Pro Handyman Blog

If you have ever removed wallpaper from drywall, you know the situation is ripe for tearing the paper on the drywall face. Drywall paper can get torn from a variety of causes….from a pet to moving furniture.

The problem with tearing the paper on the drywall face is that it will suck up wetness from the drywall compound and leave you with a blemish on your drywall repair. You can sand and paint all you want, but you will still have a noticeable patch because of this.

You can remove the torn areas as best you can using a razor blade. Your finished product should look something like a smooth piece of cardboard. You don’t want a bunch of torn fibers poking up above the surface. Next you want to seal the paper. You can use Kilz or another stain sealer on the area. Spray or brush the sealer on the paper area and just outside the border. A few coats of this works nicely and it dries fast.

Once the sealer has dried you can repair the area with drywall compound, letting each coat dry before the next one is applied. Float the area with the appropriate width taping knife and finish as normal. Here is an article on drywall repairs.

A common handyman repair is for furniture that needs to be assembled. You know the type, a full sized desk that comes in a box that would fit in your pocket. That’s right, lots of assembly required. These types of projects have wood dowels and cams that fit together. The problem is that the wood is typically cheap and isn’t made to take much abuse. The dowels and cams can pull out of the furniture and you are left to create a fix.

You can connect the pieces back together by drilling new holes in the mating surfaces and using new dowels. The holes must be aligned and you can cut a new dowel to fit the diameter of the new holes. Slather up the dowel and holes with wood glue, push everything together, and clamp it until its dry.

The other method is by using a biscuit joiner. This is a tool that cuts a slot (instead of drilling a hole) that align on each mating surface. Into this slot will go a biscuit (a football shaped disc). The biscuits come in different sizes for different applications. Once the slots are cut, apply glue to the biscuit and the slots, push the pieces together and clamp until dry.

Removing a broken shower cartridge is no picnic. Plenty of things can go wrong. You can use a cartridge removing tool which attaches to the threaded stem in the middle of the cartridge and gently goose the cartridge out of the opening. This works most of the time without incident. Then there are the times it doesn’t work and the stem pulls out of the cartridge.

For times like these, take a deep breath and relax. If you look at the cartridge removing tool, it looks like the letter “T”. The long leg of the tool is skinny and has a small ball bearing on the end of it. This ball bearing retracts enough so that you can slide the leg into the hole of the cartridge. When the leg exit’s the rear of the cartridge, the ball bearing pops out to grip the rear of the cartridge. Now you can use the tool to pull out the rest of the cartridge. This is not always easy. Maybe when the shower valve was originally installed, the installer failed to remove the cartridge before he applied the heat of the torch to the fittings. This intense heat can make removing the cartridge very difficult.

A shower cartridge installation can make a beginner a little nervous. There is the whole issue of turning off the water to the house and then removing parts from the valve in the wall. When you get the job done and turn the water back on…and it drips?

As you might imagine, there are some problems that might occur.

If you install a new cartridge and it leaks, you will have to remove the cartridge again (yes like you are starting over) after you turn the water off. The cartridge fits into an opening that is a tight fit. The O-rings are the only part of the cartridge that touch the cylindrical opening and it sometimes occurs that the O-rings will twist and cause a leak. You can’t just horse a cartridge into the opening without a little finesse. You need to lubricate the exterior of the cartridge so that when you push it into the hole the rings don’t twist and leak.

Use liquid soap for lubricating the O-rings. It makes the cartridge very slippery and it should push into the hole without any trouble. Once the cartridge is in place, secure the pin to hold it in place. Re-assemble the handle and test to make sure that the hot side dispenses hot water and the cold side is actually cold. If not, you need to rotate the cartridge stem by 180-degrees.

Installing a water heater means making all of the proper connections. One of these connections is at the top of the water heater. If you have a gas water heater the exhaust will be carried out of the unit and the building via a vent. This vent is connected to the water heater by a draft hood. The draft hood has legs on it to allow air to carry the exhaust out of the building.

A water heater draft hood has legs on it that allow it to connect to the top of the water heater. The tabs on the bottom of the legs slide into some slots and turn, which locks the draft hood onto the water heater.

Connecting the vent to the top of the draft hood is a little more work. The vent should slide over the top of the hood. Secure the vent to the draft hood with self-tapping screws (minimum of 3 spaced equally around the perimeter). Wrap foil tape over these screws and the connection to further secure the vent to the draft hood. Just make sure you don’t cover any of the openings in the draft hood as these are important for proper ventilation of the exhaust.

When painting, you will undoubtedly use tape to mask off an area that you don’t want painted. You can use traditional masking tape, or you can use painter’s tape. I love painters tape, but for big jobs, it gets very expensive.

