Pro Handyman Blog

If you have a door hinge that is giving you problems, or maybe you just want to replace them, you might need a chisel. Not that replacing door hinges is all that common. It really isn’t, but there are times when you want to. For example, some people cheat when it comes to painting, and instead of taping the hinges to protect them from the paint, they will paint over them.

Replacing a hinge is nothing more that removing the screws from the old hinge and installing them in the new hinge. Just make sure you buy the right size of hinge. Most commonly you will find them in 3 ½ inches and 4 inches tall.

The chisel comes into play when your old hinge has rounded corners and your new hinge has 90-degree corners. If you try to place the new hinge in the place of the old rounded-corner hinge, it won’t fit. So the easiest way is to chisel out the corner areas so the new hinge will fit.

Place the new hinge in the correct position and use a pencil to make a light outline for the new hinge. Then place the tip of the chisel on the line (with the beveled edge facing toward the interior of the hinge area) and cut the outline for the corners of the new hinge. Once you have cut the outline, drop the angle of the chisel and tap out the corners up to the line you just cut. You can clean up the corner pieces with some light taps of the chisel and then place the new hinge to make sure you have a good fit.

If you have a two handled faucet and you have a drip from the spout, feel the water for whether it is warm or cold. That will tell you which side of the faucet needs to be repaired.

You will have two components to stop the leak, the stem and the seat. The stem is attached to the handle and rotates to allow water to pass to the spout. The seat is what the stem pushes against to stop the flow of water. Many people will replace the stem because it is easy to get to, but the seat is a little different.

The seat can get pitted and allow water to pass. You can use a seat resurfacing tool to remove the rough areas. This tool is basically a small abrasive wheel the grinds off the rough areas.

If you want to replace the seat, you will need a seat wrench. This tool is shaped like the letter “L”. One leg slides into the hole in the middle of the seat, and the other leg is used as a handle to unscrew the seat from the faucet. The new seat just screws back in.

Place the stem back in place and then finally the handle on the stem. Turn the water back on and there shouldn’t be any leaks.

Repairing a wooden picture frame is a simple carpentry job. Usually, when a picture frame has been damaged, you get a split between the mitered corners and they start to come apart.

You can reinforce the corners of the frame very simply. You can pick up the necessary items at any home center. You will need a mending plate and some wood screws. I typically use a 2” mending plate and #6 screws that are ½” long. Just make sure the length of the screw isn’t long enough that it penetrates the front of the frame.

Turn the frame face-down on a non-scratching surface. You will need to pull the two corner pieces together tightly so that you can secure them with the mending strip. They make special picture frame clamps, but you don’t need to go through the expense of these. You can use a series of bar clamps to squeeze the frame together, or even try taping the corners after you pull it together. Place the mending plate on the back so that it spans the corner. Drill pilot holes in the locations and screw in the screws that will hold the mending plate to the back of the frame. Once the mending plate is tightened you can remove whatever method you used to temporarily hold the corner together, as the frame will be very solid.

Water heaters are required to have a gas sediment trap. Many people also refer to these as a gas drip leg, but the function of these is to allow impurities and debris in the gas supply to be removed before it hits your water heater.

The sediment trap is made of black iron pipe and you will need to assemble a few pieces together to make it work. You will need a Tee fitting, a few threaded fittings, and a cap. Orient the Tee fitting so that you have an opening on the top, side, and bottom of the fitting. You will place a threaded nipple on the top of the fitting. This is where the gas supply will enter the Tee. If you are using a flexible gas supply line, it will connect at this nipple, if you are using a hard piped gas supply, it will enter the top of the Tee.

Coming out of the side of the Tee will be a threaded nipple. This will thread into the gas control valve. The “trap” will come out of the bottom of the Tee. This threaded nipple has to be a minimum of 3” long and will have a cap on the end of it. You need to use gas tape or paste on the threads to prevent gas leaks.

As gas flows into the top of the Tee, any debris will fall into the trap before it can make the 90-degree turn and enter the gas valve and burner.

If you have a door that sticks, it is probably an adjustment of some type. The first step is to diagnose where the door is actually sticking. You will usually find it sticking at the latch side of the door or at the top jamb where it intersects with the strike jamb.

If the door sticks at the latch itself, maybe the strike plate needs to be mortised into the jamb. This is as easy as removing the plate and chiseling out an indention equal to the thickness of the strike plate. You want to make the strike plate even with the surrounding jamb.

If the door sticks somewhere along the strike jamb (look for rub marks or missing paint), figure out where. In many cases, it is near the top of the jamb since the weight of the door will pull it toward the floor. Grab the door by the handle and move it up and down. You are looking for some play in the door. If the door moves up and down, go to the hinges. Most likely the top hinge has become loose. Try tightening these screws while placing the door in the correct position.

