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Our heating engineer is a diamond, I am dreading him retiring.

Still trying to find a good roofer... :(

Roofers are universally grifters, as far as I can tell. I called one out because I thought I had an issue with water ingress on one side of the house. He glanced at it from the garden, made some generic "thinking" noises, then said I needed tiles replaced and maybe other work done, but he could start tomorrow for a mere £2000. Another said he could bang some tiles back into place because they were misaligned for £300.

The next guy I got for a quite said there's nothing wrong with the roof and it was an internal vent issue. He was right.

I've had nothing but problems with roofers in my house and flat. Luckily I've neve had any major problems that needed fixing, even if some of the roofers tried to make it seem like I did.

Yeah we have an awkward bit of roof where three slopes meet eachother, which has had persistent leaks in it since we moved in 10-12 years ago. (Bastard estate agents said it had been fixed, but that's another matter!)

Had must be 3 or 4 roofers on it now, seems each time a bit gets fixed another starts leaking. Got someone else coming today for an initial look at it, think the recommended fix (from previous guy, who is a one-man band and said it was a two-man job to sort out) is to strip off all the tiles in the area and re-line it. I imagine it'll be a couple of thousand... But if it means I can just stop thinking about my f'ing roof every time it rains it'll be worth it.

Slipspace wrote:
Roofers are universally grifters, as far as I can tell.

A point of cultural commonality.

Finding good contractors is something of an art. Word of mouth is paramount. Not sure if this translates, but another issue is that where you live matters in terms of what they charge. That's not true for all, but it is out there.

I've had terrible luck with housepainters, and instead of having a list of ones I like, I have a list of "never use gain." Same with roofers. I found a pair I do like, though, and that is a good thing (though hopefully I've just bought my last roof).

Painting walls? I assume you are painting over paint? Sugar soap it it to clean it, then depending on paint prime/undercoat, then 1-2 coats of your chosen colour. If the paint on there is curiously glossy after sugar soap Zinsser BIN appropriate can fixes that.

In general wood paints and similar need sanding, wall paints don't.

Yay! No more TV for me!

My TV died tonight as I was getting ready to watch Gordon Ramsay yell at people.

That sucks. We thought our TV had packed it in a few days ago. Turns out that the power cable had somehow managed to work loose. I mean, we've had it for almost 20 years, so we have definitely gotten a good chunk of use out of it, but getting a new one would be an annoying expense.

 Flinty wrote:
That sucks. We thought our TV had packed it in a few days ago. Turns out that the power cable had somehow managed to work loose. I mean, we've had it for almost 20 years, so we have definitely gotten a good chunk of use out of it, but getting a new one would be an annoying expense.

I've had mine for 8 months... 2 months past the extended warranty.

Argh.

Thankfully, relatively speaking; TVs are cheap now-a-days and easily replaced.

Indeed.

Weird to think that within my lifetime, renting your TV set was more common than owning one.

I think the only reason Mum and Dad didn’t rent one, is that Grandad got a free colour TV with a printing press, and that went to us,

Professional purchase, or communist agitator?

I remember in 1991 my parents being disappointed that they won the 2nd prize in a raffle. First prize was a tv, 2nd was a satellite disk and sky box. Back then no one else had one and it was only 4 extra channels (sky 1, movies, euro sport and sky sports if I remember correctly.) Obviously it wasn't long until they realised that they had gotten the better deal after all.

Hobby and Crafting room is now a usable space!

Fair amount of organisation needed, but I can now build my models in peace.

Congratulations! That great milestone. Me for example still vagabond on my own house migrating from room to room with hobby stuff

Think I’m gonna put my foot massager in there.

Foot rub whilst building and painting? Can you conceive of a greater decadence?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Think I’m gonna put my foot massager in there.

Foot rub whilst building and painting? Can you conceive of a greater decadence?

Yeah, since vibrations in your feet help keep your hands steady?

Well, you can also drink something while getting your massage and painting...

Anyone had their kitchen floor replaced?

The cracked tiling is only getting worse, and so whilst I’d hoped I could put it off a while? It’s something now in need of addressing.

Looking to move from ceramic type tiles, to a nice Lino or laminate type. Something properly hard wearing that, provided it’s laid right will last donkeys.

I probably could spend a weekend lifting the existing tiles, which sounds like it would save some money. But given it would need at least a screed to even it out I’m wondering if it’s a false economy?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anyone had their kitchen floor replaced?

The cracked tiling is only getting worse, and so whilst I’d hoped I could put it off a while? It’s something now in need of addressing.

