Indy Total Construction

You might find you need access to a particular part of a pipe. In that case you should cut out a section of the cladding and fit it with screws to create what is in effect a little trap door.

If you’re boxing in a length of pipe that has a stop-valve on it you should again make a little trap door, but this time fix it on with hinges so that access can be immediate. You can fix a small handle or touch latch on to it to facilitate opening.

If you find pipes exposed in a number of rooms in your home, one method of concealing them, which will provide you with extra storage space as well, is to install built-in furniture. An ideal location for this is that living room alcove. The pipes would be largely unnoticed if you fitted a waist-high cupboard with book shelves on top, for example. The construction of such a cupboard is straightforward (for further details see Ready Reference).

If the pipes are on the back wall. the shelves can be supported on an adjustable shelving system in which brackets lock into uprights. The uprights should be fitted to vertical battens; that way the shelves will be thrown well clear of the pipes. Alternatively, if you have the pipes running up the side of the chimney breast, you can carefully cut notches out of a corner of each shelf so you won’t disturb any of the pipes.

The bathroom is an obvious place where unsightly plumbing can be concealed behind built-in furniture. A built-in cupboard, beneath the washbasin, for instance, will provide extra storage space as well as acting as a neat disguise. If you live in a flat that has the upstairs neighbour’s soil pipe passing through your bathroom, you can disguise it neatly with shelves at the end of a built-in washbasin unit or with a built-in vanity unit.

Another way of concealing pipes is to construct a false wall. This is especially useful if your plaster is in very poor condition. You simply fix timber cladding, probably match-boarding or veneered plywood, to battens running down edges of the walls. Water pipes will go conveniently behind such cladding providing you never forget their location and try to drive nails into the timber!

A more sophisticated version of this that is especially suited to the kitchen or living room, is done with timber panelling. However, if the pipes are running up and outside the wall, it would be wise to allow for some air holes or a small gap at both the top and the bottom. This will ensure that warm air can circulate.

If you find that for some reason you cannot conceal your pipes then it’s worth thinking about going to the opposite extreme and making a feature out of them. Pipes that have been painted with bright colors, for example, can look extremely attractive in their own right. And copper pipework, polished and lacquered to stop it tarnishing, can be a really eye-catching feature.

You’ll have to make sure that the pipes are in good condition to warrant either painting or polishing up, and that their new color won’t clash with your existing decor. Ideally they should be lightly rubbed down to clean them before being given a coat of special enamel radiator paint. You should also take care not to apply too thick a coat of paint — especially on any vertical pipes, as you could end up with unsightly drips, which would be difficult to get rid of once the paint has dried.

Faults can also develop in the door frame — for example, part of it may work loose from the wall. In this case you’ll have to find the heads of the nails holding it in place — they are usually visible under the paint — and drive them deeper into their timber plugs with a hammer and punch.

However, if the plugs have split or shrunk this remedy will not work. So for a more secure repair drill through the timber and into the masonry behind with a masonry bit. Twist a plastic wall plug onto the end of a screw and insert the plug into the hole in the frame. Tap the screw head lightly with a hammer until the plug is fully home, then tighten up the screw. Fit as many screws as necessary to secure the frame.

Settlement of the building or loose joints may force the frame out the square, and then the door will not fit properly. The only answer is to reshape the door to fit — removing excess timber, adding a fillet here and there and shaping these until the door matches the opening as it should.

An easy way to do this is to cut the top of the door to match the angle of the doorframe, add an extra piece to the bottom and then reran the door. First transfer the angle of the frame to the top of the door using a small block of wood and a pencil, and then cut along this line.

It’s worth taking off a reasonable amount to make sawing easier —12mm (1/2in) would be about right. Measure the gap left at the top of the door and add a batten of wood of this thickness to the bottom. Finally, move up the hinges by the same amount so the door fits correctly, and adjust the latch striker plate too, cutting a new mortise if necessary.

If any faults arise in a door you should deal with them immediately. They are not just a nuisance; they could also be setting up stresses in the construction that could cause greater problems later on. Some of the more common faults, and many of these apply to windows as well.

