Show Notes
Today, learn which hardwood floors hold up best, how female DIYers are shaking up home improvement trends, and why replacing your front door is one of the best projects for boosting home value. Plus, we’re taking your questions and tackling your biggest home project challenges on this episode of The Money Pit!
Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
- Women DIYers: Who needs a handyman when women DIYers are redefining home improvement?
- Hardwood Floor: Choose the hardest hardwood floors for maximum durability.
- Front Doors: Adding value and curb appeal is an open-and-shut case with a new front entry door.
Top Questions & Answers
- Insulation: Claudia’s old attic insulation is falling down in some spots. It’s not hard to replace, but she should consider installing spray foam insulation that’s more efficient.
- Plumbing: Jim has questions about installing a recirculating pump to get more hot water to the kitchen and bath. We have recommendations for a good system to use.
- Flooring: LuAnn’s pets keep ruining the carpet and now she’s thinking of installing hardwood. We have tips for priming and sealing the subfloor first.
- Siding: Icicles are running down the vinyl siding on one side of Don’s house. Ice dams may be getting water behind the siding.
- Basement Chimneys: Old, unused brick chimneys are turning to dust in Kathy’s basement, but it would not compromise the structure of the house to disassemble them.
- Windows: Charlotte is always wiping away moisture and mold in her double-pane windows. We recommend replacing them, along with steps to reduce indoor humidity.
- Bathroom Odor: There’s a sulfur smell coming from the bathroom. Justin gets tips for cleaning out biogases from the drains and checking the water heater anode rod.
Ask Your Home Improvement Question
Podcast Transcript
Read Transcript
| 00:00:24 | TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler. |
| 00:00:29 | LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. |
| 00:00:30 | TOM: And we are here to help you with projects you may be planning around your house. If you need some expert guidance to get the job done, well, that’s us. So reach out to us with your questions at 1-888-Money-Pit, 888-666-3974. Whether you are a do-it-yourselfer or a do-it-for-me kind of home improver, let’s take on those projects together. Coming up on today’s show, if you’ve ever thought of adding hardwood floors to your home, you might be surprised to know that some hardwood floors are, well, not quite as hard as others. We’re gonna share some tips on how to choose the hardest hardwoods for maximum durability just ahead. |
| 00:01:09 | LESLIE: And women are taking on more DIY projects than ever, but their strategies and motivations are shaking up the traditional approach. New research reveals how female DIYers are redefining home improvement. |
| 00:01:22 | TOM: Plus, Replacing Your Front Door is a project that can increase both your home’s value and its curb appeal. We’re gonna share some tips on how to get that project done. |
| 00:01:30 | LESLIE: First, we wanna hear what you are working on now or what project you’re planning to take on next, because we are here to help you create your best home ever. So whatever it is you are working on, rebuilding, redesigning, we have got you covered. |
| 00:01:44 | TOM: Plus, if you reach out to us at 1-888-Money-Pit, 888-666-3974, we are here to help you create your best home ever. And if you’re still here today with your questions, you might just win a copy of my new book, Home Maintenance for Dummies. It’s sort of like an encyclopedia where you can look up the answer to any project that you would like to do. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who was asking me about removing popcorn ceiling. And I’m like, ah, page 312. It’s all in there. So call us right now at 1-888-Money-Pit. You might just win my book. Leslie, let’s get to it. Who’s first? |
| 00:02:11 | LESLIE: Claudia in Massachusetts on the line has a question about insulation. How can we help you today? |
| 00:02:15 | CALLER: I’m working on doing some upgrades to my father’s house and his attic has some insulation and it’s it’s falling down in parts and I wanted to find out first of all how do I know if it’s and it seems like a simple enough job to do it myself but I don’t know if it’s safe to do it myself. The house was built in that probably in the 1950s and he bought it in the late 70s so I’m not sure can I just remove the parts that are falling off? |
| 00:02:48 | TOM: You said the insulation is falling down the ceilings falling down? |
| 00:02:53 | CALLER: The insulation. The insulation where? In the attic. And the attic is it’s a like a modified Cape Cod and because he has a fan in the attic a big attic fan that he uses to cool the house in the summer. I don’t might like the idea of an insulation just kind of like hanging and where’s it hanging from? |
