Show us yer house and house-related meddlings
- Thread starter mauvais
- Start date
mauvais
on reddit or something
Another day, another step forward.
I did cart it downstairs, outside, and pressure washed all the goo off. Plus a lot of chipping away at it with a scraper/chisel type thing. Now it needs going over with wire wool, which I need to order, and then blackening with grate polish.
Any tips on what kind of wire wool? I have a little bit of 0000 from something else but it's slow going.
I did cart it downstairs, outside, and pressure washed all the goo off. Plus a lot of chipping away at it with a scraper/chisel type thing. Now it needs going over with wire wool, which I need to order, and then blackening with grate polish.
Any tips on what kind of wire wool? I have a little bit of 0000 from something else but it's slow going.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Personally I would use a fine grade to avoid damaging it. It's looking amazing.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
I finally hung some pictures up in the living room.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Obtained from a degreeshow at the Edinburgh School of Art at least 15 years ago, the illustration course always had the best stuff. The small picture was a free postcard, the big print cost me a tenner.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
First picture I bought when I left home at 18. I have some more Monet pictures around the house.I like the irises.
Oh wow that’s so beautiful equationgirl you have a great eye, if I tried to do that I just know I couldn’t.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Thanks Edie that means a lot. Honestly it's just pictures I've collected over the years.
The photos of old-fashioned women I found in a charity shop and thought it was sad they got put out. All of them are dressed up and obviously going out somewhere special.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
I need decking.
That’s both a confession of my shortcomings and an acknowledgement of my requirement to purchase a shit load of wooden planks and make good use of the lockdown time by ripping up the old deck outside and screwing down a new one. Never having done this, I thought I’d ask some advice.
First up, which boards to buy? Pressure treated seems like a good idea for longevity, and 28mm x 120mm seems like a good size.
But ribbed or flat? Pics below from a website. Ribbed is £1.60 per metre and flat is just about £1.10/m, so a fair difference with 32 square metres to cover.
The ribbed is probably nicer to walk on, but do those grooves hold rainwater longer and make it rot sooner? Any other factors to consider?
That’s both a confession of my shortcomings and an acknowledgement of my requirement to purchase a shit load of wooden planks and make good use of the lockdown time by ripping up the old deck outside and screwing down a new one. Never having done this, I thought I’d ask some advice.
First up, which boards to buy? Pressure treated seems like a good idea for longevity, and 28mm x 120mm seems like a good size.
But ribbed or flat? Pics below from a website. Ribbed is £1.60 per metre and flat is just about £1.10/m, so a fair difference with 32 square metres to cover.
The ribbed is probably nicer to walk on, but do those grooves hold rainwater longer and make it rot sooner? Any other factors to consider?
purenarcotic
Conveniently Pocket Sized
Cloo
Banana for scale
equationgirl - what shade of blue is that in the lounge? I'd like to try something like that in our front room - I'm hoping to order sample pots but from what I can see a lot of paint sites are selling out because everyone else is getting test colours while on lockdown!
As soon as we might be able to have some workmen in the house (which I would hope will be allowed in earlier stages of de-lockdown for non-shielded homes) I think I might just suggest we get the hell of with that roon.
As soon as we might be able to have some workmen in the house (which I would hope will be allowed in earlier stages of de-lockdown for non-shielded homes) I think I might just suggest we get the hell of with that roon.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
It's a B&Q Valspar colour called 'cry me a river'. I don't know if it's still available.
Kiln- (or air-, depending on species) dried hardwood is the more hardwearing and imo looks much better than the softwood stuff.
Decking should be laid with the ribbed side down; the ribbing is not designed as an anti-slip measure, it’s designed to increase the airflow and prevent rotting underneath. It doesn‘t really help with water run off either, unless you have it installed on a fall and in short lengths.
Use decking screws and hidden fixings if budget allows.
moose
like some cat from Japan
A million Sunday DIYers just shrieked 'WTF?!?!?!?'
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Decking, I would go with the composite stuff rather than timber because unless it's somewhere reliably sunny and dry (ie hardly anywhere in the UK) wood just inevitably goes rotten and or gets algae etc all over it and turns into a slippery nightmare. Which is why people are forever ripping up decking.
