Space-Saving Kitchen Islands | Eye-Catching Driveway Markers | Easy DYI De-Icer Recipe | Ep #2280

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: We are here to help you take on the projects that you want to get done around your house, your home, your co-op, your condo, your apartment, your tent, wherever you call home. If you’ve got a project you’d like to do, we would love to help. You can reach out to us at any time by calling 1-888-MONEY-PIT – that’s 888-666-3974 – or post your questions on MoneyPit.com. Just click the microphone button.

Coming up on today’s show, if you need some extra prep space in your kitchen, what about adding a kitchen island? We’re going to share some design tips that can help you out even if you don’t feel you have the space for one.

LESLIE: And adding a driveway marker can be a fun and practical project that can definitely step up your curb appeal and improve your home safety. So we’re going to share some tips for building that project, in just a bit.

TOM: And here’s a generally unpleasant project: deicing your car window, right, when it’s cold and freezing outside and you’re trying to get the ice and the fog off the window. We’re going to share a simple recipe for a DIY deicer. You can make it yourself and you can get the job done quickly and easily.

LESLIE: But first, what’s your home reno plan for this year? You got a project or two in mind? Well, we want to help you create your best home ever. So whether you want to renovate a house, a condo or an apartment, we can help you with answers to questions about remodeling, renovation, décor, all of the ins and outs of your projects. So definitely reach out.

TOM: But first, you’ve got to help yourself by calling us with those questions at 888-MONEY-PIT or posting them on MoneyPit.com.

So, let’s get to it. Leslie, who’s first?

LESLIE: We’ve got Matthew from Illinois on the line who’s looking for some ideas on what projects are best for the house.

How can we help?

MATTHEW: Well, I have a three bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house. It’s a ranch in a very desirable neighborhood for our area. And I’m wondering, if we’re trying to add some square footage, is it the better value to do some underpinning and dig out a basement or to look at adding on a second story? What would be more cost-effective and what is better to affect the value of the house?

TOM: That’s a good question. I want to ask you about your neighborhood. Are most of the homes ranches or are there some two-story homes around you?

MATTHEW: It’s about 50/50.

TOM: So, my gut would tell me that putting a second floor on would probably be much more desirable to a home buyer. Having a basement is a nice-to-have; I don’t think it’s a have-to-have. And it certainly doesn’t replace the value that you would get by having a second floor with additional bedrooms and bathrooms, because those are the things that really add to the value of your home.

You know, you could, very simply, get in touch with a local real estate agent, perhaps – there are usually realtors in all these areas that are just looking to develop their book of business, whether it’s for somebody that’s going to sell now or sell in the future – and ask them that question. They may be able to look at the listings and say, “Well, look, here’s a house similar-sized to you with a finished basement,” and what that was worth compared to a home that maybe had a crawlspace and a second story.

I mean the data is out there if you want to investigate your local area. But my gut would say that a second story would bring more value to your house than just a first floor with a finished basement.

Leslie, what do you think?

LESLIE: I think a finished basement is great depending on the type of people that are in the area. Is it more families? Is it more younger people? It’s also the size of the house. So you have to kind of consider who the prospective user of the home is if you’re trying to sell down the road.

MATTHEW: Well, it’s definitely a family neighborhood. I know I’m one of the only homes in the neighborhood that doesn’t have a basement but I do have a three-car garage, so I get that extra storage space from that. And maybe some extra bedroom/bathroom space would be more desirable.

TOM: Matthew, I hope that helps you out. Good luck with the project. Let us know what you decide.

LESLIE: Ooh, now we’ve got Catherine from Colorado on the line. Not something we like to deal with: pest control.

What is going on with the mice and the rats?

CATHERINE: Well, the downstairs in the house is not finished. So, somehow, they’re getting in downstairs and I see little droppings, different days. So what I’ve been using so far is the – those green pellets of poison? But I’ve heard from a friend that there is a new product out there: the Ultrasonic Plug-In. So I wanted to get information about that, if you would know.

TOM: Yeah, I would skip that. I think that’s kind of junk science. So, I would skip any of those ultrasonic plug-in things.

