Not every project goes as well as planned. We would be happy to spend a few minutes answering your questions.
Current Articles | RSS Feed
Carpentry noises generally are not very good. A squeaky floor can drive you nuts. If you have floor joists and one of them is uneven, the floor will not have the proper support. If one joist is out of plane with the others, there will be deflection in the sub floor causing movement.
This movement can be very small, but generally the joist that is an eighth inch lower than the others will not be supporting the weight of a person, for example. The neighboring joists will have to carry the load of the one that is not in line.
This situation will also cause a noise over time as the movement of the sub floor will ride up and down on the shank of the nails causing a shrill squeak. The noise can be fixed in a variety of ways. If you have access from below, you can use wood shims and glue to span the gap between sub floor and joist. You can also install bracing from one joist to the next using either mechanical fasteners or additional lumber, or you can shoot nails through the sub floor into the joist and opposing angles. There is also a tool that screws a fastener into the sub floor and then breaks the head off of the fastener. Here is an article on a squeaky floor repair.
For every plumbing job there is a hose clamp waiting to help. Hose clamps are wonderful tools. If you look under your kitchen sink you are sure to see several of them.
If you have a dishwasher, the drain line will go up to an air gap device. This hose is connected to the air gap with a hose clamp. The outflow of the air gap device is connected to a discharge hose with another hose clamp. This hose drains into the garbage disposal and is held in place with yet another hose clamp.
Hose clamps come in a variety of sizes and have a variety of uses. They look like a metal band with slots in it, all connected to a screw mechanism. The clamp is round and the screw mechanism allows you to tighten it around the hose to be clamped.
To install one, you need to loosely slip it over the hose, place the hose onto the nipple of whatever fixture it is being installed into, slide the hose clamp up to the point where the hose wraps around the nipple and tighten the clamp.
Hose clamps will help on many plumbing repairs, from under the kitchen sink, to making plumbing connections to a swamp cooler.
A leaking toilet can waste thousands of gallons of water. Some toilet leaks are not quite so obvious though. A toilet that leaks from the tank into the bowl can be repaired inexpensively and quickly, but you have to try to determine what needs to be repaired.
Have you ever flushed the toilet and, although you can hear the toilet tank refill and the water shut off, you can still see water entering the toilet bowl? Sometimes it is difficult to see. It will appear as just a ripple in the bowl.
It is easy to see if you use food coloring. Remove the tank lid and flush the toilet. Once the flapper closes and the tank starts to refill, drop a few drops of food coloring into the bowl. It's easier to see if you use a darker color like blue or red.
The food coloring will color the tank water. If you have water leaking from the tank to the bowl, you will see the water in the bowl start to change color. If it does, you have a leak from the tank to the bowl. This can usually be fixed with a new flapper, but on occasion, the flush valve may need to be replaced. It may also be that the seat where the flapper seals against is pitted and allowing water to pass through to the bowl.
The water heater TPR valve (temperature & pressure relief valve) is a critical safety component of your water heater. It helps prevent explosions from excessive pressure and heat inside the tank.
The TPR valve opens when the water temperature exceeds 150-degrees or the pressure exceeds 210 psi to relieve dangerous conditions inside the tank. The valve is piped away from the tank and carries away the hot water and steam.
If the TPR drain is discharging water, people automatically assume that it is broken. That's not always the case. It may be operating correctly and relieving the water heater tank of dangerous termperatures or excessive pressure.
The valve may need replaced, but try a few things first. Go into the house and run some hot water out of a faucet. This will allow hot water to exit the tank and allow cold incoming water to enter the tank. Also, turn the temperature on the thermostat down. The combination of these two items should alleviate the temperature issue.
If you were testing the TPR valve by lifting the tab on it and now it won't shut off, you can try lightly tapping it with a hammer. Sometimes this works and sometimes not.
Installing a curtain rod is easy, at least for a handyman. If you are moving into a new house you deserve some privacy. Curtains and window coverings are a must. Curtains seem to have taken a back seat to blinds and shutters, but they are still used to hang accents around windows.
Homeowners sometimes get frustrated when installing a curtain rod because they can’t get the screws to penetrate the drywall right above the window. The trick here is to raise the curtain rod up a few inches and then install it. There is metal cornerbead around the perimeter of the window that will make it difficult to drive a nail through. You can do it, but will have to pre-drill a hole to get it through.
It’s easier to just raise the curtain rod a little bit and screw right into the wood frame and studs. By the way, I never use the screws that come with the kit. I use course threaded drywall screws as they go in fast and have plenty of bite. Measure the distances and make sure the wall mounts are level. The last thing you want to do is remove the mounts and reinstall them, which may expose the screw holes.
