TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: We are here to help you with your home improvement projects. So, pick up the phone and help yourself, first, at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. Want to wish everyone a happy holiday and happy new year. If all of this happiness has gotten you thinking about what would make you happy in your home, maybe there’s a project on your to-do list that we can help with at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Coming up this hour, if you’ve slugged through another holiday with a kitchen that needs an update, new kitchen floors might be on your to-do list. We’re going to have tips on how to choose the best flooring for this hardworking space.
LESLIE: And if you’ve ever had your electricity go out, a portable generator can be handy. But running extension cords to all ends of the house really isn’t. We’re going to have tips on a much easier way to get portable power exactly where you need it.
TOM: Plus, before the next snow falls, we’ve got tips on how to prevent snow and ice damage, including our recipe to stop slippery sidewalks from forming in the first place.
LESLIE: And as the days get darker, this hour, we’re giving away a set of five Lutron Maestro Occupancy-Sensing Switches to add lighting automation to your home.
TOM: Yep. These are super convenient because they give you a way to turn the lights on and off hands-free and they’re very easy to install, as well. They retail for 20 bucks each. We’ve got a set of five going out to one lucky caller. Make that you. The number here is 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Catherine in Delaware, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
CATHERINE: My bathroom was painted years ago with oil-based paint. And when the fellows decided to put the new paint on, it’s just washable Glidden paint – scrubbable and washable. And it started to bubble. So they stopped and they’re going to come back next week and do another coat of this washable paint.
TOM: See, when the paint doesn’t stick, OK, and it starts to peel off …
LESLIE: Let’s just add some more paint.
TOM: What do you do? Put more on top of it, right? That’s just silly. No, you want to stop them from doing that. Here’s what has to happen. You’ve got to pull off all the paint they put on already. And if it’s peeling, that may not be a big deal. Then you have to clean the walls. You want to use trisodium phosphate – TSP. It’s a powder, you mix it up. You’ll find it in a hardware store.
And here’s the most important step, Catherine, and that is you’ve got to prime these walls. And you want to use a good-quality primer. You want to use one that is an oil-based primer, as a matter of fact: an alkaline-based primer, like KILZ, for example. That will stick to the old finish. And then once it dries, you will be able to put a latex paint over that and you’ll have really good adhesion.
Right now, they’re trying to paint Teflon, so to speak, alright? And you’ve not prepped that surface properly to make that new paint stick.
CATHERINE: Oh, good. OK. Thank you so much.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Alright. Now, we’ve got Steve in Kansas on the line who’s got a question about insulation. How can we help you today?
STEVE: Well, we’re thinking about building a house and I’ve checked on different insulations. And I would like to know if I could – there’s a – I know they have the FROTH-PAKs but they’re only small cylinders to spray the foam insulation. Is there some way that you can buy the bigger – say the barrels that you could do your own insulation instead of having to hire somebody to do it?
TOM: So you’re interested in spray-foam insulation, but you’re wondering if there’s a DIY version where you can do an entire house yourself?
STEVE: Right, right. I know you can buy the small, like the 20 – what they call a 20-pound – they call it the FROTH-PAK.
TOM: See, the answer to your question is no. There is not a do-it-yourself spray-foam option. There certainly is do-it-yourself options is you’re doing fiberglass. I wouldn’t even recommend the do-it-yourself option for cellulose, because it’s a little trickier to install that to get the right density and the right weight. But spray foam is absolutely something you should consider and even if it costs a little bit more to do than fiberglass, because it does something that fiberglass can’t do and that is that it weatherproofs your home, as well. It stops all of the drafts because it seals and it insulates.
And I speak from experience on this because I have a very old house built in the late 1800s and I did have it insulated with fiberglass for many years. And then I had an opportunity, in connection with some remodeling that we were doing, to have the entire attic space sprayed with Icynene Spray-Foam Insulation. And I’ve got to tell you, the difference was nothing short of dramatic. And I do not say that about many home improvement products. Believe me, I am very conservative about praise.
This was incredible because, literally, the day after we did this, some rooms in our house that had always been unusually cold in the winter were, for the first time ever, the same temperature as the rest of the house. So it really did a good job in sealing out those drafts and insulating. So, since you are building a new house and you want this house to be warm and comfortable for the many, many years to come, I would highly recommend that you consider spray-foam insulation. And have it done professionally.