What you want to do is a couple of things. First of all, you want to eliminate nesting areas. So around the area of your house, if you have firewood, trash cans, debris of any sort that’s anywhere near the foundation, those are nesting areas for rodents. You eliminate those. Secondly, you plug up any openings in the outside walls of that house. Now, mice need something the size of about a quarter or even less to get in, so any openings should be plugged.

Inside the house, you want to make sure that there’s no food for them. So, a lot of times, people will make mistakes by providing food when they don’t realize they’re doing it. For example, I had a friend who used to keep her pet food in the garage and it was a big sack, 50-pound, whatever it was, bag of pet food. Never really even noticed that the mice had dug themselves a nice, little front door for this that wasn’t obvious. And they were just getting a big meal every single day from the pet food. So, look for things like that where food is being left out for them. Moisture is also very attractive to rodents, so water that collects at the foundation perimeter can bring them in.

And inside the house, I think you’re doing the right thing using the baits and the poisons, because that’s – they’re very effective with most of the baits today: for example, the d-CON. One hit of that, so to speak, it takes them out. It’s just one and done.

So, I think all those things together is what’s going to control and reduce the rodent population around this house.

LESLIE: Now we’ve got Joe in Michigan who’s dealing with a gutter issue.

Tell us what’s going on.

JOE: Hey, this roof, I need some help with. I bought the house about 8 years ago. And it’s got a good roof on it but it appears that they tried to save some money and have somebody do it. And what the problem is is the shingles don’t come out far enough from the top of the roof to get into the gutters. And there’s a metal strip that goes along, right at the bottom edge of the roof.

And from what I see, it almost looks as though it’s turned around backwards as though if it were put in properly, it would extend out further to help get the water towards the gutters or into the gutters?

TOM: Hmm. OK.

JOE: So what – the mess I’ve got now is I’ve got all this water that’s hitting some spots in the gutter properly and others not. And I’ve tried to push the gutters and tap the gutters back up as far against the fascia as I can and I’m still getting water through there and it’s frustrating.

TOM: Well, the metal strip is throwing me a little bit. Now, typically, at the edge of the fascia, you’d have something called a “drip edge,” which is sort of like a right-angle piece of trim that goes over the front of the fascia and up under the roof. And it’s at a 90-degree angle. Is that kind of what you’re seeing or not?

JOE: I had them install some aluminum over the fascia board but I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about. It is a channel of sorts but it’s right on the top lip of the roof, if I’m explaining this right. You know where they first start putting the shingles on and then they start moving up forward? It’s like right at that edge, there’s a – there’s metal.

TOM: Are the shingles resting on top of the metal?

JOE: Yes.

TOM: Regardless, the solution here is the same. What you need to do is to extend those roof shingles into the gutter. So, because there’s not a magic potion that will do that, the way to fix this is to get a flat bar – and that’s a very thin pry bar. And you’re lifting up the edges of those shingles at the bottom of the roof edge. And you’re going to slip underneath some flashing. And the flashing that you would use is probably just aluminum-roll flashing, maybe 6-inch or 8-inch-wide flashing. And the easiest way to do this is in small pieces, because it becomes too hard to handle when you have a long piece.

And you run the flashing up under the roof shingles and you make sure it extends past the roof shingles and lays into the top of the gutters. So, essentially, what you’re doing is creating a bridge to make up the distance between where the shingle ended and where it really should have ended, which is at the edge of the gutter. And this way, when the water comes down the roof, it will drop from the shingle to the flashing to the gutter. Does that make sense?

JOE: Absolutely. And that sounds like something I can do, so I appreciate you and we’ll give that a shot.

TOM: Yeah. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Well, if you’d like to step up the counter space in your kitchen, adding an island is a great option if you’ve got the room. No doubt about it, you definitely need some space for an island because they’re usually at least 24 inches by 36 at a minimum.

Now, kitchens don’t always have to be made of expensive cabinets. Instead, you can think about upcycling a piece of furniture. Maybe you’ve seen a beautiful, old dresser or maybe even have one in the garage or basement, even a vanity. We’ve got a lot of posts on how you can use those pieces of furniture in different ways, on MoneyPit.com.

