Digitalquill

I bought some uPVC reviver to clean the conservatory with. In the end I went for De-Solv-It uPVC Reviver from Screwfix.

It is a cream very much like jiff cream cleaner, you simply rub the cream into the frame in a circular motion with a damp cloth and then buff it off with a dry cloth and hey presto the frames come up like new.

I was very impressed with the results, when I used it on our conservatory, the grayish tinge to the frames was quickly removed and they are now gleaming white.

I would defiantly recommend this product to anyone wanting to revive or clean your tired looking uPVC window frames.

We have a fully working boiler! After 6 months of struggling with our old boiler we now have a brand new Valiant boiler fitted. The install did not go as easily as it could, regular readers of this blog will know that we also moved the boi9let to the downstairs toilet in order to free up space in the kitchen and enable the new kitchen building plans we have.

The old boiler in the kitchen was a fairly recent upgrade, it has had a catalog of faults since its install and leaks inside had ruined all chances of it ever running correctly. During the install of that boiler, it seems that the fitters took several shortcuts meaning the that hot water circled round virtually the whole house before getting to the taps in the bathroom. Not great for efficiency and not great when you come to fit a new system and have to try and work out what is going on where.

In addition as the bathroom floor is tiled, the only access we had to the bathroom was from below, the good thing is that we have the plans for the kitchen so we could take down the ceiling in the kitchen to reveal under the bathroom. Although this looks a mess it really will not take too much to sort out. I will be plastering the whole room following the build anyway and I like me ceilings to be perfectly smooth with no artex which the old ceiling had.

While doing the boiler we did a good powerflush on the system, this took some time to do but it will have been well worth it. The amount of thick black debris that we removed from the system must have been impeding its performance and there is no way we wanted all that flowing through the new boiler.

When we took the old toilet and hand basin out of the downstairs toilet we uncovered the original parquet floor. This weekend I have sanded it back to the unfinished wood and it looks fantastic. I just not need to find something that will best seal the wood and then some form of lacquer to finish it.

The next step for the downstairs cloakroom is to find a suitable toilet and basin. I need to take care when finding these as we need to ensure that they fit into the space available. Then it is a case of a little tiled area and some painting.

Thanks to all who helped on this.

CAD Drawing of the Orangery

We had our builder round last night to discuss a few things regarding our kitchen extension/orangery project. We needed to clarify some things and change some aspects of the design to ensure it is exactly what we want.

It was a very constructive meeting and we gave him the go-ahead to refer the project to his planner who will contact us and take us through the planning application process.

This is a big step for us, one that we should have taken several weeks ago, however, delays in getting quotes back from suppliers and work commitments have meant that things have got a little delayed. This is a problem for us as the planning application process could take up to 12 weeks meaning that the build might be starting in the first week of September.

Hopefully this will mean that we can get the building work done during September and fingers crossed the weather will hold out for us. Any later and the weather could become more changeable which would impact the build.

This is all assuming of course that the planning application a. takes 12 weeks and b. is passed, but we will face either of those if they happen to arise.

I am now in the process of updating my project plan, when things get a little more progressed I will update the chosen suppliers as to the expected time for delivery.

This starts the ball rolling, keeping everything in check will take a great deal of time and effort but the end result will be well worthwhile.

This year Christmas is going to be very different for us. Regular readers of my blogs will know that 7 months ago saw the arrival of our first child. Eva is now doing very well, crawling around and almost standing up. She is into everything, if she sees something that she is interested in she has go grab for it.

We would normally have the Christmas tree on the floor in the bay window, however, Eva would easily be able to grab at it. It is not that stable and could easily be pulled down, so, for that reason one of the baby proofing projects that I thought I would blog about was making a stand for the Christmas tree, moving out of the reach of little hands.

