Now available in the UK with a modern design, clear-focus vials for levelling work in tight spaces.
It’s always been Hultafors Tools’ vision to give professional tradesmen and women the best quality tools for optimal on-site performance.
That’s why these NEW Mini Pocket spirit levels have now been added to its range of best in class levelling and marking equipment.
The ergonomic design includes a crush-proof vial with a +60% magnifying effect and luminescent effect for easy reading in light or dark conditions.
There’s also a strong protective casing and, what’s more the magnetic version is ideal for accurate vertical measuring.
Both new models look great and, added to all the other products in the Hultafors’ range, there’s something to suit every conceivable levelling requirement.
Getting more information on the Hultafors Tools range of Spirit Levels easy. You call the Helpline on 01484 854788 or check out www.hultafors.co.uk and download a digital catalogue.
These new styles from Snickers Workwear deliver AllroundWork warmth and cooling comfort.
Not only will you stay warm with these new 37.5® Technology Fleeces, you’ll look and feel cool too. With styles for both professional tradesmen and women, they excel at ventilation and moisture transport to keep you working comfortably wherever you are on site.
The 37.5® Technology fabric in the Fleece is a very quick-drying material that captures and releases moisture vapour – like your sweat – for superior coolness and dry working comfort.
After all, keeping a balanced work temperature is not just about staying cool and in great shape, it’s a matter of your wellbeing and job safety.
So, to make sure you get the right protection, visibility, flexibility, durability and ventilation, check out the new Snickers Workwear 37.5® Technology Fleeces, to fit your workday.
For more information on the new 37.5® Technology Fleece, visit www.snickersworkwear.co.uk. alternatively, call the Snickers Helpline on 01484 854788.
We know from the comments on our YouTube channel that many of you find it hard to track down a good builder for your extension projects and general building work. In this episode, we offer some solutions beyond the usual first port of call for most people which are the trades recommendation websites.
If you prefer to find your builder, plumber or electrician online, try some of these trade finding websites.
Roger: Hello, this is Roger Bisby from Skill Builder and they’re back with podcast number seven.
Robin: One of the comments or one of the ones that reoccurs is people say it’s all very well as listening to you guys and reading the other comments from professional builders. How do we find professional builders? How do we find good tradespeople, people to work for us? So this is from the general public’s point of view. So we thought it would be quite useful to tell what we think is a good way of finding a good builder or tradesmen.
Roger: Well, we’ll just have a discussion about it. We might not come up with the definitive answer because I think depending on where you are, this is going to be different. Some places you go, you live in a village, you got a little local guy, he does everything for everybody, might have been the undertaker as well because that used to be a common thing didn’t it? A builder/undertaker.
Robin: If you’re living in the urban jungle, if you’re living somewhere where it’s dog eat dog, if you like, then you might have to just take your chances a bit more or you’ve drawn a blank so you’re making phone calls and no one’s coming back to you or you’re looking at the the directory or nowadays on the Internet and you don’t even know what to search for. You think you need a bit of work done in the garden, do I need a landscape gardener? Do I need a general builder? And it’s having this kind of like knowledge and packaging it up. So straight away people might direct you towards these branded Internet type operations.
Roger: What the bigger companies?
Robin: Recommendation portals, for example, you might go to a recommendation portal, put in your job, put in your budget, and then they’ll sell those leads onto builders who are paying them a commission. So basically that’s one way and a lot of people do find builders like that, but I want to try to steer my opinion away from that because I’m not a lover of that approach, I’ve never personally done it but I’ve seen the quality of work of some people who claim to be in these organizations and I think to myself, my goodness me, I mean, it’s being qualified by the client. The client hasn’t got a clue that they’ve just had a terribly paved drive down. I know that it’s not a good drive, but anyway, I will give you a little anecdote about a bit of advice I gave to one of my good friends yesterday. She phoned me and asked if I had a painter to paint some eggshell handmade cupboards and straight away I said to her, Sandra, I have some really good painters who worked with me on a subcontract basis or recommendation basis, but they’re so busy at the moment that are definitely not going to recommend them to you because they might come to you before they come to me. I said, so, I can’t help you in the short term, but what I can do is if I’m stuck and I need to find a new tradesman or someone like that, let’s say I’m working out of area and I need to find a bricklayer, or I need to find a ground worker or someone like that. There are lots of ways I go about that. So I might go into the local builders, merchants in the town, and say I’m in the area, I’m going to be here for six or eight weeks doing a project. Can you tell me if there are any really good local bricklayers who come in here who I might be able to contact? So that’s a really good place to start. So in Sandra’s case, go to the local paint and decorator shop and say, do you know any guys who really like doing this kind of work? They give you a number, you can then find them and say, Steve from the painting shop gave me your number. So there’s a little bit of a connection there already because it’s actually quite hard to get people through the door in the first place at the moment, especially down south.
Roger: Yeah, if they’re busy, if they’re not busy she should be worried. If they are busy then you’ve got to join the queue.
Robin: I mean it worked for me. I did a big job in Henley-on-Thames and none of my team really wanted to go over there. I took it because I was desperate for work, it was a big job. And I went up there and I spent a whole day doing a recce and I saw a new house being built and a beautiful fence being put around it. I went and had a chat with the guy doing the fence and he said to me, if you want to groundwork you need to speak to so and so and the guy came on the same day to meet me on site to look at the work cause he was passing and he introduced me to a fabulous bricklayer, a guy called Ian who introduced me to a scaffolder and all of a sudden I had an amazing little network of fantastic tradesmen, but I’m lucky enough to know the standard that I like and be able to talk that builder’s language. I think this is another problem for the general public, if you’re trying to find a builder, you want to speak their language and not feeling intimidated by what you need to say. So if you’ve got an architect’s drawing, that’s a good start because that kind of is going to be speaking their language. You can table that and say, I need a price for this. Or sometimes if you’ve put planning in, you might already have builders writing to you, which is quite popular in the southeast of England, you might get 10 letters and it’s just a marketing tactic. Some of those companies are fantastic as well and they need to do that to grow their businesses. So it’s worth talking to those guys and looking at their websites and seeing what they’ve done or even going around and looking at some of the work. So the obvious one is a recommendation. Roger, we talk about recommendation a lot.
Roger: As you get more and more relevant recommendations, bit like Trip Advisor, the same sort of idea. And they’ve got these things where you rate somebody, and they go up the scale. So somebody ends up being highly rated and sometimes that’s gained. Look at somebody like Checkatrade for example. Now Checkatrade has obviously got a big high profile out there. It’s a good idea. They’re doing a good job as far as they go but I’m not sure that they pursue the people that are just fakes. In other words, they’re not even members of Checkatrade, they’re just driving around with a Checkatrade sticker on the side of their van pretending to be a member to get the work.
