Just let “idiots shouting things” become part of the road noise. It’s inevitable, you can’t do anything about it, and it’s not personal.

Just ignore.

Woke up this morning and decided to be nice in 2017. So I have nothing to contribute to this thread 😉

There’s no rule about what surface you ride on for a qualifying ride. On road/off road whatever.

It just has to be 100km in a single ride. And yes, you can stop for tea and cake 😀

Is this offroad?

Not in my case – I’ll be doing it on road.

Yep I’m in. Biking to work and low carb diet should shift the muffin top.

It’s 100km not 100 miles!

Pizza and film night with the kids.

Then once kids are in bed, probably some combination of Hootenanny, Amazon Prime and sexual intercourse.

The last couple of budget flights I’ve taken (both EasyJet) there hasn’t been room in the overhead bins for everyone’s carry-on. This is because their business model creates a perverse incentive for people to cram their dirty weekend into a couple of mini-cases in the cabin, rather than a shared single big suitcase in the hold.

I’ve found them to be strict on dimensions, presumably for this reason.

Didn’t look at PCP-type options as I don’t like the ‘risk’ of mileage and handing-back condition.

This.

As per many others on the thread, I bought my new car with a personal loan. Due to a balance transfer deal I’m now paying 0% interest, and at the end of the loan (which I’m paying back early) I’ll actually own the car, and it won’t matter how many miles I’ve done or whether there’s a supermarket-car-park scrape on it.

I intend to keep it until it dies (10+ years hopefully) so residual value is not important to me.

Gentlemen, leave it, or take it out into the car park 😀

If we’re tagging mates bands. My old drummer is now bassist in dialects, who bucked the trend by having a great 2016! This is from a live session they did in Canada.
http://www.vimeo.com/167891907

Like

Can’t believe I fell for this spam.

And they really are shite.

It’s the holidays and people are bored

PLUS

Meme about lots of famous people dying in 2016

EQUALS

Bellends on Twitter saying the Queen is dead

Cheap as chips.

And cold 😀

but think in terms of only having the loan for 3 years, and then start the cycle again.

Or just keep the car until it’s old, and retire earlier with the money you save!

Fireplace off throw it to skip

Agreed

Open out fireplace enough to get the electric heater in

There’s no fireplace – it’s just a wall.

It would be a simpler, neater, more honest and more elegant solution to just sit the electric stove on a nice simple stone plinth in front of a plain wall. Cut channels into the plaster to accept the TV cables. I would use ducting to make installing/removing/replacing the TV easier[/url]. Same with the flex for the stove.

Plaster can be made good without needing a plasterer.

I admire your confidence and willingness to have a go at getting your home exactly how you want it. Honestly – if you have your heart set on putting your telly there, and hiding the cables inside an artificial chimney, then go for it.

My strong and well-meant advice would be take it back to the first fix. Don’t plonk a structural change [artificial or otherwise] in the room on top of decorative fixtures and fittings like flooring and coving.

Fix your new hearth to the floor, not the floor covering. Finish with proper materials (edge with stained wood then tile it? Just use stone?)

Cut your coving to accommodate the new chimney, and not the other way round.

Build a proper carcass, don’t just wang a piece of MDF across two bits of 4×2. It will bend. It will flex. It will sound like a bass drum when you knock it. There will be visible butt joints, and paper will not cover them.

What will the cavity that accommodates the stove look like? How will you fix it into place and make it good?

Design exactly how the cables will enter and exit the chimney; don’t just leave a hole to be hidden by a piece of furniture – that’s a bodge.

When I embark on a home improvement project, me and my girl spend weeks looking for inspiration and ideas before we start anything. As a minimum, get on Pinterest and leaf through a few home magazines 🙂

fragile individuals who faint away at the first sign of anything that might offend their delicate sensibilities.

But this is just a completely subjective caricature, used as a childish rebuttal by those who think that bigotry should go unchallenged.

Car salesman is pushing this like crazy

I bet he is.

If driving a brand-new car is very important to you then PCP is a way of attaining that goal. Unless you can afford the balloon payment it ties you into a treadmill of new-car-every-three-years which I personally think is wasteful and silly, but you may see it differently.

Edit: Sorry I now realise the salesman is pushing PCP for a used, not new, car.

Whether it’s worth it to you is a fairly simple calculation: Is it cheaper or more expensive than any other way you can finance the car?

Can I urge you to take a step back before you start ripping things out?

Firstly, and for various good reasons, mounting a TV above a fireplace is considered poor design.

Secondly,

2) Cut 2x 1220mm x 400mm pieces of 25mm MDF, then cut out a section of one to fit around the existing tiled hearth, glue together, paint with stone effect paint

Do you really want the heart and focal point of your home to be a bit of painted MDF?

Are you just going to plonk this on top of your wooden flooring? It’ll look gruesome.

A couple of small 90deg brackets to the skirting board to be hidden behind the fireplace to keep it in place.

It’ll shift every time someone accidentally kicks it. Over time it’ll come loose.

Thirdly:

80mm coving around the top which we plan to cover rather than start ripping that down again.

You just need a sharp knife/jigsaw blade depending on what it’s made of to cut out the required section.

80mm coving around the top which we plan to cover rather than start ripping that down again.