The reason it’s not a do-it-yourself project, by the way, is because the mix on that spray foam is really, really important; it’s got to be done just right. If it’s not mixed or applied in the right way, it can be very problematic. It may not cure properly, it can develop odors with some products. It’s just not the kind of thing that you want to leave to anything but a really, really talented professional, like those at Icynene, which was the product that I used.
So, I think you’re on the right track but it’s something – of all the expenses and the choices you have to make when building a new house, this is something that I would definitely invest in.
STEVE: OK, OK. Well, I know I had one project and they had quoted over $3,000 to do it and I bought the FROTH-PAK and it’s two cylinders and you hook it up and there’s – it mixes itself. And I did it for less than $1,000. So, that’s what I was looking at and maybe I’ll have to try to look into doing the FROTH-PAKs for that. But I know it’s going to be a lot of bottles sitting around if I have to do it that way.
TOM: Yeah. I would definitely get some prices from a spray-foam insulation contractor, as well, and – then so you’ll be able to compare it. But I really feel strongly about it. It’s worth having it done professionally.
STEVE: OK, OK. Well, thank you. Appreciate your input.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You are tuned to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show on air and online at MoneyPit.com.
Happy New Year, everybody. What are you working on this coming year? DO you have some New Year’s home resolutions you want to tackle? Let us give you a hand. We’re here to help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: 888-666-3974.
Up next, kitchen-remodeling projects always peak after the holidays because that’s when most of us realize how badly we need a new kitchen. We’ve got tips to help you choose the best flooring for your kitchen project, plus a great way to get a free design consultation that can help get the entire project done. That’s all coming up, after this.
TOM: Up until now, you purchased insulation to insulate, to help keep warm spaces warm and cool spaces cool.
LESLIE: But now, Owens Corning has changed all of that with Pure Safety High Performance Insulation. Pure Safety not only insulates but also actually contributes to a healthier, safer and more comfortable environment for your family.
TOM: That’s right. First, it’s a high-density, all-purpose insulation that efficiently fills cavities in your home with a layer of thermal protection. Next, Pure Safety contributes to healthier indoor air. It stays put in walls and floors and produces 50 percent less dust than some other insulation products. That means healthier air for your family to breathe.
LESLIE: Pure Safety is also fire-resistant. In case of a fire, you’re going to have extra minutes to escape to safety. And those are minutes that can make all the difference.
TOM: And finally, Pure Safety reduces noise up to 50 percent. It helps to keep outside noise out and reduces inside noise from traveling from room to room inside.
Pure Safety High Performance Insulation from Owens Corning, a single product that will enhance your family’s health, safety and comfort. Learn more at PureSafetyInsulation.com. Pure Safety, the greatest home improvement you’ll never see.
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TOM: Making good homes better, welcome back to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Happy New Year, everyone. Give us a call, right now, with your home improvement project for the new year at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. If you do, we will share some cheer, in the way of five Lutron Maestro Occupancy Switches. Those are going out to one caller drawn at random.
Love these things. Give you a very convenient way to turn the lights on and off automatically when you enter or exit a room. Great for folks that have kids, because the kids can never really leave the lights on. They’re very easy to install. They look great. You can pick them up at your local home improvement store or through your local electrical professional or learn more at LutronSensors.com. But we’ve got a set of five to go away to one lucky caller. Worth 20 bucks each. Total value: 100 bucks.
The number is 1-888-MONEY-PIT. Give us a call right now. Let’s talk about your next home improvement project and we’ll try to shed some light on that and maybe send you some light automation, to boot.
LESLIE: Alright. Now, we’ve got Debbie on the line. Welcome to The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
DEBBIE: We live in an old log house. It has a stone foundation. And the logs were rotted off some of the areas at the end, so we built another wall in front of it. But I’m about – there’s moisture coming up into my kitchen cupboards and it sounds – it smells – you know, the smell is really bad.
And I was – we got a dehumidifier down there. We got a sump pump put in the basement. But I’m still – I still think I’m getting moisture in the cupboards.
