u/Comfortable-Fox-5872

The grout in the bathroom has been crumbling in a few spots for probably two years and I kept telling myself it was fine, then last week a full tile just came off the wall in my hand while I was cleaning. The universe has officially run out of patience with me on this one.

The tile itself is those small square ones, avocado green, very much of their era, covering the entire tub surround and about halfway up the wall behind the vanity. Some tiles still feel solid when I press on them, some have that hollow tap sound that I now know is bad. Not all of them, but enough.

My actual question is whether there is any realistic world where I tile directly over this, at least in the sections that still feel solid, or whether that is the kind of decision I will be cursing myself for in three years when everything starts failing again from the back. The wall behind it is probably the original drywall, which I am not confident is even moisture resistant, and that worries me more than the tile honestly.

The bathroom is small, maybe 50 square feet total, so demo is not some enormous project, but it is also not nothing after a full week of work.

Every year I tell myself I'm starting seeds at the right time and every year I end up with these pale stretched out seedlings that can't hold themselves up and look like they're exhausted just from existing, which honestly same, but I need them to actually produce tomatoes so that doesn't help. I've got them on the windowsill because I don't have a greenhouse or a proper setup, just a southfacing window which I know is not ideal but it's what I have. They got light, I thought it was enough, and now they're about fifteen centimetres tall and completely floppy. I've read about burying them deeper when you transplant and that apparently helps because tomatoes root all along the stem, but I don't know if mine are too far gone or if that's genuinely going to save them. I'm in Wellington so it's still a bit early to put them outside, and I cannot figure out whether to start again with fresh seeds now or just commit to these sad floppy ones and hope for the best. The cost of buying seedlings at the garden centre every year is starting to add up and I want to actually get this right, but I seem to hit the same wall every season. Has anyone actually rescued leggy tomato seedlings or is starting over the only real answer?

The walls in this house are original plaster over lath, probably 1940s, and I want to put up some heavier open shelves in the kitchen for decor and actual storage, not just lightweight stuff that weighs nothing. The shelves plus whatever goes on them could realistically hit 40 or 50 pounds per bracket, and I have no idea if I should be hunting for studs behind the plaster, using toggle bolts, some combination of both, or just accepting that plaster is going to crack and crumble the second I touch it.

I found a stud in one spot with a magnet trick but the spacing is completely off for where I actually want the shelves, which is the whole problem. I cannot just move the shelves to wherever the studs happen to be. The whole point is a specific wall location that works with the rest of the layout.

The plaster itself seems solid. No hollow sound when I knock on it near the install zone, no cracks, nothing alarming. But I have watched enough renovation horror content to know that solidfeeling plaster and actually loadbearing plaster are not always the same thing

Has anyone done heavy shelf installs on plaster walls without it turning into a disaster? What actually held without pulling chunks out of the wall over time?

I know, I know, mint is the one that's supposed to be unkillable, I've seen the posts about people trying to contain it because it takes over everything, and here I am in Wellington with a pot of brown sticks that smell faintly of mint if I squeeze them, which I think is just the ghost of what could have been. I put it in a pot specifically because I read you have to contain it or it'll eat your garden, I watered it, it got sun, and then at some point over the last few weeks it just gave up entirely. The pot has drainage holes. I repotted it once when it looked sad and I thought maybe it was rootbound but that didn't fix anything, it just looked sad in a bigger pot. I've now bought and killed three separate mint plants from two different garden centres and I cannot figure out what I'm doing differently to literally everyone else on earth. Is it a Wellington wind thing, is the pot somehow wrong, am I watering it wrong even though I thought I was being careful. I genuinely use this stuff for cooking and it's getting expensive buying bunches from the supermarket every time I need it. Someone who has actually killed mint please explain what you did because I need answers.

Finally got around to pulling up the carpet in one of the bedrooms, and now I'm not sure what the right next step is. Under the carpet there's what looks like the original wide plank floor, then a thin fiberboard layer, then what I think is old vinyl before the carpet went down.

The wood feels solid overall, but there's some warping in one corner near an exterior wall that has me a little concerned. If you found this in your house, would you strip everything back to the original planks if they cleaned up well, or leave part of it in place and build over it?

The room is about 200 sq ft. I'm planning to install either hardwood or LVP, so I'd rather deal with any problems now than regret it later.

This is genuinely embarrassing to admit but here we are. My feijoa has been in the ground for maybe six years, it produces heaps, and every single year the fruit is kind of bland and grainy compared to what falls off the tree two properties over. Same season, same general Wellington weather, I pick mine off the ground when they drop just like you're supposed to, and yet. JUST BLAND.

I've started wondering if it's a variety thing and I planted something not worth having, or if my soil is the problem, or if I'm just cursed specifically regarding feijoas which honestly tracks with the rest of my life this year

I did throw some fertiliser around the drip line in late winter, nothing fancy, just the general stuff from Mitre 10. I don't think I'm overwatering because it basically just rains here and I leave it alone.

Has anyone actually figured out what separates a good feijoa from a completely mediocre one, because I cannot work it out and I've been staring at this tree for years now. Is it genuinely just variety luck and I need to accept my fate, or is there something fixable here