Pro Handyman Blog

A wobbly bed frame is a straightforward carpentry repair, but you have to do a little checking before you repair it.

A bed frame typically has four parts, the head board, the foot board, and two side rails. The side rails will have two hooks coming out of each end that mate with matching rods in both the head board and foot board. The hooks fit over the rods that are recessed in the head and foot boards. If there is some play in between the parts, you will get movement.

You can minimize any movement with some brackets. Unfortunately, you don’t find out there is a problem until it is too late. Usually you will hear a “crack” and discover a problem. Installing some brackets will stiffen up the frame.

I like rigid brackets, such as Simpson strong ties. These are probably overkill, but if they are good enough for building houses, they are good enough for repairing wooden bed frames. You will have many choices here, but I generally install the largest size I can that will fit in the space. You will need to remove the mattress and box spring and install the brackets on the inside corners. They will be hidden by the box spring when installed. Pre-drill the holes and screw them into each piece. When the brackets have been installed, you can reinstall the mattress and box spring.

When the time comes that you need to disassemble the bed, you can unscrew just one side of the brackets and the bed will come apart as if the brackets had not been installed.

I get this a lot. A customer wants to install ceramic tile in a bathroom and hasn’t quite figured out what to do around the toilet.

The answer is to remove the toilet and install tile underneath it. You want to install the tile up to the flange. This way, when you replace the toilet you don’t have to worry about the footprint of the old toilet matching the new one. Besides that, it just doesn’t look very nice. You have cut tiles around the toilet and it is an instant tip-off that a homeowner did the job. It is rare to find a new toilet that has the same footprint as the old one. When this happens, you usually have to break out the tiles that have been cut and replace them with whole tiles that will extend to the flange. If you don’t have any matching tiles around, you may be faced with retiling the floor. Here is an article on how to install ceramic tile.

Ceramic tile is a great choice for a bathroom floor. I’ve seen carpet in bathrooms and I just shake my head. A leak will be hidden by carpet and cause damage in the process, whereas you should be able to see a leak on top of the ceramic tile. If you are unsure about ceramic tile, I would go with vinyl rather than carpet.

Lots of people might turn to a handyman for this project, but it is pretty easy and you can customize it to your own liking. Turning a small closet into an office area is a lot easier than you might think. You can buy pre-made kits or you can buy the different parts and assemble your own.

The first thing to do is to remove the closet rod and shelving, fill any holes and paint the closet to whatever color scheme you like. Once the walls are bare, you can start planning. Small closets convert nicely with a series of shelves. Two vertical support bars go against the back wall and the shelves slide into slots along the bars. A larger shelf is used as the desk surface and you can plan a variety of other shelves to go higher up the wall for files, desk accessories, etc. You can slide a rolling chair under the desk and also use a rolling file cabinet that fits under the desk. When you are done working, the file cabinet fits nicely under the desk, and you can keep or remove the chair.

If you want to get fancy, you can add an electrical outlet to power a laptop, calculator, etc. Here is an article on how to add an electrical outlet. When you are done working it is a matter of closing the closet door and nobody knows the difference.

If you have never replaced a toilet before, it can make you a little apprehensive. After all, these are bulky, heavy items, and if you install it incorrectly you may end up with a mess on your hands. So it makes sense to be as prepared as possible.

The moment of truth comes when you are straddling the toilet trying to place the holes in the base over the bolts sticking up from the floor. Once the toilet is resting on the floor and the wax ring has been compressed, many installers will apply a bead of caulking in between the floor and the base of the toilet. Instead of caulking, I like using plaster-of-paris.

I generally mix up a batch of plaster-of-paris and lay it around the footprint of the toilet before the toilet is set on the floor. There is some guesswork if you cant see the footprint from the old location, but you can get a general idea of the location and then slop some around the area. When you set the toilet into the plaster-of-paris, tighten the toilet bolts and use a damp sponge to wipe away the excess. Plaster-of-paris dries white, and so if your toilet is white, the finish will be seamless. It will fill in any voids or gaps in between the floor and the base for a flawless finish.

A hand held auger can be a great plumbing tool. It is cheap, small, and comes is either a 15 foot or 25 foot length. It can save you money by being able to clear a clogged drain by yourself, rather than calling a plumber to do it for you. It doesn’t work in all applications, but if it works just once, you have made money on the deal.

These types of tools are good for unclogging sinks. It is too small for main lines, but for small drains you will find good success with them.

Go under the sink and disconnect the trap and dump out the water. Loosen the screw that holds the snake in the housing and start feeding the snake into the wall. Keep pushing until you feel resistance. The resistance will be either the clog or a bend in the pipe. Tighten the screw which holds the cable to the housing. Now you can rotate the handle clockwise, which in turn rotates the cable in the same direction. Push as you rotate the handle. You will either break through the resistance or the cable may start to kink and wind up upon itself. If this happens, reverse the direction and work out the kinks.

You might try to retrieve the cable and see if it has grabbed the obstruction. If not you can snake the drain out again. You will either grab the obstruction, push it further down the drain, or run out of cable to continue the job. When you have reached one of these, reconnect the trap and run some water to see if the drain has cleared.