TOM: Dehumidifiers and sump pumps are all great but that really doesn’t slow down the amount of moisture that gets into a house. The only way to do that is to make sure that your gutters are clean and free-flowing and the downspouts are extended away from the house by at least 4 to 6 feet and then, also, that the soil around the house is sloping away from the building. Because otherwise, you’re collecting a lot of water in the foundation perimeter. And that will evaporate into the lower spaces and then wick its way up through the rest of the house. And so, your solution is going to start outside your house by addressing those issues.
DEBBIE: OK. Sounds great. Thank you very much.
TOM: Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Alright. Now, we’ve got Steve in Iowa on the line. What can we do for you today?
STEVE: Recently have hail damage to my roof and I’ve been looking at asphalt shingles? I’m thinking about going to a metal roof. Any recommendations on either?
TOM: I think metal roofs are an excellent choice. They’re pretty much lifetime roofs. Once you put a metal roof on, there’s really not much you do to it for the next hundred or so years. So I think it’s a really good choice. That’s why they’re more expensive. They’re much more expensive than asphalt shingles. But they’re incredibly durable. And the finishes on the roofs today can actually help lower cooling bills in the summer, because they have sort of a low-E finish on the roof and that reflects heat back out and keeps it from getting into the building. So I think metal roofing is a really good choice.
STEVE: OK. Very good. Well, thank you so much.
TOM: Well, you’re welcome. And good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Well, kitchen renovations peak this time of year thanks, in part, to the workout that our kitchens always get over the holidays and the realization that maybe it’s time. Now, choosing the right floor for that space is an important part of the process. So, here are a few tips to help with that decision, presented by CliqStudios.com.
LESLIE: Yeah. First of all, your kitchen floor, it takes a lot of punishment between the fact that it’s a potentially wet location, as well as that kitchens are usually the one area of your home where everybody loves to hang out. Forget about your fancy living room or your lovely den; they want to be in your kitchen. So you really need to choose a floor that can stand up.
TOM: Well, that’s right. So, the most common choices over the years have always been vinyl or perhaps ceramic tile. But you can also opt for laminate floor, especially because there are new, water-resistant options available. You can also think about using engineered hardwood – and that’s made up of layers of hardwood and it’s more moisture-resistant than the real thing – or even a brand-new type of totally waterproof floor called EVP. That stands for engineered vinyl plank. It’s amazing stuff because it looks just like hardwood. It’s incredibly durable but it is completely resistant to water.
LESLIE: Yeah. The other thing that you have to consider is the transition. How is that flooring going to transition to the adjoining rooms in your home, both from a carpentry perspective and from a décor perspective, as well? How do these new floors flow and then connect to the floors you already have?
TOM: Now, floor design is obviously just one part of the kitchen-design process. For cabinets, CliqStudios.com is also an excellent resource because they offer a free, no-obligation design service. And that means you can work with their team to design your new kitchen cabinets. All you’ve got to do is go to CliqStudios.com/Free and sign up for the free design consultation.
LESLIE: It’s a great service because all you do is head to CliqStudios.com/Free, you sign up with a few details about your kitchen, like its size. You can even upload photos of what it looks like now. Then CliqStudios.com is going to match you with one of their professional kitchen designers who is going to work with you to create a set of plans for your dream kitchen.
TOM: Plus, you can also download a free design guide that was put together by the editors at This Old House. That’s all at CliqStudios.com/Free. That’s C-l-i-q-Studios.com/Free.
LESLIE: Genie in Ohio is on the line with a crud question. What is going on at your money pit?
GENIE: My friend – I’m afraid it that her – it seems like her apartment may be making her sick.
TOM: Well, what are you seeing?
GENIE: She has central air. She has COPD. Two weeks after they change the filter – if they get around to it – they’re dirty again and she’s been vacuuming them up and wiping around them with bleach, water and stuff like that. And she said out of the vents, also, there’s a brown something or the other. But she doesn’t know what it is and I don’t know. She doesn’t know. It might be mold?
TOM: She has an apartment or she has a house? What kind of a place is it?
GENIE: One-bedroom apartment. She lives with her son. She’s in her late 50s and he’s in his early 30s.
TOM: Right. And it’s a forced-air heating-and-cooling system? So it’s gas-fired or what?
GENIE: Yes.
