Episode #1976: Hardwood Access Walls | Tips to Keep Circuit Breakers from Blowing | How to Know Your House Age

TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.

LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.

TOM: And we’re here to help you with your home improvement projects. It is almost spring. Do you have some projects on your to-do list? Give us a call. Let’s talk about them. We’ll help you find the best way to get those done quickly, easily and as inexpensively as possible. And we might even help you not have to do it twice. So give us a call right now. That number is 1-888-MONEY-PIT.

Coming up on today’s show, if you love the look of hardwood on your floors, you might not realize that the same product can be used to create a beautiful accent wall. We’re going to have tips to get that project done.

LESLIE: Plus, has this ever happened to you? You’re in the middle of drying your hair and the power goes out.

TOM: All the time.

LESLIE: Listen, it happens sometimes and it’s never fun when it does. But circuit breakers trip for a reason. We’re going to tell you why these devices keep you safe and what you can do if they’re tripping.

TOM: And if you know the age of your home, you can stay ahead of problems common to its vintage. We’ll tell you how to do just that.

LESLIE: But first, we want to know what you want to know. What are you working on? What are your plans? How can we help you to achieve all of those home décor, design, improvement dreams that you’ve got for your money pit?

TOM: The number is 1-888-MONEY-PIT, 888-666-3974.

Leslie, who’s first?

LESLIE: Donna in Michigan is on the line with some pinhole issues in the plumbing. Tell us what’s going on.

DONNA: Hi. I’m a landlord. I have copper water lines. This is my third occurrence now of springing a leak in these copper water lines. Just a little, tiny, tiny pinhole leak. And I’m wondering if there’s such a thing that maybe somebody has invented, where they could just smudge on and press into the hole and maybe harden to the point of a J-B Weld or something like that or not. Or do I have to change the whole line?

TOM: Yeah. Well, look, you could buy yourself time with stuff like that. But what you’re experiencing, these copper – this actually is a very well-known problem. It’s called “copper pinhole pipe leaks.” And it happens …

DONNA: Is it? OK.

TOM: Yeah. It happens because of the acidity in the water. And it basically is a wearing of the interior of your copper pipes. And when it gets thin enough, it forms these little holes. And as you’ve experienced, once it starts it just continues and it’ll be an ongoing thing.

What you would be smart to do would be to replace any of that copper pipe, that you can get access to, when it happens. So, if you end up opening up a wall to, you know, fix any of this or if you can access it from the basement or the crawlspace or the attic, you want to replace that pipe with PEX. That’s P-E-X – cross-linked polyethylene. That’s the state-of-the-art plumbing for today. The stuff is virtually indestructible and you’ll never have to worry about it again. The nice thing about PEX, too, is it’s flexible. So, it can get a run into different locations, in twists and turns, without the traditional need to solder elbows and all that. So it’s a less expensive way to go.

But just patching this is just that; it’s going to continue. By the time you fix one, a month or two later you might pop open another one. So I would encourage you to look towards replacing those pipes as they fail. And if you have the opportunity, replace everything that’s accessible first and then replace everything else as it reveals itself.

DONNA: And then P-E-X you said?

TOM: Yep, PEX. That’s the type of piping. Yep, PEX.

DONNA: OK. And I can go anywhere and get that then, pretty much, right?

TOM: Well, this is – no, this is a job for a pro. It’s not a DIY. You’d have to have special tools but it’s PEX. And if – I’m just telling you this because if you bring a plumber in and the plumber says, “Well, I can replace that with plastic pipes,” I don’t want you to go, “Ah, I don’t know about that plastic.” No, no. You do want PEX – cross-linked polyethylene piping. That’s the stuff that you want and it will be a really good job when it’s done.

DONNA: To glue together then and stuff or what?

LESLIE: There’s fasteners that sort of connect the two and then they’re squeezed to crimp, to create that closure. That’s why it’s sort of specialized. But it’s super durable, super flexible. And it looks fantastic when it’s installed.

TOM: Next time you get online, Google “copper pinhole plumbing leaks” and you’ll read all about it. And you can also look into PEX – P-E-X – pipe, OK?

