James Connelly works at Masterpieces Studio in Toronto where they do some impressive things with paint, putty and special plasters and cement coatings. But since they opened their finishing school, they've also been teaching some of the secrets to the public.We followed James through the convers...
When you tear the surface of drywall, those fuzzy little hairs just keep coming through coat after coat of paint. The reason is that each time you sand it, they simply lie down and stand back up when they get wet with more paint.The way to cure it from the start is to put a coat of shellac over ...
Some of our viewers have some patching to do on their bathtubs. Here are the tricks, but remember that a patch almost always shows and some do not last forever so if you really want it nice without replacing the tub you will want to hire a professional refinisher who has special equipment and sp...
"I have a painting problem: All the walls and ceilings in my apartment have been painted using a sponge technique. The paint itself is a latex flat base to which powdered pigments were added along with a small amount of an abrasive material to give the walls an "adobe" look.I now wish to repaint...
"Renewal" is the name of a floor refinishing product/system from Flecto-Varathane.You take of any wax first. They only mention that in fine print and don't provide a wax remover, but the system will fail if you leave old wax on the floor.Then the first product in the system removes the scuff mar...
Darren Barrett from the Hardwood Flooring Store in Markham, Ontario and a long time expert in hardwood floors joined me in the TV studio to discuss the evolution of hardwood flooring. We set aside for this discussion all the plastic laminates with press board bases that have become so common. N...
When a lath-and-plaster wall has loose plaster, you shouldn't just put more plaster over it, because the base is no longer solid it will quickly crack again. Either remove the loose plaster, or secure it down.One way is with special "plaster washers". These are light curved washers made out of ...
When a floor wears down through the finish, even through the stain and to bare wood you have a serious refinishing problem.Bernadette wants to re-stain the warn spots without having to sand down the whole floor.Well, the bad news is that you probably won't be able to do a good job. Sand down the...
Drum Sanders, disk sanders and scrapersWhen professionals need to remove a lot of wood in either a new rough floor installation, or a major refinishing where they need to get right down to bare wood, they will use the traditional drum sander, and associated disk sander for the edges, and scraper ...
We received the tip that when you want to sand molding, you can make a custom sanding block by wrapping thin plastic wrap over the molding and then forming a block into the wood molding with epoxy auto body repair putty. When it hardens, remove the block, pull off the plastic and you have a pret...
