Hosts: Tom Kraeutler & Leslie Segrete
(NOTE: Timestamps below correspond to the running time of the downloadable audio file of this show. Text represents a professional transcriptionist’s understanding of what was said. No guarantee of accuracy is expressed or implied. ‘Ph’ in parentheses indicates the phonetic or best guess of the actual spoken word.)
BEGIN HOUR 1 TEXT:
Hi, this is Tom Kraeutler and thanks for listening to the show. Hey, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about a cool contest we’re running right now with our friends at Therma-Tru. It’s called the Ugliest Door in America contest and two of our listeners could win a brand new, completely installed entry door worth up to $5,000. Entering is super easy, too, at MyUglyDoor.com. So if your front door, back door or patio door is looking a little worse for wear, log onto MyUglyDoor.com and you can enter to win a beautiful new entry door from Therma-Tru. That’s MyUglyDoor.com.
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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: Call us now with your home improvement question. Call us now with your do-it-yourself dilemma. Before you pick up the paint brush, before you pick up the saw, pick up the phone and call us and let us help you get that job done.
We’ve got a great show planned for you today. Coming up on the program we’ve got all the info on getting your outdoor spaces ready to rock and roll because summer is here. First up, how to thoroughly inspect your deck. You know, decks take a lot of punishment from the elements, so an annual deck check is a must to make sure it’s safe and sound and secure. We’re going to tell you exactly what to look for.
LESLIE: And also ahead, we’ve got step-by-step instructions on cleaning your outdoor furniture. We know it’s been hibernating for a while and you have been sitting on this chore, so get out the soap and the sponges and learn how to clean plastic, wood and metal furniture right in a just a few minutes.
TOM: And is your home safe? Well, it’s probably not safe enough because there are nearly 20,000 deaths per year and millions additional are injured every, single summer. Coming up, we’re going to give you a room-by-room tour; a safety tour of the house. We’ll take tour led by Meri-K Appy who is the president of the Home Safety Council and one of the smartest safety experts we know to make sure that you keep safe all summer long.
LESLIE: Plus we’re giving away a really big prize this hour. It’s an Oreck upright vacuum worth about $500 and what’s really cool about this prize is that there’s a radio in the handle so that you can listen to The Money Pit while you are vacuuming and cleaning around your house.
TOM: So let us help you clean up on those home improvement projects. Pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Leslie, who’s first?
LESLIE: Skip in Ohio, tell us about your project.
SKIP: Well, I’m looking at putting some epoxy floor covering or coating down on my garage and/or workshop, and so my curiosity is what advice would you give?
LESLIE: Well, the QUIKRETE one, which you can also get at the home centers, is two-parts. You actually mix the epoxy into the paint portion and then, you know, some of them even have a cleanser step that’s first to sort of scuff up the floor and get rid of any dirt and debris and any oils that might hinder the adhesion process. The QUIKRETE one is excellent. Rust-Oleum makes one. I think Behr even has one. But the QUIKRETE one is my favorite. They come in some excellent color choices. You can mix in the speckle finish. As long as you don’t paint yourself into a corner you shouldn’t have any other problems (Tom chuckles) and they do tend to be very, very durable.
SKIP: Very good. I appreciate it. Thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome, Skip. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Heading over to Maryland to talk with Nora who’s got some unwanted situations happening in the basement. What’s going on? There’s water?
NORA: Well, no. It’s not water in the basement. The water that goes through the house. The pipes are galvanized and they’re old.
TOM: Uh-oh.
NORA: The water is actually brown.
TOM: So are you getting any leaks in those pipes, Nora?
NORA: No, thank God, but I was wondering if just replacing the horizontal pipes with PVC would take care of the brown water or if I have to do the vertical and tear up the wall.
TOM: Well here’s what you need to do. Let me ask you about your main water line. Has that ever been replaced or is that still steel?
NORA: It’s still steel.