DONNA: OK. Thank you so much.

TOM: You’re welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Tim, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?

TIM: Considering doing the epoxy floor in my basement.

TOM: OK.

TIM: We’re renovating.

TOM: Alright.

TIM: And I’ve never done one before, so I’m just kind of curious. Is this something that’s achievable by DIY [kind of a] (ph) – or is it something better left to a professional?

TOM: No, it’s absolutely a do-it-yourself project. It’s not difficult to apply an epoxy floor.

Basically, the way the material works is when you purchase the epoxy floor paint, it comes in two containers. It usually is a gallon that only has about three-quarters filled with the epoxy paint and then it has a quart of hardener. And when you’re ready to apply the paint, you mix them together and you’ll have a couple hours or three hours or so of work time.

The key is going to be to make sure that you follow the instructions on prepping that surface. You’re going to obviously clean it first. And then, sometimes, when you buy these epoxy-floor products, there’ll be an acid etch in the kit, which basically you’re going to apply to the floor. That just makes sure that you get anything off that could interrupt the ability of that epoxy to stick.

And then the last step, which is sort of a do-it-as-you-go project, is these products will have color flakes that, as you complete an area – maybe a 4×4 area or 6×6 area – you would sprinkle these color flakes on the wet epoxy. And then they sort of settle down and embed and give the floor a little bit of texture and makes it look kind of cool.

So, I definitely think it’s a do-it-yourself project. And I think it’s something that’s going to look a heck of a lot better than that old concrete floor does right now. Just follow the instructions and you’ll be good to go, Tim.

TIM: Are there any particular brands that you recommend?

LESLIE: No. I mean I think they all kind of work very much in the same manner. It depends on who has better color palette, because some of them are sort of limited. That’s kind of where I start with it. I don’t favor one over the other.

TOM: Yeah, I think if you stick with the major brands, you’ll be good. And just good practice is to double your dry time. So don’t think – if it says it’s going to dry in two hours, give it four or five or six hours or just keep everybody off overnight, because you really want to let it set up good before you start putting traffic on it.

TIM: If I have any kind of cracks or anything in the floor, should I use a floor patch? Because, previously, there were nails and such driven into the floor. So it’s going to have a little bit of a – some little divots and cracks and stuff like that.

TOM: I would say that if there are minor cracks, it’ll be filled in by the epoxy. If they’re significant cracks – if they’re open a ¼-inch or more – then you could use an epoxy patching compound. Take a look at the products made by QUIKRETE. They’re a very good brand and they have some good repair products, as well, on their website at QUIKRETE.com.

TIM: Alright. Well, thanks a lot.

TOM: You can also listen to The Money Pit Podcast. We’ve got some great news on the podcast this week. Apple has the podcast charts and we were very pleased to learn that The Money Pit Home and Garden Podcast is the number-one best podcast in the home-and-garden category of all time. Of all time. How about that?

LESLIE: That’s awesome.

TOM: And you know what? We could not have done it without all of you. So we’re glad that our tips and our advice have been helping you out now for, oh, almost two decades.

If you’ve got a question, we’ve got answers. Give us a call, right now, at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Debbie in Texas is on the line and is dealing with a basement project. Tell us what you’re working on.

DEBBIE: Well, I have a cement floor that, right now, has indoor/outdoor carpet that’s glued down. And I’d like to peel the carpet up and then paint the floor. So my question is: what type of prep – once I get the carpet up, what type of prep do I need to do and then what type of paint should I use?

LESLIE: Now, have you started to try and remove this outdoor carpeting?

DEBBIE: Yes, we have and it is glued and so there’s a glue, I guess, base that’s on the floor. So we’d need to somehow scrape that off?

LESLIE: Yes. And that – and did you say this was a screened-in porch or a covered porch?

DEBBIE: No, it’s an indoor – it’s indoors.

