G and J

Are you letting it go silver? Have you viewed final "colour" with mortar as well? Image of our attached just as eg. Took us a while to choose whole "package"

It is subjective but firstly is your whole frontage brick, may make a difference.... We only have a plinth, (9 at highest where ground slops at back of house) so we chose high contrast mortar that "matched" the cladding. If it had been the whole house, would have been too stark for us, and maybe the planners. Having said all that my vote would be nit no.1 (too warm), no.3 if your looking for high contrast, no.4 if you want it to "blend"

Whatever happened to a licked finger?

We’ve had an awful lot of success over the years by building relationships by using the same peeps repeatedly and once we feel we can trust said dudes we get a feel from them of the scale of the job but then go with day/hourly rates. We’ve found that if one always insists on fixed priced arrangements unless as mentioned above, it’s bog standard stuff then to be safe the person quoting needs to allow for the possible googlies awaiting them. If you look at it from the other end of the contract they may well think ‘I don’t know you or how much of a pain in the bum/slow payer you are so I’m gonna build in contingency’. Kerr-ching. Might be worth an hourly rate discussion with both. I’d certainly investigate further as the £1.6k sounds a bit too good to be true. Oh, and might be worth ensuring that both quotes include necessary disbursements.

I would guess those struts stop the wall falling in or out. It looks like a single block wall with no visible pillars, and I think of such as being very weak. The sort of gable truss that forms the top half of that wall is just sat on top. There is no strength in the wall to stop it bulging in or out and that would result in the gable wall failing. I think. No doubt a grown up will be along soon to clarify.

Wot he said. lol Except I’m a total whimp. I would shut off the feeds to the taps ‘just in case’. I’d expect to be using a fair bit of force and if a tap shifts… who knows. Technically though Welsh Nick is correct, there should be no need to isolate.

I mentioned the war(m batteries) but I think I got away with it! (& yes, if you get the reference then you are indeed, as I am, a wrinkly lol)

We used these. Didn't mesh as will "deter" larger insects, not sure would stop determined ants but 🤞

I’ve had success in such situations both with the bottle viakal dripped on the beastie in question and with the spray version too. Patience needed.

Do you want for looks? We've gone for weep holes, which are much less visible, even though there are lots of them, and vermin proof! (Uninsulated cavity between GF block skin round timber frame).

Can’t help with the connectivity, but I can offer a simple alternative. Rather surprisingly still available…. It saved us over £1k in portaloo rental fees so it really must be worth a few bob…. 😉

Natural fibres like wool are very good for temperature regulation. At least that’s what the smiling salesperson asserted when we signed up for a rather costly herdwick mattress. At that price I’m assuming it was made from real shepherds. So can we forget warm batteries now?

This sounds like a way forward. No, we did not lay ourselves, nor did we specifically ask the fitter to dry lay, mix boxes or look for repeats, but we didn't need to as they said they would when discussing beforehand and that's what they did. Only a couple of part tiles were moved, and this was only because they were very, very promenantly marked. For others reading, we chose to go to a large furniture store who actually had laid room size displays (on which they stood the furniture they were selling). Our installers had done similar in the showroom. This reinforced the need to choose a pattern/plank size we could live with. We then only used the small samples(1m x1m) to choose colours.

Our Amtico supplier/fitter provided the information when asked Our choice is both heavily patterned and embossed with a wood grain pattern. The format is 5 tiles (individual)in a 450mm square, so although there are repeats they are way less visible than they could be. Even then a couple of tiles were removed and repositioned during the process. At the end if the day they are not wood, and were bought with long term practicality considerations as well as aesthetics. Photo shows the initial laying out process (after the floor had ply and leveller) If you are really unhappy is it too late to change design now? Better that than live regretting it for the next ? years

Oh alrighty then, I won’t.