| 00:03:14 | TOM: Where is it hanging from? Is it in the roof rafters? Is it in the walls, the knee walls? Where is it? |
| 00:03:18 | CALLER: It’s in the roof. So it’s really the, there’s the, the roof is, it’s a really steep roof on both sides and that effectively is, makes up the walls of the space. |
| 00:03:28 | TOM: Right. So there’s no drywall. It’s just the exposed insulation is what you’re saying. Exactly. Exactly. So that’s not uncommon, but I will say that when you have that type, that type of a cathedral ceiling it’s called, you have to leave some space for ventilation. So if those were two by eight rafters, you couldn’t put eight inches of insulation in it. You’d have to put six inch deep insulation. So you have some space behind it for ventilation. The fact that it’s falling off, it sounds like it might be a paper face or a foil face tab that very often. Paper face. Yeah. It’ll just deteriorate over time. It’s not designed to be a permanent, you know, ceiling surface. So probably just through exposure over the years, it’s become dried out and weak and that’s why it’s, it’s dropping down. So it’s not a hard thing for you to replace. The other thing that you might want to consider though is adding spray foam insulation to that space. And if you did that, it would make an enormous difference on the energy efficiency of the home. And you can do it because it’s not finished now. So it’s fully exposed. If you did it with spray foam, you would basically be spraying foam into those rafter bays. And in some cases, like what I did at my house, I covered the rafters because I wanted thicker insulation and it made an enormous difference in that space and the entire space. So, you know, that’s kind of a bigger improvement. You can just fix up the insulations there now, but if you really want to do something that’s going to last for the ages, spray foam would be the right way to go. |
| 00:04:58 | CALLER: Is spray foam something that, would I have to have someone come and do that? Oh, yeah. Or is that something that I can do on my own? |
| 00:05:04 | TOM: Yeah. It has to be professionally applied. There’s special trucks where it’s kind of like a two-port formula and it’s mixed together at the truck and you have to have guys that are very used to applying it. And it goes on very, very thin and it expands. It has like a 50 to 1 or 100 to 1 expansion ratio. |
| 00:05:18 | CALLER: Oh, wow. |
| 00:05:19 | TOM: So it goes on as a thin coat and then it expands and fills the space. We used Isonene, which is probably the largest manufacturer of spray foam in the country. And those guys did a fantastic job in our house. In fact, if you go to moneypit.com, there is an e-book there, a free e-book called The Money Pit Guide to Insulation. There’s actually pictures of my house and the spray foam as it was being applied. And you can compare and contrast the different types of insulation and actually show you some utility bills before and after to see what effect it had. |
| 00:05:51 | CALLER: Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the help. |
| 00:05:55 | TOM: Well, good luck. You’re a good daughter taking care of your dad’s house. |
| 00:05:57 | LESLIE: I try. Thank you. Jim in Washington is on the line with a question about hot water and it not getting there fast enough. What is going on? |
| 00:06:06 | CALLER: The house is a little less than 30 years old and it’s not really that things have changed that much. But trying to get hot water to the kitchen sink and to the upstairs master bath, quite what feels like quite a bit of time. So I’m looking at putting in a recirculating pump out near the hot water heater with a crossover sensor valve. For the furthest from the hot water heater, which is upstairs. Okay. The kitchen, I don’t know if it needs a separate sensor or not. And I don’t know, but I imagine it’s on a different leg, if you will, of the run from the hot water heater. It just, I don’t know, because we weren’t here when the house was built. |
| 00:07:05 | TOM: It’s possible, depending on how the piping is. Okay. It’s arranged. What kind of a pump are you thinking about putting on? There’s one made by Watts. Yep. |
| 00:07:15 | CALLER: It’s a Watts 500, 800, I think is the number that seemed to get the best reviews. So I guess basically I’m concerned whether is that a good pump. Evidently it must be okay. |