LESLIE: Oh, it’s completely indoors. OK. That’s going to make it a bit of a chore. The reason I was a little excited that you had a lot of fresh air while you were working is because you’re going to need to use an adhesive remover if your plan is to paint this floor. Because you’re going to end up with so much residue from that glue, that’s going to be all over, and there’s a good chance that it’s going to be uneven and raised and spotty in some areas. You’re going to have pieces of carpeting on it and it’s going to be a mess.

So you’re going to have to find exactly what type of adhesive that is and what is the best remover for it. Because depending on what the base is of that adhesive will depend on what type of adhesive remover you use. So it’s really going to be an experimentation to sort of see what works well.

And then once you find what really is working well at loosening up that adhesive, you’re really just going to have to use a heavy-duty scraper and work on that glue residue until that’s up. And then even then, your painted surface is going to look really not that great after all of that work.

DEBBIE: So, I guess your recommendation would be go back with indoor/outdoor carpet.

LESLIE: Well, in a lower-level space, carpeting really isn’t the best idea – whether there’s padding or not, whether it’s glued or not – only because you’re dealing with a dust trap that’s sitting right on top of a concrete slab that tends to get moist. All of that moisture gets up into that carpeting, whether or not it’s indoor/outdoor.

Now, that moisture sort of sits with that dust and creates all sorts of allergens and mold and it’s really not the best idea. Tile would work fantastically. And if you got that floor fairly even-ish, even with the adhesive, you could go ahead and do something with that with tile.

It depends on what you want the space to look like. If you’re OK with seeing an uneven surface and you want to paint over that, then an epoxy coating is perfect for a floor in that situation. But it depends. I spend a lot of time in my basement, so I wouldn’t want to see such an uneven floor surface, whether it was painted my favorite color or not.

DEBBIE: And what harm would come if I just peeled the carpet and scraped the glue – scraped it smooth – and then painted? Would the paint not stick if there was still all the glue there?

LESLIE: I don’t think so. The systems, like the epoxy-coating systems, are usually sold in kits. There’s several steps. The first one is an etching or a cleaning step. Then there’s your topcoat that you mix in with, I guess, all of the different process that sort of cures it and solidifies it. And some of them have that little decorative speckle and that gets sort of sprinkled in there at the end. And you want to work yourself out of a corner so you don’t get trapped down there. But it should stick fairly well.

It just – is this a utility space that you’re strictly storing things in? Is this your family hangout? You have to think about what that space is and how you want it to look.

DEBBIE: OK. Well, that gives me some ideas. I guess I first need to get the carpet up and see what it looks like underneath and go from there. Alright. Well, thank you so much.

LESLIE: Well, with as little as 100 square feet of flooring, you can step up the style in any room of your home by using flooring to create an accent wall. Now, this trendy look is a great weekend home improvement project that delivers a big impact for a relatively small expense.

Now, yeah, you can choose from any flooring material for this project: bamboo, hardwood, wood-look tile, luxury vinyl or even laminate. And you can do this project using decorative wall panels, which are hardwood strips mounted on wood backing. They’re versatile and super easy to install.

TOM: Yeah, that installation is pretty straightforward and it’s pretty much the same as what you would do if you were installing the product to a floor. Depending on the type of flooring, the planks can be secured to the walls using nails, glue or even something called “wood-flooring tape.” You’ll also want to make sure to let that flooring acclimate in your home for a few days – kind of dry out, get used to the temperature and the humidity inside your house – before you start laying them on the wall.

And a little trick of the trade to make it easy: you should arrange your planks side by side on the floor first. Just set aside a space on the floor the same size as the wall. You can essentially plan the whole pattern there. If you want, you can even take some white chalk and write on the planks – you know, one, two, three, four and so on – to get them all in the right order. And then you can install them. This way, you won’t be trying to figure that out, with only two hands, while they’re falling off the wall at the same time.

LESLIE: Heading to South Dakota where Jeremiah is joining The Money Pit. What can we do for you?

JEREMIAH: So I bought a home about six months ago that’s from 1935. And they did an attic conversion already. And the previous owners, apparently, had a drop-down – the attic access door with the stairs that fold down?

TOM: Right.

JEREMIAH: Well, when I bought the house, they put stairs – actual stairs – in there. There’s 13 of them but they’re sticking out into my hallway.