TOM: OK. So, I mean obviously, the landlord needs to address this. And what I would tell you to do, first, would be to have somebody look at the duct system and really look at the apartment for sources of mold. The problem is that landlords aren’t motivated to find mold because that means they’ve got to fix it up. But a good mold inspector could detect it.
It’s hard to figure out what’s coming out of these ducts and certainly, the filter needs to be changed on a regular basis. And if you have a better-quality filter – the filters come in a wide range of qualities. But if you have a good-quality filter, that’s going to do a pretty good job of trapping most of this. But you shouldn’t be seeing a constant source of substance coming out of those ducts unless they’re dirty and need to be cleaned. So that’s kind of one thing that comes to mind.
You say that the house might be making her sick. Does she get better when she leaves the place or does she just not leave and she’s there all the time?
GENIE: It seems – well, she’s been in the hospital a couple times with bronchitis and other kinds of stuff that are breathing. I think I told you she has COPD.
TOM: Well, no, obviously, there could be a lot of things that are causing her distress. But I think eliminating the apartment as one of them would at least make her feel better. I would have it inspected thoroughly by perhaps a home inspector or a mold professional to look for signs of it. Because there are a lot of different places in a house where air quality can be impacted. Carpets can hide dust mites and allergens and different types of mold can form under appliances. There’s just a lot of places. And so, if you really suspect that there could be something of the mold nature going on there, I would have it inspected by a pro and figure out what’s there.
GENIE: Yeah. She talked about liking her purifier but I said, “If your system is dirty, I’m afraid it would fight each other.”
TOM: Yeah. Listen, you don’t want to go that way – you don’t want to add more filtration to this. I want you to inspect and determine if there’s a problem that exists. Then you can talk about the best way to clean it. So don’t keep throwing money out at this. Get the information, figure out what’s going on or maybe not going on and then you could put your mind to rest. Yes, having a good-quality filter in your HVAC system is important.
There’s a website, by the way, called FilterEasy.com that I like because you can sign up for a subscription service for filters. They end up being less expensive than they are in the store. And you just sign up once and then they’ll send you a filter on whatever frequency you need, probably every about three months. And when it shows up, you just pop it in so it’ll always be clean.
You mentioned that she was always vacuuming. If you don’t have a HEPA vacuum, one that is a high-efficiency vacuum, you could be redistributing that dust to the air. So there’s just a lot of ways that the air could be contaminated and you really need to look at this holistically, not just at one duct at a time. Does that make sense?
GENIE: Yeah. The filter what dot-com?
TOM: FilterEasy.com. FilterEasy.com. Yeah, check it out. It’s a great way to make sure your filters are always replaced when they should be.
GENIE: Thank you so much.
TOM: Good luck, Genie. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Heading to Minnesota where Deb is having some issues with an unlevel floor. What’s going on?
DEB: We’re in a house that the main part of the house was built in the 1930s. And that’s our problem right now, although the rest of the house has got issues, too. It’s over – a little over 3,000 square feet and we tried to sell it. Can’t sell it, so we’re staying but we don’t – there’s only two people living in this big of a house.
So we want to block off the upstairs and just live on the main floor. We were going to change the stairs and enclose them. Right now, they’re open stairways. But when we started doing that, the floor behind it is probably real close to an inch-and-a-half dip.
TOM: And why is it important to you that you try to take this dip out of the floor? Because, generally, when dips form over many, many years, everything gets – kind of gets settled in that space and it’s not always a good idea. In fact, it’s rarely a good idea to try to pick it back up unless it’s an active structural problem, which I doubt this is.
DEB: We want to replace the steps going upstairs. And we can’t do that because the steps that are there right now are actually twisting from the dip.
TOM: Well, that’s not a problem. It’s easier to build a set of steps that fits the existing floor structure then it is to try to fix the floor structure. You can easily make a set of steps that has a stringer that’s longer on one side than the other. You know, very often, when stairs are made sometimes, especially custom stairs, they leave the stringers running long and the carpenters cut them on site so they fit perfectly in the home. But I don’t think it’s necessary to try to rebuild your floor just to fix the stairs.
OK, Deb? Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Just ahead, some home maintenance projects that are going to help your appliances run better. But one can actually stop it from catching fire. We’re going to share that tip, next.