You can also adjust the knuckles on the door. Remove the hinge pin and move each hinge knuckle the same distance toward the handle. Do this on the door side of the hinge and it will give you some distance between the edge of the door and the jamb.

As a last resort, you can always use a hand plane and slightly remove some material from the edge of the door. You will need to touch up the paint when you are done.

Installing rubber or plastic lawn edging is a weekend handyman project. If you are going to add a lawn or remove grass and add landscaping rock, edging is for you. Edging allows you to create a dividing line between two different surfaces. For example, if you wanted to make an island of grass in the middle of a rockscape, edging would create a dividing line between the two.

Although rubber edging is inexpensive, it will take some elbow grease to install it. You will need a shovel and a lot of perseverance.

The edging comes in a roll and has a plastic barb that runs along the bottom. Start by pushing the shovel into the soil to create a cut in the soil. Stretch the roll of edging out and push the barbed end into the soil. You can then place the tip of the shovel into the barb and push it down further into the soil. You will have to do only a few feet at a time and then when the entire length has been installed, you can give it another pass to even out the depth. You can connect one piece of edging to another with push-in connectors if necessary. When you are done, you can tamp the ground to compact it somewhat.

As a handyman, I’ve done my share of landscaping. If you are installing new landscaping, you might consider using landscape fabric as a weed barrier.

Landscape fabric is a porous fabric that comes in a roll. This fabric has tiny holes in it to allow water, air, and nutrients to reach the soil underneath. The benefit of the fabric is that it provides a barrier to keeps the weeds from reaching the surface. Installing the fabric is an easy job. I would first plant the plants where you want them and then run the irrigation to each plant with drip emitters. Once you have tested the irrigation, you can lay down the fabric.

The landscape fabric rolls out over the soil. When you come to a plant, cut a slit in the fabric or an “X” and place the fabric over the plant. Push the flaps back in place up to the root ball. When you come to a tree, you will have to cut the fabric and go around the tree.

To hold the fabric in place while you roll it out, you can use fabric staples or even just place rocks heavy enough to hold it down. Once you have the fabric laid out, you can cover it with organic mulch or the landscaping rock of your choice.

If you are looking for an easy carpentry project and a way to organize your garage, pegboard just may be the ticket. Pegboard is simply hardboard with holes in it so you can place hangers and hooks to hold things off of the floor. If you were to mount the pegboard directly to the garage wall, you wouldn’t be able to place any hooks into it, so you have to create a small gap in between the pegboard and the wall. Furring strips are perfect for this.

You can use 1”x2” strips of wood and build a frame around the perimeter of the pegboard. You will also need to add some furring strips inside the frame to stiffen up the pegboard.

Once you have the pegboard attached to the frame and supports, you can locate the studs on the wall. It is imperative that you anchor the pegboard through the furring strips and into the wall studs. Once you locate the studs, drive screws through both the pegboard and furring strips, and into the studs. This assembly will support the weight of itself and everything you hang on the pegboard, so it has to be secure.

Once the pegboard is secure, you can add whatever hooks and pegs you choose. For heavier objects, locate them on the pegboard near where the pegboard is attached to the studs. The support in these locations will be better than in a location where there are no studs.

Whether you have a swinging shower door or a sliding shower door, eventually the door handle will become loose. Repairing it takes just a screwdriver.

The shower handle is usually secured to the door on the inside of the shower. A swinging door handle will have two screws that hold it in place located near the top and bottom of the handle. A sliding shower door will have the fasteners at either end of the long bar. Each of the sliding shower doors will have a bar on the door, and they are interchangeable. The bar on the inside door is used as a handle while the bar on the outside door is used to hang towels on (although it can also be used as a handle as well).

The repair is simply tightening the screws until snug, but do not over tighten. Some handles use a cover over the screw heads that you will need to pop off to gain access to the screw. Once you tighten the screw you can snap the cover back on. High-end swinging glass doors will have a cover that doubles as the fastener. It will have opposing holes in it to tighten.

It seems the heaver the door or the more you effort you have to exert to open and close it, the more often you will need to secure the handle.

Wood gates always seem to be calling for a handyman. Wooden gates are heavy and get slammed and pushed and generally abused. Over time, the fasteners will lose their grip and the weight will cause the latch side to sag toward the ground. You know it is time for a repair when you have to lift the gate just to move it.

Basically you want to give the gate some support so that it doesn’t drag anymore. There are a few things you can do to make the gate operational again. You can install a piece of angle iron (or for that matter a piece of lumber) on the back of the gate that goes from the bottom of the latch side up to the top of the hinge side. Before you secure this piece though, I would set the gate to the correct height. Stack wood scraps under the latch side of the gate until you have the correct height and then secure the support to the gate.

Better still would be a turnbuckle. It stretches along the same path, but you can adjust it by turning the mechanism in the middle. Each end is secured using a hook or other fastener and then adjusted by turning the buckle in the middle. You can raise or lower the gates latch side in this manner.