Running Repairs

Spent today prepping a house for painting. I took 8 hours, just to clean the gloss work. I do struggle to understand how people.can live in a rented property for 12 years and never clean it once. I feel for the landlords who now have to come and pick up the pieces, so the property can be re-listed

1 garden clearance finished off this morning, then a second full garden clearance completed this afternoon. I'm sure this should not have been done in 30 degrees heat. Thanks to the two young lads that came along and helped. I'm not making any profit on this job as I have invested in new tools 🤔😈

Lovely kitchen finished today. Tiled on 4 walls. This has certainly brightened up a smallish kitchen.

Doing a house a garden clearance for one of a customer's rental properties, today. Got my Nephew (moves like a snail) and a friends son, helping me out. good news for customer is that I found a pond in the garden. Bad news is, I didn't find it, until I was stood knee deep in it. 😭😭.

End of the day, 3 recycling center runs later we got 90% of the garden cleared.

Doing a house and garden clearance for one of a customer's rental properties, today. Got my Nephew (moves like a snail) and a friends son,. helping me.out. good news for customer is that I found a pond in the garden. Bad news is, I didn't find it, until I was stood knee deep in it. 😭😭

Today was an interesting day. Mounting a 100kg, 100' flat screen tv 12 feet up a wall. It is still there 6 hours later.

A new look kitchen finished this week, using 100 x 300 mm Diamante tiles, and a contrasting white grout. Once the issues with the walls were overcome, I think this kitchen looks very nice.

Another demonstration of top quality workmanship, brought to you by Persimmon Homes.

The wall is so wonky that over a 2.4m wall the worktop touches at one end, moves to be 14mm away after 1m, then touches again at 1.5m, is again 13mm away at 2m and is 5mm at 2.4m.

I even had to file away part of the plasterboard to get the tiles to sit flat as over a 300mm tile there was an 11mm deviation.

Today was not about earning money, it was about giving back to the community. I went to Hurstbourne Tarrant school a pit together some of their new outdoor equipment.

Point to note, no matter how much the school has paid for the items, it still needs someone with a brain to pack the pallets.

Bike shed had a wrong panel and the Chatty Shed was missing about 6 parts, all the screws and had no instructions 🤬.

I did manage to put together a table, 2 shoe racks, a welly rack, a coat rack and most of the bike shed.

I can't afford to give money, but I can. Give my time.

Another bathroom finished off this week. Something a little different with a window requiring all the reveals finished off. It's always a little more difficult to match grout and silicone when continuing someone else's work. I even had to remove the window to be able to do a proper job.

That said I think it looks good. I am however wondering why, every time a customer lives in an apartment, it's always the top floor. Yesterday I climbed 176 floors. Today was better at about 30.

More than happy to provide "free, no obligation quotes". See my full FB page Running Repairs

Unfortunately some people should not do DIY. Today's customers had issues with their shower since they bought their house. At the moment, it's a bit too expensive to put a new shower tray in. This one has a long crack in it and it is weeping when used. The shower also fills with water whilst being used and takes ages to drain.

After some investigation I found the reason, although I understand the thinking of the DIYist that did the work, it has caused problems.

I ground out a bit extra along the length of the crack and filled it with silicone. I have said to the customers that it might stop it for a bit. The leak is not terrible but the tray really does need replacing.

I refitted their waste trap and then found what was going on with the draining.

So what did we find.

1. The riser legs for the shower tray are upside down. Screwed to the floor and then had the tray Sat on them. Also the floor has not been reinforced, so the whole tray can flex.

2. The basin and the shower waste are connected at opposite ends of one run of waste pipe, so it seems there was run back towards the shower, as the sink is much higher. The DIYist then created their own U Bend, using 4 90° turns. The problem was then that there is not enough pressure in the shower waste to push the water round the U. I took it out and re-installed a straight pipe.

This should help the customer, until they can afford to have the full bathroom refurb l, they are saving for.

Just a small job completed this evening. It's always the same, you get a leak and the engineer fixes it but says "sorry pal, I'm not a tiler". Had to sand all the old adhesive off the tiles first, it was a bad idea having a shower before I went!!🫣

Another lovely kitchen finished today. This one using 300mm x 100mm tiles and white grout. The longer tiles really do stretch the room out. Oh and I had a lovely little kitten supervising 😁.

Nice simple job this week. Customer has damp walls around the corners of their shower cubicle. Another tradesman had told them it was an all out job, as the grout had gone porous, he quoted £2500.00 to do the work.

I was asked to give a second opinion. After getting the shower head on full and spraying directly against the corners of the shower, I identified, as expected, that there was leakage between the frame of the shower screen and the tiles.