MARILU: Hi. This is Marilu Henner from The Marilu Henner Show. And I’m obsessed with these guys. You’re listening to The Money Pit, my buddies Tom Kraeutler and Leslie Segrete.
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TOM: Making good homes better, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Well, here’s an easy home improvement project that can actually prevent a fire and it has to do with cleaning out your dirty lint traps on your dryers. It can be a big fire hazard because that lint can ignite. You want to make sure your dryer is safe and it’s also energy-efficient. Clean it regularly. You want to eliminate any kinks or any obstructions in that dryer-exhaust duct, as well.
There’s a handy little tool that’s called a LintEater. It’s like a dryer-vent cleaning brush that you can run through it, pull all that dust out of there and make sure it is clean and good to go. You’ll find that your clothes will dry quicker. And by getting that lint out of there, you will reduce the risk of electrical fire.
If you’d like to reduce the complications of a project that you’d like to take on in your money pit, give us a call, right now, because we are here to help at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Jack in Florida is on the line and has a question about a leak. What can we do for you?
JACK: Got an outdoor marble fountain, like an Italian travertine, natural-stone fountain? But the bowl has got – bowl is porous and it leaks out just slowly. And I wondered if – what kind of product I might skim that inner surface of the bowl with.
TOM: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I would think, probably, an epoxy compound – an epoxy paint. Because, as you say, it’s very porous. We want something that’s going to last, perhaps be easy to clean so you can wipe it down at the end of the season. So I would think that if you drained it out and dried it really, really well and use an epoxy patching – an epoxy-paint compound – it’s basically two parts. It’s a chemical dry, so you have the base and then you have the hardener. And you mix them together and then you have an hour or two to work with it. And then once it dries, it really is quite solid and has very good adhesion.
JACK: OK. I guess I’ve never heard of that. What …?
TOM: You see it a lot for garage floors, basement floors and sidewalks. You’ll see it in home centers. QUIKRETE makes a version of it and there’s a number of other manufacturers, as well.
JACK: OK, excellent. And now, you think that would withstand the weather in the winter?
TOM: Yeah. No, I think it would.
JACK: Beautiful. Thanks so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Jack. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Carolyn from Ohio is on the line and has a noisy neighbor. I mean her siding is being noisy. What’s going on?
CAROLYN: The siding is just noisy. The second floor. You can hear it, you know, when you walk through the bedrooms. You can hear the siding.
TOM: It’s vinyl siding?
CAROLYN: It is.
TOM: So, vinyl siding is not supposed to be nailed securely to a home; it’s supposed to be nailed loosely. That’s why, if you look at a piece of vinyl siding, it doesn’t have holes in it; it has slots. And it has to be nailed loosely because the siding is designed to expand and contract when it’s exposed to the sunshine. It has a pretty high expansion-and-contraction rate, as a matter of fact.
I haven’t really heard anyone complaining about noise from it but I do think it would make sense that if you were in a windy area, perhaps you might hear some of that. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good solution for you because you cannot tighten it up. If you do, you’re going to start getting buckled areas. And if you start driving around neighborhoods that have vinyl siding in the summer, have you ever seen a house that’s just got all this sort of wavy siding on it? That’s what happened: it went on too tight and it buckled.
So, if it’s moving, it’s put on correctly. One way to check is to take a piece and just put your hand on it and just try to slide it back and forth. The boards actually should slide if they’re installed properly.
CAROLYN: OK. I’ve had people out to look at it, to fix it. And they say that that – it’s OK. Because I always worry that it’s flying – it’s going to fly off the house or something.
TOM: Yeah. No, don’t worry about that because, like I said, it’s supposed to be loose.
CAROLYN: OK, OK. Thank you.
TOM: Alright. Good luck, Carolyn. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Well, when power outages strike without warning, they’re unavoidable, indiscriminant and more than a little inconvenient. When the electricity is out, it only takes a few hours for food to spoil and your home to turn bitterly cold in the winter or uncomfortably hot in the summer.
TOM: And that’s why portable generators have become almost an essential household appliance. Now, one downfall of a portable generator is having to string extension cords throughout the house to use it. The good news is that there’s a way to increase the versatility of portable generators. And here to tell us all about that is Scott Caron, the electrical contractor on TV’s This Old House.
Welcome, Scott.
