I've been doing some real mad scientist sh*t on my half destroyed house. I should post some pics someday. Needed an 18" panel door. The hardware store had them marked up to $120... for a crap cardboard door that was originally $20, So I chopped a 36" spare door down. @Yaka -A little bit of a sloooow reply, but, Try it out on the back of the board?
i tired it on scrap piece and was not happy with tear out no matter what i tired. in the end i carefully cut in to it with a hand saw then with a 3d printed holder used one of the v bits toe score down the cut lines took a while but i am happy with the results
Half this, half the Purchases thread: fitted new smoke alarms. When we moved in, the first thing I did was take down the long-dead alarms and empty mounting plates the previous occupants had been living with(!) and fit new interlinked wireless alarms - the ones where if one alarm goes off, they all do. Sadly, there was a design flaw: a ******* BRIGHT flashing LED which, no lie, illuminates the whole bedroom every minute or so. Couple that with a false alarm one night (dust in the sensor, I think) and I ended up taking the bedroom ones down... and have only now got around to replacing them. Went for £160-ish of X-Sense "Link+ Pro" alarms. They interlink, as before, but also communicate with a Wi-Fi base station for monitoring and alerts via an app. They also talk, or rather shout at you in an American lady's voice - which, handily, identifies *which* alarm has triggered (by a set of predefined and somewhat US-centric locations, like "den"). I can see that being handy for both actual fires and false alarms - lets you go right to the alerting one and clean it out with a vac. Just got finished fitting six smoke alarms, including one in the shed; a heat alarm for the kitchen arrives tomorrow. EDIT: Heat alarm fitted. That one doesn't shout at you in an American lady's voice, it just goes BEEEEEEEEEEP really loud instead. Decided to pick up another three-pack of smoke alarms, too: the downstairs here is open-plan (conservatory aside), and previously I'd relied on a single heat alarm in the kitchen and the understanding that smoke would rapidly go up the stairs and trigger the smoke alarm on the landing. That understanding is challenged, though, by the fact there's beams where the walls used to be - so if you flip the house upside-down, you'd have to step over 'em to go between the kitchen and what would have been the dining room, and again between the dining room and the living room. Flip it back over, and the smoke would be trapped the same way - you'd have to wait for the enclosed bit of ceiling to fill up before it'd start overflowing and make its way up the stairs. So, smoke alarms for the "dining room" and living room - meaning they'll trigger sooner in the event of a fire. Bought a three-pack 'cos it was, like, £6 more expensive than two one-packs - figured it never hurts to have a spare!
Did you get a step stool for changing a random battery every month? With that many detectors, you either smoke, charge batteries _everywhere_, or mistrust your wiring. I guess if the cat is a pyromaniac, this is acceptable paranoia. The closest I've ever seen to a fire starting in a bathroom was some tenants using a propane boiler to deep fry a turkey...in a fiberglass shower enclosure. That's the level of stupid the fire codes are written for.
Most of these detectors don't have user-serviceable batteries - the argument being that the actual detecting bit only has a finite lifespan (about 10 years max iirc) so whacking new batteries in over and over again isn't going to help if the unit can't actually do it's job due to age.
I didn't fit one in the bathroom, obvs. But they're relatively cheap, the batteries (lithium, not alkaline) last an age, and if there's a fire I want to know as soon as possible - not when the smoke's reached the one or two rooms where there's a fire alarm. And obviously the office needs one, 'cos if that goes up while I'm in the house I wouldn't know until I see the cheery glow of 90% of everything I own going up in smoke... I don't have to mistrust the wiring, either: the kitchen's got the kids tablets charging overnight, the living room's got the consoles on standby and a compressor dehumidifier, the master bedroom has phones charging, the eldest's room has a phone and a tablet charging, the youngest's has a desk lamp with a battery in it also charging... even the conservatory's got a laptop and a Casio keyboard in it. Are any of 'em likely to asplode suddenly? No. Is it impossible? Very much also no. So, yeah, I'll stick one in every room and sleep better (unless they go off, in which case... I'll wake up, I hope, 'cos that's what they're for!)
Just finished off a washing machine for Saff, she kept asking for one but they're all overpriced tiny plastic tat. The drum is a 3mm sheet of hardboard painstakingly curved round, the end result is what I'd hoped for but I knew that it was a risky business before I started
@bawjaws -In my experience, the service life of a smoke detector is when the battery gets low and the tenant throws it away to stop the chirping. (I feel like I've said that 100 times. )
Lidl have some cheap accessories at the moment, including driver bits, dremmel style grinder and sanding heads and other stuff. 3 for £2 I bought 3 packs of driver bits to replace my broken ones. LIDL TOOLS by CrapBag posted 6 Apr 2025 at 16:57
Today was a day of treating the shed and its decking with some wood preservative, after finding a few afternoons in the week to pressure wash it all and sand down the front. I am knackered.
Looking good, GH! I spent today replacing the rotten 3x1.6m decking on the front of the summer house. All the boards have a coat of decking treatment, one more tomorrow. Also need to screw it down fully and take the old stuff to the tip, hopefully it'll go in one car load
I bought a parkside cross line laser level today but it doesn't seem right. Are the laser lines supposed to a nice thin neat line because the ones being projected are about 6-7mm wide and fuzzy. IMG_20250522_001937035 by CrapBag posted 22 May 2025 at 00:21 Photo makes the lines look crisp and neat but they aren't.
I just took that shot of mine, it's in strong light otherwise I'd have expected fuzzier edges, but 5mm is absurd. I'd say the line can be as thick as 2mm in the worst conditions? This being the cheapest one I could buy as it sees very little use and the good ones are pretty pricey!
Thank you, I think I might take this one back and see if they have another to compare it too and then get a refund if there's no difference. Think it was the last one though.
So, today’s DIY project! We moved into our new house last Friday, no washing machine, but we had a tumble dryer (which we hadn’t actually used because, well, no washing machine). Anyway, the new washing machine finally got delivered. When we first moved in, I noticed the plug looked a bit burnt. Totally forgot about it until I went to sort everything out today. Ended up having to do a bit of plumbing and electrical DIY. I’m terrible at DIY, so it took me like an hour just to change the plug socket. Lots of googling, realized it needed to be cut back, then couldn’t find half the stuff I needed because we still have a load of boxes to unpack. So yeah, took way longer than it should’ve, but it’s done now! To plumb in the new washing machine, there’s a standing pipe (which smelled absolutely awful when we moved in). I got a dual drain set up so I could add the condenser tumble dryer, no more having to empty it manually, or so I thought. Turns out I only had the hose, but the nozzle was too big. Neither B&Q nor Screwfix had the little adapter I needed in stock, so it’s off to Amazon for that. That side’s just plugged for now. Honestly, I’m just glad I changed the socket, it could’ve caused a fire. And I’m happy to finally have a washing machine again. It’s pretty quiet too, it’s got one of those digital inverters. 2 Jobs i can knock off the todo snag list for the hoose.
Aye very glad I checked it Thanks, took me longer than expected. Stuff like this im terrible at. Computer, those i can do (sometimes)
Just used my crimper for the first time and I have a question. Can you cut the length of the conductor or are they not really designed for plugs as the neutral doesn't look go IMG_20250614_221442537~2 by CrapBag posted 14 Jun 2025 at 22:24 od.
