The DIY/Doing up house Thread (aka My house is falling down)

We've got a toilet where the fixings are in a stupid hidden place as well. Just bought a new seat with hinges that apparently will never budge, but I'm putting off installing it as I know how much of a potential faff it's going to be.

Well some pallets are fine/easy to take apart but others are built like tanks, better bloody be worth it after all this, seemed like a fairly easy way to accumulate some free crappy wood but surprisingly labour intensive.

Pallets (and scaffold boards) are great for making furniture etc too. Made a BBQ stand out of two last year, looks alright. Just need to find the right tiles for the top, using old slate placemats at the moment!

Nice. If it appeals at all, the cost of a decent jointer/thicknesser would get you an excellent hand plane and some method of sharpening it.

Then you have an artisanal bin store and shoe rack.

Picked up some free 2x3's this morning, old studwork but I like old wood, still plenty strong for what I have in mind for it, gotta de-nail it but nothing too onerous mainly plasterboard nails, could have taken about 3 car loads but gotta be sensible, probably about £80 worth, love me some free wood. Gonna need to build a simple rack in the garage to store it and the rest I think.

Do you like wood, fred?

My kitchen ceiling is now finally Hued. 16 halogen undimmable spots each putting out 1600 lumens of bright white was a bit much. Thanks Prime day for finally making it marginally less unaffordable. Even at half price it was still £200 to do one room.

Once again I come to you to document my descent toward stereotype, a man of a certain age twatting about in a shed* to distract from the futility of existence & nihilistic angst.

Today we're building my cat a replacement breadbin. What do you mean, your cat doesn't have its own breadbin?






Ripped with a tracksaw because I really hate using tablesaws. And I don't own a tablesaw. Circular saw and a straight edge would do the job, albeit with more mess. Jigsaw too I guess but that'd be slow going and you're probably better off just having square edge staves. Tablesaw definitely best for this but if you take one thing away from this paragraph it's that I really really hate tablesaws.

* not remotely precise


Leg it



Christ, the legs. Hadn't planned in advance how to do this, figured I'd wing it. Rough original plan was to have a sort of triangle attached to each side, but that looked too clunky and like one of those bingo barrel spinners. Then thought of scribing a concave path into planks to match the bottom profile of the barrel but I couldn't scribe a template accurately enough and it looked too gappy. Then tried a sort of U shape, but with the tips of the U attaching direct to the staves it wasn't strong, and by the time I'd added enough bracing to make it so it looked too chunky.

So settled on this scissor action (giggity) design & while I'm happy with the look, figuring they look delicate while strong enough for seven kilos of orange fluff, getting them balanced to the right length without rocking was a pain. Straight-ish square legs are easy to balance, heavily angled, profiled, legs are far too much work. I think best would be a U design but with the upper bits of the U attached to the inside face of the sides, under the bed board, have them extend through cut outs in the relevant staves, and then fix the bottom of the U once the staves are in place and the bottom tips of the U are balanced.


Finish him!



I'll do a seperate post on finish one of these days, meanwhile first time trying liberon hardwax oil, and it was a fucking nightmare, I'll never use it again. Nice feel & finish achieved at the end, but christ was it a pain.

Oh, and the batons with black felt cushioning on the inside face are to support the bed, a 40cm x 30cm x 12mm plywood board.

Pretend there's a picture of a cat fast asleep in his new bed here


You'll note there's not a picture of a cat fast asleep in his new bed here. Cats are dicks.

Loved the minimatt saga above.

Has the cat slept in it yet? You've possibly forgotten that cats don't like change.



No luck for Dougs, by the sounds of his post. Not even like you can quickly nip out to B&Q at the moment either.

I was taught how to wire a plug in three different countries and I've blown the electrics in.... three different countries.

(and nah, cats still being dicks. I'll probably be forgiven in five or so years)

Same here to some degree. Decades of renting poorly maintained, damp shitholes mean that plasterboard walls crumble, badly aligned walls won't let a piece of furniture sit snugly in a corner, I can't even adjust the windows to get them sitting in the frame properly because the grub screws are missing. Gave up years ago now.

For you? Plenty. For us? Nothing but entertainment.

Redoing a path in front of the house used mainly by the postman. Fed up weeding it. Thought the weed proof membrane was knackered, but I think leaves and weeds have just formed a load of soil for more weeds to grow in.

My plan was to put the stones in a trug I've drilled holes into and pressure wash, but I've found I need an extra sieving and large crap removal stage. Also thought my leaf blower might move the stones but didn't realise there's several cm of soil/stones.

Going to take me all week....hopefully the postperson will appreciate it.

Not DIY but I did move in a new to me full sized fridge into my apartment yesterday. After it sat by back door for over a week.

I’d had to remove doors to fit it in the back of my truck as it’s got a camper top. It was sweltering yesterday and I burned my arms on the black finish as I put all three doors back on. PITA arse as I didn’t have a socket for the bolts and had to use a crescent wrench. Was putting last one in when I remembered I still had to get it inside the house. Through doors.

Took em all off again, borrowed neighbor’s appliance dolly, wheeled it round building into front door, doors back on, lovely cold working fridge