TOM: OK.

JEREMIAH: So when you walk into a bedroom, you’ve got a staircase jutted right in front of the doorway and you hit your head.

TOM: Wow.

JEREMIAH: So I didn’t know what you guys would recommend.

TOM: Yeah. Sounds like they didn’t really think through the whole stair thing very well when they did this attic conversion.

So, look, stair construction is not an easy project. It’s definitely not a DIY project. It’s something that’s sort of advanced carpentry because when you build a stair, there are certain parameters that you have to follow. The step height and the step depth are the two most important ones.

And basically, when you build stairs you measure the total distance from the highest part of the platform to the lowest part. And you divide it so that you can get a height of each step of somewhere between 7 and 8 inches. That’s a normal step height. If it gets much higher than that, then it becomes more of a ladder and less of a stair and people are going to trip.

Now, once you have that, you also now have to have enough depth, right, of the tread. That’s called the “run.” So the run of the stair is usually around 9 inches. And usually, there’s a 10-inch or 10 ½-inch tread that overhangs a little bit. And that part that overhangs is called the “bullnose.” So, when you build a stair, you try to figure this out so you have as few steps as possible but they’re not too tall. But then that’s also going to dictate how far out into the room they go.

Now, if they sort of just bought a stock staircase and threw it in there and tried to call it a day, it’s obviously not going to work. You’re going to have to look at some other way of configuring the stairs. It may not be possible to put one straight run of stair up. Maybe you have to have a stair that turns a corner. Maybe you have to use a spiral stair.

JEREMIAH: Could I maybe take the wall back in the bedroom and shrink the bedroom a little and put a platform in? Make a platform staircase?

TOM: It’s possible if – but I would just be cautious, first of all, to make sure that the wall you’re talking about cutting back is not a bearing wall, because that gets very complicated. And also, remember that if you reduce the size of a bedroom, it potentially has an effect on the value of the home. Although the fact that you’re doing it to add a whole second floor, maybe there’s a trade-off there.

I would tell you to not start digging into this until you have a contractor or an architect look at this and see if there’s an easier way to get this done.

JEREMIAH: OK.

TOM: I sense that you don’t have the experience, completely, to do this design yourself and that’s fine, because very few people that are not pros would. But I think it’s a situation where some professional advice would be well used here, because you want to get this right once. If you do it in a way that looks haphazard or amateurish, it will detract from the value of your home.

I have seen that many times in the years I spent as a home inspector. You walk into a house and you could tell instantly that whoever put this part of the house together was not a pro, because of the way it looks. And it might have been their pet project. Believe me, I have broken many hearts over the years criticizing some of the work that I saw but it just wasn’t right. So, I don’t want to see that happen to you, OK?

JEREMIAH: Alright. Well, I appreciate it. I think that’s what they did, so I didn’t want to cut it out and do the same thing.

TOM: Yeah. Well, good luck. It’s smart of you to research that.

JEREMIAH: Alright. Well, thank you, guys. You have a great day.

TOM: You, too.

LESLIE: Jo from Kentucky is on the line with some help with a bathroom cleaning project. What can we do for you?

JO: Yes. I have an old bathtub and where the water has leaked, I have some porcelain – I guess it’s a porcelain tub. I have some orange spots in there and they look like they’re going to eventually just give way on me. I want to know how I could patch that up.

LESLIE: Are they super-tiny or are they, you know, an inch or so?

JO: Yes. Oh, yes, they’re very small.

TOM: There are touch-ups but you know what? They will show.

LESLIE: Yeah. I’ve used one. When we bought our house, there was a tiny – I mean super-tiny – little rust spot in our tub. And I used a product called Porc-a-Fix? And you can get it in – pretty much in any home center. It comes in a variety of whites and off-whites, so you kind of have to guess which one is going to work close enough to your exact white or bisque or whatever you want to call it.

JO: Right.

LESLIE: And it almost looks like it’s a nail-polish bottle, kind of.

JO: OK.

