What you do not want to happen when you are tiling a wall is to have very thin pieces of tile at the edges of the wall. It is unsightly, it is difficult to cut a tile thinly (more than it is to cut it on the thick side) and it is just plain avoidable.

You avoid it by measuring the width of a tile including the width of one of the spacers you’re going to use. Mark a place on the wall where the center tile should be, a guess. Measure how many tile-widths (including the spacer) you can get between that centre point and a side wall. Make sure you finish on a half tile or more or near as possible, if not then move the centre marker appropriately so that you can finish on a half tile or more or near as possible. Now measure how many tile-widths you can get from the centre mark to the other side wall. If you can’t finish on a half tile at that side then move the center marker again until you are satisified you have got the best of both worlds.

Do the same for the vertical plane, you don’t want to finish on less than a half tile vertically either for the same reasons.

First of all when choosing a bath, spend a decent amount of money on one. You can pick up baths for about £100 or even less but they are rubbish - you get what you pay for - if you spend £200 or more you’re going to get something with more strength and substance because they are usually made of thicker material. Which means it won’t move when you get in and out of the bath (even if it only moves a little bit in the end with a cheaper a bath, it’s going to annoy you and it won’t be easy to change your mind then). If you spend more on a bath it also makes it easier to fit and it won’t bend during the fitting stages. Also with a more expensive bath you get the stands with it and they are usually pretty good.

So to fit a bath it needs to be put in place on the stands and levelled out to make sure it is flat. Then get under the bath while its in place and mark horizontal lines on the walls where the bath touches the walls. Move the bath away. Screw big blocks of wood (not too thick it doesn’t want to be thicker than the gap around the underneath of the edges of the bath) to the wall, this is what the bath will sit on for extra support. The blocks of wood should be level with the lines you just drew.

Once all the wood is on the wall around where the bath is going to go place loads of sealant where the bath edges will be as you’re gong to push the bath into the sealant making sure it is completely water tight. The taps are already assumed to be ready to push through the holes in the bath. Bring the bath back for its second and final fitting. Push the bath onto the wood blocks and into the sealant, wiping away excess sealant with a damp cloth. Make sure the legs of the bath brackets are on the floor. One solid bath.

If you have ever been screwing a screw into a door frame or a cabinet and found the screw does not tighten - what can you do? Well if you are lucky then you can scrap that hole and drill another one alongside it and get the same results. But this is not always possible. I was trying to fix a door that wouldn’t shut properly. The catch on the door handle would not go far enough back to click into the bracket on the door frame, preventing the door from closing. So after trying to adjust the door position itself I worked out that it was the bracket on the door frame that was in the wrong position. I decided to move it forward a ‘tut’, but the definition of a tut meant it was not possible to drill a new hole in this distance.

So I made the hole bigger in the wooden door frame, which meant the original screw was now too small for the widened hole. I could not use a bigger screw because the size of the hole in the metal bracket was fixed and I did not want to mess about with that fiddly thing. Which is a common scenario, even if you just find one day that a screw just turns and turns it’s the same situation as I found with my door. So what do you do?

Find some matchsticks (used ones preferably) and shove them into the widened wooden hole. Just one, maybe two will be enough. Now try screwing the screw into the hole, it will grip.

As i’ve already mentioned in an earlier post when i moved into my house my radiators leaked like crazy. The pressure in the system would not stay constant and kept going down. It didn’t help a couple of them were really old, cast iron radiators.

First thing you need to do is drain the radiator system using the valve tap so that there is no pressure in the boiler system.

Using the taps on the end of the radiator, turn of the radiator. Next get ready a couple of containers (bowls, pans etc) to catch the water as it comes out of the radiator, as there is quite a lot. Use a pair of grips to grip the radiator while using a variable spanner to unscrew the big bolt on the end of the radiator. Do not unscrew the smaller bolt that may be on the pipe that goes into the radiator’s tap/valve.

Water will start to leak out at this point as you unscrew it more, so have your bowls and pans ready. It will take quite a while to fully empty.

Once the radiator is empty. Unscrew the smaller bolt that is on the pipe that goes into the radiator tap/valve, and remove.

Go and buy a new one of the same size. You’ll also need some PTFE tape.

Around each of the screw areas on the new tap place a good ten wraps of PTFE tape to make it water tight.

Rescrew the bolts back into place using the variable spanner and grips. Turn on the radiator using the new tap(s).

Fill the radiator system again by turning on the supply tap (usually with the boiler).

When i moved into my house almost all the radiators leaked at the valves on the side. It’s a shame really, because they are really old fashioned, cast iron radiators that look really nice, but can barely function as they should.

For a while i just tightened them up with a variable spanner and grips. It soon became clear that they would need to be changed.

To drain the radiators you should find the radiator that has a release valve tap. It’ll look different to the valves on the other radiators, and normally there is only one release valve tap per boiler system in a house.