What has become more and more prevalent, is fantastic sign-written vans with vinyl displays wrapped around, they might have a lovely patio on it and beautiful looking house and it says landscaped gardeners and all the rest, I’d run a mile from it. Especially if all they’ve got is a mobile phone number because it seems to me that anybody can go out and buy some vinyl now and get a pretty picture on the side of the van, it doesn’t mean a thing. You know, they’re not necessarily a good company and they run around getting work like that, so beware. If they’ve got Checkatrade written on the side of their van, don’t take their word for it, check with Checkatrade.
Whether they are actually a member, find out where they live. You really need an address, you can’t just work on a phone number and you’ve really got to start doing a little bit of homework because you get these guys in there and it goes wrong. They are nasty people to have anything to do with, people say “oh my goodness” I never knew this. You know this is a nightmare, this person is intimidating me, they’ve turned really nasty on me and they just want to be a thousand miles away from it. Years ago, it happened to me. I was doing a plumbing job and done this emergency call. The leak had brought the artex ceiling down, they tend to hold the water for quite a long time until they go and then when they go, they bring a big area down. So I said to this plumber, do you know what patching artex is very, very hard. I said, you’re probably looking at boarding the whole thing down, you’re probably better off getting new board and having it plastered through. So he said, “do you know a plasterer?” I said “well, I know a few but they’re all busy”. I got this phone call from the customer and he said: “your plasterer has turned up”.
I said, “hang on, my plasterer?”. He said, “yeah he was recommended by you, you know. And he’s taken a 500 quid cash deposit for the materials from me”. He went off and he’s got a few bits and pieces, materials etc. Now the police have come and they’ve just taken him away in a police car. I said, “I don’t understand this. I never put a plasterer on to you”. It turns out it was my plumber mate had met this guy in the pub and this guy said to him “I’m a plasterer” he said “we’ve got a job for you” and given him this blokes contact details. So this guy is completely unknown to me, I went down to the local police station and I said to the policeman, “have you got a plasterer here?”.
The policeman stood there and folded his arms. He said, what do you want to know? and was really hostile towards me. I said “look mate, he’s taken 500 quid from this customer, from MY customer, you’ve taken him away and I don’t know what he’s done wrong”. I wanted the 500 quid back and obviously, I didn’t want him back. The policeman said he’s a good plasterer! And he said, “yeah he did my front room”. You’re kidding me I said, so what have you got him in for if I can ask that?
He said, “oh, he just nicked a car”. So this guy had got a day of work as a plasterer and gone and stolen a car from a neighbour to use as transport to get to work and get his materials on site. I said I didn’t want this guy back he’s just useless, and he said no no, he will be just fine, honestly, you’ll see his work is good, he’ll be out in about another hour or so. I waited outside the police station and this guy came out and I nabbed him, got him in the van and said right, you are coming back to this job and I’m going to stand there and watch you do it until it’s finished!
I thought never again, I just fell into that nightmare situation. I did explain to the customer that it was a bit of a risk, but yeah, he did actually do a good job in the end. So I’m really, really nervous about having anything to do with tradesmen if I don’t know them well.
Robin: So the other way of finding people is if you see people working in your street, you can sometimes go and chat to them informally and see how you get along and see the work that’s being done and you liked the look of it or the way that people are dealing with the customer and it’s nice and tidy.
That’s also another good way of doing it. But quite often, trade associations are a good place to look and just go on Google now and you can search for a carpenter or carpentry trade association and you might look at the Institute of Carpenters who only have about three and a half thousand members. Considering there’s about 70,000 carpenters in the southeast, it’s not a very big representation. The Guild of Master Craftsman is another one, which is a broad brush covering all kinds of disciplines. So you can go to these trade associations as well, but you still have to go through the same process of calling the people, trying to get them through the door because it’s just a nightmare trying to get anyone to come and look them up.
Roger: I was in the Institute of Plumbing for years and that was a great source of recommendation. It’s now become the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering, but the same idea, it was a tiny number of people that run it. If you think of all the promises out there, the number of guys who were willing to put themselves through that kind of jumping through the hoops, be assessed to get themselves on that register and keep up their continual professional development, go on courses and so on. It’s an onerous thing, isn’t it? And actually, if you’re getting loads to work, why would you want to put yourself through that and join one of these federations? It’s a bit of a shame in a way, because in certain countries were tradesmen have a much higher status, everybody is in those associations and a member of something and they have to be in order to work. I hesitate to say that because we have it with Gas Safe and it doesn’t necessarily achieve what you wanted to achieve.
Robin: Another interesting point is that people say they want to find a ‘builder’, well actually you can’t go and get qualified as a ‘builder’. The only building qualifications are probably the next level up from the domestic market is for where you might become a chartered builder for example. So someone who goes to university and learns all things building from project management and all the rest of it, but they don’t tend to delve back into the domestic market. If they do, it’s more at the higher end and because of the way they are schooled, they’re not necessarily tradesmen, but a lot of builders, the smaller builders were tradesmen to start with. So, they might be strong on carpentry because the founder was a carpenter or equally, they might be strong on brickwork and foundations because the founder was a brick worker or it could be a ground worker that’s expanded into doing the whole job for people.
And most of the building companies or tradespeople out there work on a sort of cooperative basis with other tradesmen. So you’ll find that they can scale up and scale down to suit your job. So it’s not unusual to get in a building company and you say, how many employees have you got? it’s not unusual for them to say, well actually I don’t have any employees, but what I do have his subcontractors and that’s totally normal, so you don’t really need to go out looking at hiring a company with all their own employees. There are some companies, with all their own employees, but not many.
Quite a lot of small domestic building operations and sole traders, for the sake of economy, can take on some big work because they have a good network and manage a cooperative of talented people under an umbrella of ground workers, scaffolders, brick layers and so on, which is quite normal, so don’t get put off by that. Sometimes people think, oh he’s got all his own painters, but generally speaking it’s group, it’s a cooperative and that’s how we operate. I do a lot of project management and I can do that on just a day work basis and then I can introduce people as well. It’s quite nice and easy like that.
