My friend and subscriber, Terry B., asked this question about the fireplace mantel he was building. That’s it above when completed: QUESTION: How can I get rid of residue left behind by wood filler? I’ve built a fireplace mantle out…
In the final analysis, do-it-yourself success comes down in part to tools, and chopsaws (also called miter saws) make building projects more fun and more productive than most others. If you’re thinking of tooling up to build your DIY skills,…
For people living in the country, getting water usually involves electricity, a pump, tank and a bunch of fittings. Lose electricity and there goes your water, too. Boosting the reliability of my homestead water supply is why I installed a Bison…
Radon gas occurs naturally in soil and rock from certainly areas, and even though it’s “natural” it still causes cancer at rates similar to smoking when the gas exists in sufficient concentrations inside houses. This is not unusual in high-risk…
Anyone who has priced a kitchen has had this experience. Same room, same layout, three companies, and the numbers come back at eighteen, twenty six and thirty nine thousand. The instinct is to assume somebody is overcharging. Occasionally somebody is….
Walking down the pest control aisle at any home improvement store reveals dozens of products, sprays, baits, granules, foggers, each promising to solve a slightly different problem. That variety often leads homeowners to treat these products as interchangeable, grabbing whatever…
Utility spaces rarely get a second thought until something goes wrong. The area behind the water heater, the gap where a pipe enters through the foundation, the narrow space around the HVAC unit, these spots sit quietly in the background…
Every fall, Grand Rapids homeowners notice the same seasonal visitor working its way indoors: the brown marmorated stink bug. These insects show up on window screens, cluster near doorframes, and occasionally drop from ceiling fixtures at the most inconvenient moments….
Walk into almost any newly renovated kitchen in Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary and run your hand along the counter. Odds are good it’s quartz. Not the speckled, slightly plasticky quartz of fifteen years ago, but something that looks remarkably like…
Okay, so let’s talk about something that honestly doesn’t get enough credit—glass tile. Have you ever walked into a kitchen or bathroom and just thought, “Wow, this feels fancy!”? Nine times out of ten, it’s the tile. BELK Tile is…
Got old paint to remove? It’s probably got lead. Read Steve’s three-step paint stripping process that will get the job done safely.
One of the most common wintertime problems homeowners face is condensation forming on the inside face of windows. Every winter for a couple of decades I’ve heard from distraught people wondering what to do to stop water from trickling down…