The need for speed

I found it hard going trying to strip this wall paper from the walls as it seems to have a coating on it. Even with the steamer I have it seems to be tough to remove.

I had a look about and found a tool called a scorer

It has three sets of spiked wheels designed to dig in to the paper and allow the damp or steam to get into the paper under the coating on the paper.

I will test it in a few rooms and let you know how I get on with it

Electrical safety tool

Ok with all the old sockets and wires in the house that will need to come out or just electric sockets that need to come out, you need to test them before you cut or unscrew them.

I purchaced a non contact a.c. voltage detector pen from screwfix for £9.99p it has two led's for detecting.

You press the on/off  button the green led comes on,

 if you place it near a switched on power socket the red led will flash with an auditable beep to warn you the socket or wire is live

As an added bonus it has a white led and it acts as a torch this could be very useful if your working in the dark for some reason

It is powered by two aaa batteries and appears to work on a basic socket test and 3 core cable test 

More to come.

Man tool No:3

So another gadget I got. A distance laser measure it's brilliant. It can measure.

I purchaced it for approximately £15 from AMAZON.

Apparently this unit will calculate square meter and cubic meter

Man tool no:1

Well I found out that a man tool will be a valuable thing here to remove the plaster and stuff from the walls and drill the holes.

Meet the bosch sds hammer drill found on AMAZON

I will review the item after I have used it for some time

The damp issue

Ok now rising damp I don't know much about it but it ruins the walls and the plaster on them.

Time to research the damp issue, I found this video about rising damp and how to treat it.


This is where I purchased the damp cream the cheapest at the time.

The strip test

Ok I purchased a 5 pice combination tool a long time ago and one of the things it dose is strip walls.

I have to say I can't remember all it's functions as I purchased this year's ago and I don't think I ever got to use it.

Well today i did! And I have to say compared to the normal paper strippers it worked brilliantly.

The working end is a fine almost blade like scraper that allows it to get between the paper and the plaster and take it off the wall effortlessly, and the surface the the handle is more rigid so it let's you put more force to the blade than it being lost in the flex. The point on one edge also works well to force it's way in and also score the paper if needed

I feel this item on striping the walls alone was a worthwhile purchace

WARNING ok this is brilliant at stripping walls once you get the hang of it, I did find it also dug into the plaster if you held the scraper to steeply or you applied to much pressure to one side of the blade more than the other

The newer version can be found here for the sum of £3 I don't think you can go wrong!

Rateing 4 out of 5

Man tool No:2

Ok I purchased another man tool this time it's a cable and pipe tracer from bosch.

The bosch truvo cable detector. I haven't used it much but I feel when stripping the damp walls this will be a valuable tool as it will aid finding power cables before the sds drill dose trying to remove the damp plaster.

I have used it a few times and it works very well with power cables

I purchased the finded from AMAZON

A new beginning for me and my family

Ok in September this year we sold our shared ownership house because it was too small for our family.

In the time it was up for sale we looked for another house and found a lot of houses we liked an put in many offers and all got refused.

On the moveing out day we found a house in the next village on that had just been put on the market and ticked all the boxes, off we went to view it the wife loved it.

Off road parking for two cars, three good sized bedrooms, a nice size kitchen, a big back garden, on a peaceful street, very close to a small park, it needs some work as it was owned by an old person that passed away.

We put an offer in below price hopeing they might drop the price and it was refused as it had only just gone on the market so we offered full asking price.

We waited 10weeks for the probate to clear and we now have our new home where my part time job was to begin!