Roger: I know some good building firms who have about half a dozen vans, keep about half a dozen guys on the books, different trades and they do work very, very well like that and have enough work to put those guys on the cards and keep it going, they do fantastic work and I’d recommend them to anybody, they’re in and out in no time. They specialize in actually just getting that job done and being finished and out the door, which for a lot of people you were talking about, you know, in one of our previous podcasts, that six week period, people started to have a nervous breakdown. They want to see the builder’s gone and they get that job done as fast as they possibly can. And that is to do with a lot of having good people on tap with really good organization. And it’s not just about the skills, it’s about having somebody who is organized who can carry the job through.
Robin: Managing lead times, because every extension seems to have a set of bi-folds now, here are some manufacturers who can turn them around in three days because you need to physically build, measure the aperture, work out your floor level, so there’s some complications. Try to preorder those and work the building out around them, so with the right organization and ingredients on the project you’re all good.
Roger: I’ve got a job at the moment, just to digress, which is just exactly that. I’ve got the guys to do the measurements for some bi-folds based on my marks and hadn’t got the screed in and I put the screed on my marks, then when the door’s were fitted… too low! and there’s not enough room on the lintel and now I’m going to have an argument with these guys and there’s no way around it, now that’s the mark where I wanted it, but I just think, ah! I’ve fallen into it again. Every time you get somebody else to do it, like you say, the way to do it was to finish the floor level and then just say, right, stick your doors in. But you know, they’re doing it all day long and you think they’d get it right. But now the only solution I can think of is to either scrap those doors or lift the lintel and I think I’m going to lift the lintel now, it’s only got to go up by 30 millimetres, but that 30 millimeters is the step that I didn’t want. I wanted a level threshold going all the way through and it just bugs the life out of me. But, a stupid little thing this digression, but years and years in the trade and you still fall into these traps.
Robin: It must be really daunting for the general public to actually build relationships with people. And I know that once people do build a relationship with you, they tend to stick with you as well. So it works well for the trade as well if you’re a builder reading this or a tradesman. Generally speaking, once you do form these relationships with people, these are lifelong relationships in a lot of cases and you might be working for them now, then you might work for their children in the future and grow old with your customers.
Roger: Best way isn’t it? We hear from guys saying, we’re watching the channel and they say things like, I’m a small builder, I’ve got about a dozen clients, customers, and that’s enough for me. And then it might be a question of actually coming in and doing every single job themselves on a bill, which is fantastic. I love all that.
Robin: Quite a lot of the time when you’re looking for people as well, you imagine if they’re busy, they’re good. If they’re not busy, they’re not good. But that’s not actually the case because a lot of craftspeople and builders, that’s what they are, craftsmen and artisans, and that comes before marketing that comes before sales and the rest of it. So they tend to never know what they’ve got going on next week but they’re always busy. It just sort of flows along. So there will be times where you can get a recommendation and they might be able to start in two weeks’ time. It’s just because that’s the way they operate it. So it’s sort of a just in time basis. It just seems to be how they operate. So don’t be put off. If you’ve got someone who can start pretty quickly as well, because I know that some people are put off.
Roger: I am generally, I’m always a little bit suspicious, put it that way. If they said they could turn up the next morning, I thought, why is it you’ve got no work. So I’ll probably ask and they might say a job’s fallen through or the bi-folds hadn’t arrived. So I’ve got a couple of spare weeks where I can come in and do your job. I fully understand that, but I want to hear it. If we were talking about finding a good tradesman, and we’re not talking about just builders, but plumbers, electricians, whatever it is you’re trying to find, the recommendation from somebody else who’s used them has got to be the best way. But if you live in a town, a city like London, you don’t even know your neighbour, you don’t know anybody locally and let’s face it, the concept of local builders in London, really they’re all coming in from outside, perhaps Essex or trying to afford to live in central London. So there you’ve got a disconnect straight away, haven’t you? You don’t have your local person that is known to the village and does everybody’s work.
Robin: And obviously the Internet is our friend now so you can search people out and you can look at their web site and see pictures of previous works as well, which is quite useful. When I get people contacting me via the Internet, they’ve looked at my work and they’ve looked at every single picture and they say, I saw your work and I think that’s fantastic. So it’s worth it, for builders too to invest in a simple web page, something which works on the mobile devices as well. It’s not majorly expensive.
Roger: I would recommend anyone that’s creating a website, we’re going back to tradesman, get the spelling right, if it’s not your forte, then get somebody else to do it because there’s nothing worse than seeing a badly put together website misspelt and everything’s wrong with it. So if you’re going to do it, invest a little bit of time and money and get a good job done. But equally from the customer’s point of view, they’re more persuaded if they see somebody that’s got a professional image.
Robin: We will definitely be touching on this. If you’re a builder watching this and you’re thinking about e-commerce and a website and what you need to do? I love marketing and I’m definitely going to do something on that in the future.
Roger: Okay so there’s no magic solution to finding a good tradesman, but I would say don’t just be fooled by all those trade finding portal websites out there with so-called approved trades because some of them are just a complete scam. So ask around. I’ll tell you what I’d like to see. I’d like to see a television program like the ones where people find a partner, but they find a builder, a dating show for builders and clients.
Robin: Thanks very much for visiting and come back again soon. We’ve got more subjects to cover and more interesting things on our YouTube channel coming up. So whether you want practical instruction or advice or just a bit of company, thanks very much.
In our final part of the bathroom renovation series, Roger sorts out the pressure with a new Kingspan unvented cylinder and Jubi joins us to take care of fitting the furniture and putting the finishing touches to our epic installation season.
Roger tries out a fast and strong dot’n’dab drywall fixing solution from Corefix and is very impressed with the performance. Watch our YouTube video and see for yourself.
Dot & Dab Wall Fixing Solution
Suitable for most modern homes with plasterboard/dot & dab walls
Trusted and independently tested incredibly strong fixing, 90kg safe working load
Fast installation, no specialist tools required, drill, 10mm bit, hammer & screwdriver
For all wall types, brick, block and lightweight concrete
Speed
A bracket can be fixed using Corefix within 50 seconds, watch the video directly above if you don’t believe us, it really is that quick!
Strength-Tested
Product performance has been independently tested and verified. In-house tested to over 250kg on four fixings with a safe working load of 90kg. Test results can be viewed on our technical datasheet.
Where To Use Corefix
The product was developed to safely secure wall hung kitchen cabinets but it will support any heavy load on a dot & dab wall, to include but not exclusively, wall hung cabinets, large screen TVs, boilers, radiators, sanitaryware & heavy duty shelving.
Required for most modern houses
Obtaining a secure fixing to a drylined (dot and dab) wall is notoriously difficult. Corefix solves this problem by securing the load to the solid wall behind, and not to the plasterboard.
