The books say 32 inches, but there is no reason for that to be a hard and fast rule. However if you make it a lot smaller you will have the impression of being a giant Alice in a tiny Wonderland. If you make it a lot higher, it will dominate the wall.Wainscoting was originally created to protec...
There are times, especially when working with moulding, that you need to divide an angle in half. I learned how to do this with a compass in high school and since then I have fallen in love with the Angle Finder, an impressive little device that uses more geometry than my compass to measure exac...
32-1/2 inches.The rough framing should be 2-1/2 inches wider than the door itself. That leaves room for the 3/4 inch finish frame on each side of the door, and then 1/2 inch on each side for the shims between the finish frame and the rough frame.There are some tricks for building frames into new ...
There are no hard and fixed rules, although there are some generally accepted standards. Actually, a lot depends on how tall you are and what kind of work you are doing.
If you are doing small detailed work you may want a "counter" at about 40 inches off the floor.
A standard woodworking workbe...
Measuring devices have gone from a folding ruler, to a tape measurer
-- and then -- the new electronic digital read-out type.
The digital tape measurer I had came from Starrett called the DigiTape. It could read in imperial and metric, the readout would flip for up-side-down reading. It would e...
When hiring a contractor to replace your windows, DO NOT MEASURE THEM YOURSELF. You can give him measurements to the nearest inch with the very clear indications that these are "approximate measurements only and not to be used for ordering the window".
WHY HAVE A CONTRACTOR TAKE HIS OWN ...
Dan wrote in asking what is that little diamond mark on his tape measurer at 19-3/16 inches?
Look further down the tape and you will see it repeated every 19+ inches, always at some imprecise measurement, not really a multiple of 3/16 of an inch. Finally when you get to 8 ...
Paul from Vancouver wants to put some new stairs down to his basement, but he has a very limited opening in the floor above. He wants to know just how do you determine the slope of stairs.
In the first photo you can see on the model the triangle formed by stairs as they go to the basement. The t...