| 00:07:27 | TOM: It is. Those guys really know what they’re doing and they were out early with this product. And what I like about the Watts system is this. There’s a timer on it or a thermostat on it. So you can basically control when it runs. So what you do is you set it up so that if you get up the same time every day and pop in the shower at, I don’t know, 6 AM, 7 AM, you have this kick on a half hour ahead of time. So it purges all the cold water out of the pipes and is then hot basically before you need it. So when you step in the shower, it’s on. So that means that you don’t have to run that loop of hot water all the time, which if you think about it, would drive up your heating costs because you’re heating more water than you would have to. So you set it up according to your own personal schedule. Now, there’s another way you can go and this is something you might think about doing if your water heater is maybe at or beyond a normal life cycle. Rheem just came out with a new water heater that’s called the Performance High Efficiency Tankless Gas Water Heater with built-in recirculation. They actually added the recirculation element to the water heater itself. So much like the way that Watt system works where there’s a crossover valve at the farthest fixture away, you would do this with the Rheem unit. And then the water heater is sort of taking over here and it’s a really smart one. It has a smart technology built into it. So it actually sort of starts to manage or measure your patterns of water usage. And when it kind of gets used to where you want the water to be hot, it supplies it before you need it. So I think that’s kind of a cool technology, sort of the next level of that. And they’re not terribly expensive. I mean, the fact that it’s tankless, you never run it in hot water. They’re at Home Depot for around $1,300 or $1,400 right now. So I think for a good water heater, that’s not a lot of money to pay, especially if it has this built-in technology. So those are two options for you that could both work well. |
| 00:09:17 | CALLER: Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate that information. |
| 00:09:20 | TOM: Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:09:25 | LESLIE: Hey, guys. If you’ve heard a helpful tip or two while listening to our show, please help us help even more home improvers by dropping us a five-star review. |
| 00:09:32 | TOM: That would be awesome, and you might even win a copy of our book, My Home, My Money Pit, your guide to every home improvement adventure. Just go to MoneyPit.com slash review. |
| 00:09:44 | LESLIE: Now we’re taking a call from Luann who’s dealing with a flooring issue. What’s going on? |
| 00:09:48 | CALLER: Well, I had a hallway carpet when I moved here, but my cat got sick. |
| 00:09:54 | CALLER: Uh-oh. |
| 00:09:55 | CALLER: And he started peeing, yeah, all over the carpet. Okay. So I removed the carpet. |
| 00:10:01 | CALLER: Mm-hmm. |
| 00:10:02 | CALLER: I washed the plywood floor, and then I painted it with Kills. Okay. Which is supposed to kill the smell. Yep. |
| 00:10:12 | CALLER: Okay? Mm-hmm. |
| 00:10:12 | CALLER: Now my dog goes pee in one spot every night, and I’m going to have someone come in next week. They’re putting down the, you know, that plastic or whatever they put underneath, and I’m getting hardwood. |
| 00:10:28 | TOM: Okay. So you’re kind of a glutton for punishment here. You keep improving the floors, and the pets keep ruining them on you. Here’s what I would do. I would take up the old floor, and I would prime the subfloor again just because this is the time to do that. Okay. You did it right the first time. I just think you should do it again because this way, if there’s anything left over from the pets, this will help to seal it in. And it won’t be nearly as bad as if you didn’t do it. So before that new floor goes down, I think it’s a smart move. It’s a smart idea to prime the old floor again. Kills was a fine product. If you had a choice, I would use the oil-based or the solvent-based version of that because it comes latex, and it comes solvent-based. The solvent-based is a little tougher and gives you a better seal than the water-based. |
| 00:11:16 | CALLER: Well, to be honest, it was the oil-based. I didn’t know it. |
| 00:11:21 | TOM: Oh, good. Well, you made the right decision then. |
| 00:11:22 | CALLER: And it was winter, and I’m putting it on. |
| 00:11:24 | TOM: Yeah, that’s a good idea. If you have a problem with a pet like that is to prime that surface. It does get saturated, and it’s the best way to seal it in permanently. So good luck with that project, Luanne. And maybe we need to do a little work training the pets, right? |
| 00:11:37 | LESLIE: Oh, well, thank you two so very much. |
| 00:11:41 | TOM: You’re welcome. |
| 00:11:42 | LESLIE: Well, it might be called hardwood, but not all hardwood floors are the same. In fact, some can be more than twice as hard as the others. |
| 00:11:50 | TOM: That’s right. Now, first, the hardwoods of wood flooring is determined by what’s called the Janka rating, J-A-N-K-A. And that compares the hardness of different species of wood. And this is important to know because the higher the Janka rating, the harder the floor will be, which means to you it’s less likely to wear out and scratch and dent. |