SCOTT: Thanks for having me. Boy, it’s nice to be here.
I’ll tell you, those cords are a pain in the neck. What happens normally, you have a portable generator, you roll it out of the garage, you start it up and then you look around where to plug it in. There’s no place to plug it in. So you run cords through windows in the houses, you run them through your garage. It’s just a mess and it’s not safe.
LESLIE: Alright. But there’s got to be a solution, so what can we do to get rid of those cords?
SCOTT: There is, Leslie. The correct way to do it is a transfer switch. Now, this transfer switch with a portable generator has to be manual. That’s really the only way you can do it.
TOM: So that means you have to actually plug the generator into the portable transfer switch. But all the other circuits that you’re feeding off of it can be connected directly to that transfer switch as if it was, say, a mini circuit-breaker panel?
SCOTT: That’s one way of doing it is they have a 6-circuit, 10-circuit, 12-circuit little transfer switch. And you’re able to switch these circuits manually so that if you want 1 or all 12 of them on at the same time, you can do it. And it does the exact same thing as an automatic one. It isolates the utility power from the generator power so that there’s no cross-contamination. You can’t send it one way and they can’t get it back the other way.
TOM: So is a transfer switch really meant, Scott, then to power every circuit in the house?
SCOTT: Not with the portable ones. With the automatic ones – with a full-house standby generator, they do a really good job of covering almost anything. And you know what? With the right amount of money, you can buy a generator big enough to power any size home. But with these portable ones, you need to pick the circuits very carefully. So if you want your refrigerator on or your heat or a sump pump or a well, then that circuit is tied directly to that manual switch on that transfer switch.
LESLIE: Now, what about grounding? I don’t think people really think, when you’re using a portable generator, that you have to ground to things that you’re connecting to it.
SCOTT: It is often overlooked. The ground in the electrical panel inside your house usually covers what needs to happen. It’s tied into the water meter, it’s tied into the neutral. However, the secondary ground needs to be tied to a great ground source.
Now, if you have a copper water pipe in your home that you can get to easily with a wire or copper wire, we recommend that. Or you could drive a copper ground rod out by wherever the generator is going. But you need an earth ground for any sort of a fault that would happen.
TOM: And of course, we can’t talk about portable generators without having a cautionary note about the issue of carbon-monoxide poisoning. It happens every winter, sometimes more than once, when folks run these generators in enclosed spaces, including even open garages where the doors are open. That combustion gas can get into the house pretty easily, right?
SCOTT: It’s not a good thing. What happens is they’ll roll the generator out of the garage, open the garage a little bit, and they’ll start the generator up. What happens? The carbon monoxide just drafts right back into the house and it just creates a really toxic situation.
TOM: So always use that generator outside and of course, always, always, always have a carbon-monoxide detector in your home.
Scott Caron, the electrical contractor from TV’s This Old House, great advice. Thank you so much for stopping by The Money Pit.
SCOTT: You bet. It was good to be here.
LESLIE: You can catch the current season of This Old House and Ask This Old House on PBS. For local listings and step-by-step videos of many common home improvement projects, visit ThisOldHouse.com.
TOM: And Ask This Old House is brought to you on PBS by Gorilla Glue. For the toughest jobs on Planet Earth.
Just ahead, we’ve got tips for preventing slippery sidewalks and other damage from snow and ice, when The Money Pit continues after this.
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ANNOUNCER: Today’s Money Pit is presented by Mr. Beams. Lighting solutions that can be installed in five minutes. No wires, no electrician, no kidding. Find Mr. Beams lights at major retailers and learn more at MrBeams.com.
TOM: Making good homes better, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
Give us a call at 888-MONEY-PIT. We want to help you get whatever it is you are working on at your money pit this New Year’s weekend done and done well. Plus, we’re giving you a great prize, something fun for the new year. It’s a set of five Lutron Maestro Occupancy Switches.
We’re going to make it so that when your hands are full in this new year, you can still turn on the lights. It’s super convenient because it’s hands-free on and off. Best part: it’s really easy to install. It’s got a great sensor on it. It looks super clean on the wall.
You can check them out at your local home improvement store or even through your local electrical professional. Learn more at LutronSensors.com or you can check them out by calling them at 888-LUTRON-1. And you’re going to get a set of 5 worth 100 bucks.
