Several of you have sent in the tip of using sawdust or wood shavings, mixing it with glue to make a putty, rather than buying a commercial putty. So I put my props maker to work. Using all the same wood shavings, but three different glues he got three different results. First a tip he came up wi...
Finished that deck and want to celebrate with a glass of wine? (I do come from Quebec.) But you forgot your cork screw?
Just drive in a deck screw, it has wide threads that grip well. Then use the ears of your hammer to create the "T" of a regular cork screw. Thanks for the tip Shawn.
ENTRANCE DOOR HORIZONTAL ADJUSTMENTS
Entrance doors often warp from season to season and are hard to close in the winter and rattle in the summer. This requires moving the strike plate horizontally -- but the good fit changes from season to season. Don't adjust it at all -- but rather follow...
Epoxy is the most water resistant of all grouts and is probably one of the most durable, making it a good grout for a ceramic tile kitchen counter top where you will be scrubbing it clean all the time. But there are some tips for working with it.
It comes as a kit with three pouches: the A and B...
The swirl doesn't come out too evenly from under the rim of the toilet seat so the cleansing action is not working as it should.
You may have calcium build up in the holes that direct these little jets of water.
Simply put a mirror in the toilet so you can see under the rim, and poke a co...
For a project like building a deck, you will want to go as far as you can with realistic graphics before laying the foundation or building the structure because many people around you will certainly want changes as soon as they begin to visulize the deck itself.
There are a lot of simple ...
I recently spent some time at the Terrazzo, Tile and Marble Association training centre in Toronto and learned some very basic but surprising things, like just how to apply tile mastic and why it makes a difference.
Using a notched trowel gives you a measured quantity of mastic or thinset m...
The best way for air to move through a duct is to have a straight duct with a smooth inside wall and a round form will have the smallest surface area to cause the air to slow down. That straight smooth round duct is what is considered the benchmark for good ducting.
Everything else is measure...
When plumbing pipes and chimneys have to go through sloped roofs, they are always cut fairly large just to make sure that the pipe will pass through. The problem is that a 3 inch round pipe needs an oval hole in a sloped roof. There is an easy trick for drawing out the hole.
Hold the p...
A viewer caught our TV cameras in a renovation centre and asked about cleaning aluminum siding.
An interesting fact about siding is that white aluminum siding and to some extent white vinyl siding both tend to "chalk". If you run your hand over it, you get a bit of a chalk like deposit on your h...
