Vern has a range hood on an inside wall and is wondering if he could just use the hollow wall cavity or should he line it, and could he just vent into the attic because the attic itself is vented. There are actually a lot of interesting questions there Vern. First remember that there is a lot of...
Rene from Thunder Bay, Ontario has a corner joint in a counter top that doesn't sit perfectly flush and the water is getting in and swelling up the counter. What to do?Unfortunately, if the counter has swollen up, you may not be able to fix the problem. However, to avoid problems when things do...
Tom from Toronto, Ontario wants to know how to go about putting a vent pipe into the drain of a kitchen island sink.Good question Tom, because you don't have a wall which will simply allow you to go from the drain pipe uphill to the vent stack as we usually do. The first drawing shows a simple me...
One viewer caught our cameras in the renovation store and asked how to remove stains from laminate counter tops.The reality is that it is very difficult to stain laminate counter tops although high temperatures can easily scorch it. We tried for a week and couldn't get any colour from coffee to b...
Gail asks: "We are redoing our kitchen. I have taken the drawer fronts and sanded down the wood portion of it. We didn't stain it, we just varnished and I've got matching knobs but will this wood turn dark over time as it has in the past?"There are a lot of reasons why wood might go dark, the m...
Although we tend to associate the term accessibility with wheelchairs, in reality it is much larger than that. Accessibility can relate to people who are extremely short or extremely tall, to very young people or very old people who have trouble holding on to things, or seeing things -- anyone w...
Catherine from Calgary Alberta just moved into a house that has a tiny boat galley type of kitchen that simply doesn't work, so she was looking for some guidance.Without trying to present a full course in kitchen design, I gave her a couple of the basic rules.There are three major appliances in...
A viewer asked the question, can I replace the plastic surface on my kitchen counter?If there are curves and bends, like a round front edge or a continuous splashback, either forget it, or cut off the curves. With home workshop equipment you won't manage to mold the new plastic laminate to th...
A viewer in Edmonton sent us some pretty nasty photos of mould under her sink. Two plumbers told her that the moisture was not coming from the plumbing.I saw two things on her photos. First, mould was building up around the cold water pipe, meaning that there was humidity under the sink that...
It almost sounds like an oxymoron to talk about removing stains from stainless steel, but the reality is that there are many grades of stainless steel and they are not all resistant to all stains. In fact, anything stuck to stainless steel for a long period of time will probably leave a mark...