This is sounding a bit arse-about-tit 🙂 What will you fix the coving to if there’s thin air between the ceiling and the top of your “chimney”? How are you going to manage the join in the coving between the wall and the side of the “chimney”?

MDF front panel. Then cover with lining paper and paint.

Yuck. Better to use skimmed plasterboard and just paint it?

But leaving all of that aside: Isn’t this big, messy, time-consuming project a slight overkill just to get rid of the cable from your telly?

You could just run a bit of box ducting from your telly, painted in the same colour as your wall.

Or you could put your telly somewhere else?

But if you insist, getting your studs vertical will be the least of your worries, but seeing as that’s what you asked, here’s how to do it:

1. Cut away skirting board as required.
2. Offer stud up to wall. Use a spirit level to level it.
3. Draw a pencil line down the length of the level stud. This is now your datum line.
4. Drill screw holes in the stud.
5. Offer the stud back up to the wall (using your pencil line) and get a pencil/awl/knitting needle into the screw holes, making marks on the wall in the correct places for the wall plugs.
6. Drill out the marks on the wall then fit the plugs.
7. Screw your stud to the wall (top and bottom first, checking again for vertical-ness)

It should be compulsory for phone companies to give up that data

Be careful what you wish for.

And I hope the chap is found.

Special snowflake

Yeah yeah. This is just an expression used by misanthropic, authoritarian virgins to refer to anyone who isn’t a misanthropic, authoritarian virgin.

I have bought and sold on Ebay for years now. I have opened cases against other sellers and had cases opened against me. I am very familiar with their buyer and seller protection. The T&C’s state that any proof of postage must include the address, minimum requirements are post code and house number. Also it needs to be traceable with confirmed delivery. If these details were not provided then it was wrong to close the case and you can insist on it being re opened.

Yep 100% this

The seller has 2 negative feedbacks this month for the same thing, unless the feedbacks are from you and your mate.

He has a relatively good feedback record for someone who sells end-of-line tat and ships worldwide. Why he’s suddenly decided to act fraudulently is anyone’s guess, but this account does actually seem to be an attempt at an honest business.

Some people are just a mess. I think maybe your man is a little too highly strung to be an eBay power seller, in that he takes routine problems, like shipping delays, personally rather than seeing them as an inevitable hazard of his business model.

I’m confident you’ll get your money back from eBay, no thanks to this seller!

Having dealt with lots of tradespeople over the years, the only ones who have insisted on big sums up front, then pestered for interim payments, have been wastes of space. YMMV and all that, but this has been my experience.

I now have a circle of trusted tradespeople. None of them have ever asked for a penny up front, I trust them to price a job properly and present me with a fair bill at the end with no surprises, and in return I pay them well within terms, and recommend them to people.

often listen in places with no wifi or mobile signal.

You don’t need a connection. You can choose tracks to download to your device for offline listening.

If you’re lifting heavy (squats, deadlifts) then get something with minimal cushioning.

I’ve discovered far more music since having a sub to a streaming service.

Anything Google Music doesn’t have, I can usually find on CD for a couple of quid from amazon Marketplace.

We gave it ten minutes.

A rather ill-conceived venture.

A friend of mine went a couple of years ago. Like you, he thought it would be shit. He really enjoyed it.

Good to hear – thank you!

You could always put your back out saw your own head off a couple days before.

FTFY

This is the opposite of a flounce.

An anti-flounce.
An unflounce.

We are now in a post-flounce era.

Sell the tickets?

It would be ungracious. The gift was from close relatives and they’ll expect a full match report.

Other close relatives were given the same gift by the same people. They feel the same way about going. So we’re going to go to the same prom, meet up and form a group, then make the best of it and enjoy the Spitfire flypast, the fireworks, (probably) some of the music, have some good food, and get nicely pissed on a summer evening 8)

I could only find mention of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. That won’t be allowed after Brexit.

😀

But yeah. From the little I can find out about the music programme, it’s any crowd-pleasing classical piece that has anything to do with wars or battles. Plus Rule **** Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory. Nothing interesting, challenging, life-affirming or beautiful.

I cannot think of a more culturally bankrupt evening.

First world problems and all that, but I want to curl up in the corner and have a little cry.

Wanting some shelving/cupboards for above garage workbenches
Thinking easiest option is just to use kitchen units
Any other ideas?

I have just this second been measuring up for my own garage storage bench, and writing a cutting list.

It will store all of the usual family garage crap, and provide a home on the work surface for my mitre saw and drill press.

I considered kitchen units but then thought **** it – by the time I’ve “acquired” a second hand kitchen, I could have just built the benches out of timber. So I’m going to build a frame out of 3×2, put a top on it of 1in MDF, and fit sliding doors to the front.

It will also have integrated dust extraction 🙂

airfix Vulcan

I made this kit as a teenager. One of the wings is a poor fit to the fuselage. Very frustrating. I hope you have the wet and dry paper and Milliput ready.

Bad haircut blues?

1. You’ll get used to it, or…
2. Buzz it all off
3. It’ll have grown out in two weeks
4. Don’t go back to the same barber’s again

Portly retired gents in Mercedes.

Had a look at the website. My three thoughts are:

1. That guy has the same pillar drill as me.
2. Those tampers look really, really nice.
3. I can’t justify the cost.

Stupid c3nt so angry with him

I have to admit, that wouldn’t be my first reaction to a friend in intensive care!