| 00:12:10 | LESLIE: Now, red oak is probably the most common hardwood floor in most homes, and that has a Janka rating of 1290, which is pretty much the industry benchmark for comparing the relative hardness of different wood species. With older homes, softer woods like southern yellow pine were common, but that has a Janka rating of 870, which is about a third less. |
| 00:12:30 | TOM: Yeah, and you know what? I have Douglas fir floors in my very old home, and that’s probably similar to the southern yellow pine. And if you’re not careful, they do dent, but they also wear to a nice satin. So there’s positive and negative aspects of each species of wood. But for the highest Janka ratings in floor, you need to look into some of the exotics, like exotic solid hardwoods like Brazilian walnut, like Brazilian pecan and Brazilian chestnut. These all have Janka ratings over 3000, which makes them like more than twice as hard as red oak and among the most durable selections for your hardwood floor. And we should probably include in there bamboo, Leslie, because that’s really tough as well. |
| 00:13:10 | LESLIE: Yeah, it’s super durable, and it’s really attractive, and you know, it’s very resourceful, and I think it’s a great option. |
| 00:13:16 | TOM: Yeah, and probably a lot easier than finding a whole suite of Brazilian hardwoods, and less expensive too. |
| 00:13:22 | LESLIE: Don from Pennsylvania is on the line with icicles on his siding. What’s going on? |
| 00:13:26 | CALLER: I had a strange thing happen on the backside of my house, which faces the northeast. It has vinyl siding on it, and I noticed this past week we had a lot of snow and wind. I have icicles running down my siding only on that wall, and the water’s dripping out of the drain holes in the siding. This hasn’t happened. It’s been sided for three or four years, and I hadn’t ever noticed that before. And it did go all the way across the full width of the wall, every foot or so, but it wasn’t just in one location. It happened to go all the way across the wall, 16, 18, 20 feet or so. |
| 00:14:19 | TOM: Now, do you also happen to have an ice dam on the roof above it? Like ice on the ice? Is there icicles coming off of it? Off the gutter? Do you see ice built up at the roof edge, Don? |
| 00:14:28 | CALLER: Well, I’ve had that problem, yes. |
| 00:14:30 | TOM: I wonder if water’s getting behind the siding. That’s why I asked that question. |
| 00:14:33 | CALLER: It was so cold, it wasn’t doing the—when it melted at all or was warm enough to melt, it was while the weather was really cold that it formed. But I mean, I would agree with you. It could have—it’s just that it had never happened in that way before. |
| 00:14:54 | TOM: Now, the water that’s coming out, it must be coming out through the siding, drain holes, and then icing once it hits the outside of it. Is that what you’re saying? |
| 00:15:01 | CALLER: Yes, exactly, yes. |
| 00:15:02 | TOM: So the only way that seems to me that it could be happening is if the water’s getting behind it, and an ice dam would cause that. Now, for those that are listening and aren’t familiar with ice dams, it’s probably a good thing that you’re not, because what happens is if you live in certain climates and you get a heavy snow, it starts to melt then at the upper part of your roof, which is usually warmer because a lot of escaping heat from the house gets there. As that snow starts to melt and the water runs down, it hits the part of your roof that’s overhanging the exterior wall. And since it’s overhanging the wall and not your house, it’s colder, and hence, it tends to freeze there. And once it freezes, you get like the effect of a dam. The water keeps hitting that dam, and it can’t get through it, so it backs up under the shingles, and then it can leak down through the sheathing, and it can either leak into your house or it can leak into the exterior wall and perhaps show up as it is in your house, Dom. Now, one’s always going to say, you know what? When was the last time you did your roof? |
| 00:15:55 | CALLER: It’s a metal roof, and it’s no more than four years old. |
| 00:16:00 | TOM: Well, if it’s a metal roof, you shouldn’t be having water back up under it unless it’s backing up to the seams. So I guess at this point, I would wait for the winter to pass, and then I would take a careful look at the seeming around that area and see if there’s any gaps where water could be forced up under there, because it would seem to me that the most logical way the water is getting into the siding is by being pressed up there through an eye. |
| 00:16:23 | CALLER: Okay, would you recommend, would you feel that these ice tapes that you put in your gutters, if I get the chance in a thaw to add that, do you think that might help? |
