tetris

Hi All. I'd really appreciate your thoughts on wardrobes and their apparent affinity to attract condensation. In my old house I've had a few stand-alone Ikea units against external walls (Mid 1970s cavity walls). Despite the house not having any damp problems to note, I was surprised to find patches of mould behind the wardrobes when removing them. Two corner units leaning against 2 external walls were the worst). In the new house (with damp issues that are yet to be fully diagnosed & resolved) I've got corner built-in wardrobes & I found thin ~2mm sheets of styrofoam glued to the inside of the external walls - potentially suggesting that previous occupants had condensation & mould issues there. Is there a "proper" way to put in a wardrobe against an external wall, either built-in or stand-alone Ikea-type unit? Leave a void and plug PC-style fans into the sides to ensure circulation sounds a bit extreme? 🤔 Thank you.

A lot of learning indeed. About the house and about buildings in general. Air bricks everywhere, floor levels all over the place - there's 4 of them with about 10cm steps in between.

Yep. I wouldn't stop at just houses though. I'm a firm believer the planet would be much better off if we just nuked ourselves and let new, better species inhabit it.🤐 It's a prime plot in a prime location, but large part of the appeal is the vintage cottage feel & current garden grounds. Redeveloping into something modern would be a crime. Also, like most of the country at the moment, I'm broke, at least for the foreseeable. In my neck of the woods, real salaries are less than half of what they used to be 20 years ago while property prices have doubled and building materials are 3x-4x times more expensive. I'll keep my mouth shut about food, fuel and taxes because this is a forum about homes & houses, not about failing economies😇. Concrete floors I'll just leave for the time being (I've just read that one can get suspended concrete, which I suspect is the case here) and, once I've sorted out the rotten wooden windows around the house, I'd like to focus on the suspended flooring while I rip out the living room (only lifting 49.99% of the floorboards at any given time to make sure I'm on the right side of the building regs 😉). My thinking about the mahog was to potentially, lift it, re-finish while it's off, then use it as a top layer once the floor is rebuilt. Assuming it's not too damaged after being lifted. 32sq m of Cuban mahogany is not a common sight these days. Would be a shame to scrap it. I found this post on this forum and it seems to align with what floor insulation businesses are doing. Only difference being that here the suggestion is to use breather membrane on the bottom, while a more common approach is to use debris netting? I'll need to confirm the air is free to flow under it once this is installed once the boards are lifted, but I'm 90% confident it's not an issue after poking around with a camera probe - there should be plenty of space. Target state would be: Membrane stapled to joists - mineral wool - membrane on top - new floorboards - underlay - mahog/laminate Anything else I need to consider here? Looks like a job for one weekend (famous last words), as long as there's no joist rot. Pics will follow eventually.

Thank you - yes, I agree it all needs further investigation, but since we're living in the house and just moved in, I can't just rip up the living room floorboards after my morning coffee - it will require a bit of planning and step-by-step investigation. Wouldn't drilling a hole in concrete breach the DPC if it's there?🤔 Anyway, living room appears to be solid mahogany flooring over joists. That's it. I can stick a probe camera into the void through one of the old unfilled holes from old plumbing or wiring and it looks like there's nothing else to the set-up. So I infer that currently the outside air is free to come in via the breather blocks and flow straight into the living room.🫣

A mixture of construction styles. The majority of the house is uninsulated cavity walls with so far unknown type of DPC (assuming DPC is present at all). External ground levels might have been raised through the decades. House has been unoccupied for about 8 months and has been neglected for several years prior to that. For the first week we've been waking up to 75% humidity, but I've cleaned & fixed all the gutters, fixed two obvious roof leaks, started clearing overgrown plants from the external walls and have been keeping the windows open every chance I got - we're now waking up to 65% RH. Still very high in my books, but it's moving in the right direction. I only have 2 dehumidifiers and I'm thinking of investing in 2 more (suggestions welcome). Kitchen and 3 bedrooms appear to have solid concrete flooring, while living room, 2 extended bedrooms and utility room seem to be suspended flooring - initial spot inspections suggest that at least part of that flooring is over plain ground without any vapour barrier. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on modern ways to manage suspended flooring in particular. I'm not planning to go for the nuclear option of pouring concrete everywhere & would rather work with what I have & improve it where I can.

After a few months of delays I'm heading toward finally getting the keys to the new house. In the meantime I've been trying to unpick the house extension history and I think I finally got there. Green is the original cottage. Two (or 3 very small) bedrooms to the left, bathroom & kitchen in the middle, living room at the bottom. I suspect this pre-dates 1950s. Livingroom has raised flooring - probably about 20cm higher than the rest. The ceiling has been raised accordingly and the rafters are visible between the ceiling panels as a feature. I wonder if this was done to retrofit floor insulation at some point... Weird. Wall construction unknown, but from memory, it might be ~10cm thinner than the cavity wall of the top extension, which makes me wonder if it's a solid wall. Will need a closer inspection. Blue extensions were added probably around 1950-60s. Top extension turned the bedroom wing into 3 bedrooms + 1 study. Wheelchair-accessible toilet & wetroom was bolted on to the side of the bedroom wing. Bottom-right blue section is a single-skin flat-roof garage. Right above it is a potential garage conversion into a bedroom/dining room/study. From memory, Flat roof is raised above the garage roof, and walls were quite thick. Will need investigation. Top right pink bit is a single skin utility room. Looks like this is going to be my hobby for the next 10 years. God knows what horrors I'm going to uncover on close inspection.