LESLIE: And you apply it in gradual layers, letting it set up and then going back the next day and putting another one on until you build it up. And it’s done a fairly good job. We’ve been in the house eight years and it’s still there, it’s still covered up. But I know exactly where it is.

JO: OK. Well, I thank you very much.

TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Well, we’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of something when poof, the lights go out. And it seems to always happen at the worst possible time.

TOM: Yep. Now, it may be a nuisance but circuit breakers trip when there’s a major safety hazard. What they’ll do is protect you from an overload, which is basically when too many appliances are running at the same time and the circuit’s drawing too much power. What can happen in this case is the wiring can overheat. So the idea is that the breaker trips before it becomes a fire hazard.

And it can also help protect you from a short circuit, like when an appliance breaks down. The breaker will sense that and shut it down to keep the system safe. So, they do serve a very important purpose. And if they’re tripping, they’re tripping for a reason.

LESLIE: Now, there is a fairly new type of circuit breaker that can help prevent fires called an “arc-fault circuit interrupter.”

So, Tom, how do these arc-fault circuit interrupters really work? Are they just sort of anticipating what’s coming?

TOM: No, they actually do sense an arc. It’s kind of the next level of protection. If there’s any arcing scenario – which could happen if you have a bad switch or if you have a wire that’s overheating or a loose connection, where the basic electricity is jumping from one point to another – it can detect that arc and instantly shut down the circuit breaker.

LESLIE: Now, these AFCIs that we talked about – the arc-fault circuit interrupters – that’s sort of a new concept. But what’s been around a lot longer is a ground-fault circuit interrupter. And I think a lot of people might not really be familiar with what that is, either.

TOM: Well, you’ve probably seen it, although you may now know what it’s called. It’s when you see an outlet that has a Test and Reset button it. You’ll usually see them in kitchens and in bathrooms, perhaps in your garage. It’s basically kind of like the arc fault but like you say, it has been around longer. But it has one job to do and that is to protect you from a shock that’s caused by a grounding.

So a grounding basically means when electricity is trying to find its way back to ground. If that happens, we don’t want you to be the ground. So if it detects 2/1,000 of a volt going to a ground, it will turn off the circuit. So, that’s really a great way to protect you from hazards, especially in damp areas like kitchens and bathrooms and garages. In fact, that’s why the code requires it in spaces just like that.

LESLIE: And I think that’s why people are familiar with seeing them in outlets in those spaces. But you can also install them in the panel directly.

TOM: Yeah, you can. It depends on how the circuit is laid out. In a newer house, you may very well see them in the panel because this way, the entire circuit is covered. But you have to do it carefully.

For example, in your kitchen, you would not want to have the outlet that the refrigerator is using on a GFCI, because the refrigerator going on and off will trip the outlet unexpectedly and not because of a short but just because the refrigerator compressor pulls so much power. It kind of fakes it out. So, in a modern house, you’d have the refrigerator on one circuit, you’d have the lighting on a different circuit and you’d have all the counter outlets on the circuit that was protected by the ground fault.

So, it depends kind of on the age of the house. But whether you have an old house or a new house, you could definitely take advantage of that technology and be all that much safer as a result.

LESLIE: Mike in Georgia is on the line with a question about a dimmer. How can we help you?

MIKE: My kitchen is in the center of my house, so I get very little light from the windows.

TOM: OK.

MIKE: And I tried an LED light. I have five 60-watt cans in there. I had heard you mention about a dimmer that would work with the LEDs? My question is: is there a particular kind? I need one that works with a three-way.

TOM: Yeah. You can go to The Home Depot and you can pick up the Lutron Skylark Contour CžL Dimmer. That’s the Lutron Skylark Contour CžL. This is a dimmer that’s designed specifically to work with energy-efficient bulbs. It works with CFLs and it works with LEDs. And specifically, it’s adjustable so that you can get the lowest level and then the highest level of light. And therefore, when you move the dimmer up and down, it controls that.

Typically, with standard dimmers, you can get a flicker because at some point, you’re going to be not putting enough power in to bring that bulb on. So you get this sort of flickering effect?

