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The biggest convenience our house lacks is a downstairs toilet. It’s very inconvenient having to go go upstairs to have a pee after gardening or dog walking. Enough of the puns - it’s very hard to find the space to put one in a cost effective way (eg close to drains and water). One option is to...

Our house was flooded recently and the kitchen damaged. It’s a top-end one from ‘DIY-Kitchens’ which I installed we are very impressed with. The insurance assessor’s contractor for the repair work wants to replace it with a Howdens kitchen because that’s what all the trade uses. I can’t say we...

Like 70-odd other houses in our village of Debenham Suffolk we were flooded in Storm Babet three weeks ago. 12-15 ins through the ground floor. We were lucky enough to live in a house with solid largely tiled ground floors so, unlike many, we are still at home with services running again...

We got flooded in Storm Babet this weekend. My shed cum tool store copped it badly - nearly three feet underwater. TBH the only thing I’m really upset about is my Dewalt table saw which was submerged. Now the water is down it’s just covered in silt. Any advice on the prognosis? I can clean...

I’ve always struggled with this - lack of skill probably but maybe also that my board cutting by track saw or DeWalt table saw doesn’t leave a smooth enough edge to work to. Can anyone walk me through edging, say, 18mm ply with ‘proper’ wood? (I can’t convince myself that stick-on edging is any...

Is tiling over the existing wall tiles as dubious a practice as I think it is? The existing tiles seem pretty well stuck to the mainly solid (not p-board) walls. Which leads to second question: if I have to get them off is there anything more scientific than hammer and old chisel?

It was a sad day yesterday, my Lidl Parkside 20v drill finally expired. I’ve owned it for upwards of four years and used it relentlessly pretty much every day drilling timber and steel up to 10mm thick. It never faltered. I couldn’t have asked more from a drill. Especially one costing IIRC...

I’m thinking a Japanese pull saw would be a good thing to put on my Christmas list (better than socks!). But what sort? I’m afraid I’m a power saw person - table saw and chop saw - but a hand saw would be useful for cross cutting smaller pieces and hopefully improve my accuracy. At the moment I...

I’ve got about sixty mitres to cut in ogee mouldings for my boat cabin. They’re chunky (28x16mm max) mouldings but I’m still concerned about getting neat cuts on my admittedly rather mediocre chop saw. Would I maybe get a better result hand cutting with a jig? The only boxes and hand saw jigs I...

My One+ nailer stopped working a couple of weeks ago. Just over a year old so no warranty there I thought. Then I found it was two years and even three if I registered it with Ryobi EU. Suffice proof of purchase was my on-line invoice from SGS. Seemingly I could send it back to Ryobi to be...

I bought a couple of iroko wood block worktops a few weeks ago, trimmed them to size, sealed all round with several coats of Danish oil then left them on the kitchen units unsecured over maybe two weeks around Christmas. Just gone back to the job and both are bowing significantly across the...

Thanks to power tools I'm a modestly competent DIY-er. I do stuff around the house and re-fitted a burnt out canal boat recently. No workshop so it's all mainly hand held or portable stuff. Basically at the moment I have an old but big and heavy Makita circular saw, a Worx mini circ saw, B&Q...