Therisa Timan from Pittmetals B.C. wants to know what to do with her old paint cans. How do you handle paint waste responsibly?If you dump solvent wastes like paint and paint thinners down the street drains, they usually go straight into the lake or rivers. If you dump it down the household dra...
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...
Good questions, since we are usually trying to take stains out of grout.First you should be aware that you can purchase coloured grout. The renovation stores will have three or four base tones to choose from, not too exciting. Go to a speciality tile store and you will discover a wide variety o...
One of our viewers lives in an apartment over a noisy basement suite and wants to know what are their options to blocking the noise.Soundproofing is never a perfect thing and although each possible action can have an important effect, the sum of all the actions together can be less than you expec...
Many clear finishes today have what they call "flattening" characteristics which help the material to flow out and let bubbles escape. But depending on the drying conditions, if you put bubbles into your liquid finish, you may have bumps in your dried finish.Two keys to avoiding air bumps in you...
Jim from Shelburne, Nova Scotia sent in this tip. After cleaning your paint brushes, and admitting that you never get them perfectly clean, when you hang them up with the bristles hanging down, a bit of the stiff stuff flows down to the tips of the bristles. The first photo shows two brushes c...
Rob from Clinton, Ontario has a great suggestion for getting those fine steel wool fibers out of the wood before finishing. Wrap a strong magnet in a clean cloth and simply wipe over the area.Removing the cloth from the magnet allows you to shake the little pieces of steel wool into the garbage c...
Chloe in Kincardine, Ontario uses a double open-ended wrench to carry heavy pails so that the handle wire doesn't cut into his hand.A slit garden hose can help as well.
One viewer installed drywall, taped the joints, painted and then discovered that there were lumps and uneven areas in the joint plaster. What to do?It is certainly easier to perfect the sanding before there is paint on the wall, so the moral is to really verify your sanding job before saying it ...
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...
