Valerie from Charlottetown, PEI writes: "We are building a new home and would like to use clay coloured vinyl windows, thinking that the clay colour would show on the exterior and also on the interior of the home. Today we were told that the colour is only on the outside and the interior of the ...
Larry asked: "I put cork flooring in my basement 15 years ago and we've been very happy with it. I'd like to put a similar floor upstairs. Is there a product available for upstairs?"I believe that cork as a flooring did dissapear for a while, but it is back in style. The new floating cork floo...
I love looking at the whole range of tools all designed to accomplish the same task. The least expensive get the job done, eventually. The top of the professional line get it done in the blink of an eye. How about hanging drywall?Driving drywall screws is actually a complicated task. You need...
A viewer in Brandon, Man. had some questions about why his stockwall has started to shrink and crack. Art asked whether it is the aggregate he used or the logs themselves.Good question and I couldn't really help much. (But read on and you will see that at least one of our viewers does have so...
Did you ever think of using old kitchen spatulas as wall protectors for pulling nails, or even as a nail puller itself. This segment developed a series of shop uses for common kitchen tools.And I show you the fantastic plaster washers, used to hold cracked or loose plaster in place. These wide ...
Yes, we actually followed the construction of a house made out of straw bales in downtown Montreal.Straw bale construction is seeing a resurgence, with over 2000 a year being built in the US and 20 to 30 a year in Canada. Originally a dry prairie construction practice, it is spreading across t...
Clothes hangers provide a ridgid, often plastic coated, wire that can be used to build or fix just about anything around the house. Even the new plastic type of clothes hangers can be broken up to make clamps and hooks.You'll have to catch the re-run to see the gadgets that I made in minutes wit...
So your client goes to the home show and sees this new decking material that is either cheaper, or more durable, or more ecological, or fancier or simply exotic and they want you to install it. So you check out the literature on it and they all say that you can work with their material just ...
Heating systems that operate on cheap fuel are not always reliable and cannot be counted on as the only heating system in the house. Common examples are:-- Solar energy and heat pumps: extended periods of cloudy weather mean you simply won't have enough heat.-- Wood or Coal burning furnaces, ...
Heat pumps of the future will be the key to effective use of "low-grade heat".-- They will be included in the exhaust of HRV ventilation systems to extract that last little bit of usable heat before throwing the stale air out. The exhaust air will probably leave the house colder than the wint...
