Victoria asked us: "I have really ugly vinyl siding on the house and would like to paint it. How do I do it?"Here is what works for both vinyl and aluminum siding.The first thing to know is that painting vinyl siding will void the warranty on it. But if it is old and ugly, it is probably beyond...
If you use a solvent based adhesive and squeeze it between two surfaces that will not let the solvent out -- like between tiles and the vinyl -- then the solvent will eventually eat into the vinyl showing up as a ghost line of the glue. Put a trace of glue on the wall. Push the vinyl panel into...
There are over 2000 window manufacturers in Canada, and with all that competition, each one wants to make homeowners, renovators, and builders believe that their windows are easier to install than the other brand. This has led to a lot of very poorly built windows that are often difficult to ins...
Although I have learned a great deal about paint and painting over the years, it is not my best subject, especially when formulations and even the tools are constantly changing. So I had my good friend and host of HGTV's One House Two Looks, Jane Lockhart, come on the show to answer some of our ...
There is a lot of debate about whether to put a vapour retarder (vapour barrier) on an insulated wall behind shower tiles. The code has not historically been specifically clear on this so we get lots of different interpretations. What the code does say clearly is that we should not have two vap...
The most common shower curtains sold are made of vinyl with very inadequate reinforcing around the hole used to hook it to the curtain rod. The result is that rather quickly the vinyl stretches and breaks through. Now this process accelerates when you have a wife like mine who scrubs the curtai...
Any wood product will expand when it gets wet, some worse than others. Today we have a wide variety of wood or wood like flooring products.Massive HardwoodFirst you should understand that even massive hardwood, if allowed to stay wet or overly humid for too long will swell up and potentially buc...
I have had a few inquiries about how to attach things to outside walls, like signs, wires and Christmas lights without causing any damage.For a brick wall there is a wonderful gadget called the Brick Clip that simply has a spring on the bottom and teeth on the top which grab a brick by inserting ...
Better is a big word. Each siding on the market has it's advantages and dis-advantages. Both vinyl and aluminium siding are generally available as imitation wood siding, where-as some steel siding admits to not being wood. That comes simply from the fact that people like the "look" of wood sid...
Viewers have asked me to list the pros and cons of acrylic and metal bathtubs, so here goes.The big old cast iron tubs are probably the most durable tubs you can buy. However, if you don't want it as a stand alone tub, that rolled rim on the top makes it very difficult to frame into a bathroom a...
