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.