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:
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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: And welcome to this hour of the program where we promise to grant you independence from your home repair tasks. (Leslie chuckles) We’re going to help you stay on top of the jobs by calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. We’re here to help you get those jobs done. 888-666-3974.
Well summertime means picnics and barbecues but it also means you get all those stains from picnics and barbecues over the tablecloths and your clothes.
LESLIE: (chuckling) Yeah, and if you’re like me it’s usually catsup or barbecue sauce or berries.
TOM: Absolutely.
LESLIE: Even ice cream.
TOM: So we’ve got some advice from the folks at Good Housekeeping. We’ll be featuring their picnic stain removal guide in a just a bit.
LESLIE: And if you’re having that picnic on the grass but it just doesn’t seem like the lush, green grass you’ve always dreamed of, well don’t worry. We’re going to tell you why a dry, yellow lawn will come back to life, a little late on the show.
TOM: And we’re going to tell you what not to do so that you won’t stop that from coming back as quick as possible; one critical mistake that most people make. We’re going to help you avoid it. Also ahead, if a new floor is in your future we’re going to teach you how to calculate the right amount of material that you need for any room of your house. We’ve got an easy formula, coming up.
LESLIE: Plus we’re giving away 120 bucks worth of compact fluorescent lighting from Sylvania. That’s going to help you change every light bulb in your house to CFLs. Think about how much smaller your carbon footprint is going to be.
TOM: You could win this total green makeover by picking up the phone and calling us right now at 888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974. Let’s get right to those phones.
Leslie, who’s first?
LESLIE: Jess in Washington needs some help with a tile countertop. What happened? What’s going on?
JESS: Well, we have a 25-year-old kitchen counter of five-inch square ceramic tiles. Some of the tiles have become pitted and the off-white color has become dingy. We’ve been unable to locate replacement tiles and solid-surface replacements won’t guarantee us that our adjacent garden window won’t be damaged. Do you have any suggestions?
LESLIE: Are the damaged pieces sort of all in one area or are they interspersed throughout the entire countertop?
JESS: They tend to be in the most conspicuous – near the edge; simply because, out of ignorance, early on we were cleaning off this countertop with vinegar and I suppose it has tended to eat little pits into the tile.
TOM: Well, vinegar is a very, very mild acid but I’ve never heard of it being possible to eat away at the tile. But Leslie, any suggestions for ways that maybe we could replace these worn tiles with ones that are complementary?
LESLIE: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean if they’re sort of spaced out where if you popped, you know, one of the worn ones out and maybe you could put in maybe not even a five-inch tile but five-by-five of little one-inch fun mosaics to make it a little bit more colorful or like a design choice or a decorative tile; something that’s a little different if it’s sort of interspersed and you can make it almost seem like it was a design choice. If you say that they’re all towards the edge you might want to think about doing, you know, a border and then continuing it on the wrap-around on the countertop as well; just so it sort of seems like it’s a design choice. You want to make whatever you seem like it was intentional.
JESS: Ha-ha. Thank you very much.
LESLIE: My pleasure.
TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Number one asked question here at The Money Pit – flooring – and we’ve got John in New Jersey who’s doing some work at his money pit. What can we do for you?
JOHN: I’ve been in this house 25 years. I practically rebuilt it. I have hardwood floors that have always been finished with wax. I want to put polyurethane down but the guys who are supposed to know this stuff tell me that if I put polyurethane down the wax will come through.
TOM: They’re right and you have some very floors there, John. You’ve been doing it the way people have been doing it for a hundred or more years; by using a floor wax on those floors. And if you do try to put – and I know there’s a lot of work for you because that’s just the way that is. If you do try to put urethane on top of that it’s not going to hold. The only way you can do that is if you had the floor sanded. If you go down through that wax to raw wood then you could use a urethane finish and it’ll stay up but if you try to do anything less than that it definitely will not stick and you’re going to have a big mess on your hands. So you have to decide how much of a commitment you want to make, John?
JOHN: What would you do if it was your floor?
TOM: I would continue to wax them if they’ve been done all those years. I’ll tell you what I would do to freshen them up. I would rent a floor buffer with a sanding screen. It’s sort of like one of those floor buffers you see the guys use in commercial buildings but you put a sanding screen and the sanding screen will just sand off just the upper sort of surface of that floor and then I would rebuff it with some new paste wax. That’s how I’d refinish it. But again, if you’re going to do the paste wax it’s not going to last as long as a urethane finish and you’re going to have to do it again from time. That’s the price you pay for that look of hand-rubbed wood floors, which is just gorgeous.