Get a big bowl or other suitable container for the water that is going to come out of this radiator. Also turn off the central heating. Using a variable spanner, release the valve tap by turning it anti-clockwise which will release the water in the radiator, and also reduce the pressure in the boiler system. All the radiators are connected (normally) so by releasing the water from one radiator reduces the water pressure in the entire system/network of radiators in the house. So if you observe the pressure gage on the boiler itself you will notice the pressure decreasing as the water comes out of the radiator.

I have recently had problems with my squeaky floor boards in my darned little house. The issue is it is a newish house - 10 years old - and the floor boards continuously squeak whenever you walk up and down the stairs. one solution, stop walking in the house - instead levitate, or deploy a small pulley system for transport around the house.

It really annoys me when floor boards squeak, especially those really high pitched noisy ones.

So the solution to eradicate the squeaks is to screw the floor boards to the joists, being careful to not puncture any pipes or wires under the boards.

How do you find the joists in the house? Put a small bit drill piece into your drill and start screwing through the floor boards in a line, each hole an inch apart. eventually you should hit a joist, you’ll know you’ve hit one when the drill doesn’t accelerate away when you hit the thin air under the floor boards.

If you haven’t found a joist after 15 attempts you’re probably drilling a line of holes parallel with the joist. Try drilling the line of holes in a perpendicular line to the one you’ve just tried and you’ll definitely hit a joist. Each joist is usually 40 - 50 cm apart.

When do you know to use a screw or a nail for a particular job?

I live in a 10 year old house and the floor boards squeaked like crazy when i first moved in. So along with a number of other jobs i decided to fix the floor boards. In newer houses you don’t have conventional floor boards that you find in old victorian house or workers terraced houses built in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Nowadays we have big, long chip boards placed down which rubs against each other creating the irritating squeak.

So for this type of job you have to nail or screw down the chipboard to the joists. I automatically thought to nail them down with a hammer but after some forethought you have to think “what happens if I need to get the boards up again in the future?”. So although it takes longer to screw the chipboards down because you have to drill the hole, counter sink the hole before you screw a screw into the hole. Which requires a lot of changing bit pieces in the drill. However the advantage of being able to remove the screw quite easily is an important.

Nails are best for jobs like putting a picture on the wall. (although i would still personally choose to use a screw and a plug in the wall)

DIY in the home has become less about Doing It Yourself and more about You Do It. According to reports from Legal and General Insurance company this week.

Legal and General say that 41 per cent of britains would rather than roll up our sleeves sooner pay £700 a year on help from outside contractors in the home. Cleaning, gardening, dog walking, ironing, and window cleaners.

Are we going to give up our hired help and tighten our belts with the credit crunch looming though? Not likely to be the case for much of London where lifestyles are too crazy to get their hands dirty and do some DIY or waive a duster around.

A 30% minority of people asked were honest enough to say they just paid for help because they would prefer not to do the chores themselves, and with cheaper labout available from immigrants the temptation is too great. It is the under-25s who get help the most, is this a sign of a new age? or culture for Britain.

When choosing a drill do you require power or convenience? It’s actually a good idea to have both in your DIY arsenal.

A cordless drill is incredibly convenient in the sense that you don’t need a wired power supply nearby and you can easily unpack and pack away the drill in double quick time. It’s great for little jobs that don’t require much power, for example jobs that require a smaller bit. For jobs requiring a larger bit there will often not be enough power or strength in a cordless drill. Corded drills have a power output but they require a constant high power supply that today’s batteries (small batteries) cannot supply. In a house build where electricity hasn’t been wired in yet a cordless drill is a welcome help.

A disadvantage of a corded power drill is that it can have its power cord damaged, which isn’t an issue for cordless drills. However cordless drills batteries need to be replaced every few years.

There are advantages and disadvantages to consider, you’ll need to look forward in time and predict what you’ll need the most. If you know you’ll need a powerful drill, are working to a low budget and you don’t mind the inconvenience of running a cord then a corded drill is the best option for you.

Installing a gas water heater is quite easy and most DIY’ers will find it a ‘doddle’ to do. Take careful analysis ofht einstallation make sure that when the flue is fitted it is without any obstruction. I’ll assume that you have already fitted the gas, hot and cold water pipes to the area where the gas heater is being installed. When you buy a new heater it comes with the hooks to fix the heater to the wall, the terminations for connecting the pipes and an instructions manual. A solid, rigid pipe transports the gas to the heater and the terminations for the gas pipe come with the heater.

Get the heater unpacked and be sure to read all the instructions, then make sure the required measurements and distances can be met where you’re insntalling it. For example the amount of space you’ll need from the ceiling and at the sides. Make sure of the suggested position of the flue where it exits the house. 

Remove the outer casing of the heater by removing the control knobs and screws. Lift the case up and store away temporarily. Usually a paper template will come with a heater, use it to mark the top, bottom, right and left side of the flue and the screw holes on the wall.

Now loosely fit the heater to the wall and fit the flue at the correct height and make a mark where it is placed. Now take down the heater and cut through the wall either by chain drilling or other means. Use an edged spirit level when fitting the heater and flue for the final time, drilling the fixing brackets to the wall for the final fit.