Traditional masking tape is cheap and thin. It tears rather easily and can make removing it a real challenge. It is very sticky and has great “bite” on whatever surface it is sticking to. Masking tape is the choice for typical production paint jobs.

Painters tape is certainly more expensive but offers several benefits. It is thicker than masking tape and tends not to tear as easily. Consequently, you can remove the entire length of it with one pull. It also keeps cut lines very crisp. Paint can tend to creep under regular masking tape, but not so with painters tape. It can happen, but not as often as masking tape. If you want to keep cut lines crisp, use the rounded back of a spoon and push down along the edges of the tape. This will help prevent unwanted paint from getting underneath your tape and ruining a line.

For smaller jobs where you require a clean cut line between colors, painters tape is the way to go.

Painting is one of those necessary chores that I try to put off as long as possible. There are lots of different tools to help you paint a variety of items.

A customer called and needed her fascia painted because her homeowner’s association didn’t like the way it looked. Sure enough, the paint was peeling and it was unattractive. The exposed portion of the fascia was only about 10 inches and had the lip of the roof covering just a portion of it. The perfect tool for this job is a mini-roller. These are paint rollers that are very small in diameter that will make quick work of painting fascias. Not to be gross, but these are also called tampon rollers for obvious reasons.

Mini-rollers use special frames that can be longer than normal frames. After scraping the old paint from the fascia, the board will be very smooth. You can use the mini-roller and paint using horizontal strokes and cover a three foot swath very quickly. Since the roller is smaller and holds less paint, it is less likely you will drip paint, although you will have to reload paint more often. The smaller diameter of the roller will also allow you to paint right up to the roof edge overhanging the fascia board without having to use a brush for touchups.

If your toilet is refilling for no reason and you already replaced the flapper, it may be time to investigate the flush valve. Assuming the fill valve is not malfunctioning, the flush valve may be cracked or damaged, or maybe even the tank has a crack in it.

You will need to shut off the water, flush the toilet to drain the water out of the tank, and remove the tank from the bowl. There are either 2 or 3 tank bolts you will need to remove to lift the tank from the bowl. Once you’ve done this, pour the rest of the water out and set the tank on its back. Remove the nut that holds the flush valve to the tank and pull the valve out of the center of the tank. You may find a crack in the tank here. If you do, it’s probably time for a new tank.

Before you install a new flush valve, compare the height of the new one vs. the old one. You may need to trim the new one to fit. There will be a rubber washer where the flush valve meets the tank bottom to keep water from sneaking past. On the exterior of the tank you will screw a large nut (called a spud nut) onto the threads of the valve. Over the bottom of the threads and nut you will push on a rubber spud washer (or just a “spud”). Reconnect the fill valve hose to the overflow tube.

Set the tank back on the bowl and reinstall the tank bolts snuggly. Reconnect the water supply line and fill the tank. You should not have any water draining from the tank unless you flush the toilet.

Baseboard corners take a beating. It doesn’t matter if they are 90-degree or rounded, whenever you move something around the house, they have a target on them. So invariably they will get nicked, scratched or dented and you will have to repair them.

Wood putty will quickly become your friend. In a pinch you can also use drywall mud, but if it gets bumped again, it will fall apart very easily.

For a straight section, use a putty knife and mix the wood putty thoroughly. You want to blend in the liquids and the solids and evenly distribute the color. Scoop some on the putty knife and follow the section on the baseboard, pushing the wood putty into the depression as you go. Use as little as possible to get the job done as sanding this stuff is like sanding concrete. You want to slightly overfill the void but not by too much.

For curved sections, follow the contours with the putty knife and don’t overfill it by much. When everything has dried, use sand paper to get the surfaces flush and then paint the baseboard. If you happen to overfill the depression by a lot, you can use a more aggressive grit of sandpaper and then work your way down to a finer grit for a smooth finish.

If your shower caulking is peeling up or lifting shortly after you have applied it, you may want to look at several possible causes.

First off, I wouldn’t re-caulk a shower unless it was completely dry. Applying caulking to a damp or wet surface is a sure way for the caulking to fail. Also, make sure you remove all of the old caulking. This can be as easy as pulling the length of it out of the joint, or as difficult as breaking up concrete.

Use a quality product. Don’t go cheap on the caulking here folks. I’ve followed up people that have used water soluble caulking and other products that have no business being in a shower. Use silicone caulking specifically designed for wet areas. Reading the label will pay dividends. Also, before you apply the new caulking, clean the surfaces that the caulking will be adhering to. You really can’t expect great results if the surfaces the caulking bonds to are covered in scale and deposits, right?

While you have the old caulking removed, its probably a good idea to inspect the joint for water damage issues and fix them now. The problem will grow and cost more over time.

Once you have applied the silicone caulking, don’t use the shower for 24 hours. You want to let the product set up and hold before you let the water attack it.