TOM: 888-666-3974. Give us a call, right now, for the answer to your home improvement question at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Paula in Ohio is on the line.
Paula, what can we do for you today?
PAULA: Me and my husband have an older house. It was built in 1950. And the woodwork through the whole house, it’s all interconnected: the door frames, everything. And we want to sell the house, so we’re trying to find what would be the best and the cheapest solution to fixing that woodwork without having to replace it all.
TOM: So, what’s going on with the woodwork? Is it just worn, is it just heavily painted? I mean what exactly is your problem with your woodwork?
PAULA: Yeah. It’s worn. I think somebody that lived there before us had a dog and some of it’s been chewed on.
TOM: Oh, boy.
PAULA: And it’s like we would replace – you can’t replace parts of it because you can’t get the stain to match. And we don’t really know what to do to make it look better to get it ready to sell.
TOM: So, is this molding kind of fancy molding in terms of – if you were to fill in some of the grooves and the digs in it, could you paint it and have it look halfway decent? Or do you think you have to replace it?
PAULA: I think some of it we’d have to replace it.
TOM: OK. Well, I think that’s kind of what you’re up against. If it’s painted now, you’re going to probably want to replace it with a paint-grade molding. And I think if the areas that are really damaged – you mentioned dog damage. If it’s chewed on, then you may just want to pull that piece off and replace it. But a coat of paint can do wonders with something like that.
I don’t know if there’s a way to kind of decorate around it. And it would be an awful lot of work to replace all that trim. Certainly a possibility but it’s a big job to pull all the trim off and replace it. So I think all you can really hope to do, at this point, is to clean it up, prime it – because that will give you a better paint finish – and then just put a topcoat of paint on it and kind of call it a day.
Leslie, do you have any other suggestions or do you think that’s about it?
LESLIE: No. I really think, you know, priming and painting it really is the best solution. Because once you get into replacing all of the trim work – I mean first of all, it’s a tremendous expense and it’s a lot of work. And you end up cutting and mitering and it can be more complicated, whereas paint is a simple fix for now. At least you can start there and see if it’s something that you like and can live with and work with décor-wise. And if not, then you can at least explore the future options.
PAULA: OK. Great.
TOM: That help you out?
PAULA: That helps me out a lot.
TOM: Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Well, staying on top of snow removal will keep outdoor roots safe and prevent icy buildups. The key, though, is to shovel walkways and driveways right after the storm. Because the longer you wait, the heavier the snow gets.
LESLIE: That’s right. And after shoveling, you should apply salt to melt any ice on the walkways and steps. But choosing the right salt is important.
Now, traditional rock salt works but it’s extremely corrosive to the surfaces. And it can leave your concrete pitted and worn after a full season.
TOM: Yeah. And you’ll be calling us in the spring to try to figure out how to fix it.
LESLIE: “How do I fix this?”
TOM: A much better choice that won’t damage your sidewalks is calcium chloride. It’s a lot less corrosive. And when it’s tracked into the house, it’s not going to be toxic to pets. The best approach for a safe approach, by the way, is just mix a bag of calcium chloride with some sand and then keeping it in a container near your doors. This way, you’ll have the sidewalks all mixed up and ready when you need to apply it.
888-666-3974. Give us a call, right now, with your home improvement question.
LESLIE: Gary, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
GARY: I have a basement I want to do over. I have poured-concrete floors but have poured-concrete walls. I want to seal the floor and the walls and I was kind of thinking – I don’t know if epoxy, like you would use in a garage – epoxy paint on the floor and something – is the same thing on the wall or is there something different for the wall?
TOM: Well, let’s talk about this – these concrete walls. Now, do you have any moisture issues here or are you just kind of being preventative?
GARY: No, no. I made sure that the outside was all tapered. There’s gutters on the outside.
TOM: Yeah. Then you can use a standard masonry wall paint on that. And as far as the floor, the reason to use the epoxy flooring paint is because it’ll be super durable. I don’t think you need to do that on the walls. You basically want to slow down natural evaporation of soil moisture through the walls to the interior.
GARY: That’s great help, guys. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Well, sticking doors can certainly be a nuisance and tricky to fix. We’ve got some options to make them swing once again, after this.
