Brian in Mississauga wakes his kid up every night because the bedroom floor squeaks so badly. Brian send me his floor plan, showing a large stairwell opening in line with the problem bedroom and no support walls below. He already screwed the plywood down to the floor, to no avail.Before we c...
Brian is back with his squeaking floor -- see Just Ask Jon Eakes, Season 3 Episode 15 for the original problem.I had asked him to use a broom stick as a stethoscope to get a precise location on the squeak. He did me one better and used his kid's toy stethoscope, which worked wonderfully. The ...
Carol in Havelock, Ontario has floors that are so springy that glasses tend to jump off the shelves when she walks by.Springy floors can be perfectly safe, or they can be an indication of a structural danger. Usually they simply mean that the floor is not rigid enough, or stretches too far bet...
Editor: In your May/June issue you showed gluing down 1/4 inch underlay in order to avoid telescoping of joints and fasteners through the finished vinyl flooring. That is well and good, except that the wood parquet adhesive you recommend will cause staining of the vinyl, and your customers w...
Kathy from Kamloops, B.C. writes:We are in a 60 year old house. When we moved in 38 years ago there was hard wood flooring in the living room and you didn't replace boards in the worn out places at that time. So we had a guy glue (which is black) down then felt paper then glue and then a woo...
The joist space is commonly insulated with fiberglass batts jammed up into the cavity. The header should have been well sealed with caulking first. (search keyword "sealing" for the title " WHERE SHOULD I SEAL AND HOW?") The batts should be covered with simple paper (an acceptable vapour barrie...
George from Hamilton, Ontario suggests using round toothpicks to plug the holes left by staples after pulling up a carpet.It does plug them easily and permanently, but if you are going to stain the floor, the end grain of the toothpick will take on a lot more stain than the rest of the floor, mak...
Yes. In fact it is a very good system that provides one of the hardest floor finishes available, without having to sand the old finish. But there are important details that shouldn?t be missed and some limitations that you must pay attention to.If the floor is damaged and needs wood filler, ...
A viewer asks if she can put peel-and-stick tiles on a painted concrete floor or whether she has to build a sub-floor.If the paint is intact, that means that there is no moisture problem pushing up from below and that the paint will work as a primer for the glue. As long as the surface is smoo...
We took our TV camera to Anderson Carpet & Home in Burlington and got some insights into what makes good and better carpets.The real measure of durability is the density of the carpet. With a dense carpet, you shouldn't be able to sink your fingers through the fibers right to the backing....