| 00:16:42 | TOM: I mean, it may. The real solution here is ice and water shield, and what we don’t know is whether or not that was installed underneath that metal roof. It certainly should have been. It’s a fairly minor addition at that point when you’re putting a metal roof on, but ice and water shield is a membrane that goes from the roof edge up about three feet, and frankly, I generally recommend putting it on the entire roof, because not only does it stop ice dams at the roof edge, but if your roof was ever taken off in a storm, the water can’t get through the ice and water shield, especially if you live in a coastal climate. That’s really, really important. Minor expense it adds to the roof for all the protection that it gives. So ice and water shield in your case, though, would require you to disassemble the metal roof along the roof edge, which is a big project. Now, having said that, it’s also possible that if you got damage inside the house, which doesn’t seem like it happened this time, but if you get damage inside the house and you file a homeowner’s claim, a lot of insurance companies will cover the expense of the roof repair, which of course means taking the roof off and putting the ice and water shield on. So I don’t like to see you necessarily put this electric heat tape, appliance that melts the ice into the gutters, especially if you’ve had it all these years and it only happened this once. As you know, it’s a factor of the weather, so it can change. It may never happen again, or it could happen every year, or it could happen two, three times in winter. So I don’t think I would take any major action just yet. Okay? All right. Don, thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit, and good luck with that project. Hey, did you guys know that a burglar enters a home every 30 seconds? And that’s why we’re excited to partner with Vivint Home Securities. Now, MoneyPit listeners can get their award-winning, smarter, simpler home security system right now starting at an amazing price. It’s just a dollar a day. |
| 00:18:31 | LESLIE: Plus, all of our listeners get free professional installation with a signed agreement. Restrictions apply, but don’t wait. You must call now at 1-800-586-9606. That’s 1-800-586-9606. Kathy in Massachusetts is on the line with a crumbling basement wall. Tell us what’s going on at your MoneyPit. Our house was sold about 1802. |
| 00:18:55 | CALLER: That’s the earliest records that we have. And the chimneys are literally turning to dust in the basement. The bricks themselves, they’re not just crumbling. They have become dust. And I need to know, is there anything we can do to salvage them? Or if we take them down, does it compromise the stability of the whole building? |
| 00:19:14 | TOM: Well, it definitely would not compromise the stability of the building because chimneys are not part of the structure. They just hold themselves up. Now, are these active chimneys or inactive chimneys? Are they being used for a fireplace or for the heating system? No. We are afraid to use them for fireplaces. Okay. No, that’s wise. Well, how is your heating system being vented, Kathy, if it’s not through the chimney? |
| 00:19:33 | CALLER: There’s two fireplaces in the building that extend up to the second floor to the roof. And we have a gas boiler that is vented through one of them. But we can actually vent it to the outside. |
| 00:19:47 | TOM: Is the chimney that’s deteriorating the one outside? Is that the one that the gas boiler is in? |
| 00:19:51 | CALLER: Both of them are. One of them was a cooking oven back in the 1800s. They used it for a school for young girls and taught them the fine arts of cooking. And that is a large walk-in fireplace, and it’s just totally crumbled. The bricks are falling out, and a lot of it’s just dust. The other one is a little better shape, but it’s still turning to dust. |
| 00:20:12 | TOM: All right. Well, first of all, it would be highly unlikely that either of them are safe to use because they’re not lined. Now, the process of lining. There’s a number of ways to do that. But one process of lining is where they drop a tube down the middle of the chimney itself, and they pour a concrete kind of slurry mix around the outside of the tube and then deflate the tube and pull it out. That process can actually make the chimney stronger. If that’s something you’re interested in, you could explore that. It’s probably costly. If you want to just get rid of the chimneys and the fireplaces, then that’s totally fine. And what you’ll do is essentially disassemble them from the top down, and then roof over the openings. As long as you’re not going to use them and you have no plans for it, I see no reason to keep them. |
| 00:20:55 | CALLER: All right. Sounds like a good plan for us. |
