Hey friends,

😢 Plastering Gone Wrong

2022 was pretty good for upping my DIY skills. I learnt a lot doing the bathroom, became semi capable at simple electrics and added plastic pipe plumbing to my skillset.

Should I learn to plaster? I've thought about it but I just don't feel it's the type of DIY I'd enjoy. Anything wet and messy tends to annoy me. Like the tiling - I liked planning and measuring and cutting them precisely and using my laser level to get them just right but mixing and spreading endless buckets of adhesive drove me potty. I decided to put plastering in the 'one-day' category and designated it to a professional this time round.

My usual plasterer had done his knee in so I found a chap who was well reviewed and seemed to know his stuff. He was flat out in the run up to Christmas so decided to do the whole room in a day (important context) along with his brother and their two apprentices .

Other than making a bit of a mess of my nice floorboards, the room looked good and I paid in full the following morning.

You'll likely know that plastering over in the US is pretty rare and instead they tape and joint even high end homes. Sometimes specific construction methods just catch on in certain countries but there is a good reason why a full plastering isn't done and that's because for half the year it's too hot and would dry out too quickly and crack. So taking that lesson, generally speaking you shouldn't use a dehumidifier to quicken the drying process. Maybe it's reasonable if a whole house has been plastered during winter but otherwise it's better to just crack open a window.

Below you can see that the walls and ceiling that were plaster-boarded and received only a skim dried first, within 3 days.

While I was waiting for the other two walls to dry I went about filling any little nicks and indentations with easi-fill. Technically I shouldn't have to do this (or at least not much) but I've never seen a freshly plastered wall that was 100% smooth. It's fine, no bother.

The other two walls which were brick were now nearly dry and the problems were showing. There are two methods of plastering on brick (that I know of): sand & cement and hardwall. My plasterer used hardwall and you have to wait for it to go off just right before doing the final skim layer. If the skim is done too soon you can get something called blebbing which are essentially bumps in the plaster and, if it's really bad, undulations which when painted will look terrible.

This photo is pretty damning:

And therein lies the issue. Because the job was rushed, this was the result.

The wall with the chimney and alcove wasn't too bad and after pole sanding it for a while (again, not something I should have to do), I got it smooth. But there was no saving the other wall, pictured above. It needed a re-skim.

After some back and forth where I employed the 'he who speaks first loses' technique he agreed to come back and sort it.

All's well that ends well I suppose. I know I'm in danger of sounding like I complain whenever I get a tradesman in but you know what? If it was easy to organise, with a great result nearly every time at reasonable cost I wouldn't be writing this newsletter, and you wouldn't be reading.

The price was £925. I haven't been keeping tabs like I did for the bathroom but I'd estimate this whole room came to about £2k so the plastering alone was almost half.

So maybe I should learn to plaster, save myself some grief and almost a holiday's worth of money (okay, materials). I wouldn't start with a brick wall though so instead I'd either tape the cracks of the existing plaster and skim or I'd remove the plaster and dot & dab/ adhesive foam new plasterboard to the brick. Marco emailed me asking why I hadn't done the latter and the answer was simply because I wasn't the one plastering! But, you know, it's gotta be done right!

Okay I'll stop now - blame it on my mid-winter grump.

💰 Skip & Scrap Metal

While I was waiting for the plastering to be sorted it was time to get rid of all the waste material from this room and the bathroom I did earlier in the year. Side note: this patio area is where we want the kitchen extension eventually.

Filling a skip is the the type of job dumped on to the lowest ranked at a work site but I enjoy it. It's good exercise: pushing, pulling, lifting plus you can play the game of fitting in as much as possible. Like tetris, kind of.

'Level fill' is the term they give you but how many skips have you seen bulging at the top? At the very least you can put some boards at the lower, shorter ends to get a bit more in. £315 for this 6 yard skip. As one of you pointed out to me they don't allow plasterboard because it gives off a toxic gas when wet (perhaps another reason you don't hang plasterboard all the way to floor level).

What cheap doors are made of:

I've always wondered whether scrap metal was worth much. When I lived in London you could put anything metal outside and it would be gone in an hour, so maybe it is.

I searched online and nowhere near me seems to take ferrous metals so in the skip went the old cast iron bath and soil pipes. However I took the the brass and copper to a local dealer in the hopes I'd found my treasure. It's the kind of place where they look at you funny for asking questions but we got it on the scales and I was paid.

Definitely worth the trip I'd say. Copper is by far the most valuable and must be a decent side line income for plumbers.

💡 Neutral Wire For A Smart Switch

Foreword:

We've covered most of downlight installation before but I think I can add a bit more meat this time having done it myself. I may not have all my terminology down pat but you only need to get the gist of what I'm saying here. Also, though I am talking about wiring I'm not going into how you do it all - I'm cautious of giving poor advice on such a serious topic.

Being an old house we have a 'loop in rose' circuit which means that the circuit for the upstairs lights goes from the consumer unit (CU) into the ceiling and goes from room to room before returning to the CU.

The connections at each room are in the rose which the pendant light attaches to. Replacing the pendant with downlights is easy enough by replacing the rose with a junction box. The first downlight is wired in the same way the pendant was and the rest of the lights are connected in series.

Let's say you run a twin (live and neutral) & earth cable from the rose (if keeping the pendant) or junction box to the switch. One wire takes the power down to the switch (the live) and the other wire (the neutral masquerading as the switched live - the wires are the same after all, just different colours) returns the power to the rose/junction box. By flicking the switch you complete/break the circuit and so turn the light on/off.

A newer house is likely to have 'loop in switch' where the loop (power) that goes from room to room is at the switches rather than at the rose/junction box. If using the same twin & earth cable from the switch to the lights, it only uses one wire in the cable with the switch completing/breaking the circuit. The other wire, the neutral, is spare. Hold that thought.

I think smart bulbs are excellent for ancillary lighting - lamps and such. We have them in our office, sitting room and bedroom working with Alexa/Google. For your main lights though, if you want them to be smart, a smart switch working with standard bulbs is probably the better and cheaper option. Many, though not all, smart switches require a neutral wire to work. This is no problem with a loop in switch circuit as long as you have that spare neutral wire (i.e a twin & earth cable was used rather than a single wire)

So what about my loop in rose arrangement where the neutral is already being used as the switched live? Well I need a third wire. I guess this could be done by threading an additional wire from the junction box to switch but better yet would be to replace the pretty old cable with a 3 core & earth wire.

I think you can get the correct coloured cable - 2 wires for live and one for neutral but I used standard 3 core as I had some left over from doing the bathroom (required for the extractor fan). Just use sleeves or tape to mark them as what they are (brown - live, blue - neutral).

This is all future proofing though. I'm in no rush to put smart switches in and generally speaking, I'm happy to be a few years behind on smart home technology. There is so much you can do so you have to draw the line somewhere with these things. For instance, I know I'm not bothered about having synced speakers in the ceilings. Smart switches though? Yeh. I can see myself wanting those at some point. For now I've gone with a Varilight LED dimmer switch as it's worked well for the bathroom and we'll have a small plug-in light with a smart bulb running on Alexa for the boy's bed time.

Next time: painting, skirting and carpet.

👋

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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