Every paint is formulated to maximize some special characteristic, and that often means sacrificing other desirable characteristics in that particular paint. No one paint can be everything to everybody.One of the most common trade-offs in making paint is "ease of application" vs. "durability".Pl...
When part of the porcelain paint pops off of metal sinks, your only DIY recourse is to use the little bottles of touch-up.First you have to find one that is the right colour, not always an easy task.Then you have to get it to stick. The manufacturers all say to just clean the surface and then ap...
Donna lives in Georgian Bay, Ontario but has to share her deck with hornets that are attracted to the pine sap oozing out of her deck. What to do?Pine sap will not stop oozing until it has all crystallized inside the wood. This process can be accelerated with heat, but even kiln dried and aged b...
Charles in Toronto, Ontario has a damaged metal door which had been broken into. He wants to know how to straighten out the metal and repaint the door.That's actually an easy question. Simply go to an auto supply store and check out what they have in the body shop section. Flatten the problem ...
There is a lot of debate about whether to put a vapour retarder (vapour barrier) on an insulated wall behind shower tiles. The code has not historically been specifically clear on this so we get lots of different interpretations. What the code does say clearly is that we should not have two vap...
When two apartments share the same heat source and only have one thermometer, someone is always unhappy. If the thermostat is upstairs, the downstairs people are too cold, and if the thermostat is downstairs, the upsatirs people have to open the windows, to keep from getting cooked although thos...
You have probably seen this gadget called Squeeek-No-More in the store or at home show demos and wondered if it actually works. It does, under certain conditions.
The idea is to drive a screw into the floor, perhaps right through the rug, have the threads hold in both the floor joist and in the ...
The most common shower curtains sold are made of vinyl with very inadequate reinforcing around the hole used to hook it to the curtain rod. The result is that rather quickly the vinyl stretches and breaks through. Now this process accelerates when you have a wife like mine who scrubs the curtai...
Letter: I have a ceramic shower, that is leaking, I do not know how it was built or what is underneath.In the last week +- have noticed about an ounce or 2 of water in the garage,I have a small openeing in the ceiling directly under due to the drain pipe, the drain pipe and feed lines are dry. Bu...
Ed writes from Ajax, Ontario : All 3 walls of my bathroom shower stall are finished with 4" ceramic tiles and are in good shape. When I had to remove one of them, I discovered that the drywall was behind it was so wet that I had to put a fan on it over night to dry it out before I could glue...