JOHN: Well it’s a colonial house, so I think I’ll stay with it. Thank you guys.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: You are listening to the Money Pit and if you are hosting a big barbecue party this weekend or any weekend, we can help you get your grill operating smoothly and efficiently and get your next party all fired up. So give us a call with your home repair or your home improvement question 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: And speaking of barbecues, along with barbecues comes barbecue sauce – like on your shirt. (chuckles) So coming up next we’re going to turn to the folks at Good Housekeeping for some tips on how to remove picnic stains.
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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.
Hey, pick up the phone; give us a call; let us know what you are working on and especially what you’re having problems with and you might need a hand with. Give us a call at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. Not only are you going to get the answer to your question that you are working on. We’re also going to give you a chance to win a pretty great prize and this hour we’re giving away 120 bucks worth of the new micro-mini CFL – those are the compact fluorescent bulbs from Sylvania – and they’re a great new, small size so they can fit just about anywhere a regular incandescent bulb does but they are far more energy efficient. You will almost never change that bulb for like – what; seven, nine years? And you’re going to be reducing your carbon footprint, thus helping Mother Earth. So pick up the phone for your chance to win at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: 888-666-3974.
Well it certainly is the summer picnic season and picnics are fantastic. But eating outdoors can be messy for your clothes, your tablecloths and that outdoor furniture. So here are some stain-removal tips for the most common picnic stains from the folks at Good Housekeeping.
First, barbecue sauce; one of my favorites. Flush with cold water from the underside of the fabric then blot with a liquid laundry detergent and sponge it off with vinegar. Interesting combination. So first you flush it with cold water from the underside then you blot it down with some laundry detergent and then you sponge it with the vinegar and apply a stain treatment and launder. Makes you wonder, Leslie, that if you just did the stain treatment, would it work.
LESLIE: No it doesn’t because I’m just sometimes very sloppy – especially at summer outdoor eating events – and catsup never comes out.
TOM: Well it certainly will this way. Now what about those berries; when you’re eating those blueberry pies and things like that?
LESLIE: Yum. If you end up with berries all over your favorite white picnic shirt you want to mix a tablespoon of white vinegar with half a teaspoon of liquid laundry detergent and a quart of water then you want to let your fabric soak for 15 minutes. If you have a super-tough stain you can blot the area with alcohol – that always does the trick – and then launder the piece as usual.
TOM: Now for a complete list of how to get rid of the top 10 picnic stains, check out our next Money Pit e-newsletter. It’s free. Comes to your inbox every Friday. We promise not to spam you and we will not sell or give away your e-mail address. Totally secure at MoneyPit.com. Sign up today at MoneyPit.com.
If you have an outdoor home improvement question or an inside one, you know what this might be a good time to do, Leslie? A deck check. Making sure your deck is strong before all of your friends and family and fans come over to visit you. Questions like that, pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Who’s next?
LESLIE: Susan in South Carolina has got a cleaning question. What can we do for you?
SUSAN: Well I have porcelain tile – beige porcelain tile – with kind of a light gray grout and I just can’t keep the porcelain clean and can’t get the grout clean.
TOM: Do you just live in a dirty house, Susan?
SUSAN: Yeah. (chuckles)
TOM: You got kids?
SUSAN: No.
TOM: Oh.
SUSAN: I have two dogs, which doesn’t help.
TOM: Dogs? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, kids are pretty dirty but dogs are worse.
SUSAN: Yes, they are. (chuckles)
LESLIE: Now, when you’ve gotten the grout to a clean point which makes you happy, have you ever taken the step to seal it?
SUSAN: No.
LESLIE: That could save you a tremendous amount of cleaning effort post-sealing. So what I would say is get it as clean as possible and then go ahead and get a grout sealer and you can get – they make these interesting little applicators that are sort of small, squeezy bottles with like a rolly foam tip or even one that almost looks like a nail polish brush. That helps you really just get it on the grout.
SUSAN: OK. So I have been just using bleach mainly; you know, on the porcelain and the grout and that’s – is that the quickest fix for that?