TOM: OK. The first pipe to replace is the main water pipe, from the house to the street; the second thing to do is all the horizontal lines; and the third thing to do are all the vertical lines. That would be the order of replacement. This is a project that might not be an immediate emergency but you need to get on it. I wouldn’t waste much more time because eventually you’re going to get a break that’s going to happen at the least opportune time and the price goes up when it becomes an emergency.
NORA: And is it – your opinion is the PVC would be the best …?
TOM: You can use PEX for your interior water lines. That’s a new material that’s getting a lot of – very, very popular; very durable material. Stands for cross-linked polyethylene. Or you could use copper. Either way you’ve got to get going on those pipes.
Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You are listening to the Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Pick up the phone; let us know what you’re working on, especially if you need some help. Call in your home repair or your home improvement question 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: 888-666-3974.
Hey, we want to tell you about a great contest that there’s only two weeks left on. It’s the Ugliest Door in America contest that we’re running, sponsored by our friends at Therma-Tru Doors. If you’re not happy with the look of your front door, your back door, your patio or maybe you know someone that’s not so happy with their door, well head on over to MyUglyDoor.com and enter the contest because if your door is chosen the Therma-Tru team will show up and replace it with a brand, spanking new Therma-Tru entryway worth up to 5,000 bucks. Details at MyUglyDoor.com.
Up next we’re going to talk about how to inspect your deck; another great outside project. We’ll tell you where to look and what to do to make sure it’s safe for an entire season of summer fun.
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ANNOUNCER: This portion of The Money Pit is brought to you by Ryobi, manufacturer of professional-feature power tools and accessories with an affordable price for the do-it-yourselfer. Ryobi Power Tools. Pro features. Affordable price. Available exclusively at The Home Depot. Now, here are Tom and Leslie.
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 right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. One caller we talk to this hour is going to win a whopper of a prize – no, it’s not a hamburger. (Leslie chuckles) It’s actually an Oreck XL hotel upright vacuum with a radio in the handle; worth almost 500 bucks. Not only do you get the power of an Oreck vacuum. You get to listen to your favorite radio show while you’re cleaning the house all at the same time. But if you want to win you’ve got to pick up the phone and call us. You must be willing to come on the air and ask your home improvement question. The number is 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Well, now that it is officially summer I can guarantee that you are all spending a ton of time outdoors and probably on a deck that you may have had for quite some time or perhaps is even newly built. But this, unfortunately, is the time of year that we start hearing about some news stories about maybe a deck collapsing, which can turn a really fun backyard event into just a horrible nightmare and we want you to avoid this happening to you so we’re going to tell you how to inspect your deck. And it’s a great time, you know, if you’re taking any home improvement projects on. We, for example, just redecked the deck out at my family’s vacation home which takes a lot of abuse from the elements and we got rid of the pressure-treated lumber on top which had just really seen its day and once it was off we could really take a look at the system. And then we replaced it with a fiberon composite product. We went with a tropic-look decking piece. And it really looked amazing and we know that’s going to stand up to the elements. But really, you can inspect the deck from underneath in all capacities. If you’re doing a project it’s a great opportunity to take a look at it from the inside. So this is what you need to know.
Know that your deck is taking a lot of abuse from the sun in the summer season and the snow in the winter season, so you really want to look for any signs of rot, cracking and at least once a year check every area that you can get to with your eyes and make sure you’re checking for this abuse. Now you should also look at the floor joists beneath as well as any posts, columns, girders and decking. Most importantly, you want to check the attachment point with your house. This is where most of that weight is sitting on and it really does take a lot of damage and if it’s not attached properly you can really see some wear and tear there. If you spot cracked or rotted beams or any rusty hardware get it repaired before anyone in your family gets out there and you have a huge event with a ton of people and a lot of weight on there. You just don’t want any disaster to happen. Be safe instead of being sorry.
TOM: Here’s another tip. You’ve got to be really careful what you put actually on the deck. A friend of mine was not thinking and he was the proud owner of a brand new hot tub and he put it on the second-story deck …
LESLIE: Ooh.
