Tag Archives: rawlplug electric tile cutter

30th April 2015 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… finish the plasterboarding around where the beichstuhl will be, I have made further great progress today.

First though, I had a rummage around in the barn looking for plasterboard. I can see me being short of decent plasterboard for the shower room if I’m not careful, and around the beichstuhl will be a good place to use a few offcuts.

So once that had been done, I attacked the major task that needed to be done, and one which I am never happy when I have to do it.

tiling beichstuhl shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceWallpapering is a job that I detest, as you know, but one that I am never happy tackling, much as I enjoy it, because I’m rubbish at it, is tiling.

However, supposing that it all sticks to shere it’s supposed to, it hasn’t come out too badly. Thats mainly because I managed to make the consistency of the paste just about right, but also to the Rawlplug electric tile-cutter that I bought for peanuts from a car boot sale years ago. It’s cheap and basic, and the design could be improved in a million ways, but it cuts tiles a thousand times better and a thousand tiles quicker that I could ever do and it was well worth every penny that I paid for it.

I had fun cutting the hole for the breather pipe, but luckily it’s near the edge of a tile so I cheated with a deft little technique with the tile cutter

Now I know that I have said on a million occasions that I hate white, so why the white tiles? The answer is that when I lived with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, and Roxanne’s school was making mosaics, a friend of a friend gave me “some” waste tiles – “some” being enough to fill a Ford Escort estate. And there were plenty in there that were certainly serviceable, so I put them on one side for jobs such as this.

So that’s a nice job to finish off the week, as it’s Bank Holiday and so a day off tomorrow. No alarm, and no working either. I could do with a few more days like that.

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Tuesday 11th February 2014 – I DIDN’T FIND …

… my tile cutter today, but I found something else instead.

tiling window sill head of stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceQuite a few years ago I was at a car boot sale at Hexham with Dave Boustead (whatever happened to him?) and amongst the objects that I picked up was an ancient Rawlplug electric tile-cutter, for a couple of quid if I remember correctly.

And this morning, we had bright blue skies and not a cloud in sight and fully-charged batteries by 11:00 and so after I’d put the second coat of varnish on the wood that I’ve been fitting, I wheeled out the tile cutter.

It needed cleaning and a little oiling and so on but to my surprise once I’d loaded it up with water we were off. I did a few test cuts and then set about the tiles.

There are loads of design faults with this machine – I can think of a hundred ways to improve it – but it did the job as I asked it to do and, to be honest, it cut them better than I could have done. So no complaints from me.

By lunchtime, they were all cut and cemented to the window sill. All they need now is to be grouted and I really do wish that I had done the window in here like this now.

This afternoon, I started on the definitive version of the stairs to the attic. When I built them in 2009 I was constrained by time and also by the width (60cms) of the wood that I had at hand. None of this now though. High time I did them properly using real wood and with real rails.

This means, in effect, removing the rails, cutting them down so that they fit behind the plasterboard that I’ll be fitting, and then cutting up floorboarding to 67cms which, apart fom giving me three strips to a length of 2m, fits perfectly upon the new rails.

It’s taking me ages to do this as you might expect, but it looks much better than scrap chipboard and the like, and takes my weight so much better..It’s looking much better already and there’s only one tread fitted so far.

With a brief interruption for rain (i had to fecth in the washing) I was well away when knocking off time came round.

I’m clearly enjoying myself.

And while I’m on the subject, the Xantrex charge controller in the barn, the one that packed up last autumn, has now miraculously sprung into life.

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