TOM: Yeah, bleach is fine. There are also grout cleaners and grout strippers. If it gets really dirty you can use a grout stripper which is a bit of a more industrial sort of strength product or a grout cleaner which is somewhat of a lighter product; both of those, available at home centers and hardware stores, will do a good job at this as well.
LESLIE: Time to talk water management with Ralph in Maryland. What’s going on?
RALPH: I have a problem because I live in a detached garage apartment and the driveway that’s in front of the house and the garage funnels all the rainwater that comes down right – basically into the space between the garage and the house and it makes what’s my front yard pretty much a swamp most of the time.
TOM: OK.
RALPH: And I’m wondering what would be the best way to build like an irrigation trench or some way to get that water from the driveway down past our house. There’s a hill, basically, that’s behind our house and if I could get it to go over that hill it would be really great.
LESLIE: Would that be a French drain?
TOM: Sort of that. It’s called a curtain drain. It’s like a French drain. Basically what you want to do is you want to dig a trench that’s about 12 inches deep and 12 inches wide. You put about two inches of stone in the bottom of that and then you install a perforated pipe. Surround the perforated pipe with more stone all the way over the top then you put a piece of filter cloth over that and then you put grass or dirt and grass so you won’t see this when it’s done. And what happens is the water will fall into this area, come up into the pipe and then run out. Now the trick is you need to be able to take that pipe and run it downhill to get the water away from the house. Is that possible or is it going to bottom out somewhere?
RALPH: No, that’s possible because the ground has a natural grade to it anyway, so …
TOM: Perfect.
RALPH: … it’ll run right along with the hill.
TOM: Well then that’s what you want to do and I’d break it out to daylight somewhere so you can always snake it out if it ever gets clogged.
RALPH: OK.
TOM: But that’s definitely the way to do that. It’s called a curtain drain. When it’s installed it’s completely invisible but it’ll stop that water from ponding once and for all.
RALPH: OK. Well that’s great. Thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Tom in Louisiana, welcome to The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Tom and Leslie, it’s good to talk to you.
TOM: How can we help you?
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Well, you already did.
TOM: Alright, this is good news.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: I put a whole-house generator in my house two weeks ago …
TOM: OK.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: … and I’ll probably never have another problem with a power outage the rest of my life.
TOM: Yeah, isn’t it terrific?
TOM IN LOUISIANA: But it’s great.
TOM: Tom, what kind of generator did you put in?
TOM IN LOUISIANA: I bought a – from Home Depot.
TOM: A Guardian generator?
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Guardian. Yeah, that’s what it was.
TOM: Yeah, that’s a great machine. I’ve got one at my house and I love it. And you’re right; once you put one in you never have to worry about power outages again. It’s always interesting. If you turn off your main breaker with that on …
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Yes.
TOM: … the whole house repowers in like 15 to 30 seconds.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Yeah. Just 30 seconds. Yeah.
TOM: Yep.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: It’s great.
TOM: Yeah, it’s a great thing to have. That was a smart move; especially down in your part of the country where you have a lot of storms and get a lot of power outages.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Yeah, well. And in my neighborhood, if it rains the light goes out. (Tom and Leslie chuckle) I don’t know why.
TOM: Well we’re glad that worked out for you, Tom. Thanks so much for letting us know.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Well thank you and have a good day, will you?
TOM: Alright, we will.
TOM IN LOUISIANA: Bye-bye.
TOM: 888-666-3974. There goes another happy Money Pit customer.
LESLIE: Excellent.
Michelle in New York is dealing with some local troublemakers. Her house got egged. What happened? Tell us about it?
MICHELLE: Unfortunately the front of my house was plastered with eggs and – well it’s a painted white aluminum siding and I was curious to find out what product I can use to get that off without leaving a stain?
TOM: And how long were the eggs on your house, Michelle? Was this from last mischief night or something?
MICHELLE: No, it was just about a week ago.
TOM: Michelle, here’s a little trick of the trade that can help get the egg off your house.
MICHELLE: Yes.
TOM: You need to mix up a solution of white vinegar and warm water. Are these stains in places that you can physically reach without too much trouble?
MICHELLE: Actually, no. I’ll have to get a big ladder.
TOM: OK. Well you want to go up there and you want to saturate it with some warm water and white vinegar; kind of a 50/50 solution.
