Yet Another House Renovation Thread
Discussion
Yep, good work so far 
Megaflow said:
If you really feel the need for one, as somebody else said you can always link the house to the garage and have that as the utility.
That was done to ours. Out of that tiny void we got a downstairs shower room, a utility 'space' (stacked washer & drier + shelves for iron and stuff), and access to both the garage and a new room built behind the garage.mattdaniels said:
It looks like we have an ex-vegetable patch in the back garden. We want to make it the same as all the other grass. Can we just rotavate it?
Best thing to do is to cover it in weedkiller (glycophosphate), leave it a while, do it again, leave, then in September or April, rotavate or dig over, rake and seed with grass seed or turf it over.If you don't kill off what's there you'll end up with a lawn with random weeds/plants popping up in the middle of it. It's worth the hassle of the weedkiller, I can tell you from experience
Mark Benson said:
mattdaniels said:
It looks like we have an ex-vegetable patch in the back garden. We want to make it the same as all the other grass. Can we just rotavate it?
Best thing to do is to cover it in weedkiller (glycophosphate), leave it a while, do it again, leave, then in September or April, rotavate or dig over, rake and seed with grass seed or turf it over.If you don't kill off what's there you'll end up with a lawn with random weeds/plants popping up in the middle of it. It's worth the hassle of the weedkiller, I can tell you from experience
Bit of a discovery today.
Ripped up the carpet in the dining room in preparation for channelling out the concrete floor to move a radiator, to discover the concrete floor is in fact a parquet floor, same as what is laid in the hall.
Now, I hate it. But I know there is parquet and there is parquet. So before I rip it all up and throw it in the skip / on a bonfire, is it worth anything?
Dodgy camera phone pic here of the blocks:
They are a good 5-6mm in depth and the room is 4.5m x 3.2m (3.7m in to the bay).
Also given the price of scrap metal, I assume these rads are worth something to someone?
Ripped up the carpet in the dining room in preparation for channelling out the concrete floor to move a radiator, to discover the concrete floor is in fact a parquet floor, same as what is laid in the hall.
Now, I hate it. But I know there is parquet and there is parquet. So before I rip it all up and throw it in the skip / on a bonfire, is it worth anything?
Dodgy camera phone pic here of the blocks:
They are a good 5-6mm in depth and the room is 4.5m x 3.2m (3.7m in to the bay).
Also given the price of scrap metal, I assume these rads are worth something to someone?
mattdaniels said:
Mark Benson said:
mattdaniels said:
It looks like we have an ex-vegetable patch in the back garden. We want to make it the same as all the other grass. Can we just rotavate it?
Best thing to do is to cover it in weedkiller (glycophosphate), leave it a while, do it again, leave, then in September or April, rotavate or dig over, rake and seed with grass seed or turf it over.If you don't kill off what's there you'll end up with a lawn with random weeds/plants popping up in the middle of it. It's worth the hassle of the weedkiller, I can tell you from experience
Good work on the house. I do hope you're keeping that dangly light thing in the kitchen! Get some Round up Bi-active from an agricultural merchant - it kills everything off but becomes inactive when it hits the soil so you can replant quite quickly and isn't going to kill your dog (although I'd give it time to dry, obviously. It works a treat. I couldn't believe how little you need for serious weeds so it'll get rid of your garden in no time.
skintemma said:
Good work on the house. I do hope you're keeping that dangly light thing in the kitchen!
Err, in a word, no. 
We have built up quite a collection of dodgy lighting as we've rewired. Probably need a good ebay session at some point.
Thanks for the suggestion of Round up Bi-active we'll have a look for it.
mattdaniels said:
Also given the price of scrap metal, I assume these rads are worth something to someone?
I got 10p a kilo weighing in my brake discs the other day. I don't trust a scrappy as far as I could throw one, so I suspect they had my eyes out. Let us know what you get.(I spent the £1 trying to win the missus a cuddly dog at Dawlish Warren. And failed.
