John in Scarborough wanted to put a ceiling fan above his stairwell, but the existing electrical outlet was not in the middle. He tore the whole ceiling up (attic insulation and all) to manage to move the box over to the middle.We talked about his project and then I showed him the new light weigh...
Annie has three roofs on her house, a shingled roof in the front part followed by an asphalt and gravel flat roof and then an elastomeric membrane flat roof over her back porch. They all seem to leak. The asphalt roof is only six years old, installed by someone who advertised in the local paper...
Brian in Calgary just can't get the handles off of his faucets in the shower. He has tried to pull them off until his hands are raw. When he tried to pry them, he discovered that the plumbing in the wall is not stable and the pipes move forward. He tried WD-40 and CLR to get the handles to...
Iver in Manitoba recently had a workman install pot lights in their ceiling. The problem is that they used the outer ring rather than the inner ring to draw the hole and now the lights just fall out of the ceiling. What to do?About the only thing to do without patching up the hole and starting o...
Some things that are glued can slip with time, especially if they are glued with contact cement or similar adhesives. This can apply to trim on the edges of doors and counters as well as some self-adhesive floor tiles. In fact when something glued slips with time; it is probably an indication t...
When the mortar on your brick is breaking up a bit, or scaling off, you cannot simply put a skim coat of new mortar over the old, it will not hold. If someone has done that before on your house you know it doesn't hold, that is why you are redoing the job now.Mortar sticks to the brick, not t...
You know that I don't believe in trying to keep a basement dry by simply patching all the cracks in a wall. First I want to remove as much of the water as possible from the other side with rain gutters on the roof, downspouts running far away from the house and the landscaping slopped away fr...
When you drop a sharp object on porcelain finished sinks or appliances, often a chip of the porcelain will pop off. This can be patched with porcelain touch-up kits. But in the bottom of a sink the porecelain seems to pop off without dropping anything, and the patch never seems to last.That ...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Concrete Product: Surface Patching
Temperature Limitations: Above +5 C (+40 F) and below +30 C (+85 F)
Rain Limitations: Protect from rain until concrete is set, 2 to 6 hours (so rain won't was...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Asphalt Product: Acrylic sealer for Asphalt Driveways
Temperature Limitations: Above +10 C (+50 F) and below +30 C (+85 F)
Rain Limitations: No rain for 24 hours
Wind Limitations: n/a
Humidi...