MICHELLE: Yeah?
TOM: And that usually does a pretty good job of loosening up the eggs and getting it off your house.
LESLIE: If there’s any way to secure that damp rag to the egg stain itself for a little while so you can sort of work your way around these stains, that’ll help; otherwise you’re going to have to hold it on there for a little bit to loosen up the egg itself.
MICHELLE: OK, and will that leave a stain?
TOM: No, it shouldn’t and, in fact, if you want to be sure I would start with one of the lowest stains possible and test it.
MICHELLE: OK.
TOM: You have to be very ginger with aluminum siding because remember, it’s painted metal. So if you press too hard it can come off. You have to be careful not to scrub too much. You really just more or less want to blot it off.
MICHELLE: Alright, then. That sounds great. Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Michelle. Thanks so much for reaching us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Tiling trouble; that’s what Art in Texas has got. What can we do for you?
ART: Yeah, I have a little divot in a ceramic tile. It’s about a quarter-inch around and maybe about a quarter-inch deep. I had a glass fall on the tile. It didn’t crack it but just like knocked out this little hole in there and I tried Googling, you know, to find out about how to repair tile, if you can just do a spot repair, and the only thing I’ve been able to find is how to replace the whole tile and I was jus wondering if there’s any kind of like a little kind of thing you can pour in there or something to fill it in.
LESLIE: Is this in a spot where if you did some sort of patching repair job it would see a lot of action? Like is it in a big counter space that you use quite often?
ART: Yeah, it’s right there by a counter in the kitchen.
LESLIE: Because I feel like whatever you use to patch it, it’s not going to adhere as well as you hope that it will and, you know, with cleaning and everyday use it’s just going to keep popping out.
ART: Oh, OK. So really the only thing you can do for that is either live with it or replace the tile.
TOM: Or replace it with a tile that’s complementary if you can’t find one that happens to be an exact match.
ART: Right, yeah I’ve got tile left over from when they built the house.
TOM: Oh, good deal. You know that’s not that big of a deal to replace it then if you’ve got that tile. I would just do that if it bothers you that much.
ART: Great, thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
You are tuned to the Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Hey, has the summer sun and lack of rain in your part of the country left your lawn looking more like a hay field than a park? Well don’t fret because a live lawn is definitely in your future if you don’t do this. Find out what it is, next.
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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: Welcome back to the Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show coming to you free at 1-888-MONEY-PIT is the answer to your home improvement question. Pick up the phone. Give us a call. We’d love to help you out.
I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
Alright, so before the break we were talking about lawns. If you’re looking out the windows of your house and you’re seeing something that looks more like a yellow, dried-out hayfield rather than that beautiful, green, lush lawn that your neighbors have or perhaps you’re just dreaming of, we can help. If you find that your lawn is looking a little dry and crunchy and the wrong color, don’t worry because lawns, they can easily be affected by summer droughts and they are way smarter than you think. That’s right; your lawn is thinking all the time. Even though it looks dead it’s really just dormant. It’s taking a nap and it’s going to come back to it’s lush look when the rain returns and it gets all the water it needs. If you want to prevent any further damage to this dormant area of your lawn just try not to walk on it. Really, anything you can do – caution tape; police tape (Tom chuckles); mini fences – just keep people away and that lawn will be green before you know it.
TOM: Maybe one of those invisible fences.
LESLIE: Oh no, then all your friends would have to wear the collar.
TOM: They have to wear the collar. (chuckles) 888-666-3974. We promise not to shock you with the answers to your home improvement question, so pick up the phone and call us right now. Let’s get back to the phones.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Gwen in Florida has got mold on her mind. How can we help you?
GWEN: Oh, I just need some help with my – I don’t know if it’s a mold problem or what it is exactly. We had water leakage in a common wall between two rooms.
TOM: OK.
GWEN: One of the rooms is the bathroom and it’s right where the shower is. The other room is an office and the office smells kind of musty and icky and we did get the roof repaired where the know the leak was coming from but we’d have to tear out the whole wall to find out …
TOM: How long did it stay wet, Gwen?
GWEN: It was during the hurricane – the last, yucky hurricane that came through here …
TOM: But I mean was it like a few days or something like that?
GWEN: When I realized it was wet I cleaned everything on the inside and then the guy didn’t come fix the roof for about six months.