I am lucky in that I have a load of 18mm MDF left over from shelving out the garage, this would make the ideal material for the box I was making. It needed to be 600×600 mm in order to be big enough for the base of the Christmas tree and 500mm high, which would hopefully be just high enough to keep out of Eva’s reach while being low enough for her to be able to see the tree.

So here is my quick step by step guide on creating a Christmas tree stand

1. Cut the top piece at 600x600mm, a front piece at 600x500mm and two sides at 582x500mm. I am leaving the back open but you could easily add a back if required, as this backs up against the wall, we will be able to use the box to store things that we do not need over Christmas.Although the Dewalt Saw bench makes life allot easier, you can do this project using hand tools only.
   

   Dewalt Saw Bench with Side extension

   

   MDF Cut to Size

2. Take the top and measure in 18mm (or what ever thickness paneling you are using) in from the front, left and right edges and draw a line as shown in the picture below. Make sure you mark the underside of the top as we will be fixing our joining bars to this line later.
   

   Mark 18mm round the edge of the top

3. Cut yourself three jointing bars, I used some off cuts of 25x30mm pine I had lying around, these do not have to look great as they will be hidden. These need to span between the marks you have just made on the top of your stand.
4. Put the bars in place with one edge on the 18mm line you have just drawn and draw down the other edge. This will then provide you with a guide where to drill your pilot holes.
5. Drill through between these lines. I put 4 screws in each bar.
6. Flip the top over and countersink the screw holes to make a nice finish on the top.
7. Flip the top back over and put the front bar in place, making sure it is lined up with your original lines, especially the 18mm line, then clamp it in place. I used a quick grip clamp but a G-Clamp of any sort would do. If you wanted you could put some wood glue in between the bar and the MDF but I did not bother.
   

   Clamp the bar to the underneath of the Top

8. You can now torn the top back over, taking care not to move the bar, and screw through.
9. Repeat this process with the two sides until you have them all secured.
   

   All the bars secured on the top

10. Put the front panel into place and draw a line onto it at the top of the wood bar. This gives you where you can drill along the top of the front.
11. Measure and mark and line 18mm in from the edges of the front panel
12. Cut two jointing bars that will be secured to the front panel, these will be used to secure the front and the sides together.
13. Place them onto the front along the 18mm line, being sure to leave enough room at the top for the existing bars on the top of the box and draw a line down the outer edge.
14. Drill your pilot holes through on the front panel for the top and the sides and countersink them all
15. Secure the side bars as we did with those on the top
    

    Secure side bars to the front and drill pilot holes to secure it to the top.

16. Take the two sides and mark lines on them where they meet the top and the front, again drill and countersink your screw holes
17. It is now time to screw it all together, first secure the front to the top, making sure everything is in alignment, then secure the sites to the top and finally the sides to the front.
18. Your box is now made and should be strong enough to hold the biggest of trees especially if you have used 18mm MDF like I have!
19. As I was doing this as a project for Baby Eva, I wanted to round off the corners, so I used the router with a rounding bit along the edges of the top and the front.
    

    Round the edges with a router

20. Finally I used Christmas paper to decorate it, sticking it to the box with PVA glue and here is the finished article.

I will publish a follow-up article when we have the tree up so I can get a pic to show the finished article

Installed a door for some friends in their downstairs toilet, however there is not enough room to have a conventional door, and bi-fold doors prove to be rather expensive, so I was given that task of fabricating something to work.

1. Take one solid pine internal door from the reduced bin at B&Q and one sliding door tracking system.

   

2. Cut door to length
3. Split door in half on saw bench

   

4. Trim each half to the desired width, taking an equal amount off each half to keep it even
5. Install tracking system

Hey Presto a Bi-fold door for £10 rather than the £70 to buy off the shelf!

Well, maybe it was not that easy, but all in a weekends work! The problem with this is that you find modern doors are not made to the standards the once were, although the outer edges of the door we purchased were square, once we got back home, and I started to cut it up I soon found that the internal sections were not square to each other, this did cause some problems, but I think you will agree that the finished