Do you need to Find a Handyman in London, or in any other place whatsoever across the length and breadth of Britain? Then you need look no further than Mr-Skill, because we have a huge database of Handymen that you can access when you just click here. Of course you could also look for one yourself, although from what we know you’ll battle to find one yourself that’s half as good, or at a better price than ours either.
Notwithstanding this, here are a few tips to get you started…
o Does the handyman in your sights have some form of technical qualification, best of all a trade of any kind? Alternatively, do they have some form of practical experience? If the answer is no on both counts, then they could be about to do their learner’s licence on your home! And don’t be afraid to ask for proof either. The ones who squeal the loudest are the ones to avoid the most.
o Take a good hard look at their business card. Is there enough information on it to track them down, assuming that the job does not turn out all that well? And while you’re at it ask them about their guarantees, and whether or not they are insured.
o Make sure that all Handyman Quotes list materials and labour separately, and in terms of unit prices and actual hours provided for too. I’m not saying that they are not allowed to make a decent profit, just saying that an indecent profit is a bridge too far for me. And while you’re at it, make sure the information on their quote and business card is consistent. If it’s not, then find out why.
o I’ve always believed that the condition of the places where men store their things is an indication of the quality of their work. When you have a chance without being sneaky, take a look in the cab and load bay of their van.
Life is about choices, and if you need to Find a Handyman anywhere in England you could save yourself a load of trouble by doing so on Mr-Skill. We check all our tradesmen out on your behalf, and, in the event of an unlikely problem, we are as close as the other end of the telephone.
Should you be the proud parent of young children or have elderly and infirm relatives living in your home, corner guards are a great way to protect them against injury in a fall and save your property from being damaged at the same time. Corner guards have been present in hospitals and schools for some time, but are now being designed for the home market and can be used in many different applications.Once upon a time, corner guards would have been purely practical items which you would have acquired from a handyman in London, but now they can be integrated into your interior design and available from Londondecorators, and even tilers working on flooring jobs in London will recommended corner guards in certain circumstances.
Corner Guards on Walls
If you have ever had small children ride tricycles in your home, you will appreciate the value of corner guards. Corner guards can be installed on the sides of door openings or end partitions of walls to protect them from damage should your children not yet have mastered the art of steering. They are available in a number of materials (the corner guards, not the children) including clear plastic, moulded plastic, rubber, padded aluminium and stainless steel, and can be selected to compliment or contrast with your existing decor.
Corner guards can usually be purchased “off-the-shelf” from a hardware store in 90 degree or 135 degree angles, with a choice of lengths available to suit your personal circumstances. Similar materials are used in safety stair nosing, which can also be integrated with a grip on the horizontal plane to prevent slipping on carpeted or polished wooden stairs.
Corner Guards on Furniture
Any sharp angle on furniture presents potential hazard to people tripping or falling, and corner guards can be used to prevent cuts or worse when kids bang their heads on tables or the corners of shelving units. They are also quite handy features to prevent adults getting a nasty bruise on the leg when walking into a corner, as sometimes happens. Fire surrounds are another area of the home which can be protected by corner guards, and although you cannot cushion your entire living environment, you can make your home as safe a place to live in as possible by making use of corner guards at each opportunity.
Corner guards, stair nosing and table or fireplace protectors are not expensive to buy and reasonably simple to install. However, if you are in any doubt that you are able to fix them correctly, it is better to use to services of a tradesman in London to have these safety features secured firmly to ensure they perform as they were intended. A selection of local handymen in London is available through Mr Skill’s Tradesmen’s Directory, or you can alert local tradesmen in your area to your requirements by using the “Post-a-Job” facility at the top of the page.
Nearly half a million pounds of lottery funding has been allocated to support Age Concern´s “Men in Sheds” scheme, a program aimed at supporting men over the age of 55 who have been affected by life-changing events – such as bereavement and redundancy – and providing an opportunity to socialise and learn practical skills from each other in a supportive environment.
A pilot scheme, launched earlier this year in Cheshire, was based on the Australian model “Mensheds”, which has received worldwide acclaim for its innovation and the value to over-55´s of integrating back into the community after a major trauma in their lives.
John Standing from the scheme has said that men over the age of 55 are welcome to work on projects at the charities warehouse. “They make things and share resources and skills to help each other. It is also a great way for them to access other services which may be useful to them”.
Alex Major of Age Concern Cheshire highlighted the need for more projects involving older men: ‘There are a lot of projects for older people, but they mainly appeal to women and men can feel left out.’ The pilot project had 20 members who helped the charity in the area with jobs such as repairing furniture and minor DIY tasks. Ken Clemens, also of Age Concern Cheshire, said: ‘The atmosphere in the shed is very informal with men coming together to do activities such as wood working, producing items that are sold to help support the work of the shed – or just to socialise and share time with other men.’