TOM: … and proceeded to fill it up with a hose. Hey, water weighs eight pounds per gallon. You can’t put a hot tub on a deck. The whole thing came crashing down. Unfortunately he didn’t ask me for advice first. He just went merrily long into it and that’s what happened. So you have to be really careful with these decks. Make sure you inspect them. Make sure you use them carefully and keep them safe for the entire summer season.
This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show where we will take your home improvement safety question right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Time to chat with Maryann in New York about some unwanted squirrels. Are they in your house? Where are they exactly?
MARYANN: Well, it’s my daughter. She loosened the aluminum siding from her home and – she loosed a portion of it – and saw the babies between the aluminum siding and the plywood.
TOM: Aw.
MARYANN: And then she noticed a chewed hole that was there.
TOM: And you felt really bad about kicking them out.
MARYANN: Well, she knew that she couldn’t do that. (chuckles) But she’s desperate to get rid of them. So now she can hear them from inside the house. They’re between the sheetrock and the plywood.
TOM: Wow.
LESLIE: And shortly they will be in the house.
TOM: Yeah.
MARYANN: Did you say they would be?
TOM: Well, they can eat through the drywall pretty easily.
MARYANN: Oh, my.
TOM: (chuckling) Faster than they could eat through the aluminum siding.
MARYANN: OK.
TOM: Well, do you have an opening where they can actually get out; on the outside of the house?
MARYANN: Yes, it’s probably – the hole that she did see that was chewed on underneath the siding.
TOM: So what you need to do is you need to create sort of a flap entry there; sort of a one-way entry – you can do that just with some wire mesh – so that the squirrels can get out but they can’t get back in again.
MARYANN: OK.
TOM: What I would do is on the outside of that area I would put food and a Havahart trap and what you want to do with that is you want to wire it – take like a piece of heavy wire and almost like rope the fruit to the bottom of the trap …
MARYANN: Yes.
TOM: … and put it right outside that hole and I think you’ll trap them one at a time.
MARYANN: OK.
TOM: And then you can drive them away and, you know, drop them out in the woods somewhere.
MARYANN: Alright, thank you very much.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Time for some concrete repair with Jim in Utah. What’s going on at your money pit?
JIM: My house was built in ’79 and I never had any problems with my sidewalk out front; my steps. And this is the first year I put ice melt on and it was made in Salt Lake and so it said on it that this would not hurt your concrete, but it had breakfast, lunch and dinner on my concrete. (Tom laughs)
LESLIE: Sure did.
TOM: It was a big lie, huh? (chuckles)
JIM: It ate it really bad and it’s down to the rocks.
TOM: Oh, no.
JIM: And I patched up, you know, small patches before but this one, it’s down to the rocks and I know enough that you have to clear everything, all the loose concrete off, but I figured I’d just call the experts to find out what else to do.
TOM: Yeah, you know when it gets that bad you really can’t patch it; certainly not with any type of concrete. What we would recommend is a product called AboCrete. It’s an epoxy patching compound.
LESLIE: Their website is Abatron.com and they list all of the products that are available as well as where to find it because at this point you’re not going to get concrete to adhere to this at all.
JIM: Would I use a bonding agent?
TOM: Well some of these have bonding agents and some of them don’t. You have to follow the manufacturer’s instructions on it. Wait for the right weather – you know a nice clear, dry day – and then you can go to it and I think you’ll be very happy with the result.
JIM: OK, well thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: We’re going to talk to Joe in Connecticut about some walls that are just not quite up to his design standards. What can we do for you?
JOE: Yeah, I want to know – I have an old colonial that has plaster walls and I want to do a fix. They’re cracked in several places. I want to minimize the labor and maximize the look.
TOM: Alright, well that’s easy to fix. What we would recommend you use is a fiberglass tape. If you just tried to spackle over those cracks what you’re going to find is that the crack will easily open up again. So the first thing to do is to sand the surface and then you want to apply a fiberglass tape. This tape is adhesive, it’s perforated, it’s easy to apply; then on top of that you’re going to put two to three layers of spackle. You’re going to start with a narrow spackle blade – say about three inches – and you’re going to work out to be about a six or seven-inch blade and by doing that step by step your lines will disappear and they will not come back.
