LESLIE: Jim in Tennessee is doing some drywall work. Tell us what’s going on.
JIM: Well, I’m finishing some drywall in my own house. I’m not skilled enough to end up with a nice, smooth finish using a trowel, so I always end up sanding and sometimes a lot of sanding, which makes a lot of dust and makes a mess.
TOM: Lots of sanding, right? Right.
JIM: Do you have any tips for how to minimize that mess?
TOM: Well, there’s an attachment that you can put on a wet/dry vacuum that helps you sand and sucks the dust up at the same time. I see them all the time at home centers.
LESLIE: Yeah, it’s almost like a giant, sanding sponge but it’s a rectangular piece that attaches to the hose on your shop vac and the sandpaper attaches to that.
JIM: That’s for hand-sanding?
TOM: Yes.
LESLIE: Yeah, because you would hold, essentially, the hose on your vacuum and sand with that.
JIM: Hmm. OK.
LESLIE: And then that makes it – and you know, a lot of the pros, because they’re sanding such long surfaces, they also put the sanding block – essentially, same thing: long rectangle with the sandpaper on top of it – on a painter’s stick to help them but that doesn’t minimize the dust. I mean the other thing you could do is use those plastic sort of – is it called a ZipWall, Tom?
TOM: Yes, a ZipWall, to isolate …
LESLIE: And they sort of spring between your door frames and they create – they sort of trap you in that room and keep the dust all in there and keep it from traveling to the other rooms in the house.
TOM: And if you do that, what you want to do is you want to stick a fan in the window and depressurize the space. And then open it up somewhere in the other side of the room so you get this sort of cross-ventilation. Then, when the dust gets in the air, it gets sort of pumped right outside.
JIM: OK, good.
TOM: That minimizes it from getting through to the rest of the house.
JIM: Very good. Well, I appreciate the ideas.
TOM: You’re very welcome, Jim. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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