Cindy from Ajax, Ontario writes: We have an L shaped house, and our roof is in need of re-shingling (we are considering asphalt shingles). Where the two roof slopes meet in the centre of the "L" there is a major valley, quite long, with steep pitch. This valley is currently an open valley...
To my mind old fashioned hardwood floors are far more trouble than they are worth, especially now that we have better and better Engineered Floors available. An engineered floor is not a cheap plastic laminate on masonite floating floor. It is a very stable, usually pre-finished, real massive h...
-- Oil base, resin base and polyvinyl acetate caulking do not hold up. There are far too many better caulkings available to waste time and money with these old formulations.-- Latex based caulking is inexpensive, can be painted and has medium durability. It is acceptable for baseboards and caul...
One of our viewers asked about sound proofing a basement room. That is a big topic but here is some information.The QUALITY of sound in a room is the subject of ACOUSTICS, not sound proofing. Acoustical tiles and sponges on the walls do not do much to stop noise movement to or from the rest of ...
I get a lot of questions about choosing and applying a finish to a hardwood floor.First understand that there is no one right answer -- there are a lot of products that each has certain advantages over the others and you need to select the properties that are the most important to you. There are...
Annie has three roofs on her house, a shingled roof in the front part followed by an asphalt and gravel flat roof and then an elastomeric membrane flat roof over her back porch. They all seem to leak. The asphalt roof is only six years old, installed by someone who advertised in the local paper...
In many regions of the world water is scarce or polluted and in mountainous regions the populations often live higher in the mountains than where they have to walk to in order to get water. But in many of these regions the clouds billow over the top of the mountains, keeping them shrouded mu...
Weather-stripping is used to seal air leaks at any opening in the house that moves -- doors, windows, and traps. If you need to be convinced of the necessity of doing a good job of weather-stripping, check out Air Barriers in the search tab above -- or look at your last heating bill.
Much of ...
Reflections on why someone with a scientific orientation like myself might give more credibility to those who worry about the health effects of cell phones and smart meters than to those who say there is no "scientific proof" of a health problem. The following is an extract from an exchange wit...
Should you have a contract or not for every renovation? According to David Foster, author of the pamphlet Get It In Writing, except for the simplest of maintenance tasks, you need a contract, and for a lot of reasons that you may have never thought of.
If you would like to read the other two par...