JOE: Great, thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You know what I used, Tom? Recently I had a coat rack hanging in my home and we have plaster as well. In trying to put anchors into the system – as you know, anything trying to get some load-bearing issues on plaster …
TOM: Right.
LESLIE: … is like a nightmare and so I ended up with a couple of unintentional holes in the wall and I found a putty; I think it was like a painter’s putty.
TOM: OK.
LESLIE: And it was something that I shaped with my hands and then shoved into the hole and …
TOM: Oh, because it was a very deep hole.
LESLIE: Yeah. And it did a great job of sort of sticking and expanding into the space. I mean it did need a little bit of sanding when it was done and then painting over you would never even notice. But that was a hole.
TOM: Yeah, that makes sense. That’s one thing that spackle’s not really good at because you have to put successive coats. So if you have a putty situation like that, that’s definitely the way to go. So well done.
LESLIE: Thanks.
Cathy in Alabama’s got a situation in the shower. What can we do for you?
CATHY: I have a bathroom that has a foul smell coming from the shower and our home is only two-and-a-half years old. We had it built. And there’s no mold in the actual drain.
TOM: How often do you use that shower, Cathy?
CATHY: Every other day.
TOM: Every other day. OK.
LESLIE: So it’s not like it’s an unused guest bath.
CATHY: Right. But it seems like when I clean it like with bleach or Clorox the foul smell gets better but it doesn’t quite take it all the way away. It is like a mildew-y – we do have a septic tank.
TOM: Typically when you have a bad smell in a bathroom shower area in the drain it’s because it doesn’t have a proper trap, which is a u-shaped pipe that goes where the water goes and the reason it’s u-shaped is it’s supposed to have some water sit in it all the time. Now if there’s any chance that that trap was not properly installed that would be the reason for the foul smell.
What I want you to do is to take the cover off of the drain and shine a flashlight down there and see if you see standing water. If you see standing water this is a good thing. That means you actually have a trap. If you don’t see standing water and you just see like a pipe that goes to nowhere, that means that the plumber never installed the trap and if that’s the case you’re always going to have a smell coming up out of that.
CATHY: OK, great. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Cathy. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Molly in Wisconsin needs some help with a painting project. What can we do for you?
MOLLY: Yes, hi. This is the third year I have to repaint my back porch steps.
TOM: Oh, it’s an annual event, huh?
MOLLY: Yes, it’s getting that way. (Tom and Leslie chuckle) It’s like it’s really causing a problem.
TOM: The next time you get ready to do your painting project I would sand the steps down; get down as much to raw wood as you possibly can. I would use a really good-quality, oil-based primer and then after that dries solidly – and by the way, paint as much of that step area as you can. If you can get underneath that’s great. Try to seal as many surfaces as you can. Then I would use an oil-based topcoat and leave plenty of dry time and I think you’re going to find that the durability and the abrasion resistance is far superior if you do it that way.
MOLLY: OK, well thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Hey, we’ve got a great contest to tell you about. Do you want to win a $5,000 makeover? Who doesn’t? I love getting free stuff. If you do, enter today at Therma-Tru’s Ugliest Door in America contest. It’s all about your front entry door, your side door, your patio door, your back door. Whatever entry that you’ve got into or out of your house that is just a disaster, Therma-Tru wants to help.
TOM: That’s right. All the details are at MyUglyDoor.com. So if your front door, your back door, your patio door or maybe it’s your neighbor’s door – wouldn’t that be cool?
