ToughButterCup

Over the last four years or so, we have had our fair share of ups and downs. But this is an up. And now, GCNs are very welcome. From a twinkle in our eyes in the little local-stone built cottage (to the left of the photo) to a contemporary orange (coloured) box... which will be silvery grey in a while. Like my receding hair. Lots more to do, but hey! SWMBO reminds me we started when POTUS was being sworn-in , and just moved in by the time he had been sworn at long enough to be kicked out. Is there a lesson there? Probably not.?

hive .... good description. Lots - too much almost - good stuff here. This place can sting you though. Dont switch your due diligence button off, eh? Welcome.

As usual, @Russell griffiths is bang on the money. My Kubota 206 alpha held its value over 4 years. Dealer-serviced and over-maintained. Considering the rental cost over the same period, it far more than paid for itself even adding the VAT and repairs in. Two repairs: broken track clips and a new door (smashed by someone else), and new tracks exchanged for the old ones. Do your due diligence on the dealer. Find out which hire companies the dealer supplies and then ask the hire company what the dealer service is like. Then, ask the hire company . Then find a site repair guy - preferrably a one-person band, and ask him for his opinion of both the dealer and the hire company, and ask for his rates. Then ask him if he knows of a decent second-hand digger. Take him to see it and get him to test it for you. It'll cost you, but save you a potentially massive bill - not all to do with the digger either - delay on site is a right pain in the Bottilcelli. Sometimes mechanics only work on one type of machine - and thats fine - but if your heart is set on one (say Volvo) don't be deflected from your choice without good reason Here's a purchasing checklist we put together a while ago. Probably needs updating now..... A bit of a slog, I know. But it worked for me.

Yes, if you are stacking feathers. No if you are using rock. I made some out of our spare sheets of A393, (5 or so) got rid of a load of rubbish stone in them, but covered the cages with MOT1 and then earth. The cages formed the corner of a carpark. Part of our ecological mitigation strategy. Somewhere for the newts to do whatever newts do in winter.

References please. Online would be great. Thanks.

Well, @joth , in a horrible, uncomfortable way, I'm pleased it's not just me. By turns I laugh, cry, grizzle, fume, joke, write, about lack of connected thinking on the part of people whose salary I pay. Not long ago I would have been hauled over the coals for producing an online experience such as the one dished up by IKEA. And to point out the Zero Tolerance Policy so prominently just beggars belief.

... tell em to leave home while they (think they) know all the answers.

Here's more answers than you can shake a stick at....... Google, useful, sometimes.

I'm not sure: I was given a post code to go to: no address. I asked for one, but..... Yes: thats exactly my point: it says that , but when you go through the whole routine, the final dialogue box says that they don't deliver. The final straw was the ' Zero Tolerance Policy ' placed so prominently on the home page. For me that is psuedo-code for 'Our-systems-piss-so-many-of-you-off-that-we-need-to-tell-you-to-calm-down-when-we-dont-do-what-we-say-we'll-do.' And the lad at distribution point telling me that many customers are spitting hair and nails by the time they get to him lends credibility to my theory.

In a fiddly little wetroom Gary?

How can a simple job, like connecting tubes (or connecting holes, whichever way you think of it) be made so unecessarily complex? Did we really put someone on the moon? Cos if we did (and that's by no means certain) IKEA had nowt to do with it. Need an extra little widget to deal with your dishwasher waste? Certainly sir that'll be £5. Fanx. Now, got it in stock? Yessir: Warrington Tickety Boo. Lets pay for it then..... > Wha ? Don't deliver? 'S ok, you can pick up locally Great > Wha ? Oh, you can't. Need to fetch it from Warrington . Grrrrrrrrr. OK then. OK, I'll pay for it Wha? £10, not £5 like you advertised Yessir, its for the priviledge of picking it up from Warrington. Get to Warrington at sparrow fart. No, its not here, its at our storage facility Grrrrr. Wheres'at then? Hidden in the unmentionable depths of wild Warrington is a secret, totally hidden facility - no sign - just empty IKEA boxes blowing in the wind. Ya' awraaaaght mert? says the spotty thing with an eye patch. He's standing at the in front of a pile of packages - probably a few hundred of them - waiting for saps like me to turn up to collect. Get many people in here to pick up their stuff? Naaahh. 'An wen vey does vey's yooshally spittin' hair and nails. And they have the sheer bare faced temerity to put their Zero Tolerance Policy on the homepage of their website. Is there any point? First world problem innit. I'm being totally unreasonable. Again.