Now, if your kitchen is small, another option is to use a mobile kitchen cart. It’s smaller than an island and the kitchen carts can greatly enhance your cooking space because they’re compact, they’re very versatile and they come in a lot of different sizes and styles and finishes and configurations. And you can kind of push them aside when you don’t need them and you can kind of move them around the kitchen with you for a variety of steps of the process of cooking. I mean they’re definitely helpful and definitely space-savers.

TOM: You know, speaking of a kitchen-cart kind of a thing, we recently – and this is not for a kitchen or maybe more for an outdoor kitchen. Over the holidays, our kids gave us a pizza oven, which was a really cool gift.

Now, to use this, you’ve got to set it on a table and you’ve got to set it on some sort of a table or stand outside. So, I thought, “Boy, wouldn’t it be neat if I had some sort of a rolling cart for this?” And I found online a huge array of stainless-steel food-prep tables that are available with wheels.

And I could not believe how inexpensive they were. For about 100 bucks, I got a stainless-steel table that was about, I’m going to say, 24 by 30 that held the oven perfectly. It has a shelf on the bottom where we put a whole 20-pound tank of propane, so it was completely contained that way.

And I was thinking, “Boy, you could use these inside or out, these stainless-steel islands.” So that’s another way just to have a food-prep area that’s easy to clean, easy to maintain, that you can simply wheel out and then wheel away when you’re done.

Now, if it’s hard to drop an island into an existing kitchen and you want to do a traditional island, think about designing an island into a new kitchen. And that always makes a lot of sense, because then you can really plan it out and you can work on all the space around it. Because that’s when it’s easy to move things around and shift it to kind of really maximize all of that space and the cooking and the cabinet space and think about the working triangle.

In fact, a friend of mine is just about ready to complete a renovation and one of the last steps was to install her island. And so she had the contractor sort of tape it out on the floor. And once she saw the space around it, she was able to make some changes because it turned out a lot of that space was wasted. And by shifting the island at that point, it was very easy to kind of make that change.

So, you have all those options if you are going to be building new. But if not, you can do anything, from a small piece of upcycled furniture to a cart to a stainless-steel food-prep table. All of those options await you and really allows you to take advantage of having that extra surface. Because I tell you, when you need it, you need it.

Right, Les?

LESLIE: Yeah. Now, let’s talk about the pizzas. Have you made some? How are they?

TOM: We did. It’s funny. I was not here for the initial pizza-cooking cook-off.

LESLIE: The inaugural pizza event? OK.

TOM: So, my wife and my kids were doing it on their own. Then my son called me later and he gave me a FaceTime tour of the results. And they made about 5 or 6 pies, because they’re only 12 or 14 inches wide. The first one looked like a blob of seared dough, so that didn’t go so well.

LESLIE: There’s a learning curve, I’m guessing.

TOM: Right. As we moved through, there was one that was torn nearly in half. And then we peaked with a really dark one. Too much char. And by the time they got to five and six, they were looking just perfect. So, I think there’s definitely a learning curve. I did try my own hand at it about 2 weeks later and I found, to my embarrassment as an Italian, I could not take that pizza tray with a long handle …

LESLIE: The pizza peel.

TOM: The peel. That’s right. The pizza peel. And you know – and you see the pizza guys do this all the time and they just flip the pizza around. It just spins. Mine was glued to the pizza peel, so I had to use tongs to rotate it.

LESLIE: They have a lot of – they put something on the bottom. It’s either a flour or a cornmeal or something to keep it sort of loose on that peel and to also to keep it from sticking to the oven.

TOM: Right, so I’ve got some work to do. I’m really pleased with it. The one they got was – I think it’s called an Ooni? O-o-n-i.

LESLIE: An Ooni stove. Those are the gift of the season.

TOM: They were great. And when you do finally heat it up – it takes 20 minutes to heat it up, by the way. But when you put the pizza in, it cooks in 1 minute. One minute and they weren’t kidding.

LESLIE: That’s awesome.

TOM: Yeah. So, it was good.

LESLIE: That is awesome.

TOM: So that’s my kitchen-island story and my pizza story.

LESLIE: Alright. Coming over for one.

TOM: You got it.

LESLIE: Gayla in California is having an issue with a countertop.

Tell us what’s going on.

