Handy Andy’s Home Work: A Beginner’s Guide to Decorating, DIY and Maintenance (Hardcover)
Amazon.co.uk Review
Andy Kane, famous as the resident carpenter and handyman on the BBC’s Changing Rooms, has written a brilliantly simple beginner’s guide for anyone new to decorating and DIY. Never wielded a paintbrush in anger before? Hammers are radar-guided to hit your thumbs? Don’t worry, this is the klutz’s friend, the idiot’s handbook. Before he even starts to tell you how to fix anything, he takes you on a guided tour of the average home, explaining how it is all put together and how it is supposed to work. He goes pretty slow, so no one can get left behind: Your house walls tell you a lot about how they’re built, especially if they’re of plain brickwork. If all you can see are the long sides of the bricks, then you have cavity walls–two separate walls, each one brick thick, set about 50 mm (2 in) apart and held together by metal straps called wall ties. The gap in the middle stops any rainwater that gets through the outer wall from reaching the inner one, and in (more…)