TOM: Oh. Well geez, it might – you may have a mold problem. If that stayed wet for six months, Lord knows what you’re going to find inside that wall.
LESLIE: And kept getting wetter and wetter …
TOM: Yeah.
LESLIE: … due to continuing rains.
TOM: Yeah, exactly. So I think in this case it probably might be a pretty good idea to remove and replace that drywall in that area; see what you got.
GWEN: Boy.
TOM: Yeah.
GWEN: The one side is a custom shower that …
TOM: Well can’t you do it from the other side?
GWEN: If we do it from the other side it – I guess we can try that. That might be easier.
TOM: Well if you had the option of opening up a shower wall and opening up a regular drywall wall you would simply open up the drywall wall.
LESLIE: Because the drywall wall is probably where the mold is growing. If your shower wall has tile or any sort of waterproof material on top of it you’re dealing with a waterproof backer board of some sort, so the problem is definitely within the framework or that drywall.
TOM: And you know drywall, while it seems like a major job to open that wall up …
LESLIE: It’s not.
TOM: … it’s not and it’s not that hard to fix it.
LESLIE: You will feel so good about yourself if you do this project because it is very simple to replace drywall.
GWEN: Oh, I’d love to try that but I’m not sure I know how. (chuckles)
TOM: Well it’s not difficult to do, Gwen. Maybe you can get somebody to help you. But basically, what you’re going to want to do is, very simply, if you start at the corner you’re going to cut that first with a utility knife and then you’re going to identify …
LESLIE: Because there’s some tape in that corner.
TOM: Yep, and you’re going to identify where the stud is in the wall. You can find that with a stud finder. And then right in the middle of the stud is where you’re going to cut that other piece of drywall out and you’ll make two vertical cuts and then once you have the vertical cuts you’ll also cut it across the ceiling. Then you can remove that whole thing in a clean way because basically, remember, when you cut drywall out you want to have a clean edge so that you can patch it back in just as easily. You know, cutting drywall is pretty easy stuff.
LESLIE: And the reason why you split it on the stud is so that when you put the new piece on you have something to attach to so you’re not just floating in space.
GWEN: I never would have thought of that.
TOM: And now you can do it.
GWEN: OK.
TOM: Alright, Gwen. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974. Folks, this is not that hard. You can do it.
Hey, flooring is one of the most popular topics on this show so up next, if you’re getting ready to replace your flooring – maybe you need some new hardwood floor, some new carpeting – and you’re wondering how much to buy, we’ll give you the surefire formula for making sure you don’t come up short, after this.
(theme song)
ANNOUNCER: Stay-Green lawn care products and gardening supplies provide practical solutions for seasonal lawn and garden needs at value prices. Stay-Green products are available exclusively at Lowe’s and come with a written guarantee printed on every package and label. The complete line of Stay-Green fertilizers, growing media, weed controls and grass seed help keep lawns looking beautiful year-round and are the perfect blend of science and technology at an affordable price.
TOM: 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: Call us right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. We’re going to help you greenify your house because this hour …
LESLIE: Is that a word? (chuckles)
TOM: It’s a word; I just made it up. Greenify. We’re giving away one dozen double packs of micro-mini CFL bulbs from Sylvania; compact fluorescent light bulbs from Sylvania. These are smaller in size than the usual CFLs so they’ll fit just about any light fixture you have plus they’ll be so much more energy efficient and save you some money for years to come because they last that long; for years. It’s a prize that’s worth 120 bucks. If you want to win it pick up the phone right now. Call us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT and you must have a home improvement question and be willing to come on the air and ask us, but we’ll give you a great answer. May not be the correct answer but (Leslie chuckles) it’ll be an answer. (chuckles)
LESLIE: Alright, well now that your house is all sparklingly lit up with those beautiful new CFLs and you’re being energy efficient you’re taking a good look around your house and you’re thinking, ‘Ugh, this carpet needs some replacing. It’s kind of seen its day.’ Well if you find yourself in a situation where you are ready to get rid of the old and bring in some new but you just don’t really know how much to order, we have got the solution for you. You need to measure your room’s square footage and here’s how you do it.
You need to measure the length of the room and the width of the room then multiply those two numbers. Then you take that total and divide it by eight. This is going to give you the amount of carpet that you need in square yards with enough extra to be safe but not sorry. This way you’ve got some to finish the job and you don’t have to worry about running out midway.