GAYLA: I am. About 4½ years ago, I remodeled my kitchen and installed Corian countertops. And I used the pattern called Savannah; it’s one of the light ones. So I’m getting ready now to sell my home and looking at the countertops, they’re really – there’s tons, like thousands of hairline scratches. And I’m wondering, how can I bring back their luster? They never were shiny but they were lustrous.

LESLIE: Yeah, they do have a satin finish that looks very rich and nice but obviously, over time, just from normal wear and tear, they are going to dull and not look so great.

There’s a good website that generally specializes in granite and marble care – it’s called StoneCare.com – but they do have some products for Corian. And there’s actually a spray. It’s made to reduce a residue on the surface. I’m not sure it’s going to help you with the scratches but it could be a good starting point. It’s called their Deep Cleaner for Corian. And that might be a good place to start, at least.

GAYLA: OK. Yeah, I don’t know that they’re that dirty. I do keep them quite clean but it’s just a question – it’s just those hairline scratches. And when the sun comes through the window, you really see them.

TOM: What that product does is it will also pull out any residue from all the cleaning that you have been doing so religiously, which is a good thing. The other nice thing, though, about Corian is the scratches can be repaired. And if you – the Corian can be repolished, basically lightly sanded, so to speak, and …

GAYLA: Oh, I was wondering about that.

TOM: Right. To actually pull those scratches right out. So that’s not something that I would recommend that you do the first time out.

GAYLA: No, I don’t think so.

TOM: But if you contact a kitchen-cabinet company, for example, they might have an installer and for a reasonably small fee, they might come out and repolish those tops for you. They’re going to have all the tools and the equipment, as well. And probably they can pull many of those scratches right out.

GAYLA: Well, thank you. That sounds like the way to go for me.

TOM: Alright. Well, good luck with that project and good luck selling your house.

GAYLA: Well, thank you and best to you both.

LESLIE: Bill in Tennessee, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?

BILL: I’m trying to clean some pressure-treated deck. This is on the second floor of my house and also on the ground is stone. What we have here in Tennessee is Crab Orchard stone; it’s a soft stone. And it’s turned black. The stone has turned black over time and it’s about 15 years old. And the pressure-treated wood has turned black, also and I wanted to see what the best thing to clean both of them – I’ve tried cleaner on the end of a garden hose and it don’t – and I followed the instructions but it didn’t do much at all.

LESLIE: Mm-hmm. I mean it sounds like a combination of the wood aging and also mold or algae.

Now, a pressure washer set to an aggressive but gentle setting, if that makes any sense, will probably do the best to kind of attack this growth on it. If you could use some bleach and water or Wet & Forget – a product like that that will do a good job of – I’m not going to say attacking but you know what I mean: really aggressively going at this growth. That will probably do a good job of getting to the base of it and removing it from it.

If you can get more sunlight on the area to sort of beat this shady mold growth that’s happening, that will help tremendously. You know, there’s some things that you can do there.

BILL: OK. That’s good. Thank you very much.

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

LESLIE: Jan in California is having a wallpaper-removal situation.

Tell us what’s going on.

JAN: Hi. Been removing wallpaper and repapering for 50 years and never come across where you take the wallpaper off and it looks like there’s a paper lining behind it. I’ve had some people tell me that this is a filler for the texturing so the wallpaper looks smooth. And others tell me that it’s a liner and it fills the whole wall with pencil lines where the wallpaper goes. I don’t want to damage the sheetrock that’s underneath, so I’m a little leery about taking that off or leaving it on or what I should do with it.

TOM: So your end game is to get down to the drywall?

JAN: Well, it doesn’t have to be if I can texture over what’s there. But it’s almost like a paper and I don’t know if we can put the mud and everything on that.

TOM: If it’s adhered well, then I don’t see why you couldn’t texture over it. Do you want to use a textured paint?

JAN: No, I want to use the texture that I’ve had on the other walls.

TOM: The key here is whether or not the surface that you’ve exposed is well-adhered to the drywall underneath. If it’s well-adhered, then you can go ahead and put your texture over that. If it’s not, then your texture could be on there for a couple of months and it could start falling off in chunks when that backer paper pulls off. As long as it’s well-adhered, then I don’t see any reason you can’t go on top of it, Jan.

