Lime was the primary ingredient in most stains in the old days -- it was called a 'lime wash'. It can be used to stain all porous materials including masonry, concrete, and stucco without causing any of the moisture problems that modern finishes may cause.
Given the need to use traditional mater...
Commercial cleaners
There are a lot of tile cleaners, even some grout cleaners on the market such as those shown above or the newer cleaner specifically for grout, Oxy-Grout. They work pretty well if you have a stain on grout that had been sealed before the stain, because the stain will be somew...
DRILLING A TILE
When you want to hang something on ceramic tiles you will need to drill a hole. Regular metal cutting twist bits will not cut through the hard ceramic face, and in fact the ceramic material itself will destroy such a bit. You need to use a bit that has a carbide head....
Scratches on furniture can often be camouflaged by any of a number of simple techniques, especially if the scratch follows somewhat the grain of the wood.
WIPE-ON POLY
When there is no stain on the wood, so the finish is actually the natural colour of the wood, simply putting a bit more fini...
"Decor" paints are the deep rich colours that are often used for decorative trims or accent walls. But home painters are constantly complaining to me that they can't get the right colour at home, or that it requires three and four coats to cover the old wall.
To understand what is wrong and h...
Truss uplift causes cracks between the wall and the ceiling that open and close every year and you cannot plaster or caulk them shut. For details on the cause and solutions to this problem follow this link.
If you cannot do the major work required to prevent this crack from opening, or you j...
Linoleum used to be the kitchen floor covering of choice, but with the arrival of less expensive vinyl flooring which had colourful patterns, it got lost in the market. Yet linoleum has always been one of the most natural flooring materials following wood. It has been and is still made up ba...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Finishes Product: Acrylic Latex Paint
Temperature Limitations: Use above +10 C (+50 F) and below +32 C (+90 F)
Rain Limitations: No rain for 24 hours
Wind Limitations: low to moderate to avoi...
Determining, definitively, whether a given paint was oil or latex has always been a bit of a problem, but an important one as you can paint oil over latex, but not latex over oil unless you use a special 'super adherent primer' first.
I used to recommend taking a bit of paint thinner on a clean ...
Petra from Mississauga Ontario has small pocket holes in her brick mortar that is only a few years old. These are not the weep holes that she knows should be there, but just little holes probably caused by air pockets during construction. How to fill them?
The easiest way to deal with very small...