Thanks. Mix of different floors - there's the original cottage and several extensions. Will share more details as & when. Re service voids: I currently have peeling lining paper on the inside of external walls. Am I correct to understand that instead of stripping & skimming, I can screw in 30-40mm battens, then put plasterboard on top? Assuming no beads injection, leave empty voids or insulate? I lose some room volume, but hide the heating pipes running along that wall & can run electrics along that wall if I want. I guess the windowsills will become 50-60mm deeper, so I'll need to re-frame & I lose a bit of light (window frame becoming more of a tunnel?

It will be indeed. I was replying to bancroft about pre-made MFT tops. Plenty of drill bits here, 20mm or otherwise

Thank you. That's good to know and I'm not intending to make the house uninhabitable at any point, so I'm safe. I'll be skint until winter, so no heatpump for a while. Also, I've done some reading on IWI - a completely new topic to me, but I won't be keen on making any non-reversible changes unless necessary. I was thinking more about closing off drafts, installing better windows and improving attic insulation/closing gaps.

Thanks. The Bosch looks like a slightly upsized workmate? Yeah, but the idea of paying somebody £100 to drill a few holes in MDF for me just doesn't resonate. I've heard a lot of good stories about MFT, but personally, I have 10 dog holes in my workbench and I've only used 5 in 15 years I've owned it. One of those 5 was only used 3 or 4 times. Keter looks interesting but on the small side? How would it handle chopping a 2.4m-long 2x4?

Monitor facebook marketplace for a bunch of tools that looks like it's coming from somebody who wanted to get into DIY, splashed his cash on high end stuff, got disillusioned and decided to offload his tools. I saw a £1k+box of mint blue Bosch tools going for £300 recently, but it was gone pretty quickly. From my monitoring of used power tool market, most trade-grade tools are being sold by workie "entrepreneurs" who use up 3/4 of the resource then sell it on at a high price as "fully operational" to some DIYer. You get similar trends with touring and commuter bikes. Most other things on used market tend to be OK. With quality hand tools, most folks don't have a clue how to use them these days, never mind how to properly maintain them, so it's often easier to buy new unless you fancy getting into tool restoration hobby.

Hi All. I'd appreciate your thoughts for a portable bench for major home renovation (anything from decorating to fitting new windows and replacing small flat roofs). I've got an old aldi workmate but that's quite flimsy and not suitable for working on anything large. While I still have access to my woodworking workshop for a few weeks, I was thinking of making a couple sawhorses with the top surface drilled for dogs + figure out some way of attaching a woodworking vice to it. Maybe a way to join two horses with a board so the whole thing is heavier & more stable while being used, then knock it down into 3 separate parts. Any cheap, smart & easy solutions to this problem? I've searched the forum, but just saw a thread about workmates. Thank you.

I don't rate such low-end table saw - shaped objects very highly. Apart from the obvious H&S concerns: lack of guard, the pile of dust that's a slipping and inhalation hazard and the spaghetti bowl of cables (you don't want to trip and fall on the non-guarded blade ), your support tables look out of true, which probably causes the blade to stick, kick & bind. "Old smoky blade" sounds like a problem in itself. If I had a saw like this, I'd put it in the back of a van and take it to the tip. Never compromise on your safety. I found that sliding mitre saws, light handheld circular saws and plunge track saws are the way to go. Sadly, good table saws (cabinetmaker grade) start from about £2.5k used - anything else is not really worth having unless they are bought and used with jigs for very specialist jobs.

Thank you. External wall insulation would ruin the old cottage look & feel, so that's out of the question unless we're talking single skin extension upgrade, but I haven't even thought about that. On this note, is it worth investing ~£200 into a thermal camera? Probably on of those phone clip-on jobbies. From what I read online, it's the go-to tool for finding drafts, insulation gaps, tracing roof and pipe leaks and can help check hot electrics. Which seems to cover all of my phase 1. Toll budget is very tight, but if it saves time and improves result quality, it's worth having. Also any tips on living in the house that's being renovated are very welcome. Kitchen, one bathroom and one bedroom (will have to be the kids' one for now) are in decent condition to move in, everything else needs to have the interior ripped out.

Hi All, Excited to join the forum – I hope you don’t mind renovation projects as opposed to a proper self-build. Mrs and I are in the final stages of buying our dream home (1950s bungalow) & just waiting for the paperwork to be finalised by the solicitors – they seem to be taking 5 weeks to do what AI can do in 5 minutes. Good news, the house was so run down, it was within our budget. Even better news – the home report is mainly “2”s, so there’s several years of fun work for me to do to get it into top condition. Bad news – while I have extensive fine woodworking skills, and can do some basic electrics & plumbing, I’m pretty much a newcomer to major home repairs. We’re still in a bit of “what have we done” phase. As a matter of priority for phase 1, I’ll be looking to fix the pitched roofs and repair & replace a couple small flat roofs (porch and bay windows). Trace any leaks & moisture spots. Then consider insulation & window replacement and radiators replacement – so I’m prepared for winter. Any internal decoration works will have to wait for phase 2 I guess, but there’s a major re-wiring on the cards, with a view of getting a modern consumer unit installed within a couple years of moving in. There’s also a (likely) single skin extension that the Mrs wants to eventually turn into a bedroom and there's a garden to overhaul. Phase 3 would include a garden room (I’ve built one from a kit before but will likely do a scratch build this time) and maybe even a garage roof terrace if things are going well. Apologies in advance for daft questions.