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Currently in the process of preparing the lounge of our 1965 semi-detached bungalow for decoration. Whilst removing the wallpaper I discovered crazed plaster on the party wall ( photos attached). There was no hint of the cracks on the wallpaper that I've just removed and the surface feels solid...

Evening all Had occasion today to join old plastic supply pipes to new copper ones. After taking a butcher's at YouTube I decided to put metal inserts in the plastic pipe (which looks ancient, and I've no idea what brand it is) and connect the plastic to the copper pipes with brass compression...

Afternoon all My daughter moved into her current, late Victorian house 6 months ago. Amongst the numerous issues that need sorting out is a horrible old kitchen mixer tap, which I recently volunteered to replace. I'm OK with basic plumbing, but having purchased all the fittings I thought I'd...

Looking for what will hopefully be a simple solution that just hasn't occurred to me. My neighbour and I have sectional concrete garages alongside each other, with a gap of about 10 inches between. Over the years leaf litter and other rubbish has accumulated between the garages to a depth of a...

Evening all Our bungalow has a 1960s sectional concrete garage. It’s never been fitted with gutters (we've only been here for 18 months), so the roof sheds rainwater directly onto the ground below, which stains the bottom few inches of the painted walls. I want to fit gutters below the roof of...

Morning all Is it possible to cut a mitre into worktop edges with a jigsaw and fit them together without the bolts underneath and expect a lasting result? I pose the question because a relative of mine has asked me to do this. I've fitted worktops on a number of occasions, but have always...

Morning all My daughter has just bought an early 20th century ( 1906-ish) semi detached house. The back yard/ garden is about 6 metres square and surfaced with brick pavers, and there's a fairly significant downward slope towards the house. The rear elevation of the house and garden walls are...

I've noted that there's already an ongoing thread about boiler pressures, but I don't want to hijack someone else's issue. We've got a 12 month old Ideal Logic C30 running five rads in a bungalow. Yes, just five rads. We had a bedroom rad changed the other day, from a monstrous and useless...

Hi All When we moved into this property 12 months ago we quickly noticed that after we flushed the push button toilet cistern, water carried on running into the pan. By fiddling with the plastic screws inside the cistern lid I eliminated the problem, but today it started doing the same thing...

Admittedly just looking for validation of my own conclusions, but here goes. Heavy rain this morning which necessitated the bailing out of a garden pond. Whilst doing so it occurred to me that I hadn't checked the drain inspection chamber for a while, so I lifted the massive concrete lid and...

Seems like a totally daft question, but I have to ask. When we moved into our bungalow last May, there was an old halogen PIR on the wall outside the kitchen door that didn't work, so I replaced it with a modern, low wattage LED PIR unit. There was no fused switch in the loft between the...

Advice on the relative merits of Euro locks, please. When changing locks after moving house I've got into the habit of buying the kitemarked Yale Euro locks with what I've always believed to be small magnets on the keys, though they may be nothing of the kind. The other day we had a...

Evening all I think I know the answer to this one because a search has flagged up similar discussions. But here goes. I want to fit a wooden gate between the wall of my house and my garage wall, a span of just over a metre. No problem fixing the hinge side of the frame to the house because its...

Morning all Just asking about the current regs/ guidance concerning minimum distances between extractor outlets and boiler flues. I have a cooker hood which is currently set to recirculate but I intend to convert it to extraction, and the outlet would be on a gable wall about 3 feet from the...

Afternoon all We have a concrete driveway which is about 60 years old, and around 20 yards long. Its largely in decent condition and the visible edge suggests that it's at least 8 inches thick, but it has two or three cracks which are no more than a centimetre wide across its width ( not...

Morning all For reasons I won't go into now, I'm battening out and dry lining over an alcove at my daughter's house. There's a double electrical socket on the wall, and as I'll be raising the level of the wall from the current surface by a couple of inches, I'll need to bring the socket out as...

Yes its that old wet chestnut, condensation in a loft. We moved into this 1960s bungalow in May this year. All well until we had a problem with condensation last month, specifically windows streaming with water, a smell of mildew in the bedrooms and newly hung wallpaper that wouldn't dry. So I...

Evening all Just had the pleasure of painstakingly removing woodchip from a bedroom ceiling, using a scraper. Yes, I could have used a steam stripper but a) it would have cost far too much to run the thing for several hours and b) there's already a problem with condensation in the room, and I...

We moved house recently to a mid 1960s bungalow, and have inherited an 82mm soil system. Never seen this before, our previous four houses all having four inch/ 110mm systems. The soil pipe is plastic and in a pretty parlous state, with the many layers of paint flaking away in chunks. I don't...

Morning all We have a UPVC back door, and the handles have clearly taken some stick from the previous owner of the house due to difficult operation of a stiff mechanism which has now been adjusted and eased. I want to replace these handles, but a bewildering array of different measurements...