You can’t stain the pretreated (green) stuff, and it will always look like pretreated timber. It’s also going to warp and split more than a hardwood.
If you want a deck that retains a warm timber colour you’ve got to oil it and then commit to a serious maintenance regime. Or go for a composite which will always look like plastic.
bimble
floofy
Deck is more of a 'that would be really nice' thing and can wait, probably years.
My immediate plan is to fix the (wooden casement) windows so that they open and close, most of them don't open at all and once you have shoved them open won't close again. Some buffoon painted them shut (I mean gloss painted them from outside without ever dealing with the warped insides of the frames).
Has anyone done this before? I'm worried about how to get it so that I have sanded the right amount to allow for undercoat and paint and still be able to open and close the windows but without overdoing it and having a draughty house.
My immediate plan is to fix the (wooden casement) windows so that they open and close, most of them don't open at all and once you have shoved them open won't close again. Some buffoon painted them shut (I mean gloss painted them from outside without ever dealing with the warped insides of the frames).
Has anyone done this before? I'm worried about how to get it so that I have sanded the right amount to allow for undercoat and paint and still be able to open and close the windows but without overdoing it and having a draughty house.
Sounds like specialist work if they’re badly warped as they’ll need to be cut and spliced to fit properly. You could sand them down and install some draughtproofing seals yourself but ime window restoration is as much art as science and an experienced eye is required to get it right.
sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
Decking is one thing I need to do too, we have stairs and a platform outside the back door down to the garden and most of it needs replacing. It’s got green pressure treated boards in it at the moment. How difficult is the hardwood to work with?. Is it much more expensive?
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Where I am, the hardwood options are literally 8 times the price of the standard pressure treated softwood boards, so nice as it might be, it’s not feasible for me. There is an intermediate option of Siberian Larch, which is a softwood which they reckon is good for 50 years lifespan and looks pretty nice. That is getting on for four times the price of the pressure treated softwood, so again probably not gonna happen.
By hidden fixings, you mean this kind of thing? Looks like it screws to the back side of the boards and then you put the screws through the gaps? Nice idea, but doesn’t it promote rotting of the underside of the boards by allowing water to stay trapped between the plastic bar and the wood? Surely the screws to hold the plastic bars on have to be really short so they don’t come through the top side of the decking boards?
The plastic stuff leaves me cold tbh... It might last forever, but I guess the frame it gets screwed to needs replacing eventually anyway.
One more Q for anyone who knows - how easy is it to put in these predrilled plinths and bearers for making the support frame of a deck? Do you dig the hole just with a spade, or is a pick axe required? And from what I understand, you dig deeper than the plinth height and line the hole with gravel for the plinth to sit on top of?
Siberian Larch would be a good option. Cedar is another softwood used for decking so might be worth a try depending on where you are.
I haven’t used those fixings but there are dozens of varieties. Some need a special tool, others just a hammer. I don’t know of any designed for softwood though. Speak to the timber supplier and see what they recommend would be best.
For the plinths you could hire an auger, a post hole digger or just use a spade. As long as the timber is clear of the ground and any pooled water once you’ve backfilled it will be fine.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
The composite stuff that is brown colour and tries to look like timber looks fairly horrible but I think it can look ok if it's a dark grey colour and isn't pretending to look like timber. This is subjective of course.
The problem is that softwood timber is simply the wrong material for the job. People want something that is impossible: a deck with a natural timber look, without it being expensive. The choices are: have your softwood timber deck and watch it turn into something awful after 2 or 3 years, spend a lot more money on some kind of hardwood or specialist timber product, or do it in an affordable way but give up on a natural timber look. The DIY stores do a good trade on most people going for the first option.
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Thanks, I just found this tool for about £45 which allows you to insert the decking screws through the sides of the boards. Looks like a good option to me!
bimble
floofy
Is this just an unavoidable fact of life or if a person were to sand and treat it every summer with the right sort of oil stuff would that not mean it lasts much longer? I ask because cohabitee is now dead set on building a deck.
