What have you fettled today?

[rogerzilla]

Half drained the CH, cut the leaking pipe below the damage, and removed the old radiator.

Then spent an hour and a half prising tiles off the walls.  They are going to need skimming before re-tiling as some plaster has come off.  Bah.  That puts the project back until I find a plasterer, although I will leave the old bath in until it's done, so I am still functional (just no showers, and only the downstairs bog and basin).

[T42]

Then spent an hour and a half prising tiles off the walls.

When we re-tiled our kitchen ~20 years ago, a chum came up from Strasbourg to help. The bugger went at it with such abandon that he went right back to the brick in umpteen places and we had to completely replaster the wretched wall before tiling it again. He hasn't been back.

---o0o---

Meanwhile, I haz been taking inventory of my wood stock with a view to finally building a kitchen island.  Turns out that using classic stiles + rails + floating panels I already have enough, if I don't mind oak-ply panels floating in a white-pine frame.  One side of the oak has a pleasant pink shade.

What to do: risk it with clear varnish or slap on a couple of coats of e.g. cherry / dark oak stain? The rest of the kitchen is in ash.

[rogerzilla]

These tiles had been put onto bare plaster by the housebuilders in 1989.  When they're on paint, they often lift the paint rather than the plaster on removal.

I use a wide stripping knife and a mallet. It is not the worst job I know.

[rogerzilla]

Got the rest of the tiles off.  The only thing left in here is the bath now, and that might need to come out for the plasterer to do the best job.  Only a 10 minute job to rip it out now that it isn't siliconed in, but there are no stop valves on the water connections (yet) so it takes half an hour to drain the cistern in the loft (which then creates air locks so the taps don't work afterwards, but I figured out how to clear those years ago - you backflush with a hose from a mains tap, using one of those universal tap adaptors.  If you fitted one of those fancy weir taps, you are stuffed!)

[De Sisti]

New front brake blocks on my xacd titanium-framed bike that will be ridden tomorrow (Sat 11 May), as the weather forecast is looking good.

[JefO]

Big charity ride tomorrow, so Lotsa fettling on my old British bike, then commissioned the hammer shelf (have added a couple of small hammers since the photo).

[ElyDave]

Nice shelf.

My hammers is in toolboxes, apart from the sledge, which lurks behind the door

[MattH]

Took the opportunity of MrsH being away to give the trice a service. The transmission has been giving me a bit of grief, but it's not been properly looked at (other than cleaning the chain and a bit of a tweak to the gears) since I got it, and done a lot of miles on the trainer plus some on the road and track.

There's an old wooden garden table that has been waiting to go to the dump, one of the ones that has a top that's about six inches wide, then two drop down leaves hinged off that. I realised that if I took the top and leaves off it, then swinging out the legs out that would have supported the leaves makes it stable, and the front wheels will sit nicely in the gap between the wooden rails that would have been attached to the top. Put the rear wheel on a workmate (with a small stand if I wanted the rear wheel to spin) and I could work on it all at a comfortable height.

So, stripped it down and cleaned the hard to get to places. Checked and regreased the idler bearing. Replaced the cassette. Cleaned both mechs. Replaced all three chainrings, going up slightly (from 52/42/28 to 55/44/30), then put on three new chains. Spent a bit of time making sure they are all set up properly. Much better.

[ElyDave]

You must have legs like Griepel, my S40 has an ultegra 52/39/30 and I have occasionally found myself in 30 x 30 and this king i may need an extra gear

[MattH]

It does go up to 34 on the rear, on a 20 inch wheel. So not as bad as it sounds, going from 15.4 to 16.5  and 88.3 to 93.4 according to Sheldon's calc. I'm more a masher than a spinner. I may yet regret the choice, but might be able to go back to the original 28 smallest chainring without losing the 55 - I'm already beyond the nominal capacity of both mechs. So far I've never needed the lowest gear, but was spinning out.

[ElyDave]

That explains it, I was on a 700c with that, now 650b to allow fatter tyres