Huge Load Rating
Tested to over 250kg (without failure) with a safe working load of 90kg based on 4 x Corefix fixings. Corefix has been independently tested for tensile and sheer strength with its performance verified.
Robust and Dependable
With Corefix the load is supported by the solid wall behind, not the plasterboard. Corefix is well-engineered using quality materials and heavy-duty components, with the metal parts being plated for corrosion resistance.
Superfast installation
Very quick and easy installation with no specialist tools required. All that is needed is a 10mm drill, hammer and screwdriver. The straight-forward fixing system comprised of a patented plug, metal insert and single screw.
Corefix is Ideal for
Wall mounted large screen TV’s, wall hung cabinets, shelves, boilers, radiators, sanitaryware and much more! Corefix has been designed for drylined walls but is also suitable for other wall construction types.
No more bowed Plasterboard
Corefix bridges the void between plasterboard and the solid wall behind with STEEL thereby preventing the plasterboard from crushing into the void (as is common with many other types of fixing).
This is the Kieren Messenger episode. He sneaks two questions into this edition of ASB and sends some lovely video clips showing his huge problem in the extension of the Messenger household.
Ali P has a huge amount of questions on doing a full renovation in his house.
Leo Carswell has a neglected 1950s semi’ with dodgy DIY and many things that haven’t been touched for years.
James Eyre is doing some refurbishment on my 1920s house with freezing solid brick walls and would like to introduce some insulation internally to the walls.
Dealing with customer complaints can be the hardest part of any job, so it’s time for Roger and Robin to share their experiences and tips on how to handle customer complaints.
Roger’s comes back to the rescue with our weekly Ask Skill Builder show and Episode 6. We take a look through your emails, Facebook messages and YouTube comments and Roger does his best to steer you in the right direction.
John Collins is considering buying a ‘doer upper’ that needs an epic effort to turn around. He asks “Just wondering if these images give an insight into the extent of work required to repair. Is it removal and replacement of render or am I looking at deeper structural issues?”.
Tom Dalgliesh has water coming through his bathroom wall. Tom says “Our house was built in 1936, we moved in last year and re-painted the bathroom to refresh it, and it shortly after developed a damp problem. I have filmed the external side of the wall with the damp as well as a rear view of the house with the upper dormer windows visible”.
Alan Forder asks is it best to pack out the wall where the coving is fitted or to fit it after tiling so that it sits on top of the tiles.
Stu has noisy creaking plastic cladding on his ceiling. He asks “It’s now looking shabby and I need to renew the bathroom as a whole. Please what paint, preparation or cladding would you recommend for a steamy bathroom ceiling?”.
Robin is back with Roger to discuss the all-important issue of getting paid and taking every measure in avoiding bad debts so you’ll escape being knocked by cowboy customers.
Roger and Robin really enjoyed creating our step-by-step guide to installing a Roof Maker Slimline Roof Lantern.
The English language can be confusing especially when you throw in some building terms. We have skylights, roof windows and roof lanterns. A roof lantern is not actually a lantern but a glass structure with pitched sides.
Its purpose is to provide light. They have become very popular because they throw light back into parts of the building that have been made darker by the addition of an extension.
Even with a large patio door across the whole back elevation, it’s surprising how much the daylight falls away as you move back into the original building.
A roof window gives more daylight than a vertical window and a roof lantern being multi-aspect gives more than that. It’s due to the combination of light that comes directly down from the sky and sunlight which comes in at an angle dependent on the time of the year.
The striking thing about Roof Maker roof lanterns is the minimalist design. When you look up you see the sky and not a whole bunch of bulky glazing bars.
This is the thing that delights the customer but what delights the installer/builder/DIYer is just how easy they are to fit. Even if you have never done this kind of job before you will be amazed how easy it is.
Fitting the Window
The first thing you need to know is that all Roof Maker roof lanterns are made to measure but before you construct your opening and build your kerb you need to look at the size chart because there are certain principles of geometry and structural strength that come into play.
The pitch is 46 degrees which happens to be the optimum for self-cleaning glass, this means that the wider you go the higher the lantern. This might not be a consideration but if you are building an extension you might not want the roof lantern obscuring the view out of the bedroom windows, you might also find that the planning consent stipulates a maximum height.
This is often easy enough to overcome if you have two or more lanterns. The chart shows how you need to narrow the width of the window as you increase the length. This is purely so the weight of the glass is supported.
The next consideration is heat loss. Under Building Regulations, you may be restricted on the amount of glazed area you can have. The good news is that the energy efficiency (U value) of the sealed units and structure is so good that you may be able to have a larger size than you would with some other units.
The lower the U value the better. If you can’t quite achieve the figure you need you can choose the option of triple glazed sealed units which dramatically lower the U Value and also cut out noise from aircraft and traffic.
In most cases, the base perimeter frame comes ready assembled. This is only possible because the company uses its own transport. The other benefit of this is that your lovely new lantern does not have to run the gauntlet of couriers who tend to throw things around.
I can’t begin to count the number of jobs I have done that have been delayed by goods damaged in transit.
Somewhat unusually the Roof Maker frame is fitted before the roof membrane or fibreglass. This means that you don’t have to fit in with somebody else’s schedule. Once the frame is screwed to your built up-stand (kerb) the minimalist frame is constructed and held together with machine screws.
It is hard to imagine how anybody could get this part wrong but the bit you could get wrong is putting in the glass. All I can say about fitting glass, in general, is that it is essential to have a plan.
Before you carry the glass onto the roof you need to work out the route, check for hazards, decide on the method, who is doing what and who is in charge. The last thing you want is a variation on the Chuckle Brothers “To me, to you, to me”.
I would also recommend a pair of professional-grade glass lifting suckers for lowering the last panes onto the frame. These can be bought or hired if you are a DIYer just doing a one-off job.
There are a few bits of siliconing to do to complete the job. If you are not experienced with silicone grab a tub of wipes so you can remove any unwanted smears straight away.
The final bit of siliconing around the bottom edge of the frame must be done before the roof covering is applied and when this is done the glass structure is watertight and draught-proofed.
Conclusion
Whether you do the job yourself or use professionals the end result is a window that gives you superb insulation and the most daylight you can possibly achieve. The question I get asked a lot regarding roof windows is “Will it leak?”.
I can put my hand on my heart and answer that, fitted properly, it will never leak and fitting it properly is amazingly straightforward.
The kind of problems people experience with older style PVC roof lanterns which depend on gazing gaskets can’t happen because the glass is on the outside of the structure not in it.
It’s almost time for the tiler to start work, so Roger has to get the bath connected, the tray down, underfloor heating hooked up and the elements board down onto the KST adhesive which will give us a level bathroom floor.
