Re-covering kitchen worktops

I said it was small...... :-)

I tend not to dress things up, but that doesn't mean that it's necessary to offend - not that I suspect that you are easily offended, Mary.

We've gradually been dumping all of it out.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Yeah, I've seen this discussed in a couple of threads. Goes against the grain a bit! Get someone in?? It's not really the cost, but the principle. I'll have to think about this one.

Well, I am not one for feeling that I can't tackle something and like to feel in a position to do so, even if I then elect for time or other reasons not to do so.

Here's the issue with this one though.

- I went for 600x400 slates for kitchen, conservatory and some other areas - approximately 60-70 sqm in all. Having the larger tile sizes, vs. 300x300 makes them look a lot better and the spaces that they are in larger. These tiles are heavy in this size and need to be held at arm's length to lay.

- If you buy a slate that is calibrated on both sides - i.e. flat and constant thickness, then it is not so hard to even out the floor. The types that are cleaved on one side (the upper) and that have a more natural appearance, vary in thickness by up to 6mm. You have to account for that in the laying and bedding and sorting thicknesses by area without ending up with too uniform colours in one area. This involves a lot of moving round of the slates.

- This is not a job that will be repeated in a hurry and there is no real scope for learning as you go because you will have wasted material over quite a large area before it becomes obvious that there is a problem. It is *very* noticable when a floor is done badly. The material is not so cheap that one would want to waste too much of it - £25-30/m^2 is typical.

- The guys that did ours took about 8 man days on it.

When I stacked that lot up and considered that the supplier and fitters own any problems, it really didn't make sense to DIY it. I watched what they were doing on a couple of the days and have an appreciation of what is involved, but still wouldn't take it on.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Ii was just amused that you called it the TV room!

How can you play music if folk are watching the TV though?

Because there were so many people in our house when the children were all here there was no opportunity for a dedicated music room. The piano was in the dining toom/library, the sitting room was the only quiet room and it was important to have that. To have privacy daughter would play her double bass in the bathroom - and her flute too because she liked the acoustics. Another daughter practised her violin in her bedroom but that wasn't big enough for the bass. A son always played his recorders IN the bath.

We didn't have a TV ...

Mary

No - if people try to offend me it says more about them than about me and I ignore them.

Mary

Thanks for that - very useful.

If I do decide to do it myself, I will probably go for much smaller slates - a local place keeps 30x40, which is a more manageable weight.

There are only two of us, so we just make sure we both want to do the same thing!

We don't watch TV as such, we watch DVDs.