)
Spent all weekend strippig wallpaper. I hate woodchip with a passion.
Took 2 days, but at least its done, so the lounge and dining room looks in better shape now.
But we like a challenge. So sod it, lets move the lounge radiator to under the bay.
And let's have a smaller more modern radiator in the dining room.
Meanwhile, in the office, the parquet floor starts getting it, so that we can move the radiator to under the bay.
Today we got some deliveries. 75m2 of 11mm underlay (thanks to the Underlay Underlay thread on here!)
And the first lot of AV cabling - 1220m of cat6 and 305m of audio. Thanks to toxicnerve and VEX for their help and advice so far on the AV side of things.
It's going to be a busy weekend. We move in next week
Took 2 days, but at least its done, so the lounge and dining room looks in better shape now.
But we like a challenge. So sod it, lets move the lounge radiator to under the bay.
And let's have a smaller more modern radiator in the dining room.
Meanwhile, in the office, the parquet floor starts getting it, so that we can move the radiator to under the bay.
Today we got some deliveries. 75m2 of 11mm underlay (thanks to the Underlay Underlay thread on here!)
And the first lot of AV cabling - 1220m of cat6 and 305m of audio. Thanks to toxicnerve and VEX for their help and advice so far on the AV side of things.
It's going to be a busy weekend. We move in next week
A busy Friday, the last full weekend before we move in. Erp!
Lottie has been concentrating on the garden. She's removed a few little stones.
Meanwhile I'm throwing a quick bit of patio down infront of the bike shed.
The chasing out is done, including a comedy "spy hole" between two of the bedrooms where the breeze block has gone all the way through.
New rad finished in one of the guest rooms.
New rad in lounge, moved from the wall to under the bay.
New rad in the dining room showing just how much smaller the new rads are.
Starting the AV wire. Thanks to some great help and advice from toxicnerve and VEX, we've planned out some whole house video and audio distribution, mixed in with a bit of Sonos, and a Media PC that I will build. VEX came over today to help finalise the CAT6 and COAX wiring, then kindly arranged for his recommended aerial guy Greg to come over and get the dish and aerials installed.
First step was to work out the cable run from the aerial point to the AV cupboard which was about 22m, so then we measured out 5 runs of 22m twin shotgun WF-100 cable to feed the 8-way LNB in the dish, a DAB radio aerial and a TV aerial.
Greg's done a lovely neat install just under the eaves and all the cables are routed across the loft and down into the AV cupboard.
I'm back at the house tomorrow at 6am to start pulling CAT6 and get the study/home cinema and lounge wired up. Hopefully the plasterer can pay a visit next week as we really do need to start making some of the rooms habitable
Lottie has been concentrating on the garden. She's removed a few little stones.
Meanwhile I'm throwing a quick bit of patio down infront of the bike shed.
The chasing out is done, including a comedy "spy hole" between two of the bedrooms where the breeze block has gone all the way through.
New rad finished in one of the guest rooms.
New rad in lounge, moved from the wall to under the bay.
New rad in the dining room showing just how much smaller the new rads are.
Starting the AV wire. Thanks to some great help and advice from toxicnerve and VEX, we've planned out some whole house video and audio distribution, mixed in with a bit of Sonos, and a Media PC that I will build. VEX came over today to help finalise the CAT6 and COAX wiring, then kindly arranged for his recommended aerial guy Greg to come over and get the dish and aerials installed.
First step was to work out the cable run from the aerial point to the AV cupboard which was about 22m, so then we measured out 5 runs of 22m twin shotgun WF-100 cable to feed the 8-way LNB in the dish, a DAB radio aerial and a TV aerial.
Greg's done a lovely neat install just under the eaves and all the cables are routed across the loft and down into the AV cupboard.
I'm back at the house tomorrow at 6am to start pulling CAT6 and get the study/home cinema and lounge wired up. Hopefully the plasterer can pay a visit next week as we really do need to start making some of the rooms habitable
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