This is a brilliant little life hack that will remove shower mould and kill ugly black marks.
Taking Control of the Problem
We’ve been asked how to remove black mould from the silicone around shower trays many times and the solution is almost too easy to believe because it doesn’t involve any scrubbing or elbow grease.
You will need some bleach, toilet or kitchen roll, gloves, eye protection and a few hours where you don’t need to use the shower.
This is something that affects so many people and it’s mould around the shower. Now, it’s a bit of an academic point but the mould exists because of the stuff we wash off our bodies; the skin, all that junk that’s washed away every time we have a shower ends up on that silicone seal.
Now, silicone seal is mould resistant, mildew resistant, forever why it’s one of the ones I use. And although they have these additives in that stop the mould biting into the silicone, it still doesn’t stop it and solve the problem and I heard somebody say the other day, “You’ll never get rid of that mould”.
The example in this video isn’t horrendous, but it’s had a fair amount of work and the customer is telling me that they spend a long time scrubbing and rubbing down to try and get rid of this mould.
Remove Shower Mould
This is actually a ceramic shower tray so it’s absolutely brilliant for resistance to bleach, and you’ve got to be careful that whatever you use doesn’t attack the shower tray; so check that out before you use any treatments.
Get yourself a nice strong bleach and some toilet or kitchen roll. This is a really useful thing to do when you go away on holiday or just away for the weekend, just before you leave and you’ve had your last shower, give it a cleanout. Remember what’s happening here, the mould really loves moisture and warmth and will thrive in most showers or baths.
Now, twist some strips of toilet paper into a poultice (a twisted tight braid if you like). Next, pour the bleach gently down the back behind our poultice; this prevents the bleach from evaporating.
Stay Safe
And now what you’ve got is constant contact with that mould. Make sure (unlike Roger) that you use gloves and eye protection. Get rid of this mould here by using this technique, and then use that daily shower cleaning spray and you will stop it appearing in the first place.
So that’s all there is to it, a very simple tip. Make yourself up a bleach poultice, make sure that your shower tray is not going to be affected by bleach, in other words, check the manufacturer’s instructions. And if it is, then use something else. You can use any kind of mould inhibitor, do the same thing; so long as you’ve got some kind of loo roll around there to hold it.
• How to remove mould from shower caulking?
• How to get rid of mould in shower silicone?
• How do you get rid of black mould in the shower?
• How do I clean black mould in shower silicone?
Ask Skill Builder is becoming one of our most popular shows, which is great because we get to help you directly and you can take the pictures for a change!
In this episode we have.
Jon Curtis – Has a shower tray leaking and decided to do a full remodel job and fit all-new, larger shower, but has a leak on the floor and the wood has seriously rotted away.
Ian Sta – Looking to convert a single brick outhouse into an internal space, looking at insulation options for external walls, floor and roof.
Biker Chris – Like Ian Sta is looking to build an office in the back garden and wants to make it as warm as possible.
Graham Hine – Tried to fit a McAlpine 40mm multi-fit compression fitting but the central pipe is too large for his waste pipe.
With the Elements board in place, it’s time to work out the best fixing solution for the Abacus Multi-Design Tileable Bath Surround Kit, which is made from the same material as the Elements tile backer board.
Roger’s house cheat sheet comes into play with Ask Skill Builder Episode 4. We take a look through your emails, Facebook messages and YouTube comments and Roger does his best to steer you in the right direction.
Jacob Ashton has good cold water pressure but as soon as he turns it to hot, the pressure drops and the shower is unusable.
Vinny Surti has a concealed thermostatic shower valve doesn’t get hot enough.
Jono Walsh is camera shy and would like to install solid wood flooring onto an asphalt floor.
Lee Henderson has cracked mortar and a few cracked bricks.
Noah Lott asks us about brick repointing but we suspect this one’s a prank but we loved it anyway!
Brickie Keith Bryden shows us some of his fine arched brickwork.
Roger and Robin discuss going self-employed in the second episode of the new Skill Builder podcast. It takes some courage to make the leap from the security and comfort of your job, but the fact that you’re here tells us that you’re thinking of making the leap into the world of being the master of your own destiny, but what do you have to consider in your new self employed life?
Have you got the courage to quit your job and find the motivation needed to build a new happier and more fulfilling life?
Our thanks go to the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel at Milton Keynes Dons F.C. for allowing us to record our podcast in their matchday bar.
Transcript
Roger: Hello, this is Roger Bisby and Robin Clevett with our second podcast, Skill Builder podcast coming to you, from where are we? Robin: Well, the pub was a bit noisy by all accounts, so we fought, where can you go where it’s really quiet? Well, an empty football stadium, of course.
Roger: Yeah. Don’t ask us why we are at the MK Dons Football Stadium. Now, the first one we did, basically Robin was telling us how he priced, conditioned people and how he gets the right money for the job, and that really struck a chord. People are saying to us that, oh well, you should tell me this 30 years ago. I could use this information. So with this podcast, what are we going to be doing is, we are going to be talking about taking that plunge, becoming self-employed.
Robin: We are.
Roger: We’ve never been self-employed before. It’s taken away the safety net, really isn’t it?
Robin: The way this one came about. It’s obvious we looked at the comments and everything else and there’s a generic line that runs all the way through these comments. And that’s about anxiety, about becoming self-employed or being your own boss and so on and so forth.
Roger: Yeah. The other thing I picked up on from the comments of the first podcast was that people were saying, look, I’ve been self-employed for two or three years, and it’s not really working out. I’m thinking I’m going to have to take a part-time job stacking shelves at Sainsbury’s or whatever they’re doing. Somebody said they’re going to go work evenings at Screwfix. If it’s not working for you, then don’t give up, but just think tomorrow is the first day for the rest of your life. In other words, the fact that you’ve had two years of hardship and so on. It doesn’t contaminate the future. If you take on board maybe some of the things we’re going to say, and then start from, not start from scratch, but just push yourself forward from that point rather than being tied down, weighed down by your failures. Look at your success and potential.
Robin: Because the thing is, nowadays, what we call the gig economy and everything else, whether you like it or not, most industry wants to go towards people who are self-employed because it’s easier for people to hire and fire. There’s less liability involved. Because generally, if you’re self-employed, you’ve got to cover your own insurances and all that sort of stuff. So, this is probably why this subject is going to get a lot of interest. Now, tell us about you, Roger, tell us how you became self-employed?
