mattnewton.co.uk

Following on from my previous entry, I decided that Polyfilla just wasn’t going to do it - and I couldn’t be bothered cutting pieces of wood to fit into the hole to pack it up. So, off I went yesterday evening to B&Q to get some ready-mixed plaster and a plasterer’s trowel. What a good investment.

After a bit of sanding down the Polyfilla from where the plug socket used to be, I put a blob of plaster on the trowel and packed it in to the hole. It did the job and it hasn’t fallen out! I picked up a good tip off the internet to help the plaster dry smoother - and that was to run the trowel under hot water and then run it over the plaster to smoothen it out - it worked.

Pleased with this, I came downstairs and started to plaster the channel in the utility room wall where the electrician had put a cable for an outside light. As you can see, a neat job, I think you’ll agree.

So, there’s another thing I can add to my list, but I think I’ll leave the ceiling to the professionals.

Now all I have to do is wait for it to dry, seal it and sand it (or at least I think that’s the order I have to do it in).

I may have mentioned this before, but when we moved in here, there was a plug in my room (my office) that was, how shall we say… put in very poorly. (It was a metal-faced double plug without a backing plate (and therefore, I assume without an earth. Drilled down and eventually popping outside underneath the porch and then drilled into the hallway was the crappy piece of 13A flex that it was on). Not safe in my books. As a temporary measure, I took the metal socket off and put in a metal backing box and a proper plastic double socket. I’m no electrician, but it worked.

Anyway, once we had the electrician put all things right and do some other electrical-type jobs that needed doing, we removed the dodgy wire leading from downstairs to my office (via outside and a bit of jiggery pokery as it would appear) and made the socket inactive. Now I have the job of filling it up before I decorate next week. Easy job…or so I thought.

Well, as you can see, I’ve tried to fill the hole with Polyfilla. At first I put a nice thin layer in so that it would stick to the breezeblock at the back. Once this dried, I put on a second later, this time disregarding the instructions not to lob in too much at a time.

Over 24 hours later, and what should set in 2 hours has still not set. So I’ve pulled out all of the stuff that hasn’t set and I’m leaving it to dry for another night.

After speaking with Bob, what I need to do is cut up some old pieces of wood and knock them into the hole to avoid putting too much filler in there. Once that’s done, I can fill over the surface of the wood and sand down where necessary.

Now there’s another job for me while I’m off next week - sanding. I’ve bought a Black & Decker sander for all the bits that need doing. I don’t know what the previous owners did to my wall to make it need loads of touch-ups, but it’s certainly going to keep me busy for a while before I can paint the room.

More on the big hole in the wall later. Once it’s filled I’ll take another picture and then see if we can see it once it’s sanded and emulsioned over. I do hope not.