JAN: OK. I appreciate you and enjoy your program all the time.

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

LESLIE: Well, you may have noticed that the homes that really stand out are the ones that have a little something extra at the end of their driveway. I’m talking about a driveway marker. Now, there’s the aesthetic reason, of course. They just look nice, they set your home apart from the street and they really set a tone that’s just a notch above. But they can also help to identify your house for everybody, from delivery people to friends to, most importantly, first responders like fire, police and EMTs.

TOM: Now, there are many types of driveway markers, if you think about it. It’s stone, it comes in brick, wood, metal fence pieces. Some people use sculpture to create driveway markers. Whichever one you choose, make sure you keep your home style into that consideration, because if you live in a modest Colonial house, you don’t want to put giant columns on either side of your driveway. It’s not going to look great. So think about size. Think about the materials. Some material requires a lot more maintenance than others and you don’t want to be dealing with that if you don’t have to.

And this is important: add reflectors. Why would you do that? Well, if you live on a dark street, it helps to spot both sides of the driveway. If you live in an area where there’s a lot of snow, it gives you a sense as to where those surfaces are so you don’t mistakenly hit them with snow plows or snow blowers or even your shovels.

And then think about installation. Make sure your markers, no matter what material, are not going anywhere anytime soon. And remember, you need to call before you dig. You need to make sure you identify utility lines that are underneath that surface. If you break a utility line and you didn’t call first, you will subject to beaucoup fines, like major bucks. So don’t skip that step. It’s free. You just call 811 and they will send out a team from your local utility to mark that out so you know it’s going to be nice and safe.

LESLIE: Yeah. And you know what, guys? When you’re in the planning process, maybe you can consider adding a mailbox or a place to get the newspaper into. Those are really fun ways to help make it more functional and beautiful. Think about lighting, think about the house numbers. Find something that’s in the style of your home.

And I mean one of the most common types that we’ve seen is a white picket-fence style. It’s kind of two simple corners on either side of the drive and then there’s sort of those stock pieces of fencing that kind of swoop down, make a little – just a little design point at the end of the drive. And that is definitely a DIY project.

TOM: We’ve got more tips on MoneyPit.com on how to create the perfect driveway markers.

LESLIE: Alright. Now we’ve got Derwin in Texas who’s dealing with a fascia-board situation.

Tell us what’s going on.

DERWIN: I have a fascia board that is rotten. The way it’s put on there is I have a 1×4 fascia board that’s nailed up on there and then a 1×2 is nailed on the top portion of the fascia board.

TOM: Yep.

DERWIN: Which kind of – and the gutter is nailed to the 1×2, so I guess the 1×2 keeps the gutter from resting up against the fascia board, to keep it from rotting.

TOM: Got it. Mm-hmm.

DERWIN: But the drip edge – there’s a drip edge that’s nailed to the top, so like a 2×2 drip edge. And the top part of the drip edge is nailed to the roof deck and then it lays – the other half is – lays into the gutter.

TOM: So what you want to know is how can you get the rotted fascia board out without taking apart your gutter and your drip edge and your spacer and all that stuff, right?

DERWIN: Right.

TOM: There’s no way to surgically remove the fascia; it’s like one part of the assembly.

DERWIN: Right.

TOM: So you’d have to take the whole thing apart. Now, it’s not a – it sounds like a lot of work. It’s not a tremendous project to get a gutter off. It’s not something you can do yourself because you don’t want to bend it, so you have to do it with some help to take the gutter off in one piece.

But there is an opportunity here and that is that when you replace the fascia, I would not put wood fascia back. What I would do is I would use a product called AZEK – A-Z-E-K. This looks like wood, so it could look like that old 1×4 that you had, except it’s made of cellular PVC. So, it cuts like wood and it looks like wood but it never rots. So I would definitely suggest that this is an opportunity to improve the material that you’re using there.

DERWIN: OK.

TOM: Now, whether or not you put back the spacer and the gutter the way it was before is up to you. You really don’t need to have a spacer. You could put the gutter right up against the AZEK and then have the roof just lay into the top of the gutter. That would be the most normal assembly for that kind of thing.