Roger: Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean my things very slightly different to a lot of other people, and as much as I left school and started an apprenticeship and then that didn’t work out for me particularly well. I left out. It was a bit of a footloose. I went traveling and did all kinds of, did the hippie thing really. It was all about the hippies in those days. So I did all that, sleeping on the beaches, tossing around, having a great time, and the sex and drugs, and rock and roll scene. And then I came out, I thought I really want to do is something, what I did an apprenticeship with plumbing and so on. Because it gives me the opportunity to be independent to do what I want, and just go to work when I want to go to work rather than working for somebody else. At that time, I’d actually caught myself in a position where I got a mortgage, couple of kids, and I was just sort of starting out married life, and I thought I missed the boat. I wanted to be self-employed and I wanted to do something. Suddenly, I’m working for somebody and I’m trapped in this golden goose. And then everybody, I spoke to, I said, look, I want to give this job up. It’s reasonably paid. It was a very easy job to do. I said I want to give it up with two kids and the mortgage. I want to throw all that away and I want to become self-employed. And almost every single person that I spoke to said, big risk, don’t do it.
Robin: So why did you do it?
Roger: Well, there was one person that encouraged me. One single person said to me, I think that’s a great idea, go for it, and that person was my wife.
Robin: I mean that’s amazing.
Roger: Yeah. It is because she had the most to lose from it. We’ve got the two kids and it’s –
Robin: But she could see your potential and the potential to go out there, name your price effectively, and do the work. Because you’re a hard-working guy, Roger, so she could probably see that you do better on your own.
Roger: I’ve always loved work. I’ve never been really scared of work, but I think the thing that she thought is, if you stay here, if you stay in the safe lane, just carrying on, that’s the potential is dead there, isn’t it? Whereas, if we hold the cards up in the air and see where they land, at least we’ve got a chance we’re going to do something else. And so, it’s a bit like when people immigrated. I mean loads and loads of people did it, and they just set off for America. People left the island with nothing because, obviously they didn’t all make it. They weren’t all success stories, but it gives you the chance to do it, so that’s me anyways. So it’s hard, it’s hard, in the beginning when you’ve got 300 quid in the bank and you’re thinking, I’ve got one more wish, I’ve got kids. You’re going to meltdown on it, or you could start crying, but the great thing is, there is no plan B, isn’t it? You just got to go for it.
Robin: You have to…
Roger: You can’t sack yourself when you’re self-employed.
Robin: No.
Roger: So what about you anyway?
Robin: Similar. Well, it wasn’t a similar story. I went to college, I did my carpentry and joinery craft certificate. And I had a company who was kind of like my sponsor. So through the CITB (The Construction Industry Training Board), they were able to get a like a little bit of a grant to train me up. I went to them saying, you don’t have to pay me, I just need the experience, just please be kind enough to take me on. And they did take me on, and I stayed with them, did my apprenticeship. They were really kind to me, put me on the road of a van, and the rest of it. And I was kind of like an employee, but I wasn’t really an employee, I was an apprentice. The company was quite young, a sole trader effectively with me as his apprentice, and he was bringing other people in as he got busier and busier. And then when I’ve got to about 18 or 19, I finished my time. I pretty much went self-employed straight away because I wanted to do price work because I knew that I could do lots of work in the time I was there for 40 hours a week or whatever. I just thought it’s better for me to be on a price. And also, he wanted to me to be self-employed because it was a lot easier from taxation and running a business point of view. So that’s how I got into it and that was – so I’ve never really been employed. I’ve always been self-employed. It’s been tricky. There’s been lots of pitfalls, lots of ups and downs. It’s not been plain sailing. In fact, sometimes you just think to yourself, why am I doing this? Because you know you might’ve had a bad couple of weeks and just not banked any money. And you still got the bills to pay, and it gets rolling up, rolling up and you just think, how am I going to get out of this? But you kind of just do it, you’re under pressure. I personally worked quite well under pressure. I don’t remember anyone else out there.
Roger: Yeah. You do, you give yourself a lot of pressure, I know that. I know your wife says that around about lunchtime on a Sunday, she loses you to the dark side. And that’s when his head thickened and he started thinking about the week ahead, and about planning, and about putting all those things into place. Getting the guys out on site and everything else. On the plus side mate, I don’t know, I suppose if you hadn’t become self-employed, you carried to working for somebody. You would have three fewer houses you’ve got today.
Robin: Well, I mean I think –
Roger: Seriously though, you’ve done okay.
Robin: I think the thing is, for my personality, I don’t think I’m a good employee. I wouldn’t be a good employee.
Roger: You know what I think exactly the same.
Robin: I was a class clown in school. I was always wanting to make, we’ll have a laugh. I was more interested in doing something to go and earn a few quid and that was basically what drove me. And I was from a big family and there weren’t masses of money to go around. Mum and dad were brilliant, but there wasn’t massive money to go around. Dad was a plumber too. And so, it was kind of times were hard. And so my goal was to earn enough money to buy a car, get to work. I had no idea I’d ever owned a house in my life, certainly not going long holidays. But it was all based around the flexibility of being self-employed, even though it was a bit sort of struggle. Because I thought to myself, I’m self-employed, but I’m not a business. What’s the business? I had no idea what a business was. Let’s take for example, you’re a carpenter for example, and you want to do side work. There are companies that employ carpenters, but the majority of them are subcontract companies. And they build their workforce up from self-employed people. You might do a couple of months with them, going to a couple of months, which is how you should operate as well. Because any more than a couple of months with the same person, you could be classed as an employee.
Roger: Absolutely.
Robin: So you need to rotate and move it around. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket of course. But that is basically how the industry works. I mean, when I’m managing a project for a client for example. So I’ll be managing that project, and I will be introducing them to tradespeople say, a brickwork contractor. Now, I don’t want that brickwork contractor coming through me. It’s onerous. I can introduce them to my client. My client can deal with them directly. If it’s just a one-man band, they’re not even charging VAT because they weren’t hit the threshold. So it works nicely for the client as well. And it doesn’t mean I’ve got to interfere with their tax affairs. They’re there as a subcontractor working directly for the client. So that’s how a lot of the industry, people will agree with this. If you’re in the small building arena, you don’t employ your own plumber, you don’t employ your own electrician; everyone is self-employed.
Roger: Yeah. You just meet and you just phone each other up and get ahold of each other, when and where you want each other, and you all let each other down. Let’s just focus back upon the fact that you’ve taken the plunge of becoming self-employed, you set up a business. What I’d say really first of all, from my point of view is define what your business is because, plumbing for example, you can be fitting bathroom, central heating system to gas work, gas boiler, you can do even lead work. It came under the umbrella of plumbing. And of course, if you do all that, you’ve got a massive fan load at all. You’ve learned here, there and everywhere, you never become an expert, and people don’t know what you do. So for me, it was about just saying, right, which bits of this do I enjoy, and which bits do I really not, and which bits of my making money, which bits am I good at.