| 00:20:57 | TOM: Good luck. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, home improvement projects aren’t just about tools and techniques. They’re also about people. And when it comes to DIY, women are stepping up in a really big way. Now, a new study out by the Home Improvement Research Institute revealed some fascinating insights into how female DIYers are approaching their projects. Yeah. |
| 00:21:21 | LESLIE: One of the most interesting findings is that women are just as likely as men to tackle those DIY projects, but their reasons for doing so often differ. Women are more likely to take on a project because they want to improve their home’s aesthetics and functionality. They’re focused on creating a beautiful and comfortable space, which makes sense because, let’s face it, we spend a lot of time at home. |
| 00:21:41 | TOM: Absolutely. Now, men, on the other hand, tend to be more motivated by cost savings. Hey, I’m not saying we’re cheap, but we’re thinking, hey, how much can I save if I do this myself instead of hiring someone to do it for me? That practical sort of dollar and cents mindset is a big driver for the guys. |
| 00:21:57 | LESLIE: Yeah, and it’s not just the reasons. They approach the projects differently, too. Women tend to do more research before they start. They’re diving into how-to videos. They’re reading reviews. They’re really trying to understand the best way to get that job done. It’s about being prepared and ensuring the outcome is exactly what they envision. Yeah. |
| 00:22:15 | TOM: Well, men often dive right in. I mean, who needs directions, right? They’re more likely to learn as they go, figuring out things along the way. And while that works for some, it can also mean a few extra trips to the hardware store because you’re going to miss something. |
| 00:22:29 | LESLIE: That is true. Now, another big difference is the type of projects that each gender is tackling. Women are more likely to take on those decor-focused projects like painting, wallpapering, organizing. Men lean more towards structural or technical tasks like plumbing, electrical work, or carpentry. Yeah. |
| 00:22:46 | TOM: And what’s interesting, though, is how those roles are shifting. I mean, the study found that more women are tackling traditionally male-dominated projects like installing flooring or building furniture. That confidence gap is narrowing, and that is a great thing for the DIY world. Yeah. |
| 00:22:59 | LESLIE: And here’s something that I love. Women are more likely to recruit friends or family to help them with those projects. It becomes a collaborative effort, which not only gets the job done faster, but it also makes it more fun. Yeah. |
| 00:23:12 | TOM: And men often see DIY as a solo mission because when we screw up, we like to do it in private. both men and women, though, do take pride in their work, and they love the sense of accomplishment. |
| 00:23:23 | LESLIE: Yeah, exactly. DIY isn’t just about saving money or improving your home. It really is also about personal growth, creativity, making a space that feels like your own. Lots of wonderful reasons to tackle these projects. |
| 00:23:36 | TOM: So a really interesting study. I want to thank the folks at the Home Improvement Research Institute, HIRI for short, for sharing the insights. And if you’d like to learn more, there’s a full infographic that details all of this out at hiri.org, H-I-R-I dot O-R-G. |
| 00:23:50 | LESLIE: Now we’ve got Charlotte on the line with a leaky window question. What’s going on at your money pit? |
| 00:23:54 | CALLER: We have a problem with our double pane windows. I go around every morning in the winter and dry out the windows, and we’ve got mold showing up in there. I’ve tried the ceiling fans running. I’ve also tried those deflectors, and we took the deflectors away because the manufacturer or the people we bought it from said that was not good. They said it wasn’t a good idea. And we’re still going around wiping the windows out, and I’ve got mold. I’ve tried cleaning them with a little bit of different things, peroxide, bleach water. Any suggestions on what can keep this down? Wow. |
| 00:24:24 | TOM: I’m sorry to hear that. And you know what? The reason that’s happening is because the windows are not insulated very well, even though they may be thermal pane windows. What’s happening is you have warm, moist air on the inside of your house striking cold glass and then condensing on the glass surface and then dripping down. So the long-term solution here is to get new windows. Now, a shorter-term solution might be to examine all the ways that moisture is building up inside your house, and it can build up in a surprising number of ways. First of all, cooking, right? If you have an exhaust fan that is recirculating that moisture back into the house, that builds up moisture. If you have bath exhaust fans in your bathrooms, if those are not run during, say, 15 minutes, after showers, all that moisture gets into your house. If the grating around the outside of your house is flat or sunken in, that lets more moisture under the house, which will eventually wick up. And finally, if you don’t have good attic ventilation, you get what’s called vapor pressure that can build up inside the house. So if you try to reduce the amount of moisture that’s inside the house, that will control some of that. But unfortunately, the long-term solution here is to replace the windows. They absolutely should not be condensing. And if they were properly insulated, that would not be happening. Does that make sense? |