MIKE: Right.

TOM: But with this Skylark Contour CžL line of dimmers, you can adjust the low end and this way, it’ll always be on when you turn the switch on. And then you can bring it up from there.

MIKE: Yeah, I was afraid with five cans in the middle of the house, it would look like Yankee Stadium at nighttime.

TOM: No, actually – I actually have one of these dimmers in my kitchen and I’ve got five cans on this dimmer, so I have exactly that situation. And I have LEDs in the lights. I have the Philips LEDs in there, the ones that are yellow. And they turn really super-clean, white light when you turn them on. And I’ve got that Skylark dimmer controlling the whole thing. Now, that’s not a three-way but I’m sure it will work on a three-way.

And the thing that’s cool about Lutron is as you’re putting this together, if you have a question, they have an 800 toll-free, tech-support number. You can call them and there’s somebody always standing by to kind of answer your wiring questions. If you can’t figure out where the extra wire goes, they’ll tell you.

MIKE: OK, great. Thanks a lot.

TOM: You’re welcome, Mike. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Well, as long as there have been homes, there have been home repairs. But if you know the age of your home, you can stay ahead of problems common to its vintage, because homes of a similar age have similar issues.

TOM: Well, that’s right. And in fact, if you know a little bit about the systems through the years, you can get pretty close to determining its age.

So, for example, if you have a house that has some of the original knob-and-tube wiring, that was probably built somewhere around 1920. If it’s got steel plumbing pipes, that might be, say, up as late as 1940. If the walls were not insulated or the chimneys were unlined, that’s early 1900s. If you move into, say, the 1940s to the 60s, you can see things like undersized electrical systems and asbestos ceiling tile. Then when you move into the 1960s to the 80s, then you start seeing things like aluminum wiring and fire-retardant plywood, which were two really big hazards from those years.

So, if you know how your home was put together, you can get a pretty good idea of when it was built.

LESLIE: And I think that’s really important. You’ve got to really know what the age of that house is before you invest, because it’s going to help you understand the features of the structure, as well as the building techniques and the materials that are going to spell trouble later.

And to find out, you know, you can research public records at your local building department, the tax assessor and the register of deeds.

TOM: Yeah. And there’s another way – I’ll give you a little home inspector trick of the trade – that you can figure out the age of the home. If it has the original plumbing fixtures, like a toilet, lift the lid and look at the underside. There are almost always dates stamped into the lid or the tank itself by the manufacturer, literally, as they roll off the assembly line. The date is usually expressed as a four-digit number. It might just say, “1954,” but you might also find that it’s preceded by a letter and just have the last two digits, like M54 or D54. Other plumbing fixtures, like sinks – I’ve seen cast-iron sinks that actually had the date cast into them in really old houses.

So, sometimes if you take a look at those old toilets or old sinks, you can actually find the date that it was made. And you can bet, because these things were so expensive to produce, that your home was probably constructed within a year or two after that.

LESLIE: Now we’ve got Lorraine in Arizona who needs some help with a paneling decorating project.

Welcome, Lorraine.

LORRAINE: We have an older home that has two walls that has paneling on. And I was told that if we took the paneling off, it would probably damage the drywall. So I was considering maybe trying to put something over top of the paneling to give it a different look and wanted some suggestions.

LESLIE: Well, it depends. It depends on how it’s attached to whatever is behind it. There may not be any drywall behind it; it might just be the paneling attached directly to the studs, in which case you would have to put drywall up. It could be that the paneling was glued to the drywall. Then you would never get it off without completely destroying the drywall. Or it could be that it was just nailed on. You’re not really going to know until you sort of peer at a corner or an area where you can take off a little bit of trim work and see what exactly is going on before you make a decision. So that’s probably best step number one.

Now, if you find out that there’s really no removing it and your choices are to deal with the paneling and make it look better or cover over it with ¼-inch drywall, you can do that. It depends on how much work you want to do.

Painting paneling certainly is an excellent option. I mean it creates a totally different look when you paint paneling a crisp, glossy white or an off-white or something that really just poses a good, neutral backdrop and just sort of go with it.