Robin: Yeah. So what was it for you?
Roger: Well, oddly enough, I did all kinds of general plumbing, but I kind of fell into a trench one day. Well, funnily enough, for the first job I ever did as an apprentice plumber was laying a lead water main in a trench for a church and has kind of where I went back because I saw all these water mains, the water companies were doing and they were charging a fortune for doing it.
Robin: Yeah. Replacements.
Roger: Replacements, repairs, anything. And there was a lot of money in it because it was underground because it was a bit of a drama and so on so I got into that. I’ve got referrals from guys on the water company, so that was quite nice. I was giving them a little drink. They were passing jobs onto me. So my phone was off the hook. It was ringing all the time in a burst pipes. I even started doing them for the county council. I started doing it for farmers. I became known as the guy that would fix your underground burst. And they would do it for half the price of the water companies, which are never hard. In fact, I did one a couple of weeks ago. They wanted four and a half thousand pounds to do it. Quite honestly, it was a day’s work. It took me a day’s, worth, 25 quids’ worth of Polypipe.
Robin: Yeah. A lead lock.
Roger: Yeah. Well, it wasn’t a lead lock two connections and digging a trench. So for me it was a combination of skills. It was about doing the groundwork and putting the pipes in higher money, hand over fist of doing that because nobody else was doing it. I couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to do it either, this is great. So what about you?
Robin: Well, I mean, as I said, it was a bit of an accident. I became self-employed because there wasn’t a job, which was anything that I knew about. And it was 1989, 1990 and if you remember back that far, there was a bit of a recession. So the building trade fell off the cliff. And so talking about finding something that you were good at. I particularly liked at the time, fit in locks, and I thought well, it was a recession, so people where houses were getting broken in a lot. So I thought I could do a locksmith, so I could do just about afford, a little advert in the local Guardian Newspaper. And it just said, locksmith 24-hour and a phone number. That was it, that was my marketing. That was my whole effects. But it just tied me over, I’ve got the odd call, and for a while I thought I might go in that direction. But three or four calls a week used to be enough to just keep my rent going to my mum.
Roger: So quite low value job.
Robin: Low value job. Then again, I might be able to go back two weeks later, for a new front door once the insurance company had agreed it. So it could lead to other things. So for me that was at that time and then roof construction was the thing that I actually decided that I would focus on. And exactly, the same as that little one line at the time, way before the Internet and you sort of marketing on the Internet and everything else. I did a line saying, top-quality roof construction and that was it. I had a mobile phone from the age of about 19.
Roger: Big brick, wasn’t it?
Robin: Yeah, it was so big Ericsson thing and it worked out really well for me. I just get one or two calls a week from Germany builders who saw it because they advertised alongside me. It was in the classified section –
Roger: Okay. So they’re looking at there and they saw yours.
Robin: Yes. And I’d get a phone call and I still know quite a lot of those people now. And I used to only run the advert for as long as I needed to.
Roger: I reckon the reason that was happening, unless it’s just me, I don’t know, but it is just a guess of it. The reason you were getting that is because a lot of carpenters were coming out of college and all they knew how to do was truss roofs.
Robin: Truss roofs—
Roger: Actually pitch or done in a cut roof as we say.
Robin: They hadn’t. Going back to my apprenticeship because it was a loft conversion company. And the guy, Brian, his name is, really fabulous guy, entrepreneur. He said to me, you were the apprentice, there’s a dormer here with a pitch roof, you should know, you go and get on with that. And so I was given the opportunity, it was literally textbook out. I was learning at college, textbook out and I think I spent three days building this little hip dormer, which I could do in the morning now. But again, I didn’t realize it at the time, I was anxious, can I really do it? But that guy, I don’t think he believed in me, he just wanted to get the job done –
Roger: Sure, yeah.
Robin: And he’s just sort of letting me get on with it.
Roger: Before you’re in there, he threw you in there – you can do it.
Robin: But it was kind of slow. So let’s go back of becoming self-employed. Sometimes it is a bit accidental. Sometimes there is a series of circumstances that puts you into a place or makes you meet someone. You might walk on a job to do five minutes work, bumping at someone and go, oh are you busy tomorrow? I need someone to go to. And that’s how it is. So you might not be nowhere, you’re going to go next week, but you’re always busy. How does that work? You know what I mean? So it’s a little bit unpredictable, but I think that’s part of the appeal of it being self-employed.
Roger: No. It’s an adventure all the time, isn’t it? And funnily enough, my water business, which was going really, really well all the time. The water companies were not privatized. Once they privatized them, they took all that work in-house, and so it dried up overnight, it disappeared.
Robin: So your experience of being self-employed was the fact that you kept your eggs in one basket effectively?
Roger: No, no. What it was is I found something right. Because I went back and did my training, so the apprenticeship wasn’t good. But when I went back and did my training, I did everything, guess what a lot, so I could do all that stuff. It’s just that I didn’t like rubbing around under floor walls, where I could be out there in the sunshine or even in the rain just doing a simple job load. But that’s what I enjoyed doing, that’s what I made money at. But once that went away, if you like the rug got pulled from under, it was just a question saying, right? So what else is there out there that I can do that I like doing? And then just moving into those other things. So for a while it is about doing central heating system. I hate the idea of competing with everybody. That’s the thing that really used to get to me is that you just go in, and they’re putting a price in there with five other people in the pricing. And you are only ever going to get it if you were to achieve this. So that’s again, another story and we touched on that the other week. I think you’ve got to be adaptable. You’ve got to realize, if you start out in business, what you’re doing now. I mean, a classic example of that, my dad always said to me, go into the print.
Robin: Yeah, my dad did.
Roger: Because I knew they were the richest, best paid workers in the country, but it all that went, didn’t it? And all the rest of it and the computer.
Robin: When we chatted earlier, when you kind of drove me here, you were talking about making small steps, and I think that’s really important.
