Velvet wrote:
I'm due to complete on said house this friday :-)

Good-oh.


Crack is of little/no concern, it seems, though will be keeping eye on
it. I'm sure I'll be spending lots of time here, searching past posts
and asking new questions, since I'll be getting a lot of stuff DIY'd
rather than paying a pro - lack of money due to house purchase!

Makes lots of sense if you're at all practical. It might be productive
to ask "pros" questions, watch them work, or whatever - even if you have
someone to do the first job, you can learn how to do it next time.


But I wanted to say thanks to those who gave me some sound advice, and
blow raspberries at those who said don't touch it with a bargepole

I'm getting a bigger house in a quieter road with a much bigger garden
than I ever expected to be able to. If I'd been scared off as a first
time buyer by the crack/damp/woodworm issues, I'd still be frantically
trying to find a place to live before my current place was repo'd (crap
landlords in debt, hate them!).

That's nice, then - when I bought my first house, I'd noticed it
with a "For Sale" sign up for *ages* and thought "I couldn't
*possibly* afford *that*!" - however, at an Estate Agent the
details (in my price range) were produced, with a "Oh, you wouldn't
want that, it needs lots of work!". Hah! Sold.


As it is, I have 6 months to get the damp/woodworm sorted (though
leeway available on this, as long as I don't want to borrow any more
against the place) - woodworm's probably being done 2 days before the
furniture's moved up there, the rest I'll be DIY'ing if poss... and the
woodworm guy said the original damp and timber people were talking out
their a**es on the damp - he's happy to show me why he thinks I have
woodworm needing treatment too though, so we'll see if I believe him on
that :-)

Great, sounds a chatty chap. Ask questions, you may get "war stories",
information about how things work (why the treatment is effective
against woodworm, how "rising damp" works, meters, dry/wet rot, etc.);
just talk, if you've a good 'un, you'll get lots of interesting stuff,
even OT useful stuff maybe. Don't directly contradict "tradesmen",
make your own mind up about what they say, ask the whys and wherefores,
give tea & be friendly! You know - "life" - as you'd expect to be
treated if working for someone.

(excuse the cider, it's making me rather expansive)


Finally I'm joining the ranks of homeowners, and thus able to DIY in my
own house without having to hold back due to tenancy agreements!

"May I put in a screw to hold a mirror up?" Ans: "NO!".


I'll go read the FAQ once I'm and have net access again, but in the
mean time, what would people suggest (if it's not in the FAQ) as
essential toolkit for those emergency repair situations? I'm thinking
electrical/plumbing/drains - anything else that might not have occurred
though...

Don't worry about it. Make sure you know the system you've got. You
need to know where the stopcock is and whether it works, where valves
are from the cold/hot water tank, how to switch off the electricity/gas.
This is enough to stop *really* rude things happening, and you can then
sort the problem out at comparative leisure.


I have some of the basics (reasonable hammer drill, spanners,
adjustable spanner of some size or other, hammer etc, but probably not
a lot more than that - screwdrivers but generally the sort more used in
IT (pc sized to suitable for racking kit in comms rooms).

Buy kit as you need it, if you can - *don't* try to put together an
all-purpose toolkit straight away, you will find that you never use
some tools which you thought might be really, really useful, and
haven't what you need. Buy quality unpowered hand tools; for powered
hand tools go for what works. Don't ignore unpowered hand tools such
as tenon saws, planes, brace & bit etc., etc. (pssst! these can
sometimes be had at markets 2nd. hand) - they can be of more
use than power tools, sometimes. I've yet to come across an unusable
power tool (although some are obviously better/longer-lived than
others), but a screwdriver/plane/float/whatnot made of monkey metal
is a disaster.


Oh, and a question straight off the bat:

I want to route coax up from the livingroom (front room) to the front
bedroom. And telephone and Cat5 cable from livingroom to back bedroom.

What's the best way to do this - coax up the internal wall, through teh
ceiling/floor? There's a solid brick wall between front/back half of
the house. Again, is it easiest to run cabling for telephone and cat5
up the wall, along ceiling/floor, through wall, and across back bedroom
floor and up at a convenient point through teh floor? Or route it out
the living room, up the stairs, around the landing/bathroom door, into
back bedroom that way?

I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to be wanting to do this :-)

And wireless would be nice but I want the AP up in the back bedroom,
and the internet will be in the front livingroom...

Dunno. IIWY I'd put up with trailing wires, or wires stuck/stapled
or blu-tacked or whatever until I "got to know" the house a bit
better, i.e. when it's yours, you're there, and can prioritise things
a bit better. What do you do? Install your wires, then find you've
got to move them 'cos [something else is in the way]? Decorate & then
have to re-do something? Realise after you've been "in" for a while
that it would have been much easier/neater/better to put the wires
somewhere else, & you need to make good previous work *and* re-wire?
Just put the cable where it can go/be removed easily - it's cheap in
terms of time and effort. Hide it under the carpet, clip it (or tape
(!) it) to the skirting, let it run loose, run it under doors -
'till you can work out your "grand scheme".


Velvet

Well done, keep up the good work. I have now nearly run out of cider,
so it's probably sleepy time.