Leo writes: Hey Jon, my year old house has squeaky ceramic floors in random areas, the sub floor was to be screwed down to prevent this but when I look from the basement I can see the screws poking through were they have missed the floor joist. After complaining, the builder stuck some shimmi...
Do you need to remove chewing gum? It can be found in the strangest places and the removal process will depend on what it is stuck to.Let's start with gum stuck to the bottom of a chair or table, on a hard surface. If it is still soft, start with a scraper of any kind to push off most of it....
Laying out one large piece of sheet flooring to fit into a room that is not square is not always easy. I like to first find the wall that is the straightest, or the one that will be the most visible if there is a pattern on the flooring that will look crooked against an odd angled wall. Tha...
The famous outdoor second story steps in downtown Montreal, an area they call Balconville because of all the open balconies with stairways, presents a real safety problem in those icy Montreal winters. The most common anti-slip treatment is to install a jute runner, commonly called Tapis CoC...
True wood veneer consists of very thin sheets of real wood shaved off of logs. It can look like the grain of plywood if it is peeled off of a rolling log, or look like furniture lumber if it is sliced flat like boards right across the log. It was developed as a way to use sturdy but inexpen...
The subject of baseboards came up when Less from Lannigan, Saskatchewan wanted to know how deep trim nailing should go into the wall. The answer is simple, the length of the nail more complicated. A trim nail should go 3/4 of an inch into the stud of the wall. But then you have to add to t...
Dale asks about hardwood floors over concrete.If the concrete floor is above grade, like is common in a new condo, no problem.If the concrete is in a basement, below grade, then you have potential serious moisture problems, and hardwood really doesn't like excessive moisture.Generally it is not r...
Health officials all recommend that central vacuum systems should exhaust outdoors while most installers do not put in an outdoor exhaust pipe.A few conflicting facts:The cost of piping the exhaust air outdoors is about $75 installed.Central vacs are noisy and a few municipalities have begun to...
On windy days, houses in the Prairies often develop a small frost line on the rug about an inch away from the wall on the north or west side of the house. Here the wind is succeeding in lowering the temperature of the most poorly insulated part of the house -- the floor boards.
In most construct...
Stephanie saw a show where we were tracking down what was causing water to ooze up through floor tiles laid on a basement floor. She wanted to share her very strange experience with water oozing up through floor tiles on the main floor of the house.
She finally discovered that the clothes dryer ...