| 00:25:44 | CALLER: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much. |
| 00:25:46 | TOM: All right. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. |
| 00:25:50 | LESLIE: Well, if you’d like to take on one remodeling project that can increase the value of your home and improve your curb appeal for years to come, installing a new front entry can do both. |
| 00:26:01 | TOM: Yeah, and surveys show that installing a new front entry door to your home can actually deliver a dramatic boost in what home buyers think your home is worth. And that can lead to a lot more interest at the time of sale. |
| 00:26:13 | LESLIE: Now, you can find doors available in wood or steel, but new fiberglass entry doors can look so much like real wood that it’s hard to tell the difference. They’re also far more energy efficient than both wood or steel, and they often come with multi-point locking systems that make them almost impossible to break into. |
| 00:26:30 | TOM: Now, keep in mind, though, installing a new door is not for the inexperienced home improver. It’s definitely best left up to a pro. You know, removing the old door opens your home up to the elements, and surprises like rot and insect damage are often found. Plus, home security systems or electrical wiring all require special care. And pros know how to install a door that’s not going to shift and become hard to operate no matter how much settlement the home goes through or no matter what the weather. This makes sure that you get many years of hassle-free use, so a great investment. I know that we replaced our doors. They were steel doors. When we first moved into our house with fiberglass, probably, I’m going to say, at least 15 years ago now. And, boy, they still work like the day they were installed. I’m so happy with the way those fiberglass doors perform, and you will be, too. |
| 00:27:22 | LESLIE: Justin in Missouri is on the line with a bathroom odor. Let me tell you, Justin, I have had the sulfur smell in my bathroom before, and we can help. What’s going on? |
| 00:27:31 | CALLER: I can’t really find the source of the smell. I just smell it sometimes, and it’s not all the time. But I’ve noticed sometimes whenever it’s warmer weather outside and it cools off, I know it sounds funny, but I get this smell. I can’t find it. There wasn’t a P-trap in the bathtub, and I put one under there. I thought maybe that’s where it was coming from, and that didn’t do anything. And the house was built in 2007, so it’s just almost 10 years old. I don’t know. It’s clean. |
| 00:28:02 | TOM: That’s unusual for a 2007 house to not even have a trap under the tub. It makes me question how the rest of the plumbing was put together. But there’s probably two sources that you should explore. Number one is just a decay of biomaterial in the drain. Sometimes you get what’s called biogas from all the organic material that gets trapped in the drain and in the threads and in the overflow like on a bathroom sink. That all gets trapped in there, and that can really be quite smelly. So a couple of things you can do there is, first of all, close the drain on the sink, fill it up until it starts to overflow, and then put some bleach in the water and let it slowly sort of trickle down the overflow for a while. That will kill any material that’s in the overflow. And then slowly let the water back out into the drain. That will hopefully kill the rest of it. The other thing is if it turns out that it’s just the hot water, it could be a problem with the water heater. Water heaters have something called a sacrificial heat. It’s called anode. And that anode, if it’s worn, you can end up having a sulfur smell as a result of that. The anode is designed to stop the water heater from corroding or rusting. But if it is deteriorated or worn out, you could also get that sort of rotten egg sort of sulfur smell. So I would take a look at the drains first because that’s the easiest thing to do and see if you can clean them really good with a bleach solution as I’ve described. And if it continues. Try to figure it out if it’s coming from the water itself because if that’s the case, then I think that anode is most likely the culprit. Okay? Okay. Thank you, sir. You’re welcome, Justin. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-Money-Pit. Well, a messy home can leave you feeling frustrated and alone, but it shouldn’t. Most messes have a lot in common and Leslie’s got the top reasons for all this messiness and ways to ward them off in today’s edition of Leslie’s Last Word. Leslie, your home is always in perfect order. It’s in organizational condition, right? Yeah. Don’t open the closet. |