If you’ve ever replaced a door frame and tried to get the molding off in one piece, you know it can be a challenge. Door molding is typically nailed into the frame and then caulked around the perimeter.
Even being careful is no guarantee that the strip of molding will come off in one piece.
Start by using a sharp utility knife and running it around the perimeter of the molding. The idea here is to cut completely through the caulking at the edges of the molding. If you don’t cut through all of the caulking and start to lift the molding, the caulking will also lift the paint on the wall along with it.
Once you have cut through the caulking, start at one end of the molding and slowly pry it up. You can use a standard screwdriver or a putty knife to get it started. Try to goose up the molding over a large area rather than a small one. Builder grade molding is usually finger-jointed and will break if too much pressure is applied to it.
Once you have a corner lifted slightly, continue down the length of the molding so that it all lifts uniformly. You would be surprised at how little pressure is needed to snap the molding.
Replacing an electric cord on a lamp is very straightforward. Cords get pinched by furniture and flooring and can get damaged. Don’t try to repair a cord as it’s safer to replace it.
After unplugging the lamp, remove the shade, bulb, and socket. The socket should pop off, but you may need a screwdriver to goose it out of its base. The cord will be attached to 2 screws at the base of the socket. Remove the cord from the screws. Rather than pulling the old cord out of the bottom of the lamp, cut the plug from the old cord and tape the old cord to the new cord wires with electrical tape. Now you can pull the new cord into position using the old cord. This eliminates the aggravation of trying to fish the new cord up the body of the lamp.
With the new cord in place, strip ½ inch of insulation from the new cord. If you bought a polarized cord (and you should), the wider blade on the plug is the neutral. Follow this blade into the cord and you will see that the neutral wire of the cord will be ribbed or striped. You can separate the cord wires at the socket to allow you to tie a loose knot (called an underwriters knot) in the wires. This will prohibit the cord from being pulled out of the lamp, which will keep the wires connected to the socket’s terminals. After you connect the wires to the appropriate socket terminals, you can reassemble the lamp.
For your carpentry projects, nails and screws are unattractive. A glued joint is stronger than any nail or screw, particularly when applied to the long grain of the wood’s surface. Biscuits can also be glued at the joints to make a very strong joint..
If you are using nails or screws, you can countersink them to make your project more attractive. To countersink a nail, you can use a nail set. This is a stiff sharp tool with a blunt end on it for hitting with a hammer. You simply hammer the nail close to the surface of the wood and then place the nail set on the head of the nail and tap it just below the surface of the wood. Then you can fill in the divot with wood putty. The key here is to hit the nail very close to the surface of the wood before you use the nail set. If you leave the nail ½” out and use the nail set, you will likely bend the nail.
For screws, you can use a countersink bit, which is tapered in the same way the head of the screw is tapered. As the bit drills a hole, the tapered device cuts the taper for the screw head. Some screw heads also have small burrs on the underside of them that will cut a taper for countersinking.
When you install a grab bar, it must be rock solid so that it can support the weight of a person relying on it to keep them from slipping or falling.
If a customer wants to install a grab bar in a certain position, it may be a challenge. Grab bars should be installed into wall studs, however if the bar is too long or short to align with the studs, the grab bars have been installed on a diagonal.
There is a part available called a Wingits that allows you to install one end of the grab bar into drywall. It claims to exceed all building codes and is ADA compliant.
It also installs in minutes, but you have to be very accurate. You will need a screwdriver and a drill with a 1 1/4" hole saw. You want to make sure that there is no wall stud within 1 1/2" of the location you are installing the Wingits device. You can attach the wingits device to the grab bar and use it as a template for where you need to drill the hole. Then you can remove the grab bar and secure the wingits into the wall.
You adhere the wingits to the wall with some waterproof adhesive and then tap the center screw to engage the wings that reside inside the wall at the end of the device. By tightening the screw the wings push against the back of the wall and secure the device.
Window screens are nice to have, unless yours is tattered and flapping in the wind. In most cases, the screening mesh has torn, rather than the spline pulling up from the window screen’s frame.
If the window screen frame is bent, just replace it. Trying to put new mesh on a bent frame is a waste of time and money. Here is an article on window screen installation.
If the frame is straight, cut the mesh several inches larger than the frame and lay it over the frame on a flat hard surface. The mesh will get tucked into a groove on the back of the frame with a spline. A spline is nothing more than a continuous piece of round rubber with little fins sticking out of it. The spline gets pushed into the groove and holds the mesh in the groove with the friction from the fins on the spline.
Starting at a corner, lay the spline over the mesh and push it into the groove. The right tool looks like a mini pizza cutter and makes quick work of this job. If you don’t have the tool you can always use a blunt object, like a screwdriver, but be very careful as the mesh cuts easily from an errant push with a screwdriver.