But if you want the spacer and it just works out better because that’s the way it was before, then what you could do is buy 1×6 AZEK, cut a 1½-inch strip off of it, use that as a spacer and use the rest as – you’ll have a 1×4 left and you use that for the fascia and you’ll have the strip just in one piece.

DERWIN: So it cuts just like wood.

TOM: Looks like wood, cuts like wood, doesn’t rot like wood. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Now we’ve got Joan in Illinois on the line who’s dealing with a mold issue.

Tell us about it, Joan.

JOAN: Well, I’m wondering what causes dry rot and how you can tell if you have it.

TOM: OK. Well, what are you seeing, Joan?

JOAN: Coming down to the floor, there’s about an inch below the molding. And I took the carpet up and I saw sawdust down there. And I wondered if it was dry rot.

TOM: Alright. So, first of all, there’s no such thing as dry rot; there’s only wet rot. Wood that gets wet – it gets over 25-percent moist – can start to decay. Then, if that wood also dries out, that’s what people call “dry rot” but it’s really sort of a misnomer because it’s not really dry rot; it’s wet rot that has dried out.

JOAN: Oh. So we can’t cause it by overheating or under-humidifying a house.

TOM: No. Well, not overheating but if you over-humidify, I guess it’s technically possible because you’d put a lot of water in there. But no, you’re not going to cause it by overheating.

In terms of what you’re seeing under this molding, I think that would bear some further investigation. When you mentioned sawdust, I think about carpenter ants, for example. And so, I would make sure that I know exactly what’s causing this.

One of the things that you could do is you could take a picture of it and you could post it to our Facebook page at Facebook.com/TheMoneyPit. We’ll take a look at it and give you an opinion. Or you could post it to the Community section at MoneyPit.com. How about that?

JOAN: That sounds great.

TOM: Alright, Joan. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.

LESLIE: Well, deicing your car window can be a cold and unpleasant start to the day. So we’ve got a simple recipe for a deicer that you can make yourself, that’s going to get that job done quickly and easily.

So, here’s what you do. You fill up a spray bottle with about one-third water and two-thirds rubbing alcohol. Mixing just water and rubbing alcohol is going to work like magic. Now, keep that filled spray bottle in your car so that you can use it on the go.

TOM: Yeah, that water and alcohol works really well because rubbing alcohol has a much, much, much lower freezing point than water. Actually, it freezes at over a hundred degrees below Fahrenheit, so it really speeds up that melting process and it prevents that surface from icing up in the future.

And I love that you can just simply keep it in your car, because this way you have it when you need it. Even at the end of the day, you come out at work and you’ve got to deice your car, you just grab the bottle. With a few spritz, you’re totally good to go.

LESLIE: Randy in Delaware is on the line doing a bathroom project.

Tell us how you’re working on it.

RANDY: So, a shower stall – you know, an old shower stall – was removed with an old pan just all cruddy and moldy and just outdated. So, installing a new shower base. It’s not a mud base; it’s preformed epoxy and cement. And then, I was wondering about what type of flashing you might recommend from the framing members, behind the corners and any of these areas. How susceptible are they to these moisture issues where the corners may, with expansion and contraction, may break open or get some kind of moisture penetration? What’s the extent of the flashing system that you put behind cement board?

TOM: OK. So, when you put on tile backer board, you don’t flash like you would if you were putting up shingles and intersection – intersecting – with siding. Essentially, what you do is you put the pan in, you put the backer board on, you overlap the pan and then you put the adhesive on and the tile right on top of that. That’s sort of the normal procedure for doing a tile job. You don’t really flash the board any further than just making sure it overlaps the prefabricated pan.

Is that what I’m hearing? Are you using a prefabricated, say, a fiberglass tile pan?

RANDY: Right. But a lot of – there are a lot of recommendations out there to run a 6-mil plastic sheet behind the backer board so that any penetration that could occur in the future hits this plastic wall. It overlaps the pan and in front of that, the backer board overlaps it. But anything that penetrates the backer board and the tile and all that hits this plastic and eventually makes its way to the pan, never actually getting to the framing members.

TOM: I don’t have a problem with that. But let me put it to you this way: for many years, the way that tile showers were done is they simply put the green board – the water-resistant drywall – right on top of the studs and that was it; there was nothing more than that. So, by putting on a tile board, you’re already making it a lot more durable. And if you want to put a polyethylene sheet behind that, I have no problem with that. Just make sure that the shower pan that you choose goes up enough to create that good overlap at the bottom so you don’t have water that backs up into it.