LESLIE: Enter your neighbor? (chuckles)
TOM: (overlapping voices) You could suggest to your neighbor that perhaps there could be an opportunity for them to improve the entire neighborhood by winning a front-door makeover or a back or patio door makeover from our friends at Therma-Tru. Tell them, ‘Go to MyUglyDoor.com.’ Maybe it’s your mom; maybe it’s your cousin; maybe it’s your uncle; maybe it’s your brother. Go to MyUglyDoor.com and enter Therma-Tru’s Ugliest Door in America contest. It’s pretty easy. Two ways to enter. You can either take two photos of your door – one up close; one that includes the entire house – or you can shoot a 60-second video and upload that and if you win – there’s going to be one in each category – the Therma-Tru folks will send a makeover team to your house to remove that ugly door and put in a beautiful, brand new fiberglass door from Therma-Tru. All the details, again, at MyUglyDoor.com. Less than two weeks left. Do it today. It’s easy, it’s fun. They’ve been doing this for four years. It’s a fantastic upgrade and you could win it.
LESLIE: Up next, avoid a trip to the hospital. We’re going to tell you how to do a room-by-room safety check in your house, right after this.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: The Money Pit is brought to you by Behr Premium Plus Ultra Exterior paint and primer in one with advanced NanoGuard technology to help you save time and money while preserving your home’s exterior finish. For more information, visit Behr.com. That’s B-e-h-r.com. Behr products are available exclusively at The Home Depot. Now here are Tom and Leslie.
TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles, this is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show where we make good homes better. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: And it’s time to talk about home safety. Is your home safe? Well maybe it’s not safe enough. Accidents at home account for nearly 20,000 deaths per year and millions of us are injured every year in the home at the same time.
LESLIE: Well that’s why we’ve got a great guest today. We’ve got Meri-K Appy and she’s the president of the Home Safety Council and she’s joining us now with some great new web tools for homeowners to create a safe home environment, which everyone should be taking care of regardless of age or ability.
Meri-K, welcome. June is Home Safety Month so this is great timing.
MERI-K: It sure is, Tom and Leslie. Thank you so much for letting folks know about it.
The Home Safety Council has been around for somewhere around 12 years now trying to help people make some simple changes that would keep their families a lot safer. You’re right, there are about 20,000 people who die every year; 21 million medical visits. Home injuries are a much bigger problem than most people realize. The good news is – and especially for folks, like your listeners, who are handy – there really are some simple things that will spare folks the tragedy of a home-related injury.
TOM: Alright, well let’s talk about some of the leading causes of home injury. You say the number one cause is falls. Now, that seems pretty obvious. What are some things that people should be doing that they’re just not doing to get that number down?
MERI-K: One of the things is to install grab bars. I love grab bars; not everyone does but I really do. People tend to think of a grab bar as something that only an older person would need but if you think about it, a bathtub is a hard, wet, slippery surface …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: Right.
MERI-K: … and when you’re a little one or a middle-age person or an older person it really helps to have something that will help navigate you in and out of that. So grab bars are good. Another thing that people neglect is good lighting around the stairwell areas. You need good, strong light – the maximum safe wattage your lighting fixture will permit – at both the top and the bottom of the stairs.
LESLIE: Well and I also think that people just sort of neglect clutter.
MERI-K: Yep.
LESLIE: They tend to acquire a lot of stuff; whether it’s mail or shopping bags or just toys that the kids leave around the house …
MERI-K: Shoes. Yep.
LESLIE: … and they’re like, ‘I’ll be fine,’ but those are a hazard, too.
MERI-K: They absolutely are and another thing, structurally we tend only to have one handrail. Many stairwells that you see will have one railing on one side and that won’t help you. You can trip going up or down. You’re likely to grab with your dominant hand, so you really do need a functional, round grab bar that you can get your whole hand around on both sides of the stairs and as we’re carrying, you know, laundry baskets up and down, whatever, try to organize yourself so that you’re carrying it in one hand leaving your other hand free to grab on if you need to.
TOM: We’re talking to Meri-K Appy. She’s the president of the Home Safety Council. Meri-K, when you talk about handrails and grab bars, I think people tend to think that it has to look very hospitalesque. But what we’re seeing in the marketplace is new lines of very, very attractive grab bars, for example, that have beautiful finishes on them for the bathrooms, for example; whereas these bars can look like towel bars or any other type of a bar that you might have in your bathroom but actually be very, very safe at the same time. So it’s nice to se manufacturers making these types of safety products much more attractive. Are you seeing that in other areas, too?
