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After the rewire, I noticed that the new lightswitch in bedroom 3 tilts slightly. This looks bad as it sits only 4 inches from the vertical door arcitrave. Any tricks for ficing this?

OK - silly question time. We want to order new carpets for all of the upstairs rooms. After having them fitted, we planned to get new pine doors fitted on all of the rooms. However, I worry about the door fitting causing a mess on new (cream) carpets (can't expect the chippie to wear...

With the hardboard - which way up do I nail it? I had presumed smooth side up, but someone recently advised me to fix it rough side up to stop the carpet "sliding around" on top of it.

The wall looks very flat and so hopeful I will screw the plasterboard directly to the surface - I presume that they call this surface browning? I don't need a perfect finish at all - just something solid to cover the browning with.

Can I just screw the plasterboard directly onto what looks like "cement on top of the breeze blocks, with swirly horizontal lines scrawled in"? What kind of screws would I use? I have heard of "dot and dab" for fixing plasterboard ....but it sounds more like a kid's TV programme!

What does the water do?

We had a similarly problem - although in reverse, the previous owners had gloss painted all of the woodwork about 10 times (incidentally, along with the radiators, pipes and even door hinges) - and we wanted a waxed wood finish. In the end I ripped off the old architraves and put new pine...

Thanks for the response...yes...the problem wall exists on the inside of the cupboard. Which also makes it an outside wall. I suppost I could just drill and screw the plaster board onto the bad wall and then paint it directly...don't mind seeing the joints.

We had our old hot water cylinder removed when we had a combi-boiler installed. This has now left us with a fairly large and useful cupboard in the back beroom. However, years of heat from the cylinder has caused major cracks in the plaster on one wall. Last night I knocked off all of the...

Numerous plumbing and electical operations have left some of our floor boards rather creaky. I planned to simply hardboard the floor to level it out but will this stop the creaking? I don't want to replace the floorboards unless I have to.

I will soon fit new pine skiting boards that I intend to then wax. Ideally I don't want screws showing and so wanted to glue them on using "no more nails". However, I suspect that the walls will not run perfectly straight and the the wood will also have slight warps. How can I ensure a...

The previous occupants of our house sealed up the door that joins the lounge to the hall. They accomplished this by plastering over the door on both sides and then papering with bumpy wallpaper. The lounge side looks fine but the hall size bulges noticeably for some reason. I stipped the...

I live in a 1966 brick built semi. I want to board the floor of my loft for storage purposes. We have ceiling hangers that I dare not remove due to concerns over sagging and so I will need to board around them. I bought one trial pack of T&G chipboard panels from B&Q but didn't like them...

Ouch...maybe I shouldn't drill it after all! Thanks for all the advice.

I want to put shelves up in my garage. It has asbestos wells (or so I believe). The garage and house got built in 1966. Should I consider myself safe if wearing a mask?

We will soon get our house rewired and will end up with lots of "chasing out" to fill up. Should I use "patching plaster" - which I have used before and found to dry very soft and flaky - or should I mix some real plaster?

Main thing is whether or not they will detect if I sever the cable near the top of the house!

We live in a 1966 brick built semi. A small number of the bricks making up the window sills have literally crumbled and broken away. Oddly, these bricks sit between ones that have no signs of decay whatsoever. Does anyone know why this has happened and what we should do?

The previous occupant of our house used BT, whereas we now get our telephone through cable. Can we remove the black BT cable that runs down the side of our house? I know that we cannot cut it back to the telegraph pole - but will they known if we cut it near the connection pole on the roof?

Before I replace my floorboards I want to lay down a few coax cables ready for wiring up the ariel in the loft to the various upstairs TV's. Can/should I use satellite quality cable rather than the cheaper coax stuff? I know that I will need some converter dongles along the way but I just...