Maureen in Abbotsford BC has nail heads popping out of her walls a bit all over the house. This is unfortunately so common that the term "nail popping" is used to refer to nail heads showing up in drywall. The problem is that there is a space between the drywall and the stud, and when someone l...
Tony from Montreal has problems with cracks in his walls. All of the cracks followed drywall joints just above the corners of windows and doors. Tony thought it was his electrical radiant heating in the ceiling that was causing the problem. This could be partially true, but more likely it is rel...
Beth has a kid in a wheel chair and wants to know how to lay down a floating floor across two rooms without a bump in the doorway.Good question Beth, because floating floors are designed to shift a bit with expansion and contraction. The first photo above shows the official transition piece that...
A viewer asked me for some tips on cutting glass.First work on a flat surface with clean glass, gloves and goggles. Oil the wheel in your glass cutter. Score the top of the glass but pass only one time all the way from end to end, never twice and never pass the cutter over an existing cutter...
Someone asked me for wheelchair ramp specifications -- so here are the ones from CMHC.Specifications include: a ramp slopes no steeper than 1:12, max length of 9000mm between landings, an upstand curb 75 mm high (to stop from rolling off the side), guard rail mounted at a height of 200mm on each ...
Steve from B.C. has problems with Toung & Groove pine boards on the ceiling of a log home, where the boards were cut very roughly where ceiling sections came together. Steve was looking for some kind of discrete trim that would cover the ends of the boards.I suggested thin pine boards, taken...
When an electrical box needs to go into the wall where there are no studs, you can secure them with special drywall brackets. The one in the photo is pushed in from the front and then the screw pulls it back tight against the drywall. You must cut the hole tight enough to have the ears on t...
Kim from Brampton, Ontario has problems with vinyl flooring in the bathroom. She had wanted to just caulk around the edge to join it to her ceramic wall trim on the floor, but the workmen cut it so poorly that she can't do that at all. So now it is all curling up around the edges. She also fel...
Leonard Lee, President of Lee Valley Tools, was a guest on my TV show where he demonstrated to us how to do some very basic inexpensive sharpening of knives and chisels. I'm not going to try and repeal a lot here, because Leonard actually "wrote the book" on sharpening, which you can purchas...
The critical steps to a soldered plumbing joint that will not leak are:Scrape the two surfaces clean with steel wool or a soldering brush;Liberally apply flux to prevent oxidation of the surfaces to be soldered and choose your flux to match your solder, i.e. lead free;Heat the joint on one side ...