Patching a hole in drywall may seem like a daunting task, but if you follow some simple rules, even a beginner can make a reasonably good match on the texture. The goal here is to obviously make the hole disappear, which can be a challenge.

Make the patch flat. If any part of the patch stands out, the repair will be noticeable. If you want to get fancy, use a hand held light or flashlight and lay it against the wall. Move the light over the patch and look for shadows. A shadow indicates an area that needs some attention.

Once the patch is flat you can add some texture. The spray texture in a can works well. Practice on a piece of cardboard or wood to get a good splatter pattern. I usually spray the larger splatter first and then fill in the bare areas with smaller splatter. Practice holding the can at different distances from the surface and always keep the can moving so that you don’t have a build-up of texture in any one spot. Once you get the texture to look like the surrounding area, you can actually apply the texture to the surface.

If you have knock-down texture, rather then knocking it down soon after applying it, I prefer to let it dry. Use fine sandpaper and give it one swipe with a sanding block. That should be all it needs to get the same appearance as the surrounding texture. The sanding block will take off the high points of the texture and make it level with the surrounding texture.

When you are done, paint the entire wall surface rather than just the patched area. It should make your patch disappear to all but the trained eye.

We aren’t talking about rocket science here, removing a door knob is easy and should take you under five minutes.

A door knob is held in place with screws on the interior. If you are lucky, the screws will be in plain view around the handle. Some door knobs have a decorative cover over the screws that you will need to pop off. You will probably see a small opening in the cover and you can pop it off with a small screwdriver.

Once the cover is removed you will see the two screws. Remove the screws and both sides of the knob will pull away from the door. All that will be left will be the latch mechanism. It takes two screws to remove this as well.

Look at the edge of the door where the latch juts out from the door. There will be screws here that hold the latch to the door. Unscrew these screws and the latch mechanism will pull out of the door.

If you are going to install a new door knob, the process is simply reversed. Install the latch mechanism first and then the two door knob halves. Check the backset of the latch to make sure it will fit the door. Many latches have adjustable backsets to accommodate different distances.

A handyman installs shower doors, and a handyman removes them. In many cases, removing a shower door is the result of a shower or bathtub remodel. Removing the doors is one of the first steps.

Depending on what type of enclosure you have, whether it’s a full length shower enclosure or an enclosure that sits on top of a bathtub, you may have screws to remove. A typical tub enclosure will not have screws to remove as the weight of the doors keeps all of the parts in place. For these, remove the sliding doors first. You will have to lift up on the doors, tilt them and swing them out. Once the doors are gone, the top rail will lift off. You may have to cut through some caulking first to free the parts that touch the wall. With the top rail removed, you can remove the screws that hold the side rails to the wall. These are usually held in place with wall anchors. Again, you will have to cut through the caulking. The bottom track is removed in much the same way. Cut the caulking and lift it up.

Shower enclosures with swinging doors use screws where the frame meets. The door is the most dangerous part when removing it because is moves. Give support to the door as you unscrew the hinge screws and remove it. Removing the shower enclosure is a pretty common sense job. This will involve removing screws and cutting through caulking.

A nice carpentry project is adding a corner display shelf. It is decorative and functional. So how do you install it?

Depending on what you intend to use the shelf for, there are a couple ways to secure it. It is all about weight. If you intend to place substantial weight on the shelf, like a lot of books, you will need to beef up the bracing. If you just want to set a small picture on, then you won’t need as much.

Generally, I don’t like to see supports under the shelf unless they are decorative. If you don’t plan on placing much weight on the shelf, you can probably get away with some “L” brackets. I would use at least four of them and place 2 on each wall. One bracket at the corner (where there are wall studs) and another set further out near the front of the shelf, ideally into a wall stud. If the shelf is small enough where it won’t reach a stud, you can use E-Z anchors into the drywall….just watch the weight.

If you plan on loading up the weight, I would install wood ledger boards along the wall first. You can use ¾” x 3” and run them along the wall. Make sure they are level and screw them into the wall studs. Then you can set the corner shelf on top of the ledgers and secure it with finish nails or screws. If you need additional support, you can add an additional ledger across the front, that will join the 2 ledgers on the wall.

If you are caulking your shower, take a few extra minutes and take a look at the hardware coming out of your shower wall. You may have some gaps around these areas that could lead to water damage.

Any opening at your shower wall is a potential way for water to enter the wall, and that is something we want to avoid. These are areas like the shower handles, tub spout diverter, and the shower arm. Caulking is the answer.

If you have an uneven surface for your shower walls, such as stone or ceramic tile grout lines, where the escutcheon meets the grout lines there will by small openings. It’s also possible that a poor installation job of the shower valve has made the valve not in the same plane as the wall’s surface.

Pick a color that closely matches the wall. You could use clear silicone caulking but you will still see the gaps even though they are protected by the caulking. I prefer to use the minimum amount necessary to get the job done. It should be attractive as well as functional. You don’t want a big glob of caulking around the shower handles…its ugly and at some point you will have to re-caulk it and that will take a long time to remove.

Use a small amount of caulking around the perimeter of the escutcheon, wet your finger and slightly push it into the gaps. The final appearance should be uniform on all penetrations.