Welcome back, yesterday we were talking about tips for when drilling. We discussed the pressure to apply to the drill and where to place your hands on the drill.

Continuing with the pressure to apply to the drill when drilling, I think it is important to know where that pressure should come from. I go to the gym, so I have a lot of upper body strength in my arms, so I find it quite easy to apply the pressure using my arms. This I think is definitely the best way to apply that drilling pressure as it is more controlled. I see some people throwing their whole body into it but I just know how easy it is to get that wrong and lose control, which can be dangerous as well, but more importantly to mention it can be inaccurate and the hole drilled might be off centre and off straight. So if you can, go to the gym.

When withdrawing the drill from the hole after drilling it, you should be pulling the drill bit out of the hole while the drill bit is still spinning. As you do not want to be yanking it out of the hole ruining the consistency and quality of the hole just drilled through damage.

When holding the drill take care not to cover the drill’s vents with either of your hands. One hand should be on the drill handle with the index finger over the trigger. This hand is also responsible for keeping the drill bit inline with the hole, either vertically or horizontally. The other hand is to be placed at the back of the drill applying pressure in the direction of the hole being drilled.

Do not force the drill to drill the hole, apply pressure but do not apply excessive pressure. Just enough to keep the drill moving through the surface of the material. If you want to be technical then for a 10mm diameter drill bit you should wanting to apply a 15lbs (7kg) force, letting the drill do the rest of the work. Obviously for smaller drill bits and large drill bits, decrease or increase the pressure accordingly. You will soon begin to develop a sense for how much pressure to apply and what brings the best results. Pressure is extremely important to get correct when drilling through glass and ceramic tiles which are delicate and brittle.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2 of this Drilling Tip bonanza

If you are wanting to drill a substantial sized hole in brick or concrete then you will often hire a Core Drill from your local merchants yard. Typically this is done to perhaps drill a big enough hole for your toilet soil pipe to go through, or any drainage pipe out of a house.

I once chain drilled a hole big enough for a soil pipe to fit through a concrete block wall, it took half a day, but I was trying to save money by not hiring a core drill. It is a lot easier with a core drill though as they are like a Hole Saw for wood (a hollowed out cylindrical drill bit), only it drills through concrete blocks and bricks.

They have a limited depth of course, but you can hire core drills with different depths. Some of the larger ore drills need a water feed to keep them cool, and some need a clutch because the resistance and power (torque) the drill can spit out.

You have probably heard people tell you to chain drill this and chain drill that.

Well what is chain drilling? Abstractly it is the action of drilling a series of holes in a straight line next to each other to create a long gap in a material. You often have to do it when you cannot get a saw or other machine to cut that long gap in a material, yet a drill can make a hole in the material quite easily so the solution is to drill lots of holes to create the long gap.

It can be done with an ordinary drill and drill bit. If the line needs to be quite a thickness, then you’ll find this difficult with a drill bit that is not as thick the required thickness. So often a DIYer will go and buy a Hole Saw, which is a hollowed out cylinder shaped drill bit, with one end open and one end closed. The closed end fits into your drill, and the drill forces the Hole Saw to spin round a cut through the material (usually wood but the Hole Saw is made of a substantial steel material and can be used to cut through lots of materials).

Have you ever seen a structure that looks impossible to get up? I found this when I needed to lift my floor boards, they are laid wall to wall, they interlock, there are no gaps - so where do you place your crow bar to lever them up? Like in the movies.

The answer is not to use a crow bar for starters. The second answer which is related to the first answer is that you cannot lift them up like that.

What you need to do is chain drill, carefully, down a length of one of the chipboard floor boards using a Hole Saw on the end of your drill. Once you have chain drilled it, then you have an edge that you can lever up. If you have chain drilled down the longest edge of the floor board then you can probably lift it up with your own strength, but if not then chisel down the other edges quite easily breaking the wood until you can lift the floorboard yourself. I wouldn’t worry about damaging the interlocking parts of the neighbouring pieces of floorboard, as you will never get the floorboards to interlock again.

To actually cut glass is quite easy (using a glass cutter) so you would expect drilling glass to be similar, also I thought it would be as easy as drilling through a tile because in my mind a ceramic tile is just as delicate and brittle as glass.

From what I have found drilling glass is exactly the same as drilling through ceramic tiles as the drill bits are the same - those spear-headed looking drill bits that you can find in any good DIY store.

