Not every project goes as well as planned. We would be happy to spend a few minutes answering your questions.
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When it comes time to remove drywall anchors, it is a pain. Maybe you are moving and have to take down all of your pictures, shelving, or whatever led you to install the anchors, but now you have the chore of making them disappear.
Depending on the drywall anchor, there are several options of removing them. After you remove them, you are going to be left with a small hole to repair. Smaller anchors come out easier and leave a smaller hole to fill. The small plastic anchors can generally be pulled out of the wall without much fuss. Use needle nose pliers and grab one side of the anchor or grab the entire anchor and collapse it. You may need to use a slight rocking motion to get it out. After you remove it, you can use a utility knife and slice off any torn edges around the hole and fill it with spackle or joint compound, and then touch it up with paint, if necessary.
For screw-in anchors, like the EZ anchor, you can unscrew them and repair the wall as above.
For larger wall anchors, usually your best option is to push the anchor into the wall. You can get it loose and then use a screwdriver and tap it into the wall. Then repair the drywall as mentioned.
If that wooden chair leg is wobbling again, pay attention or call your handyman. Wooden chairs and wood bar stools are put together similarly. The ends of the legs typically are round like a dowel, and the seat that they mate with receive the round end of the dowel. This assembly is glued together and sometimes pinned with a brad to hold it together until it dries.
Sometimes this glue-to-wood bond breaks and it needs to be repaired. There really is no stronger bond than glue and wood as the chemical reaction makes the joint rock solid. This bond is far stronger than any nail or screw into wood.
The key is to remove the old glue from both the end of the leg and the hole into which it mates. To clean the end of the dowel, you can use sandpaper and go to work. Larger grit sandpaper will remove material faster. For the hole in the wood chair, you can use a wire brush (like you find to clean copper pipe) and chuck it into a drill. Once you chew through some glue, you can move to a smaller sanding drum. The goal is to get down to bare wood so that the glue-to-wood bond can take hold. You may find that with all of this sanding the dowel may have a little play in it when gluing it back together. You can use a plane and cut a few thin shavings from scrap wood. You can use this to build back up the thickness of the dowel.
Slather everything up with wood glue and push it all together. You can use a variety of clamps to hold everything together until it dries.
As a handyman, most of my jobs have to do with the repair of houses. However, occasionally a customer might have some exterior work to do. That means using a shovel and moving dirt or landscape rock. This is a recipe for a sore back.
YOu can practice some good safety tips to minimize injury to yourself. First of all, start with heavy work gloves and thick-soled boots or shoes. You will find yourself stomping on the shovel, and regular tennis shoes won't cut it. Also, use the right shovel. A pointed shovel (called a spade) is good for digging a hole into the ground, while a flat head shovel is good for scooping dirt or landscape rock.
The most important thing to minimize back soreness is to not use your back when doing this type of work. That means staying as vertical as possible when working. If you lean over you risk soreness. Use the shovel as the tool.
To scoop up dirt or rock, push the shovel in with your foot. When it comes time to lift the weight you will have your forward hand about midway down the handle and your rear hand on the end of the handle. Push your leading hip against your forward hand to gain as much dirt or rock on the shovel. Your are staying verticle and just pushing the blade into the material. Finally, use your front hand as a folcrum and push down on the handle with your rear hand. Think of a see-saw. Dump the weight in the designated area and do it all again.
A lot of homeowners don’t like the looks of a traditional medicine cabinet, and consequently want it removed. There are two methods of installation; surface mounted or recessed.
A surface mounted medicine cabinet is very easy. Imagine just sticking the medicine cabinet to the wall…it simply mounts to the surface. It will be held in place with four screws, one in each corner. Remove the bottom screws first, support the weight of the cabinet, and remove the top screws. You will have to repair the small screw holes in the drywall, but this will be easy with either drywall compound or spackle.
A recessed medicine cabinet will be more challenging. Start by using a sharp utility knife and cutting the caulking bead around the perimeter of the cabinet. The recessed cabinet will also be held in place by screws. Look for one in each corner and remove them, then gently goose the cabinet out of the hole. You will be left with a drywall hole in your wall to repair. Since the recessed medicine cabinet is usually sandwiched between two wall studs, you will have to patch the hole, and blend it in with the surrounding surface. Here is an article on drywall repair.
When you run your dishwasher and it rinses and drains, you typically hear a draining noise as it empties into the garbage disposal. There are times though, that instead of draining into the disposal, it backs up and runs out onto your countertop via the air gap device. You probably don’t need to call your handyman, but this indicates a blockage in the line at some point between the air gap and where it is draining in the disposal.
If your garbage disposal is new, it may be that the knock-out plug was not removed which would prevent the water from draining properly. Otherwise, remove the discharge hose where is connects to the disposal and snake a coat hangar or long screwdriver up there to dislodge the compacted food particles. You can then stick the end of the hose into bucket and run the “rinse and drain” cycle on the dishwasher to clean out the hose. Then just re-attach the hose to the disposal.
