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Last summer I fitted out the garage with lots of metal frame shelving units, with 5mm MDF as the shelves. The garage has no leaks etc., but is unheated and it has been a damp winter. Just discovered that all the bare MDF has grown horrendous black and green mould. The undersides of the shelves...

I am going to be painting 12 pine louvre cupboard doors, some previously stained "aged pine" orange with spirit based Ronseal many years ago, others are new naked timber. SWMBO says that they will all look better white. Any advice please on making a good job? I would prefer to use water based...

Can anyone recommend a supplier of pine furniture board for a reasonable price? Need quite a bit to make some bespoke cabinets/bookcases to match and extend others already in place. The shipping on online sources I have found so far is preclusive, so looking for somewhere in South West.

Having contructed a bed frame with planned spruce (B & Q's best!), I am wondering what to finish the bare pine with. Something quick and affordable would be nice, not too worried about the colour. Recommendations? Could I just sand it? Does it need sealing? Have some lovely but expensive Osmo...

I want to add a narrow hinged vertical panel to the side of a tall cabinet door, but not sure what kind of hinge will do the job. Without describing the whole project the idea is for the panel to lie along side and be connected to the 2m door making it wider, but fold in flat when the door is...

I have a freshly dug and graded (by JCB excavator) 30m x 45m area of top soil that I want to prepare for grass seed. It is generally level but has lots of fist sized clumps of soil on top that need breaking up first. Stamping on them or manual hoeing is going to be a long job given the size of...

Having difficulty getting a good finish using WB gloss (Leyland Trade Acrylic Gloss - pink tin) on flush doors. I've done the skirtings, architrave and 250mm deep window ledges with the stuff all quite nicely, what good paint I thought, but now it comes to the doors it is Hell! What is the...

I have hundreds of screw head holes in both MDF (skirting boards) and new timber (door sets) to fill and prep before painting. What filler do I use that will give good long lasting results and be easy to use? The ease of dry wall joint cement is temping, but worried it won't last and tends to...

Have had a new pine staircse fitted intending to paint and carpet it, but I'm not happy with it. The fillets in the base rail between each baluster protrude 1 or 2mm above the rail whereas I would have expected them to be flush with the rail. They came with the staircase and were nailed and...

Want to paint some MDF and wondering what to use. Around 8 years ago I painted MDF that I had made into cabinet carcasses using vinyl silk emulsion. I worked well, the surface still looks great and wears well any marks being easily washed off with soap and water. The emulsion was standard Dulux...

Fitting a space saving semi-recessed sink into a narrow vanity unit and needing some advice. Have cut the front panel neatly and about to cut the worktop but just realised that the back of the sink will almost come to the back of the unit. This gives me two problems: a) the cut leaves a very...

For the power installation on my new build the meter tails and CU are protected by a 100mA RCCD in the meter box. From the day the site was energised this has randomly tripped, often working fine when reset. The electricians have blamed the weather, the equipment in use at the time, the earth...

Constructing a new roof with raised tie trusses to make space for an attic room above 1.5 story walls. The truss manufacturers have specified using glide shoes to attach the truss to the wall plate. Using these does it mean that the truss will always be free to move horizontally on the wall...

While uPVC windows are installed with packers and a gap on all sides of the frame (which is finally filled with foam) to allow for expansion what is it best to do with uPVC doors? For the bottom frame (and/or sill) do you a) make level with packers and leave an expansion gap (just like...

Any suggestions for building a well insulated flat roof, u-value < 0.08 like the pitched roof? Filling the pitched roof loft with 500mm of mineral wool does the trick there, but it seems difficult to get anywhere near with a flat roof. Wanted to just stuff mineral wool into a flat roof...

Could someone give me some help with calculating the heat loss I am getting from my original suspended and ventilated timber ground floors. Given the u value I can do the rest, but I have seen such a variety of average u values for uninsulated timber floors quoted (from 0.7 to 4 W/m2K!) I am not...

I am hoping to add a pitched roof porch to an uneven U-shape bungalow. My idea is that 3 sides of the porch are formed by the bungalow walls, closing in part of the "U", but not sure how this will work because of the eave overhang of the bungalow roof. A 3D view of the bungalow may help here...

I am considering purchasing a site which has conditional permission for the construction of a house, and would like some advice on what aspects of the submitted plans are legally binding or likely to be enforced. This is more important as one of the conditions removes the permitted development...

Is it possible to construct a timber floor that spans 5m between steels and takes some of the roof loading? I know that I will need to pay an SE for a proper calc, but would like to check out the viability of loft floor construction with the technical experts here before I get that far. The...

Can anyone tell me the safe height for a (100mm) thick single skin brick/block wall with pillars every 2m? Is there something in the building regs about this? Which part? All I could find on the planning portal was...