Barnboy

@ProDave How long have you had your worktop fitted and being used ?

If I went for oak I was going to oil it so thank you for the heads up.

I have a laser, it's been a god send all the way through the build, even last night for simply casting a line along the ceiling to mark out downlighters. We're not sure yet, we'd like granite, quartz or similar but the price is so much that we might end up going with oak.

Hi all, I'm going to hopefully be fitting my kitchen ro my barn conversion in the next month, the walls are skimmed plasterboard on timber studs, I've fixed ply behind the plasterboard where I'd worked out all the brackers/hangers should go. The kitchen units come pre built with the doors separate and I have a range cooker to go in. It runs along in a U shape along 3 wall before returning across with a breakfast bar. I'm just after and tips and tricks before I start to help me out along the way. Thanks

@Kelvin what did you rub down with, paper or scotch pad and what grade ? so far the fresh plaster doesnt look as polished as the 1st lot so hopefully the new emsion will work watered down as the instructions say, max 40%. I'm not sure what to do with the Original painted walls upstairs. They would take some work to scrape off as the paint has adhered, unlike the bathroom ceilings, just not 100% stuck on. Do I just hit them with a drywall sander and see if that's takes the paint off and either way leave them smooth for a re coat ?

We wiped everything down with a damp cloth at least a day before painting.

I think that the bathrooms are down to the Zinsser primer, I've spoken to a friendly painter who said he painted a pool house manybyears ago with it but used normal emulsion as a base/mist coat, he says that it still looks like new today. My main worry is the rest of the walls where only emulsion was used, I'm hoping that that is down to the, what should be good quality paint being too good for a mist coat but I'd like to try and work that out before the same problem occurs with the macpherson rather than the better stuff we used last time.

Everything was sanded with a scotch pad.

I've read through all the other posts about painting after plaster on here but I'm still not confident in what the process should be and where I've gone wrong with my 1st rooms. The plaster finish was quite shiny so we gave it a key up with some scotch brite type pads. We painted the bathroom ceilings after about 3 weeks last year with Zinsser bulls eyee 123 primer and Perma white. When I drilled the spotlights the edge of the paint chipped and you could pull it off in sheets back to the plaster, when the ceiling was chipped when tiling the same happened, we've now quite easily stripped the paint completely off with a glass scraper. The non bathroom walls were sprayed with 10% watered down emulsion as per the manufacturers instructions, we haven't put anything other than this coat on the walls so far. Masking tape of all varieties, including frog tape pull the paint off the walls and I'm worried that if I put the top coats on and come to stick some 3m picture hanging strips up any pictures will end up on the floor. I've now bought some Macpherson Eclipse emulsion to try when the next lot of plastering is done and as a base for the bathroom ceilings.

I've fitted a few 3amp, ( The small round pin style ) sockets in our lounge, where we are likely to want free standing lamps, these are wired back to their own switches in the main light switch bank allowing them to be conveniently turned on and off like a normal light would be.

I will be priming the underside and non visible edges and oiling/waxing the outward faces. The plasterer has shown me his own house with the same oak and he's done a beautiful job plastering around them. Hopefully he does the same to mine.

I dont know if this should be in here or the plastering topic so sorry if I'm in the wrong group. My plasterer wants my oak window sills fitted before plastering but I'm not sure if where they protrude into the room, as shown in my dodgy photo, (photo is of someone else's house that I took measurments from ) should I butt the ears up to the plasterboard or notch the plasterboard so that the sill board ears slip in the recess made and slide back to the stud work ?

Yes the Marmox is coarser and has a honeycomb surface to it, whereas the Jackoboard is fairly smooth with just a slight ripple where the mesh is below the surface. Now that I've primed them with the Eco Prim they're very gritty, you could now take the skin off of your knuckles on them. Thanks @Russell griffiths

@crispy_wafer those were my thoughts too but thought I'd just check. One thing for you if you've also used Jackoboard, I needed an extra layer of board to pack one wall out and swapped to Marmox as it comes in the thickness that I needed, I found that the difference between the 2 makes of board was really noticeable, Jackoboard is quite smooth and the cement layer breaks up more when cutting with a knife. My tiler has had me prime all of the Jackoboard with Mapei ecogrip primer as he says that he's done some testing with one of the local merchants and once tiled, adhesive and tile could be pulled from Jackoboard whereas pulling the tile frkm the Mamox and others broke the board away with the tile and adhesive. Now that I've down this I would recommend it if you've used Jackonboard and not tiled yet, I'm swapping to Marmox for anything I now have left to do.

I've used the correct Jackoboard bitumen type tape over all of the joints and screws in wet areas, the instructions say to scrim the joints outside of the wet areas, nothing is said about the screws outside of the wet areas but I thought that I'd read or heard of putting scrim tape over those screws too.

It's going to be tiled.

On the installation instructions for various tile backer boards it's says to tape any joints in non wet areas with scrim tape. Should I also put a square of scrim tape over each screw and washer or just leave them bare ?

Thanks @Tosh I'll drop it down to around the 1.5bar mark, I wasn't sure how much the heat of the curing screed would push the pressure up by and wasn't quite expecting as much as yours went up so thank you.

I've had my system sitting at 6 bar for 2 days now, should I leave it at this whilst the liquid screed gets poured, or decrease the pressure a little, and if I do decrease it what pressure do I leave it at ?

Perfect, thank you, I thought that the full pressure of the hose would have overwhelmed the filter.

@JohnMo what sort of pressure / flow were you putting through the ion filter ? I'm looking at filling and pressure testing my system later today and don't know what sort of flow the filter will work at before being overwhelmed. Should I fit it inline from the garden hose, (the hose can produce about 4.5bar when the borehole pump kicks in) or fill the system and then run the manifold pump and divert the flow through the ion filter ?

I'm just about to pressure rest my freshly laid ufh pipe, I've been searching for what pressure to run it at and the go to seems to be about 5/6 bar. I'll be setting the pressure straight through the manifold with a garden hose and a top up of compressed air. There won't be an expansion vessel fitted at this stage so what pressure should I leave the system under whilst the liquid screed is poured ? I dont want to leave it too high and then it rise too high with the heat effect of the concrete curing.

I've just finished laying my ufh heating pipes, I've done the same as mentioned above. I drilled a 25mm hole in the dwarf block beneath my studwork, fed a length of 25mm flexi electrical conduit through and then slid my pipe through. The pipe has metres measure markings on it so I read the length of the feed leg before cutting that length and a tad more extra from the remaining reel once the room had been laid, fed this through the return conduit and to the manifold. I still have 2 loops running through the utility doorway, if I'd have put all my loops through the doorway then they would have all been touching, if they'd have even fitted. I think it all looks neat and tidy and will be hidden in a week anyway once the screed is down.

I had the same thought about my utility room after hearing of a few friends who'd sprung leaks on their water heaters. I've fitted one of these Mcalpine waterless waste in to the floor, I've not tanked the room as it was a bit of a late decision but I figured anything would be better than nothing. You can buy replacement seal units that slot and lock in if there ever was a problem.

I dont know of any others. The problem wasn't them sinking in, it was the actual firing, the plastic doesn't tear like the paper on the nails so you end up with miss fires, jamming and doubles. Unless you're super patient don't bother with them.