It may also be that there is a kink in the hose with is restricting the volume of the waste water. You may need to rotate the hose or even cut it slightly shorter to get rid of the kink.
A hose bib vacuum breaker is also generally referred to as an anti-siphon. When you hear of an anti-siphon device or a vacuum breaker, you typically think of a device for your landscaping, and you would be correct, these are common plumbing terms. However, you should also have a device on each hose bib for protection against contamination.
So long as the water pressure remains high, clean healthy water is delivered to the neighborhood. However, if a problem developed and caused a drop in water pressure, such as a water main break, contaminated water could be drawn back into the home and mixed with it’s clean drinking water. This can cause sickness and can even be fatal depending upon the level and type of contamination and the person ingesting the water. Imagine for example if you were filling up a child’s swimming pool and the pressure dropped drawing that water back into the house’s potable water supply. Whatever contaminants that were in the pool could end up at your faucet. With a vacuum breaker, that water could not enter the water supply.
By installing a hose bib vacuum breaker, this contamination problem via the hose bib will be eliminated. These devices cost under $10.00 and simply screw onto the hose bib. Once they are screwed on, you can tighten the setscrew to firmly secure them in place.
If you have a cathedral ceiling, or even a sloped ceiling that requires a longer ceiling fan downrod, you have a little extra work to do. You can buy longer downrods at most home centers, but you will also need to buy extension wires for this as well. You can buy them separately, but many retailers sell a kit that includes everything you will need. The wires will be 14 gauge stranded wires.
You will need to connect the extension wires to the same colors as the fan’s wiring. Connect the black fan wire to the black extension wire with a small wire nut and then wrap that with black electrical tape. Do the same for the white neutral wires, and connect the blue wire to the wire for the light kit (if applicable). Also make sure you connect the ground wire.
Thread these wires up through the extension downrod and secure the downrod to the fan. Most will screw in, but some have a retaining clip and a setscrew. You can trim the extra wire to fit your needs, generally an extra 12 inches will work well.
Once you have the unit assembled, you can install the ceiling fan. Here is an article on how to install a ceiling fan.
If you have a bathtub/shower combination, when you want the water to come out of the showerhead instead of the tub spout, you simply pull up on the tub spout diverter and the water shoots up to the shower head (for older styles there may be a separate handle in the wall for this).
The problem is that over time the gate inside the shower diverter will wear and either the gate of the entire shower diverter will need to be replaced. Replacing the shower diverter is easy, but you may be able to get a free gate from the manufacturer. By the way, the gate is the little door that blocks water from exiting the tub spout and forces it back up the riser to the showerhead.
Getting access to the gate is tricky. It is inside the end of the tub spout and you will either have to rotate the spout or practically stand on your head to work on it. You will need to disengage the bottom of the gate (it rides on the rod operated by the knob) and remove the gate. It is typically plastic and will slide off, but you may need to remove the knob too. Once you slide the new gate onto the rod, reinstall the end of the rod into the groove at the base of the tub spout. Then just turn the water on and test it.
After your misting system installation, it cooled everything down wonderfully. But now after some use,you notice that some of the misting heads don’t spray at all and some just drip. That sure won’t cool down the patio table.
Scale and deposits have a way of blocking the tiny orifice in the sprayer heads. You will have to disassemble the heads and clean them up so that they will spray again. The tips of the sprayers are what you are after. Use a small wrench and unscrew the tip while holding the body of the sprayer still so it won’t move. You can heat up some water mixed with vinegar in a bowl and let the tips soak in there for a while. After about 15 minutes, use an old toothbrush and brush away the scale. You can also try a product like CLR.
Once you have brushed and cleaned the tips, blow some air through them to make sure that the airway is clear. You will probably hear a slight hissing sound. After that you can screw the tips back onto the misting system and turn the water on to test for good operation.
You can install a filter onto your system, but in reality, this is a maintenance job that you will have to repeat at some point depending on use.
Installing a toilet paper holder or a towel bar is virtually identical and is an easy handyman job. It is a matter of selecting the location and securing it. For a towel bar, it will typically be installed in drywall, whereas the toilet paper holder will be installed in either drywall or the side of the bathroom vanity.
Both use the same mechanisms to attach the fixture to the surface. For the toilet paper holder, since it is so small and doesn’t support any more weight than a roll of toilet paper, you can install this wherever is convenient. You might even sit on the toilet and mark an area that will work. This is very effective for small spaces.
Once you have the area chosen, screw the brackets to the surface. The flat portion of the brackets will mount to the wall and the ends of the bracket will angle away from the wall. When both brackets are mounted, place the arms of the holder on the bracket and tighten the set screw until it grasps the bracket and tightens. Then you can install the spool and roll of toilet paper.
The only different consideration for the towel bar is that you may want some larger screws to hold the brackets to the wall, and preferably into the wall studs. You can use a large screw and screw at least one side into a stud, but the other side likely won’t match up. For the other side, you can use a large wall anchor such as a butterfly bolt or an EZ anchor.