RANDY: I think that’s it.

LESLIE: Francine wrote in to Team Money Pit and she says, “Our home has a hip roof with a short ridge vent due to the hip design. My soffit vents are adequately open. Will I get enough natural ventilation without a powered roof ventilator fan?”

TOM: Ah, that’s a great question. So, first off, you need to understand that attics do need plenty of ventilation, for a couple of reasons. Now, in the summer, it helps keep them cool, which makes it easier to air-condition your house. In the winter, that ventilation takes out a lot of moisture, which prevents the roof sheathing from rotting and also lets the insulation kind of dry out. Because if it gets damp, it doesn’t work very well.

Now, generally speaking, we advise you put in soffit vents like you’ve already, Francine, and then also ridge vents. But when you have a hip design – and for those that are unfamiliar with that, that’s when your roof sort of is shaped like a bit of a pyramid with a straight part at the top. So you don’t have a long ridge vent. The ridge vent may only be, say, 8 feet and the total width of the roof to be 30 feet. So you don’t get a lot of space for ventilation in a place like that.

So you can supplement that by putting in roof vents close-ish to the ridge but not necessarily on the ridge. So, if you have the front and the back of the ridge – of the roof covered with a ridge vent, on the ends, on the sides of those two other triangle sections, you could put a regular roof vent at the top and that will help you.

Now, when they’re all in and working properly, here’s what happens: the air blows over the ridge and it sucks out of the attic, sort of depressurizes that space, and pulls out of the attic all of that moist air, for example, in the wintertime. Now, at the same time, as the air blows against the side of your house, the wind pushes that air against the side of your house, it goes in the soffit vents, up under the roof sheathing, dragging it out and again, exits out the ridge vents. So that’s sort of 24/7 flow. Basically works year-round and does its job and it’s much, much better than a powered attic ventilator.

Because when you have one of those, especially – I’ve seen people put these, Leslie, like, they have a little ridge vent and then they put the ventilator right next to it. It’s like a dog chasing its tail. The air basically pulls in the ridge vent, goes out the ventilator and so on and so forth. It just cycles; it never really ventilates the entire house.

So, kind of a bad idea for that reason and also, it can also depressurize the rest of the house. That means you can actually pull air-conditioned air out from the living space and that means you have to run the A/C longer to do that, so – for it to be effective. So, for all those reasons, improve the ridge vent as best you can, put in roof vents where you can and always keep those soffit vents open.

LESLIE: Alright. Good tips.

Now we’ve got Jackie, who says, “Part of my house has a flat metal roof that’s leaking at the seams. What is the best way to seal those leaks?”

I don’t know that I’ve seen a flat metal roof.

TOM: Well, we do see more and more of them. First of all, if you go to an area that’s really old – like when I was first doing home inspections, I was in Washington D.C. And there, they’ve got flat metal roofs and slightly pitched metal roofs all over the place, especially in the center of the city. We used to see them a lot.

So I learned a lot about how they go together, then how they fall apart. And I’ve seen a lot of good repair jobs and a lot of bad repair jobs. And the bottom line is that lazy roofers will cover them with tar. That’s the kiss of death for a metal roof because it starts the rusting process. The best thing to do is, if you have leaks at the seam, is to have a roofer – a metal roofer – open up those seams and rebuild them so they don’t leak.

The only sealant I would use, if you had to do something quick, would be a silicone – clear silicone – sealant along the seam that’s leaking. Don’t go overboard on it, because you don’t want to risk water getting under it and forcing that metal roof to rust.

LESLIE: Alright. That’s a good call. Hope that helps you out, Jackie.

TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Show on air and online at MoneyPit.com. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your day with us. We hope that you’ve picked up a trick or two about how to take care of your house, get those jobs done once, done right, so you don’t have to do it again. If you think of a question, you can reach us, 24/7, at 888-MONEY-PIT or by posting your questions by clicking the microphone button at MoneyPit.com.

For now, that’s all the time we have. Until we talk again, 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 2023 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.)