I removed all the screen, old silicone and cleaned it all up. there was mould behind the old silicone which I cleaned up with a mould killer. Re-installed the shower screen and applied new silicone. I also ground out some of the grout, and found there is nothing wrong with it. Yes, the tiling was done New build quality,

All now looks good and at less than 10% of the original quote.

I have recommended a new shower screen in time, but I will work for the next few years.

Lovely bathroom upgrade completed this week. Including additional tiles, with a contrasting transition row, shower riser, soap dish, shelf, towel rail, safety handle and a very nice sliding shower screen.

Lovely kitchen tiling job done today. Went quite smoothly and the tiles in the corners don't look out of place. It is always difficult to match tiles round a corner when you have a high point in both walls and therefore can't start in the corners. Also there is a typically New build wonky wall.

Today I completed this bathroom upgrade. The walls had been tiled 1 row by the builder. Unfortunately my customer was unable to find a matching tile and therefore another style has been used.

The originals were 200mm wide, but the new ones were only 198mm, requiring a wider grout line to make them look right. In order to distract the eyeline to this difference a longer border tile was used between the two sets of tiles.

I think this really helped.

After the tiles were installed, I changed the taps to accommodate a shower mixer, installed a shower riser bar and shower screen.

Nice kitchen tiled today. Metro bone tiles with a complimenting Vintage White Grout.

Full Bathroom Refurbishment or Just replace the grout???

With the costs involved in a partial or full Bathroom/en-suit running from about £2k to as much as £20-30k it is worth considering what you really want or need to achieve. It's always worth throwing the cost of a new car at a room just to add 1/4 of that to the value of your home.

If your bathroom is functional but the grout has yellowed and it's looking a bit unloved, then you could just replace the grout. Go back in with a fresh new batch of the old colour or change it completely, this will make a real difference, and it could cost a little as a few hundred pounds, if you get someone experienced to do it.

Yes, it will probably never have to wow factor of a new bathroom, but it will look better. The thing you need to consider is, what would make you happy?

Any tool designed to remove grout, will also be more than happy to chomp it's way through a tile, and yes accidents happen. You can never guarantee that the edge or a tile won't get a nibble, but if you can take that, and it will probably cover with some extra grout, you can make a nice change at a fraction of the cost.

Oh By the way, it is really dusty work!!

Unfortunately there are some very unscrupulous traders out there. I have just been to a nice ladies home to look at some tiling she has paid for. The bad news is, that the work is so poor that it is unrecoverable and if the family can't live with it, it will all need to come off and be redone.

Tricky little job today. Removing one single tile. Cutting holes in a new one, and installing. A couple of hours work, but luckily done without damaging any of the tiles around it.

Lovely kitchen finished today. Nice grey tiles with matching grout.

To all my customers from 2023 I thank you for your business and wish you all a happy and prosperous 2024. Happy New Year!! 🍸🍹🎉🎉🎆

Probably the most technically difficult job I have done so far. About 50% of the tiles needed cutting, some multiple times, and all at 45° angles. This job took 3 days, almost twice a long as most kitchens. Much was down to the area tiled, including above the kitchen cabinets, the rest was the difficulty of the job. I made a mistake and it took me 10 minutes to work out which tile was in the wrong way, so that I could rectify itand it was above one of the cabinets 🙄

The final outcome is quite satisfying and my customer is happy.

I hate herringbone and black grout. It looks good, but is a pain to do.

Nice kitchen refresh completed today, using 200mmx100m marble effect metro tiles and a contrasting grey grout.

Lovely kitchen and bathroom update completed this week. Customer needed the bathroom tiles matching then a shower riser and screen installing. Then moving onto the kitchen with 300x100 gloss white tiles and graphite grout, which gives a lovely contrast. And obviously I had to deal with the typical TW wonky walls

This is what happens when commercial building contractors pay by the M2 for tilers. Just throw them on the wall. This tile popped off and as you can see there is no adhesive residue at all on the back of it. Obviously adhesive applied to the wall and the tile not buttered. The ones all around it have also let go. I will now need to take nearly all the wall off, then knock off all the adhesive, before re-tiling the whole area. At least i should be able to re-use most of the tiles, with little cleaning. You get what you pay for.

Another kitchen finished today. The white grout really makes the new blue tiles pop and gives life to an otherwise boring new build kitchen.

Lovely kitchen finished today, in a new style of tile from Topps Tiles. Grey with a matching grout. Slightly smaller than a metro tile so a bit more work required, and unfortunately the walls of this new build property were very uneven and it took quite a lot of work and fettling to get the tiles flat. But all is good now.