Initially, the scheme in Greenwich is the only one planned for the immediate future in the London area, but Age Concern are monitoring the success of “Men in Sheds” and hoping it can be spread nationwide in the near future.
If you are a retired handyman in South London and would like to learn more about the scheme, details are expected to be posted soon on the News pages of the Age Concern web site, or you can callAge Concern Greenwich on 08452 707 507
With no sign of an Indian Summer this year, it looks as if autumn is well and truly upon us and time to prepare the home against the ravages of winter. Mr Skill has prepared a checklist below of the most common jobs that need to be done around your property at this time of year to ensure that, when the spring arrives, your home is still in good condition and you do not have to make costly repairs.
Dealing with the 4 Seasons
The October Checklist
Draught Proofing
One of the biggest and most expensive wastes of resources this winter will be the heat that escapes through your un-draught proofed windows and doors. As well as wasting around £25.00 per year in lost heat, once you have properly insulated your doors and windows, you will be able to turn the thermostat down a degree or two and safe another £50.00 over the winter months.
You can get free quotes from handymen in London for draught proofing your doors and windows through our Tradesmen´s Directory, or tackle the job yourself with a little help from the Mr Skill Project Advicesection.
Replacement Doors and Windows
If doors and windows themselves are in a poor state of repair, it may be time to consider replacing them. Typical tell-tale signs are when doors and windows stick or squeak when you try to open or close them, and installing new doors and windows can add to the kerb appeal of your property as well as saving you money by being more energy efficient.
An inefficient central heating system will cost you money throughout the next six to none months and potentially have its life span reduced if rust deposits and air-locks hinder the flow of water and induce pump failure. Flushing your central heating system is the best way of improving your central heating system´s performance, but it may only be necessary to bleed your radiators to ensure your house remains warm throughout the coming months.
If you have trees in you garden, it is the right time of year to prune them back and remove any weak branches that may fall during high winds and heavy rain. As well as the safety aspect of not having great weights of wood crashing through your car windscreen or damaging you patio furniture, pruning your trees in autumn will allow more light to enter your home, potentially saving you money on lighting. Local gardeners in London would also suggest that the dead and decaying would is not just thrown away, but used to make stumperies for your garden´s wildlife.
Walls
You should do a regular inspection of the walls surrounding your home – garden walls and the brickwork of the property itself – to check for cracks and damaged bricks which may suffer from the freeze-thaweffect over the winter. Our “Post-a-Job” facility will enable you to get quotes from bricklayers in London should you need to replace damaged bricks or repoint your brickwork. If the weather is kind in your area over the next couple of weeks, you may also want to consider re-painting the exterior of your property – but only once you have read our blog about “What the Exterior Colour of Your Home Says About You”!
Guttering and Roofs
It is also the time of year to clean and repair guttering on roofs, garages and conservatories. Gutters can easily be blocked at any time of year by leaves, moss, feathers, dirt and other rubbish which has blown into them and the guttering runs can age prematurely when water fails to flow away. Whilst you are up the ladder, it is also a good opportunity to check for damaged or displaced roofing tiles which will allow the rain in and potentially cause a damp problem. A good selection of local roofers in London is available in our Tradesmen´s Directory should you find that you roof could benefit from a professional´s opinion.
Most DIY enthusiasts, handymen and builders in London will have a case full of different drill bits to cope with different drilling tasks. Wood drill bits, metal drill bits and masonry drill bits are the three most common, and inasmuch as many people appreciate that the drill bits are manufactured for specific tasks, not a lot of people know why drill bits are designed the way they are and how best to use them.
Drilling Wood
Almost any drill bit can be used for drilling a hole in a soft wood, but the “lip and spur” drill bit is best to use. It has a centring point which keeps the drill bit steady against the wood (the “spur”) whilst the raised corners of the drill bit cut through fibres within the grain of the wood cleanly – before the inner parts of the cutting edges plane off the base of the hole. Also ideal for drilling through soft plastics, the “lip and spur” is usually used in sizes from 3mm (1/8th inch) to 16mm (5/8th inch).
For wider holes, spade or paddle bits are recommended. These are flat-headed drill bits with a centring point and two cutters which are equipped with spurs to enable a cleaner cutting edge.
Augur wood drill bits are made with a spur, single cutting edge and a “flute” for removing waste from the drilled hole and are particularly useful for drilling deep holes in wooden surfaces.
Drilling Metal
There are many different types of drill bits for drilling through metal, and your choice of bit should depend on the type of metal you are drilling through (steel, stainless steel or aluminium for example) and the size of hole that you wish to make. The larger the hole, the more friction will be created and the hotter the drill bit will become leading to overheating and damage to the drill bit. Most power drill handbooks provided recommended drilling speeds for drilling through metal and you can also refer to Mr Skill´s Project Advice article on “How to Drill Through Metal” and our “Drill Speed Chart”.