Doors that stick

The door may be difficult to open or close because there is too much paint on one edge or because damp has caused it to swell up. If the condition is not too bad. an easy cure is to rub candle wax on the high spots. If that doesn’t work you’ll have to remove some of the layers of paint and perhaps even some excess timber. Use glass paper, a scraper, plane or Surfer according to the amount that has to be taken off. It may be easier to take the door off its hinges rather than work on it in position.

Sometimes it may not be obvious exactly where the door is sticking. Try running a knife blade between the door and frame, or rub chalk on the edges of the door — you need to plane down the bits where the da* has rubbed off. Don’t take off too much because the door will shrink in dry weather and you may then be left with a draught.

Treat any bare wood with paint or preservative to match the rest of the door. Make sure the paint is dry before you close the door because new paint, too, can cause a door to stick.

If the door is sticking at floor level it will often leave marks on the floor to indicate where the problem lies. You can sometimes cure it by placing a sheet of glass paper under the door and then opening it and closing it a few times. If that’ doesn’t work you’ll have to take the door off its hinges. If you are dealing with a flush door and you have to remove timber from the top or bottom, always plane inwards from each side in turn to avoid splitting the wood at the stiles.

A door can sometimes become ‘hinge bound’, that is, its hinge stile meets the frame before the door is properly closed, making it difficult or impossible to shut. The cause may be that the recesses for the hinges are too deep.

In that case, pack them out with cardboard or hardboard. There’s no need to take down the door to do this. Open it and jam a wedge under the lock stile to take the strain off the hinges. Then deal with each hinge in turn, removing all screws, pushing in the packing piece and re-inserting the screws.

The binding can also be caused by hinge recesses that are too shallow, so that the two leaves of the hinge strike each other and prevent the door from closing, or they leave a gap between the hinge stile and the door frame.

In this case you should remove each hinge and chisel out the recesses to a greater depth. But check first that the screw heads are not sticking out too far as this could have the same effect. If you have difficulty driving home a screw, withdraw it and drill a pilot hole before re-inserting it.

Sagging doors

When a door is not held properly to the frame, or it droops to grate on the floor as you open it, it is said to sag. There are two possible causes for this; either the hinges are at fault, or there is a defect in the construction of the door itself.

To start with the hinges, perhaps all that’s happened is the hinge screws have worked loose. In that case you could replace them with longer or thicker screws. Hinges are usually fixed with No 8 screws, so try No loss instead (provided, of course, the countersink holes are big enough to take their heads).

If this doesn’t work, withdraw the screws and pack out the holes before driving them home. You can use thin dowels or spent matchsticks for this.

Another problem may be that the knuckle of the hinge is damaged so that the two leaves are not held close enough together. The hinge should in that case be replaced. Once again, there is no need to take the door down from the frame. You can replace the hinge with the door supported on a wedge under the lock stile.

These repairs will cure the immediate problem, but you ought to find out why it occurred. It may be that the hinges fitted in the first place were not strong enough. An internal door needs two 75mm (3in) — or preferably 100mm (4in) — hinges, while on a heavy external door, three hinges would be better.

If you suspect the damaged hinges were not strong enough, then you should fit replacements which are one size bigger. Alternatively you could fit an extra hinge for added strength

.here the hinges are sound then a fault has probably developed in the door itself. Usually it will be easy to see if this is so. For instance, on a paneled door the joint between a rail and a stile may have worked loose. If the joint is a mortise-and-tendon and the tendon is actually visible on an edge, then there are two possible remedies. Basically, the loose joint is clamped shut and then fixed le, some way.

An easy way is to take a couple of small hardwood wedges and tap one in on each side of the tendon. Make a shallow saw cut along the length of each wedge to form a glue run, and smear woodworking adhesive on them before fixing them in place. If it is difficult to insert the wedges, open up a starting hole with a chisel and mallet.

You can also strengthen the joint by drilling holes through the face of the door into the tendon and driving in two dowels which you have grooved and smeared with adhesive.

In both cases it is best to cramp the whole door and leave it undisturbed until the glue has set. You can make an improvised cramping jig by screwing battens to a wooden floor, placing the door in the batten framework and then driving wedges between the door and the battens to hold the door tight.