What? Honestly? I mean really?

Here's chapter and verse on ours: Exactly half way between the top and bottom hourly trade (not professional fee) rate we have been charged in the last four years. And the man is a magician: two speeds, dead slow and stop, but does what he says he will do, reliable, arrives at 10 to 8 and leaves at 6ish. And sticks to his price. Gold dust.

Thanks. Ya learn summat here, every day .....

Think I'll stick mate......

My hand tight or yours....? And " I mean that most sincerely folks " ?

Yo! You're no longer an bird's mouth virgin! How does it feel? Was she easy? Did she wriggle? I did my first one on the ground, but later we did it resting on ther wall plate. Ya wanna try that pphhhh..... 'Ere, I had to cut double birds nmouths (tell ya more later)

Whassis about then eh? I mean just how much mind altering substance do you have to take to do this to an innocent tap connection , eh? Or: how to make the easy super, unecessarily hard. The monbloc tap , two innocent little holes... Choogle up to Screweez, and talk to the lass with the dry hacking cough and a sweat on ... (not jokin') : Could I have one of your finest PUSH-FIT FLEXIBLE MONOBLOC TAP CONNECTORS 15MM X M10MM please miss ..... (Oops, notice she's pregnant and has a highly polished sparkler on her ring finger ?) And she gives me this .... So, let me get this right. They give you one connector that's easy to tighten (left hand one because it sticks out of the bottom of the monobloc) and one which needs me to get a pair of tweezers to nudge the friggin' thing tight. Why FFS make the simple hard? Why Buildhub, why, and why me ? And don't tell me it's "Because yer 'ere lad" Please tell me I have missed the obvious. I'd be so pleased if that was the case. Please. Please.

+1 for @Onoff's recommendation : takes a lot of getting-in to (for me anyway) But is very helpful. It doesn't explain that you need to buy several diameters of earthing sleeve, though , and why you can't buy less than a mile of it at any one time. Or why the Knipex pliers you bought and that were borrowed by the electrician were to be found - one month after it was fitted - under the new fridge-freezer. I now have two pairs. ? I'm going to use my leftover earthing sleeve to add a bit of zip to the grandchildren's straws........

All of us have a distillery. Its called the gut. Thats why its impossible to have a zero blood / alcohol level.

Just thrown a load away 'en oi? ? You star Peter. I had seen them ,but on closer inspection, I see they are saucer-shaped : in other words not as thick as they at first appear. Tiled under the kitchen work surfaces ... just about the only thing we've done bang on right..... You can do us a PAT test on yer way past next year Dave...... ?

Here's a really useful resource for you to read.

Swearing and Ibuprofen's done it . Now to find a bit of melamine or something to get it back. Never without pain these days (ahhhhhhhhhhh, poor me ?)

Mr Eight Fingers of which a mere six consent to do any useful work calling .... ( the other two are good at holding liquid soap because of the scaring) Our chippy thought he'd have a joke by making the space for our dishwasher one mm bigger that the 600 needed, so there's half a mm either side... well not even that because the side of the opening isn't plumb. And now that he's sitting on a deckchair sunning himself somewhere - phone off - router unplugged - earmuffs on, I need some help. To me, the dishwasher is effectively jammed in. Back in the good old days, I'd have just heaved and sworn a bit, and the - as yet unconnected - dishwasher with a bit of sweat, would have moved. Now I need to be a bit cleverer about it. I've looked at loads of YT videos, and while some are nearly what I need, none are quite right. I think I need a really simple thin sheet of something like PTFE. There isn't much vertical space left for me to raise the front of the damn thing, let alone enough play to rock the washer forward to get something under the rear legs. I've tried to find where to buy a 700mm wide sheet of PTFE - no luck. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. At the moment, I think I'm not far off deciding to take the worktop off. If ya cant take a joke Ian, don't start.... Anyone got a bright idea?

I found exactly that problem too. The answer that works for me is to take inspiration from what I see, and try to find the time to emulate / make / do / buy / beg / something so similar that it doesn't matter. Bit like buying wine from a winery that's from the same area ( Fr. terroire) but doesn't have the expensive label. Same geology, same climate, same orientation but a fifth of the price. And its fun trying to work out which wines match those criteria.