MERI-K: We definitely are and I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the manufacturers do deserve a real tip of the hat for that and, in fact, the Home Safety Council gives commendation awards for safety innovation and the Moen Secure Mount grab bar system actually earned one of those because not only are they attractively designed, which is great, but they’ve also been designed to make them much easier to install. You don’t even have to find a stud.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm, the brackets are quite fantastic …
MERI-K: Yeah.
LESLIE: … and really easy regardless of your home improvement skills.
MERI-K: Absolutely. Yeah, so we love that.
You asked what other examples there are. I would say home fire sprinklers are another great example because industrial sprinklers that you might see in a factory or in a hospital are large, clunky affairs typically. But nowadays you can get a home fire sprinkler system installed in your home; particularly easy if you’re building a new home or remodeling. They’re very small. Some of them have concealer plates over them so you don’t see them at all.
TOM: Oh, interesting.
MERI-K: But when the heat of the fire melts a link, at that point the head releases and only then do you see it. They’re really terrific.
TOM: We’re talking to Meri-K Appy. She’s the president of the Home Safety Council.
Meri-K, we have about a minute left. Some of the other leading causes of home injury that you talk about are poisonings, fires and burns, choking and suffocation and drowning and submersions. Of all of those, what is the injury that surprises you the most in terms of how frequently it occurs?
MERI-K: I think poisoning would have to be my answer there because it’s not only the poisonous products that little kids are getting into; it’s the misuse of medications. People are sometimes taking more than one; get a little mixed up. Maybe add to that a drink or something and before you know it you can really get yourself in a bad way. So poisoning is actually the number two cause of home injury deaths. I will say that if your listeners would like to get the whole complete tour, we have the coolest thing called MySafeHome.org and it’s a room-by-room safety tour of a home with state-of-the-art 3D graphic animation that will really bring safety to life showing what are the things in these various rooms that could be a risk and what can you do to keep your family safe from them.
TOM: The website is called MySafeHome.org.
Meri-K Appy, president of the Home Safety Council, thanks for stopping by The Money Pit and helping keep us and our listeners safe for Home Safety Month.
MERI-K: Thank you and thanks for tuning in.
LESLIE: Thanks, Meri-K, for keeping us all safe. Still ahead, we’re going to tell you how to give your outdoor furniture a face lift whether it’s wood, plastic or metal.
TOM: And to give your front door a facelift, visit MyUglyDoor.com to enter to win a $5,000 giveaway for a brand new entry or patio door from Therma-Tru. Details next.
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ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is being brought to you by Defence by Havahart. Defence is a powerful, ready-to-use odor repellent formulated to protect your shrubs, ornamentals and landscaping from damaging rabbits and deer. Defence dries odorless to humans and it’s from Havahart, the company committed to caring control for pets and wildlife. For more info, go online to Havahart.com; H-a-v-a-h-a-r-t.com. Now, here are Tom and Leslie.
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: And do you think you might have the ugliest door in the neighborhood. Well, replacing your front entry can add value that’s five times the cost of the project. It’s a great investment for your home.
LESLIE: So if you’ve got a doorway into your home that is just truly ugly, whether it’s the front, side, back or patio, you could win a totally free makeover. It’s going on right now. It’s Therma-Tru’s fourth annual search for the ugliest door in America. They’re going to pick two grand prize winners who will receive a Therma-Tru door makeover with a retail value of up to $5,000. All you have to do is go to MyUglyDoor.com. All the details are there plus how to enter and there are only two weeks left, so do it today.
TOM: There are two ways to enter. You can either write a short essay about why you may have the ugliest door in America and send it in with a couple of pictures of your front or patio door or you can produce a one-minute video. Details, again, are at MyUglyDoor.com. Less than two weeks left to enter so do it today.
This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show where we will tackle your ugly home improvement projects if you pick up the phone and call us and make them beautiful at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Now we’re going to talk to Chris in Texas about removing a stain from a shower door. What can we do for you?