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ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is presented by CliqStudios.com, the smarter way to get a designer kitchen. Visit CliqStudios.com/Free and get a free copy of their Kitchen Cabinets Buyer’s Guide, produced in partnership with This Old House. That’s C-l-i-q-Studios.com/Free.
TOM: Making good homes better, welcome back to The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Give us a call at 1-888-MONEY-PIT or post your question to our website’s Community section at MoneyPit.com. We’ve got a post here form Tara in North Carolina. She’s having a little trouble with a door, huh?
LESLIE: Yeah. Tara writes: “My bedroom door is not closing properly. I think it’s installed on an angle. What’s the best way to make this small adjustment? I don’t want to run the risk of ruining the door, so should I just sand down the parts that are scraping the door frame?”
TOM: You know, there’s really three ways to adjust a door. You can either move the jamb, right? That’s the frame that surrounds it. You can move or cut or sand the door. Or you can adjust it at the hinges. And a lot of times, that hinge adjustment is really the trick of the trade that works. Because if you think about it, if you were to, say, loosen up the top hinge, that’s going to make the door lean away from the hinge. And you’d put a piece of shim behind it. Sometimes, that’s enough to move it away from the hinge and put some more room at the top. Because as one side moves to the left, the top would go down. If the hinge is on the right – and vice versa.
So it really depends on where it’s sticking. The first thing is to figure out where exactly that is and then determine if mechanically, you can change that by loosening or tightening a hinge. And then if that doesn’t work, yeah, you could think about sanding down the door. The easiest way to do that, by the way, is by taking the door off the hinges. But what I would suggest you do is mark the exact area that you want to sand first. In other words, put a tape across it, especially if you’re going to cut it.
LESLIE: So you see where it’s scraping and where it’s sticking.
TOM: Well, yeah. And also if you’re going to cut it. Sometimes, people will cut the doors to make it work. But the thing is, when you take a door off the hinges and lay it flat, you’ll find that the top looks just like the bottom. And you don’t want to cut the wrong side of it by accident, right? So mark it when it’s all together so you know exactly what you’re doing and to remove that material.
If it just moves a little bit, sometimes what you can do is you can take a finish nail, like a Number 10 or 12, and you can drive it into the jamb. That’s the part – again, the frame that surrounds the door. And if you do it very carefully with a couple of good raps, you may move that jamb just a little bit closer to the frame behind it and that can open up space for it. So, a number of ways to adjust that. You’ve really just got to figure out which way the door is leaning and try to reverse that process to get it working.
LESLIE: Alright. Next up, Bobby in New Jersey is asking about a washing machine. He writes: “I’m excited about my new, high-efficiency washer but not the part in the manual that says I might need to reinforce the floor beneath it. What’s this all about?”
TOM: Well, high-efficiency washers spin and agitate at incredibly high speeds. That’s one of the things that makes them efficient. And they use less water as a result of that. Now, if you’ve got a really old house that maybe has a fairly weak floor structure, you might find that that’s a problem and you may have to kind of beef it up a little bit.
But for most of us with an average house and even if you’ve got an old house with pretty sturdy floors, you don’t have to deal with that. I will say this: it’s super important that those high-speed machines be absolutely level, because they will wobble and they will walk and they will make really loud and ridiculous sounds if they’re not level.
LESLIE: They will.
TOM: Now, there’s also another trick and it’s called an anti-vibration block. Have you seen these? They’re rubber feet that can go under the legs of the washing machine and they take up some of that vibration. They’re only about an inch thick. When we put our washers upstairs, I actually set those inside the washing overflow pan. And I tell you what, we never hear that thing when it’s operating. It really did work very, very well for us.
LESLIE: You’re going to love that machine if you just get it stabilized.
If you want some more great tips on making your money pit more efficient and keeping it in tip-top shape, head on over to MoneyPit.com.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show on air and online at MoneyPit.com. Happy New Year, everyone. We hope that you have had an amazing 2016 and are looking forward to a very joyous and successful 2017. We will be here for the year ahead to help you with the home improvement projects that need to get done in your home. You can rely on us for the answers to all your how-to endeavors.
I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: Remember, you can do it yourself …
LESLIE: But you don’t have to do it alone.
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(Copyright 2016 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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