If your local DIY store sells them then grit-edged bits can work on glass. A carborundum grinder head of suitable diameter would suffice, but ask your DIY merchant about that.  If you are wanting to drill through a mirror then ideally you will want to ask your merchant to do it for you that way if they crack the mirror then it is their fault and the bad luck will be theirs to say the least.

If you have to do the drilling, then remember to follow the advice in an earlier article we wrote a couple of weeks ago when drilling ceramic tiles; remember to dip the drill bit in water before drilling, as this stops the glass from heating and cracking as easily.

If you’re a real DIY enthusiast, then once you’ve finished all the DIY in one house, you’ll be dying to find some more.  How to tell if you’re a DIY addict:

• Do you go searching for DIY to do?
• Do you rejoice when weekend comes around as that’s more hours for DIY?
• When you’ve finished your house, do you volunteer to help friends, relatives and neighbours?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you could be a DIY addict. (more…)

I hate floorboards as you all know. They’re great to walk on but if they squeak then I freak, out.

I discovered another way of getting shut of squeaks in houses where the floors are built with chipboard rather than good old fashioned floorboards fitted in traditional terraced houses for example.

This particular squeak had been hiding under my sofa in the front room which is why I had not discovered it until recently. The problem with this one was that it was only a slight squeak but because it was in the centre of my living room now (I have recently moved my furniture around to create more space which is why the sofa does not cover the squeak anymore) it was going to annoy me for potentially a long time, so it had to go.

So the slight squeak I thought would be quite easy to remove, just drill it down in the normal way to the joists and it won’t be able to move anymore. But unfortunately it came to light that these new modern houses have a concrete floor and a layer of polystyrene on top of the concrete, all beneath the chipboard floors. So there are no joists to drill the boards to. Now it’s quite obvious to me that this is the only squeak, and it is only a slight one, and therefore I’m quite lucky as compared to the number of squeaks on the first floor of the house this is a godsend. It still had to go though.

So I played with the squeak until I was satisfied where exactly and between which two boards the squeak existed. I then chain drilled right along the border between the two chipboards so they were not touching at all. And this has improved it 99% in my expert opinion. So there you go, another solution to you squeak fanatics out there.

I went to a well-known DIY store yesterday to buy a bathroom towel rail, I knew from previous visits there that the towel rail variety was not going to be great but I’d had enough of not having a towel rail in my bathroom and also not having enough time to go and seek a better vendor.

Anyway, so I took it home and opened it up. It cost me £20 for this piece of metal with cheap fittings on each end of it so I knew I had been had there’s no way it is worth £20. My hand was forced for said reasons.

With the fittings being so cheap I knew I had to be extra accurate with them and make sure they were solid.

When I was following the instructions it asked me to mark two holes on the wall where the ends of towel rail will go. I marked these very accurately of course. When it came to drilling the holes the first hole I drilled started on the correct marker however I must have had my drill at an angle and by the end of the drilling the centre of the hole was slightly above where I had hoped it would be.

In this situation it is best to not panic and just drill the other hole in exactly the same manner and this is what I did and the hole again was slightly high and looked to the eye to be perfect (perfectly inaccurate both times but still perfect to all intents and purposes). So the tip here is not to panic.

Another tip is not to buy a cheap towel rail.

If you’re thinking of buying a new carpet then to save yourself some money in labour it is an idea to lift the carpets and clear the rooms yourself.

Looking at your old carpet it probably looks like it is solid and stuck down and difficult to lift but it is not. Get a flat headed (not a Phillips) screw driver and gently push down the edge of the carpet and try levering it up like a crow bar opening a window. It will lift with a bit of effort. Grab it with your fingers and lift it bit by bit until you have it all up. It is only held down by some pointy grippers around the edges of the carpet to keep it taught and to prevent it from moving as you walk over it.

You’ll notice there is probably some felt underlay under the carpet. This is usually stapled down to prevent it from moving. If you’re keeping your underlay because you want to save some money on your new carpet budget then do not lift this. It may look dirty but it is just the way that felt underlay looks. Give it a vacuum to be sure.

If you aren’t keeping your underlay then it’s just a case of pulling at it from the edges until it is all up. If the staples to do not come out of the floor as you lift the underlay then get some grippers from your toolbox and lift them out one by one as they will hurt if you stand on them.