| 00:30:09 | LESLIE: You know, I mean, most messy homes are dealt with retroactively. That is, you clean up once that clutter appears. So, you know, you shove it all in the closet and then everything’s good to go for the rest of the day. But no, the key to having an organized home is to kind of be proactive about keeping those messes from forming in the first place. I truly do live by the saying, and it’s an old one, a place for everything and everything in its place. But it’s true. One reason that things pile up on the counter, on the tables, on the floor, even on the steps is that there’s no home for them. So you’ve got to assess what items are always out of place or underfoot and create or alter existing storage. You know, maybe make that spot more visible. Make it easier to reach so that those odds and ends end up going actually where they belong. Next, you kind of have to consistently play clutter cop here. Dollar bins, freebies, all that stuff is fun, but are you going to really use that stuff? I mean, my kids, when they go to the dentist, they still love going into the treasure drawer. Even Henry, who is almost 17, he’s like, I got the slap bracelet and a pencil. And I’m like, great, that is going to end up in the trash in about five minutes. So just don’t take it. But you’ve got to think about that kind of stuff. All those little things, party favors, freebies at the street fair. Do you need them? Probably not. So don’t just take them in the first place. Alleviate that problem right from the beginning. Another great rule of thumb is that when you bring something into the house, whether it’s a new piece of clothing, a new throw pillow, a new blanket, something like that, get rid of something else because, you know, and this really works well for kids. If you’re having a birthday party or the holidays are coming, you know, even as my kids are older, I still do a clean out of things before Christmas just to make room for the stuff that I know is coming in the door in a few days. So you’ve got to kind of make room for what’s coming, but swap it out with something that you don’t use. Donate it. Give it away. Anything you can. Sell it. Put it on the street. Whatever you’ve got to do. But make room for the new stuff. And finally, beware of nostalgia. Tossing your kid’s artwork, that’s tough, but keeping it also kind of can become a burden. So maybe take a picture of it with your child as they kind of create that art and then dispose of it. You know, it’s a great way to kind of document the item. There’s also a lot of different organizations out there that you can send your kid’s artwork to. They can send it all back to you in like a nice book or photographed or digitally. You know, just kind of think about that. Think about cutting out the clutter. I do tell you though, the schools have kind of gone away from all paper things that came home and everything is digital. I can’t tell you how many times since it’s gone digital that I’ve forgotten things that they need because I’m so used to having that paper reminder. But you just kind of have to adjust the way that you work. Take your notes, put up something on a dry erase board so you don’t forget those things. So everybody’s kind of adapting and you can too. |
| 00:33:04 | TOM: I know you. You missed the poster board and the big markers and all the other doodads you used to have to do projects with. I do. And they’re losing that tactical. You know, we want to make sure we preserve that tactical part of growing up and making stuff, right? So there’s good things and there’s bad things, but you know, as long as you stay connected, that’s what’s most important. |
| 00:33:23 | CALLER: Very true. |
| 00:33:24 | TOM: This is the Money Pit Home Improvement Show. Coming up next time on the show, are you a do-it-yourselfer, but maybe need a better do-it-yourself workspace? We’re going to share tips to create a productive and efficient garage workspace to handle projects big and small on the next edition of the Money Pit. |
| (Note: The above referenced transcript is AI-Generated, Unedited and Unproofed and as such may not accurately reflect the recorded audio. Copyright 2025 Squeaky Door Productions, Inc. No portion of this transcript or audio file may be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of Squeaky Door Productions, Inc.) |
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