Looking to move from ceramic type tiles, to a nice Lino or laminate type. Something properly hard wearing that, provided it’s laid right will last donkeys.

I probably could spend a weekend lifting the existing tiles, which sounds like it would save some money. But given it would need at least a screed to even it out I’m wondering if it’s a false economy?

I too am looking at renovating my kitchen. My house was built in 1971, and I don't think it's EVER had a kitchen renovation. The sheet linoleum looked dated when I bought the place in 2007.

Luckily enough for me the kitchen workspace and cupboards are fine, and pretty modern.

But the floor is starting to ignore me.

Actual material is looking pretty affordable, even if I go a bit fancy. Just a matter of how much the labour and disposal of the existing tiling will be.

I’m hoping no more than a couple of thousand. And it’s definitely not a job I want to be tackling myself, as I know I’ll only mess it right up.

Idk, I'm pretty clumsy and laminate on kitchen not for me. I dropped big knife very often and if it's a laminate, there be few ugly holes on the flore. Also even properly sealed laminate still don't like water. I don't like running for mope every time I'd spilled something.
As of labor. Removing ceramic tiles accurately(if you wanna same them for use later) is 3-4 hours. And same time to set lino(if you prefer to glue it) or 3-5 days if you leave it without glue and ready to wait til it's setups.

Tiles aren’t reusable, too many are cracked or outright broken.

I figure any kitchen floor is going to get damaged in the general run of things. Whilst pretty handy in the kitchen, accidents still happen. Knives and utensils can fall, pots can be dropped.

The tiles are in theory hard wearing - but when they break? They’re proper broken. And typically, right where I do the most prep work.

Hence a laminate or linoleum is my preference. Easy to spot clean, but takes a while for a proper mopping to dry.

We used to have laminate and went for tiles - the hard fake-wood kind.

Honestly they wear far harder, when properly put down, than the laminate. The only downside is that anything which lands on them will shatter into a thousand parts and scatter over the entire kitchen surface. Glass and crockery will not survive a tumble.

Bonus though is it should last donkey's yeares before needing fixing or any replacing. Laminate always has a limited lifespan and you also have to worry about if someone walks on it with high heels or any sharper footwear or takes a knife into it or such. Dents, jabs and so forth just catch water and steadily flake and make a mess of it (The absolute worst we had was trying to use a cheap steam-cleaner on it after a good few years of using the floor - it lifted every single crack in the liner!

Got a link to those sorts of tiles?

Sadly not - we got them from one of those yea-old physical stores that sold such things. Any specifics on them I wouldn't be able to recall now - save to say that talking to them for high durability ones is what we did.

After that we just got tiles in a "fake floor wood" pattern because it fit the theme of the house and, honestly, wood grain pattern hides a lot of casual dust/dirt so you don't have to clean the floor every single second of every day to have it look good.


Only other thing we did was make sure we got a really good tiler to lay them. Our one was the "midnight tiler" cause he really would come up to that late to work; ran a pig farm during the day and did tiles in the evening/night. Did fantastic work laying them out.

Are they a polymer type material thing?

Honestly can't recall if they were anything special like that.

We had a solid stone floor put down in our kitchen. Looks great, easy to clean and nothing is likely to damage them. Although as already said, you drop anything on it it's probably breaking.

Not fussed on plates and that breaking. They’re cheap to replace compared to “oh bugger, I broke the floor”.

Also speaking of utensils? Bought a new Wok whilst getting other bits. Got home to find the security tag, which didn’t trigger the alarm, still attached. Glad I kept the receipt, and I’ll wander up tomorrow to get that removed.

Weird thing to security tag, as it wasn’t terribly expensive!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JamesY wrote:
We had a solid stone floor put down in our kitchen. Looks great, easy to clean and nothing is likely to damage them. Although as already said, you drop anything on it it's probably breaking.

Don’t suppose you remember how much that cost? Hard wearing is the ticket. And a solid stone floor is nice and cool for Puppers in the summer!

Lino is cheap but not compared to tiles not very hard wearing or long-lasting. Even when fitted well, it will eventually start to lift and peel if it's put down after the kitchen units (if you do it at the same time as the kitchen you can lay it under the units, which helps a lot with longevity. Tiles or stone flooring is much more resilient.

It may be that the previous owners got cheap tiles, which can be more fragile than better quality ones. We have three cracked tiles in our kitchen after 8 years, but only one of the cracks is noticeable and it doesn't cause any problems for us.