CHRIS: I have got a glass shower door for a home that I purchased and the hard water stains are just impossible to get off. I don’t want to replace the glass but I’m hoping you guys might have a solution of what I might try to get the hard water stain off.
LESLIE: Have you tried CLR, the Calcium Lime Rust?
CHRIS: I have tried that and it helped but it did not totally remove it because once it dried that hard water film seemed to return.
TOM: Well, here’s what you want to do. First of all you can use CLR if you get it really thick on there. You can also use simply vinegar and water. White vinegar will melt away the mineral salt deposits.
LESLIE: You may have to use it a bunch of times.
TOM: But here’s one more trick of the trade. Once you get it really, really clean get some car wax and apply it to the glass shower door.
LESLIE: Only the door.
TOM: Only the door; not the floor. (chuckling) Because that could be slippery.
CHRIS: (chuckling) Right, right, right.
TOM: But the car wax does a really good job on the shower door because it makes it harder for the hard water stains to adhere and to dry and to spot.
CHRIS: Mm-hmm, would it help if I used something abrasive when I’m trying to clean it off or not?
TOM: Oh, no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.
LESLIE: No, because then you’ll end up with more cloudiness …
TOM: Yes.
LESLIE: … because you’re abrading the surface and you’re creating swirls.
CHRIS: Ah. Alright, guys. I’ll give it a try. Thank you.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Diane in Colorado is dealing with some unwanted visitors; some bugs of some sort. Tell us what you’re seeing.
DIANE: From November through approximately March I get an infestation of box elder bugs.
TOM: OK.
DIANE: And since they can’t be killed I need some ideas for how to keep them out.
TOM: Do you have a lot of trees around your house?
DIANE: You know, we had them all taken out. I live near an irrigation canal.
TOM: OK.
DIANE: I had them all taken out behind my house but my neighbors do have them.
TOM: Well, sometimes you have to sort of reach beyond your house to control the boxelder bugs and actually treat the trees that surround it. When you have as many as you have you’re probably going to need a residual insecticide; one that is actually sprayed on the surfaces as well as inside the exterior walls and the way the insecticides work is basically the bugs have to sort of march through it; they get it on their bodies and then they take it back and because they’re very social insects they pass it to each other. You can only sort of kill them yourself if you actually see them and a soap solution works well but it’s only going to kill them if you happen to hit them, so if you open up a section of your house and you see a lot of them you can spray them down with a three to four-percent mix of water and soap; but otherwise, you really need to have a professional pest control applicator to come in and apply the right kind of insecticides. These insecticides are getting a lot smarter these days in that they only work for the insect that they’re designed to kill and so that’s why you really need to rely on an expert at this point when you have an infestation at this level; so they stop taking over your house.
DIANE: Right, sounds great.
TOM: Diane, good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: Hey, here’s a quick tip to help you with that grungy outdoor furniture. If you have plastic furniture you want to mix a little bit of soap, some borax and a half cup of peroxide to one gallon of water; let that mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes and scrub away with a nylon brush before rinsing it off. Now before you do that, test a small area to make sure the peroxide does not react negatively with the particular brand of furniture that you own.
LESLIE: Now if you’ve wood furniture, make sure to oil the wood surfaces with a sealant or preservative that’s appropriate to the type of wood that your furniture is made of. You can also clean the furniture a couple times of month with an oil soap. If you’ve got metal furnishings, soapy water and a little bit of elbow grease – alright, a lot of elbow grease (Tom chuckles) – you can remove any rust or stains with sandpaper and then go ahead and repaint the entire surface with a rust-prohibiting paint or even a metal varnish. It’ll look great.
TOM: If you have teenagers, hand them the sandpaper and let them go to it.
LESLIE: (chuckling) That’s what our neighbor does.
TOM: It works great around my house. (chuckles)
This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Up next we’re going to tell you how to troubleshoot an icemaker; something you definitely don’t want to be on the fritz in the summer. That’s coming up, next.