The cheaper metal drill bits are made from high carbon steel, but lose their cutting edge quickly if allowed to overheat. Therefore, most builders in London have a preference for “high speed steel” which can be used to drill through metal, hardwood and most other materials at higher speeds. Although being more brittle than “high speed steel”, drill bits made from cobalt steel alloys hold their hardness at much higher temperatures, whilst tungsten carbide drill bits are the toughest of the lot. Due to its expense, tungsten carbide – and polycrystalline diamond (PCD) – is most commonly used on the tips of metal cutting drill bits.
Coatings are frequently used on metal cutting drill bits to provide heat resistance and increase lubricity. The most common are black oxide and titanium nitrate, which can extend the life of a drill bit three or four times, although the benefits or titanium aluminium nitride and titanium carbon nitride are worth the expense if you do a lot of drilling through metals such as stainless steel and nickel alloys.
Drilling Masonry
Masonry bits are usually used with a hammer drill by builders in London. The bit is both hammered and rotated into the masonry – the hammering breaks up the masonry at the drill bit tip, whilst the rotating flutes of the drill bit body carry away the dust. Rotating the bit brings the cutting edges in contact with a fresh portion of the hole with every hammer blow.
Masonry bits of the style shown are commonly available in diameters from 5mm (¼ inch) to 40mm (1½ inches). For larger diameters, core bits are used. Masonry bits up to 1000mm (39 inches) long can be used with hand-portable power tools, and are very effective for installing wiring and plumbing.
This is only a selection of the most common drill bits used in home improvement. If you require any further information on specialist drilling tools, please consult one of the highly rated builders in London featured in our Tradesmen´s Directory.
With more than 300 exhibitors, The National Home Improvement Show is the UK’s largest event for tradesmen in London and people looking to add space and value to their home. It offers the best in home improvement, design and space-saving advice from Real Homes experts, including TV personalities Julia Kendell (presenter of DIY SOS on BBC1 and 60-Minute Makeover), Matt James (Channel Four’s The City Gardener) and Michael Holmes (Editor-in-Chief of Real Homes magazine and presenter of Five’s “I Own Britain’s Best Home”).
The exhibition starts this Friday (1st October) and runs until Sunday. Tickets are £8.00 in advance or £12.00 on the door and further details about the event can be found on www.improveyourhomeshow.co.uk
People have been decorating their walls with paper for millennia. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese were the first to hang paper on their walls two thousand years ago, King Louis XI of France (1423-1483) commissioned Jean Bourdichon to paint 50 rolls of paper with images of angels because he found it necessary to move frequently from castle to castle and wanted to take the “wallpaper” with him, and the UK`s love of flock wall coverings developed after Henry VIII´s excommunication from the Catholic Church in Rome and the English gentry could no longer get tapestries imported from Europe.
These days, it seems that there is practically nothing you cannot do with wallpaper. They can be manufactured from many different materials – textile wallpapers include silks, linens, grass cloths, strings, rattan, and actual impressed leaves -, can be printed with life-size images or photographs and you can submit your own design if there is nothing suitable to choose from in the shop or online! Wallpaper can be printed in the style of a mosaic (see below) or as if the wall was bare brick and there was no wallpaper at all. There is even a charity in the UK promoting “wallpaper awareness” with examples of wallpaper designs over the last six centuries (for more information visit – Wallpaper History Society).
This really is wallpaper printed in the form of a mosiac
Whether you are looking for wallpaper that is modern or retro, Arabesque or Anglo-Japanese, geometric or neo-classical, the video below may offer some inspiration to you. Created with the assistance of the Cooper-Hewett National Design Museum in New York, it goes through three hundred years of wallpaper designs in a little over three minutes. Once you have chosen your particular favourite, you might then wish to use the services of a local handyman in London to help you hang it. In which case you will find our Tradesmen´s Directory an invaluable resource to help attract competitive quotes from handymen in London.
Wallpapering is one of those jobs that nobody can honestly say that they look forward to, and wherever possible will fix peeling wallpaper rather than remove all the old paper and start afresh. However, there comes a stage when completely redecorating the room can no longer be avoided and, reluctantly, you give up a Saturday afternoon to re-paper the room.
Whereas employing a handyman in London might be an ideal option to save you all the grief, people tend to feel that there is something personal about hanging wallpaper once they have been to all the trouble of choosing it, buying it and bringing it home. Nonetheless, the decision to do-it-yourself may well be regretted once you get to a corner!
Corners and light switches are the DIY-ers least favourite part of a room – whilst wallpapering at least – but there are some ways in which you can paper from one wall to the next, quickly and easily, in a smooth operation.
