Pro Handyman Blog

I can’t tell you how many houses I go into and there are holes in the drywall from door knobs. These holes could be avoided with a simple door stop.

A typical doorstop takes a whopping 2 minutes to install and will save you a lot of anguish when trying to repair a drywall hole. The only question is if the doorstop should be installed on the door or on the baseboard of the wall it would potentially damage. I’ve seen it both ways and it probably comes down to a matter of preference.

If I had to choose, the wood at the base of the door is probably a little stronger than the MDF (medium density fiberboard) that the baseboard is likely made of. This means that in the event you stepped on the doorstop, the base of the door may give a little more support to the doorstop than the baseboard would.

Installing it is the same no matter the location. It’s easier if you pre-drill a small hole for the threads to screw into. Line up the door to the baseboard and make sure that the rubber tip of the doorstop will hit where you want it to, then drill the small hole. You can turn the doorstop in by hand until it is snug.

Adding a mirror to a bedroom door makes a lot of sense. You can make it as big as the door, or nearly so, and see yourself from head to toe. The only caution is to make sure the mirror is secured sufficiently enough to the door not to break.

Installing the mirror to the door will depend on what type of mirror you buy. Some framed mirrors are sold with the specific intent of mounting to a door. This style of mirror is lightweight and can be mounted to the door with screws and adhesive. Make sure if you are using screws that you are screwing into some solid material. Installing a screw into a hollow core door will not hold. Screwing into a solid core door will offer more meat for the screw threads to bite into.

I would use a lightweight mirror and use adhesive and clips to mount it to the door. You can buy mirror clips at any home center. They are shaped like the letter “L” and have a groove that the mirror slides into. As you tighten the clip it clamps down on the edge of the mirror. These clips combined with adhesive should make for a lasting hold.

If your bathtub drains slowly, you can probably fix it very quickly. Most of the time the slow drain is caused by a clump of hair and soap mixed together. It is a matter of removing the hairball from the drain.

Fortunately, the ball of hair usually is very close to the bathtub drain itself. Some bathtubs have pop up stoppers that you push on to control the water. If you push on it once, the water gets blocked from draining and the tub fills. If you push on the stopper again, the stopper pops up and allows the tub to drain. If you have this type of tub stopper, unscrew it and remove it. This drain assembly will have a small grid across the drain with a threaded fitting in the center to accept the tub stopper. The small grid is big enough, however, to allow you to get a tool into the drain to remove the hair.

You may be able to get a pair of needle nosed pliers far enough to pull out the beginning of the clump and the rest will follow. If the mass of hair is a little further down, you can buy a “zip-it” tool and fish it out. This is a skinny piece of plastic with barbs on it that will fit down the drain and snag the hair as you pull the tool back out.

Jiggling the toilet handle is a nuisance. You flush the toilet and it continues to run and run. There are several possible reasons for this but one I’ve run into often is that the chain is getting hung up in the flapper. Sure, you could replace the flapper. It’s cheap and easy and will probably fix the problem. But before you spend your $3.00 on that, do a little troubleshooting first.

A toilet flapper is a fickle thing. On a flimsy flapper, sometimes it gets pulled off to the side when flushed and the ear becomes elongated. This will allow it not to seat properly to stop the water from entering the bowl. A new flapper will cure this.

When you troubleshoot the problem, watch what happens to the chain that connects the toilet handle to the flapper. In many cases, there is a length of unused chain that just hangs down. This section is so long that it actually impedes the operation of the flapper by wedging itself in between the flapper and the seat where it rests. This allows water to continually pass from the tank to the bowl. When the water in the bowl gets too low, the tank refills and you hear the sound of running water. You can take this long section of chain and either cut it short so that it won’t interfere with the flapper, or clip the free end where it connects to the handle.

I’ve always heard the stories of people dropping jewelry down the drain trap and then having to call a plumber to fish it out for them. Yet, I can’t ever remember getting a call like that. Maybe everyone already knows how to fish their jewelry out of the drain. If not, I will fill you in on how it is done.

If you drop something into the sink and it goes down the drain, it will usually end up in the trap. The trap is the “U” shaped pipe under the sink. If you have two sinks in a vanity, they may have separate traps, or sometimes they share one trap. If they have separate traps, go to the trap on the sink where the jewelry was lost. Depending on the weight of the jewelry and the volume and speed of the water flowing down the drain, it may stay in the trap, or it may continue down on a trip to see the city, via the sewer.

You will need to remove the trap and dump it out. Loosen the slip fittings on either side of the trap and pour out the water (and hopefully the jewelry) into a bucket. If the jewelry is there, it’s time to celebrate. If not, you might consider going shopping. You can put the trap back in place and tighten the slip fittings.

Painting jobs are pretty common where we have large variances in the weather and lots of sun. Homeowners associations have a field day writing up homeowners for peeling paint on the eves of their homes.