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ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is being brought to you by Guardian Home Standby Generators, America’s choice in power outage protection. Learn more at GuardianGenerators.com. Now, here are Tom and Leslie.
TOM: Welcome back to the Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show where we make good homes better. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: And it is summertime which means it’s also vacation time which means it’s open season on your home for would-be burglars. If you want some tips to keep your home sweet home safe, check out my brand, spanking new column at MoneyPit.AOL.com. It’s all about home security and lists, step by step, the things that you need to think about to keep your home safe while you are away.
LESLIE: Hey, and while you’re surfing the web go ahead and look at MoneyPit.com and surf around our internet site for all the home improvement information you could ever desire and if you’ve got a question just burning and you need an answer, click on Ask Tom and Leslie; e-mail us and we will answer your home improvement dilemma right now every hour on the show like we always do. We’ve got one here from Richard in Texas who writes: ‘The ice in my icemaker clings together in clumps, especially at the top of the container. The temperature is minus 10 degrees in the icemaker. Can you tell me what’s going on?
TOM: Hmm. Well, it certainly sounds like it’s cold enough. I mean generally icemakers will operate very efficiently at around eight degrees, so if you are at minus 10 that should be fine. I wonder if it’s even too cold and it’s freezing too quick and creating sort of the dam effect. So I would take a look at that temperature.
The other thing is that there’s a thermostat in the icemaker, Richard, and very often those thermostats will go bad and have to be replaced. If the thermostat is going bad it’s not going to cycle properly and that’s what could be causing your clumpy ice. So those are the two things to check.
LESLIE: Alright, we’ve got another one here from Sharon in Arkansas who writes: ‘We have a metal roof with large bolts and it’s leaking over our porch area. We don’t have an attic. How can we tell if it’s leaking anywhere else?’
TOM: You don’t have an attic. It’s leaking over the porch. It’s not leaking into the house or you would be able to tell, Sharon, because that water is going to be very hydroscopic; it’s going to run everywhere and soak into everything. So if you don’t see it now I wouldn’t worry too much about it. What I would do, though, is take this as early warning that you could be having some breakdown in the seals of that metal roof and I would get up there and not just repair the bolts that are actually leaking but those that are not leaking and I would seal those with a silicone patching material and that ought to do it.
LESLIE: Alright, looks like you’ve got a roofing project, Sharon.
Last one we’ve got from Alfred in Bay Head, New Jersey who writes: ‘Recently we had a leak which required us to remove the vinyl soffit material above my garage. This revealed only insulation and no sheeting. I believe some type of wood should have been there. If this is correct how can I install the wood and maintain the vinyl corner of my siding?’
TOM: Now that’s really interesting, Alfred, because if it’s a garage it’s not going to be heated and, therefore, why is it insulated?
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) Why is the insulation there?
TOM: Yeah, you wouldn’t normally have insulation. In terms of not having the plywood soffit, not a big deal because very many times those plywood soffits do nothing but block the air flow; in fact, the fact that you don’t have a soffit, if it is an insulated space, is a good thing because that means that plenty of air can get in there and dry out that insulation. You have to remember that insulation gets very damp and once it does it doesn’t insulate. If you add just two percent to insulation it loses one-third of its r value. So the fact that the soffit is wide open and ventilated is a good thing.
LESLIE: Yeah, but doesn’t poor ventilation in a situation like this cause roof rot?
TOM: Well, it definitely can because in this case if you did have plywood installed you’d be blocking those soffit vents and what would happen this is the condensation in the attic would have no place to get out so it would condense on the inside of the roof sheathing and then once it gets above about 20 percent moisture in the wood it starts to decay and delaminate and it grows mold and it’s a real, stinking mess. So it’s very important, with an attic, to have as much natural ventilation as absolutely possible.
LESLIE: Alright, Alfred, I hope that helps.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Thank you so much for spending this hour with us. The show continues online 24/7 at MoneyPit.com or you can look up the answer for virtually any home improvement project that’s on your mind. That’s all available free at MoneyPit.com.
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 2008 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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