOSE NOW.

Ooh, get me a left handed screwdriver, would ya?

I'm going to make all those things, make them really expensive and then sit back and watch the cash roll in as clueless Saturday boys get sent off for a joke and then buy 5 grand glass hammers on the company account.

Was it someone on here who knew someone who once got sent on one of those missions on his first day, and just went home and came back in the next day telling them he'd spent hours wandering around hardware stores to no avail?

We knew when we bought this house that it needed some serious redecorating, a while back we finally tackled it head on and I decided to learn how to plaster. Started with the office/third bedroom as its smallest.

Before (but after wallpaper removal)


After much destructioning


Boarded!


Not one but three layers of nasty lino!


Man mess!


Plastering time




Painted


Room still needs to be finished, but for now its being used as storage while we do the other rooms.

This weekend, the big living room!

Hey, that's good plastering.
I'm crap at it, and would have just boarded the lot, so kudos.

Okay, you win this round...

Plastering and rendering are fucking devil's work, which is presumably why the tradesmen charge so bloody much. I may go on a course over the summer.

That orange, diamond pattern lino is really quite something. Also, good plastering!


* considers kidnapping emoose and making him do our hall *

Thanks, it took a long time getting the hang of it.

Luckily most of the walls were in decent nick and could just be skimmed, one wall needed to be taken back to the brick and completely redone though.



I could have just boarded it, but did it all in plaster so that I could have some practice.

Ceiling is going to be a challenge in the living room, its much larger and I'm not sure I can get it all covered before the plaster starts to set...

Yeah I'm still in a dilemma about trying to plaster my (cracked to hell) livingroom ceiling or just throw some 9mm PB at it.

I'd try and secure it on, Kalmar. PB isn't sticky.

I tried to find a local course but gave up, spent a long time on forums asking questions and picking up tips (PVA the walls, buy an expensive trowel & a feather edge...) .In the end I just went for it and used one wall to practice on.

There's def a a knack to it, but its not the witchcraft its made out to be.
Main thing is to work fast and get the whole wall covered, worse thing is to spend ages getting one corner perfect...by which time the plaster will have gone off and you'll not be able to get the rest of it covered.

Second coat can fix the minor defects.

Hmm if the existing plaster is cracked it may just crack again if you skim it. Possibly the existing boards aren't screwed down(up!) well enough.

Ceiling was much harder than the walls to plaster, bigger area and harder to move around. I'd love to have ago with some stilts but I suspect I'd just trip and break my neck!

I want to learn to do this, the only one I can find around here involves Saturdays over the summer. Hmm.

Some good advice there though, actually doing something and making mistakes is by far the best way to learn.

Does finally hanging Evil Blinds of Doom class as DIY? If so, I totally did some DIY yesterday and I'm quite proud of myself

Yes it does, blinds be stupids! even more stupids with concrete lintel added to the equation



In other news the skip was delivered and plastering operation 2 is under way.
Worryingly we half filled the skip with just the ordinary junk we had lying around...

Prepare yourselves to be astounded.....

This is Ramsea's 'workstation', it's in the living room in our house, I do not know how or why I haven't divorced him before now. (Yes, it always looks something like this, sometimes worse, sometimes the chair doesn't have stuff all over it...)





This is his workstation after I had rebuilt it. He helped put it on the wall after spending all day fannying around with his bum chums.

I bet he could find stuff before you did that.

Yeah, where's the WD-40 flis?

MAGIC FIXING LIQUID!

I also (re)hung my blinds yesterday. I did it with string

I can fix literally anything with string. My flat is actually made from string.

The windows aren't very good, mind.

Yarn pirates request a string thread.

Does anyone want to tank behind the tiles in my bathroom and then re fix the same tiles, so that I don't have a damp cupboard behind the shower, then repaint that damp cupboard, for frees please?

Just realised today that the previously slightly damp peeled paint is now proper gummy after 6 months and is going to get pulled up on any half decent survey if we ever get an offer :-(

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?