Roger: Yeah. Stepping stone. So you want to cross a river and rather than looking at the river and going, right? If I take a real good run up at it, and I’m going to jump on that river, and basically, initially, I don’t know Olympic, you’re not going to do it anyway. Realistically, you’ve got to take stepping stones. You’re going to find the stages that are going to get you across that river. They’re the objectives. They’re the things that you can take it, month by month or year by year, whatever you do. So right, so where I want to get to is the other side of that river. That’s what I want to be doing in five years’ time or ten years’ time or whatever. How am I going to get there? I’m going to get there by establishing small stages that I can make things up and tick off and say, right, I’ve done that. So if you’re employed and you want to become self-employed. First of all, you’re going to work out being self-employed at. It’s obvious that you’ve got to make those little stage. So what do I want to do now? Do I need capital? Do I need to get this business plan? And all those things, incidentally just as an aside. When you become self-employed, you then at some point, you needed a mortgage. How did that go for you?
Robin: It was really difficult and that was the first mortgage I took out was roughly 1992. I was about 22. That was just after the recession, so the house prices were low, but my earnings were equally low as well. And the banks were very strict at the time, obviously coming out back of a recession. The banks were strict, but fortunately, because I, and this is a bit of a tip, I don’t know, whether it’s loyalty that counts now, but it was then. So my mum and dad never had much money. They were just very humble people, but they banked with a branch of a major high-street bank. It was NatWest.
Roger: NatWest.
Robin: I got introduced to them because I had a piggy bank and I had a bit of the account. My YTS money (my youth training scheme money) went into the account. I had to have an account for that. Then when I started doing my own work and I started putting a bit of money in, and then the conversation about you must have a business account. I took the business account out. Then I needed a loan for a van and I went to get a loan for a van. And he said to me, Mr. Buchanan, his name was, and he’d been at the branch in the village, literally all his life. He said to me, how much you want to borrow? And I said, well, I need a van, it’s 3,000, the one I said. He said, well, you only pay money in here, sometimes here, just come and see me in six months’ time. And I want to see that you’ve paid a little bit in every single week. So that’s what he did for me. So I went off and I was all disappointed. I need that van, all the rest of it. I still got tools in the back of my old car. And I knew if I have the van, I’ve to do more, get materials, but I couldn’t borrow any money. Mum and dad said, they couldn’t afford to help me. So I had to go back in six months’ time so that was the lesson. I’ve done it and there this rubber stamp history in half hours.
Roger: Okay. So it was good to his words.
Robin: But it taught me the lesson that I trusted him and he trusted me. And then so, fortunately, by the time I was 22, I was working seven days a week. I was passionate about what I was doing and everything else. And that only grew from people being complimentary about the fact that I was okay at what I did. I suppose the passion came from the kindness of people –
Roger: Succeeding.
Robin: I love my craft. I really loved what I did at college, I love timber work. I love carpentry and joinery. Self-employment was just a mistake of all that, but the passion was growing. Every time someone really liked what I did, I felt inspired to do a bit more, and it kind of, that helped the self-employment. It was the self –
Roger: That’s really just almost like an aphrodisiac because of that phrase –
Robin: It is.
Roger: But it’s funnily enough, that’s why we’re back here doing a second podcast because people said the first one was good. It’s really the same process, isn’t it? People will tell you good, it encourages you.
Robin: I didn’t answer the question about the mortgage, but it was exactly the same sort of situation. I was able to— he had my records. He saw that I was regularly paying in. He also spoke to my bookkeeper, my accountant at the time. They did between them a calculation and it was kind of like the most they can give you is three and a half times earnings. And my wife, then girlfriend, she was just out of college, so she had started her own. She was self-employed, straight self-employed as well. We’ve both been self-employed. So she was staying out, so she couldn’t really be involved in the calculation. I did focus on finding a property we could afford, and then negotiating the price down as much as we can negotiate it down, until it’s under stamp duty of all the rest of it. So that was just looking back, it was a big commitment, but actually, it was in terms of timing, I was very lucky ,and I owe my success to that unfortunate –
Roger: That first one. Yeah. No, because you’ve got a few houses now. I’ve got to say that. It’s hard to say that.
Robin: I really don’t think that helps anybody or anything. I think it should be edited out.
Dylan: You could be a role model.
Roger: So you’ve got a few houses now, Robin. So obviously that first one was –
Robin: Lego houses.
Roger: So I would say that I would never advise anybody to become self-employed. Nobody advised me. They all advised me against it and I did it anyway. And I think if you were to kind of person who needs advice to become self-employed, in other words, do you need somebody like us? Let’s face it, you don’t even know us telling you, yeah, go on, go out there, burn your bridges, become self-employed. Maybe if that’s what you need, then it’s not for you. But if you know, if you’re a risk taker, you’re going to be a risk taker. You’ve got to be one of those people that just says, right, I don’t care, I’m going to do it because I don’t have a plan B. Take away the safety net, and if you’re that kind of person that will take away the safety net and fly and you look at it. Because I read a lot of autobiographies and you see all these people have got one thing in common, they’ve all gone to hell with it. Let’s throw it all up in the air.
Robin: Equally though, Roger. If you do find yourself in a position, and you’ve got an opportunity to go and do some work because someone said, oh yeah, you’ve got a lovely job over here for you. Its three months’ work and you said, okay, what the terms? And they said, we’ve got to be self-employed. That’s unfortunately in our industry, in the construction industry, that’s the way you tend to get pushed.
Roger: So just summing up, I’d say define what you want to do. Make sure you do want to do it, that you enjoy it, and work seven days a week. You must work seven days a week. Don’t give yourself that lapses say, no, I have a day off. Because when I starting out, I never ever turned the job down when I started out. It didn’t matter what time, Sunday lunchtime or whatever. In fact, I remember once saying, there was a woman, I’m not coming tomorrow because it’s my son’s birthday. I’ve been working 7 days a week, I want a day off, it’s his birthday. And she’s, oh, I want my job done. And I said, well, you’d have to go elsewhere. And then she came back to me, and then when I came around, she said, well, done you for sticking to your principles.
Robin: How nice is that.
Roger: My goodness, she pressured me like that in the end. So let’s say, thanks to everybody that has commented on our first podcast. And hopefully, on our second podcast, we get more comments, hopefully good ones as well. Suggestions of what you want us to talk about, what you want us to cover. We will tighten this up. Don’t forget the Skill Builder website still going strong. And hopefully, we will be back with another podcast. So listen out for us, how about that?
Robin: Yeah, absolutely.
Roger: It’s not match days, is it?
Robin: No. I mean I could get out on the pitch, but I’m about as useless at playing football as I am at making cakes.
Roger: Oh really?
Robin: Yeah.
Roger: Pretty good then.
Dylan: Can you guys tell me what league the MK Dons are in?
Robin: I couldn’t tell you what league –
Roger: A league of their own –
Robin: I’d imagine they’re one down from Premiership.