Sometimes the tendon can be too damaged for a repair of this type to work — it might even have sheared off completely. In that case it is better to join the stile to the rail by means of repair plates.

These can be fixed in a recess chiseled in the face of the door and then covered by filler. But make sure the rail is not more extensively damaged or even rotten. If it is, it will probably be much easier to buy a new door, despite the cost.

Warped and twisted doors

A common problem is that the door may be twisted. If the twist is slight, and only a problem in that it lets in draughts, the simple cure is to make the door frame conform as closely as possible to the shape of the twist.

If the door stop is merely nailed in place, pries it off and reposition it to form a better fit, making up minor gaps with draught proofing strip. If the door stop is a machined-in rebate, close the door and use a small block of wood and a pencil to trace its outline on the stop. You can then shape the stop to conform to the door, using a plane, shaper or chisel.

Where the twist is more pronounced you may need to straighten the door. Lay the door flat on a bare boarded floor, with blocks under the true corners. Then place battens across the door face and screw them down to force the door back into shape. Leave it like this for as long as possible.

If the door is bowed in the middle, place it on the floor raised on blocks at the top and bottom edges. with the bow uppermost and screw the batten across the middle.

Sometimes a crack can develop in a timber panel of a paneled door. First clean up the edges of the crack with glass paper and smear glue along them. Drill two holes in the style from the edge of the door towards the top and bottom of the panel, then drive in glued dowels.

Tap the dowels home until the crack closes (see the step-by-step photographs). The dowels should be long enough to protrude out of the stile so that when the adhesive has set they can be cut off and planed flush.

The lock can be a source of trouble, too. It can get out of alignment so the bolt cannot enter properly. Usually only a slight adjustment is needed. The easiest cure is to slacken off the screws holding the staple or striking plate, then give it a tap in the right direction and retighten the screws. If you’ve had to rerun the door to correct sagging you’ll have to make a bigger adjustment and you may need to cut a new mortise for the bolt. You’ll also have to cut a new mortise if you’ve reshaped the door.

When you want to get into your attic there is no reason why you should not use an ordinary ladder, provided it is secured to the opening in some way – by hooks and eyes perhaps, but whatever you do, never use a pair of step ladders. In trying to climb out of the attic and groping for the top of the steps with your foot, you could easily knock them over, leaving you stranded, or worse you might fall with the ladder causing physical injury.

One drawback to using a normal ladder is that you will need somewhere to store it and you will have to go to the trouble of digging it out of storage every time you want to get into the roof space — or it may be in use elsewhere in the house.

A much more satisfactory solution to the problem of climbing into your attic is the proprietary extendable attic ladder. This sits just above the trapdoor on hinges or pivots screwed to the inside or top of the opening frame and can be pulled down whenever you need it. Such a ladder, with its own built-in storage, makes your attic much more usable and accessible.

Purpose-made attic ladders are usually produced in aluminum with 2 or Sin wide treads. Most have two or three sliding sections with a safety catch that must be released before they can be extended. Some are linked to the trapdoor by a special bracket so that they come immediately to hand when you open it up.

When closed, the ladder lies across the tops of the joists next to the trapdoor, but it swings upwards over the opening before it can be pulled down, so it is essential that there is enough height above the opening for this.

Another important factor is the size of the opening itself which must be large enough to allow the ladder to pass through. This is not usually a problem if you are making a new opening, but if you want to fit the ladder to an existing opening, you will have to take some careful measurements. You will also need to know the distance from the floor of the attic (not the ceiling) to the floor of the room below.

For extremely limited attic space, there is a concertina attic ladder that folds up compactly rather than sliding.

Attic ladders can be simple or complex in design with risers and balustrades just like a proper staircase. Most come with some form of automatic trapdoor catch operated by relatively light finger-tip pressure on the door itself.

Obviously, the method of installing an attic ladder varies from one make and model to another, but usually it is quite a simple procedure. Often all that is necessary is to screw the hinges or pivots to the framework of the opening (on the same side as the trapdoor hinges) and fit the automatic catch to the other side of the opening. There may also be travel stops to adjust on the ladder and a bracket to fit to the trapdoor to hold the ladder so that it is easily reached.