LORRAINE: OK. This is very light paneling anyway.

LESLIE: And are you at a point where you just want to see it be darker, different or gone?

LORRAINE: Different.

LESLIE: Painting it really does look nice. It doesn’t have to be something that, in the end, you’re going to think, “Ooh, that doesn’t look good.” You just have to make sure that you clean it, you prime it well and then you give it a good topcoat.

Now, I would really start by just taking off a piece of trimming and door frame and seeing how it’s attached. And if you want to truly start with just a fresh look, you can absolutely cover over the entire space with ¼-inch drywall without losing too much space. You’re just going to have to sort of bump-out your electrical boxes, your switches, your trim work, et cetera which, for a handy person, isn’t that big of a deal. So it could be a project you could do on your own. Or to hire somebody wouldn’t be that expensive.

LORRAINE: OK. Sounds good.

LESLIE: Alright. Good luck with that.

TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: You can always post your question on MoneyPit.com, just like David from Utah did.

Now, David writes: “I pulled up old carpet in a home we’re moving into next week, which revealed gorgeous hardwood except the hardwood is covered in staples and rust. What’s a quick fix for fixing this up before we move in? I don’t want to take on sanding and refinishing right now.”

TOM: Well, I’ve got to tell you, David, this is the time to take on sanding and refinishing. Because the hardest part of doing your floors is finding the floor through all the furniture and carpet and all the other stuff that’s going to get piled in there. I can tell you that, man, that is really the work of doing that kind of job.

I will tell you that you probably, in this case, don’t have to do a serious sanding, because it sounds like what you’ve just got is sort of the surface showing a little bit of wear. And the rust is probably from the nails that went through it. But you could probably clear that – clean that up with not a full sanding but just with a sanding screen.

So, what you could do is you could rent a buffer at, you know, a local home center or rental place. And instead of using a buffing pad on it, they will give you sanding screens, which are like – usually like 100-grit, maybe 80-grit screens. They look, literally, like window screens but they’re discs. You put it under the buffer and you work that across the floor. And it tends to take off not only the dirt and grime but that sort of first layer of finish. And if there’s any stains, like rust, on it it’ll probably take that off or you could do a little bit of hand touch-up after that.

And once that’s all done, then you can literally mop on polyurethane. You’ll need two to three coats. Use a lambswool applicator, which is kind of a piece of cloth that wraps around what looks like the size of a roller but it’s kind of a bracket that holds it in place on a long stick. And you apply it by literally mopping it on. You do it a little cut-in around the edges and work your way to the door. Hopefully, you’ll find some dry weather.

And do get that done, even if you put off drying – even if you put off moving in for a couple more days. You will definitely thank yourself for not having waited on that project.

LESLIE: We’ve got a post here from Mason in Tennessee who writes: “Our pressure-treated pine fence was stained 12 years ago when we put it up. I recently power-washed it and I like the new, natural look. Can I leave it like this or does it make sense to stain it again?”

TOM: Well, you’re definitely going to need to stain that again. The “natural look” that you’re calling it is not going to stay that way for very long. By the end of the summer, it’ll probably get dark gray and then it might even start to turn black in places.

So, I would definitely stain it again. I would use a solid-color stain. Now, if you like the color of it now, you can find a stain that color. But a solid-color stain will seal the wood and give it the protection that it needs and it’ll still show the grain.

And one trick of the trade. If those fence boards are rubbing on the ground, undercut them so you put a little air gap in there. And that fence will last a whole lot longer as a result.

LESLIE: Alright. Good tip. Good luck, Mason.

TOM: You’ve been listening to The Money Pit Home Improvement Show and we’re so glad that you are. We hope that we’ve been able to give you some tips and ideas on projects that you would like to tackle and get done around your house. If you run into anything that you can’t handle, if you run into something that’s confusing, if you’re wondering if a purchase of a home improvement product or project makes financial sense for your home, if you’ve got questions, basically, we are here to take them, 24/7, at 1-888-MONEY-PIT, 888-666-3974.

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.

(Copyright 2020 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.)