90 Degree Corners
When you reach a corner, it is much easier to hang a length of paper that has been cut into two vertical strips than to fold the paper into the corner – it looks better too! Measure from the last vertical strip to the corner at the top, middle and bottom of the wall (Some walls are slightly crooked and the corners not completely square).
Cut the paper to allow an extra inch (25mm) so it reaches slightly beyond the corner and paste this onto the wall – using a soft paper-hanging brush to smooth it into the corner. Then use a narrow roller to press the paper firmly against the wall and wipe off any excess paste.
Measure the width of the cut-off left over from the wallpaper you have just hung, and hang a plumb line that distance from the corner to get a perfectly vertical line. That line will enable you to start the next wall off correctly once you have pasted the cut-off up onto the wall.
270 Degree Corners
Some rooms have what is known as an “external” corner when there is a chimney breast or recessed window in the room. The procedure for papering around a 270 degree corner is exactly the same as above however use a side wall rather than a front-facing wall for aligning the two strips cut from the same length.
If you experience any difficulty manoeuvring your wallpaper around the corners of a room, look in our Tradesmen´s Directory for a local London handyman to come and give you a helping hand.
If you have read our Project Advice on “How to Wallpaper around Corners”, you will know that plug sockets and light switches are of equal nuisance when it comes to wallpapering a room. Every room has light switches and sockets, and as much as you might get away with making a hash of the wallpapering in a dark corner, you will notice poor wallpapering every time you go to switch on a light or put in a plug – so it is worthwhile to take the extra effort to paper around switches and sockets carefully.
Whenever you are dealing with switches and sockets, turn off the power from the mains before you start.
Hang the wallpaper from the top of the wall as normal and cover the switch or socket. Brush gently over the fitting with a dry paper-hanging brush to make a slight impression on the paper, but take care not to tear it. With the wallpaper over the fitting, draw two diagonal lines from opposing corners through the centre of the faceplate and pierce a small hole in the paper at the centre point. With a small pair of scissors, cut the paper to the corners and pull back the flaps.
Trim the flaps back to just inside the outer edges of the switch or socket so there is an overlap of about a quarter of an inch (6mm) covering the fitting. Partially unscrew the faceplate and pull it out a little way from the wall. Use a small paintbrush to ease the trimmed edges of the wallpaper gently behind the faceplate and smooth away any air bubbles. Put the faceplate back in place and secure the screws. It is best to allow the paste to dry before turning on the power.
Wallpapering around light switches and electric sockets is not particularly complicated, just fiddly and requires a steady hand. As you only get one chance to get it right, you may wish to use the services of a handyman in London to help with the most difficult aspects of wallpapering a room. There are plenty to be found in our Tradesmen´s Directory, or you can attract quotes from handymen in London by using the “Post-a-Job” facility at the top of each page.
Floating shelves look impressive in your home, and putting them up is no harder than putting up brackets for a regular shelf. One thing that you have to conscious of is the load that the shelf will ultimately bear – floating shelves are not ideal for a number of heavy items.
You will also need to consider the fixings that you intend using are suitable for the wall the shelf is being fixed to. A local handyman in London will be able to provide special plugs which are suitable for plasterboard walls, or screws and rawl plugs will generally suffice for brick and wooden walls.
Before you start, check that there are no pipes or cables behind the wall where you intend to put up the shelf. This can be done with an electronic detector and it is advisable never to drill immediately above or below a light or electrical socket – because that is where the cables will be!
Place the bracket for the floating shelf against the wall, with the holes in the protruding prongs facing downwards, and check with a spirit level to ensure it is level.
Mark the wall with a pencil where the holes need to go for the fixings, and a useful tip is to put a little piece of tape around the top of the drill bit where it corresponds with the length of the rawl plug.
Drill the holes in the wall and insert the rawl plugs. Tap them in with a hammer and then screw in the bracket – ensuring that the holes in the prongs are still facing down.
Once the bracket is secured to the wall, slide the shelf onto it and fix from beneath with the screws provided with the shelf. There should also have been some hole covers supplied with the shelf, and these can go on now as well.
Putting up a floating shelf is a very straightforward job, however sometimes a second pair of hands can be useful and you may wish to use the services of a London handyman. If so, please do not hesitate to search our Tradesmen´s Directory for a local handyman in your area of London, or use the “Post-a-Job” facility at the top of the page to attract handyman quotes straight into your inbox.
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half as good, or at a better price than ours either.
Make sure that all Handyman Quotes list materials and labour separately, and in terms of unit prices and actual hours provided for too. I’m not saying that they are not allowed to make a decent profit, just saying that an indecent profit is a bridge too far for me. And while you’re at it, make sure the information on their quote and business card is consistent. If it’s not, then find out why.