Get out the extension ladder and get ready to go to work. Scraping the wood eves is not difficult, but I would recommend eye protection. Small paint scrapings will fly everywhere. It’s also a good idea to cover the ground beneath the eves to make cleanup easy. When you are done, you will find paint chips everywhere…in your shirt, in your hair, down your back, etc.

There are two ways to scrape the eves. Either you can scrape a section and go back and paint it, or you can scrape the entire eve and paint the entire eve. I prefer to scrape the entire area and then go back and paint it. This way just seems faster and cleaner. Also, you can use the traditional putty knife to scrape the paint, but I would get a real paint scraper…one with a strong handle and a replaceable blade. This style makes quick work of scraping.

When its time to paint, use a mini-roller and pan. These are very small rollers that sit on a frame with a long handle. They can get into areas that larger rollers and brushes can’t get into. They don’t hold a lot of paint, so you will have to reload more often, but they lay on a smooth coat of primer and paint so you won’t have to repeat this job anytime soon.

A customer thought to call his handyman to remove a lock that he had lost the key to. He had locked his side gate with a padlock and wanted to remove the lock. He started using a hacksaw but quickly found that this was going nowhere.

There are a few quick ways to remove a padlock. Bolt cutters work great but you may have to rent them if the lock shaft is casehardened. The longer the handles on the bolt cutter, the more pressure is exerted at the cutting head. You may find it necessary to place one handle against your stomach and then squeeze the other handle with both hands. It’s not he most comfortable way to cut a lock shaft, but sometimes you need to get creative to get maximum force.

The other way I prefer is to grind it off. Use a small grinder with a 4” wheel and cut through the shaft. Yes, you will get a small spray of sparks, but cutting the shaft is pretty effortless using this method. The only challenge you may have is finding electricity close enough to the lock to be able to use the grinder. You other option is a longer cord or a generator.

If you are installing a new paper towel holder the question becomes should you mount it to the underside of your wall cabinet or to the drywall itself. I guess it is a matter of choice as there are good and bad with both.

I’ve never been a fan of mounting a paper towel holder into drywall as the plastic tends to take a beating. You have to use wall anchors, and the way the arms stick out from the wall leads to abuse as people pull on the holder and then rip off a paper towel. It makes sense that if the arms are pointing downward (such as if it were mounted to the underside of a cabinet) the act of pulling the paper towel in line with the arms might not subject it to as much abuse. Also, mounting the holder to the wall makes it difficult for the kids to reach it…maybe that’s why they don’t clean up their messes.

Installing the paper towel holder to the underside of the wall cabinet makes a little more sense to me. You can mount it at the front of the cabinet so that it is more accessible and easier to reach, and as I mentioned before, it should hold up to the abuse a little better. The only thing is that you will need to install the screws into the cabinet, which means you need to make sure the screws don’t penetrate all the way through the cabinet. As cabinets these days are not very thick, this might pose a challenge. If it pulls out, you might go with a short bolt, washer, and nut.

Every once in a while you will have baseboard cuts that won’t make sense. The inside corners are where I see this most. Maybe the drywall didn’t come together as the installer thought. The angle won’t be anything traditional, so you have to get a little creative.

I have found a protractor to be a good tool in this situation. You could certainly get the angle close by eye and then caulk any mistakes, but that may not look very nice. You may also use a couple of scrap pieces of baseboard and try to get the angle close, but a protractor will tell you what the angle is. All you have to do is create the angle on paper.

This is easy. Use two pieces of notebook paper and lay one piece along one wall and lay the other piece of paper along the other wall. Push both pieces of paper into the corner until they overlap at the corner. It’s easy to imagine if the paper represents your baseboard. Once the corner is covered by the two pieces of paper, tape the papers together and then pull them out of the corner. Now lay the protractor down on the papers to tell you the angle of the corner. Whatever the angle is, divide that number by two and you have your miter saw setting. Cut each piece of baseboard to this angle and your corner should be perfectly mitered.

A sagging door can be cause all kinds of headaches. Exterior doors are heavy anyway, and when you need to lift the door up to open it, it’s a real chore. On an exterior door, you may even see daylight at the top of the door on the strike side. So how do you correct this problem so that there is no daylight and the door opens and closes correctly?

Many people will start with shimming behind the bottom hinge to make up for the difference. You may end up doing this, but on an older door, I would first look to the top hinge. Your repair may be as easy as replacing a screw on the top hinge. The hinge is held in place with short screws that hold the hinge to the door and the jamb. You want to focus on the side that holds the hinge to the jamb.

The top hinge usually has four screws that secure it to the jamb. Remove the 2^nd screw from the top and replace it with a 3-4 inch deck screw. The idea here is to screw past the jamb and into the house framing. When the screw reaches the frame it will pull the top of the door back into place and eliminate the gap. You may still need to shim behind the bottom hinge, but the longer screw trick works very well.