TOM: It really stinks when you run out midway because it never comes out great when you have to buy some more.
LESLIE: Oh, gosh. And then if you have to patch things together it doesn’t work right and then, God forbid, it was like a special order and the dye lot is not the same, forget it.
TOM: Yeah. Well, this’ll help you out.
This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. Call us right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT with your flooring question, your wall question, your leaky roof question, your squeaky floor question. Hey, we’re here to help you out with all of those questions at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leslie, who’s next?
LESLIE: Now we’re going to help Scott in Illinois remove some paint. How can we help you?
SCOTT: Yeah, I’m trying to find out the easiest and quickest way to remove paint from wood trim and wood doors.
LESLIE: Interior or exterior?
SCOTT: Interior.
TOM: And Scott, how old are these doors and the trim that you’re trying to strip?
SCOTT: Oh, they’re probably since the 60s.
TOM: Hmm, OK. So you probably have multiple layers of paint on there. Well there’s a couple of things that you can do. First of all, if you use paint strippers most paint strippers are very, very toxic but there’s maybe one or two nontoxic paint strippers that I like. One is made by a company called Back to Nature Products. It’s called Ready-Strip. They’re website is Ready-Strip.com. And it works pretty good because it’s not stinky and it goes on, it turns color when it’s time to remove it and you can pull up probably one to two layers of paint with every application. You are going to have to probably do multiple applications because with trim that hasn’t been refinished since the 60s you’re going to find lots of layers of paint that have to come off.
SCOTT: Oh, OK. And that’s Ready-Strip?
TOM: Ready-Strip. It’s called Ready-Strip. Ready-Strip.com.
LESLIE: It’s probably the best to work with on the interior just because from a caustic standpoint.
TOM: And the other issue to consider is whether or not you want to refinish the trim or replace the trim. With trim that is from the 1960s, you know, it’s not an antique. So you may want to think about maybe just doing the doors but actually physically replacing the trim because it actually might end up being a lot less labor and probably will be a little more expensive but it’ll come out looking great.
SCOTT: OK, well I appreciate that.
LESLIE: Talking ceiling repair with Doreen in the Bronx. Hey, how can we help?
DOREEN: Well I had a leaky ceiling. What happened was I had a – my washing machine had overflowed. It’s upstairs; my washer.
LESLIE: OK.
DOREEN: Well, I had a leaky ceiling. What happened was I had a – my washing machine had overflowed. It’s upstairs; my washer.
LESLIE: OK.
DOREEN: And it had overflowed and it came down through the floor and into the ceiling in the living room downstairs. I did fix it. I got some of that tape; that joint tape and I got it fixed. But what I forgot to do was sand it and now it’s like really uneven. It’s like …
TOM: Yeah.
DOREEN: Is there a clean, neat way to get that done without all the powder going everywhere?
TOM: There is a machine that you could rent that basically sands drywall and has a vacuum attachment to it.
DOREEN: Oh.
TOM: But if you don’t have that you may be able to kind of do this as a two-hand – what I would do is I would take a block of wood and wrap sandpaper around it so you have a flat surface to work on and then with a vacuum hose in one hand and the sander in the other you can try to minimize the dust that way.
LESLIE: Just make sure you wear a dust mask because you – and safety goggles and a hair net, for that matter …
DOREEN: Right.
LESLIE: … because you don’t want this dust getting everywhere.
TOM: And by the way, while we’re talking about it, I think it’s USG just came out with the reduced dust spackle. And it was pretty cool because I saw a demo of it and it was not nearly as flaky as the traditional spackle mix. So I think the manufacturers are getting smart on that and if you’re doing a big project then that’s something you could look into.
DOREEN: Well that’s a little late for me now but …
TOM: (chuckling) Yes it is. But for those that are just tackling those jobs now …
DOREEN: At the equipment rental place and see if they’ve got that sander with the vacuum attached.
TOM: Yeah, that might be the way to go.
DOREEN: Alright. Well, thank you guys very much. And I just started listening to your show and I’m really learning a lot of stuff. So thank you for that, too.
TOM: Well thank you so much.
LESLIE: You are listening to the Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show.
I hate it when this happens. You are working with your brand, spanking new set of tools. You forget that you left something outside. It starts to rain and everything is rusty and ruined. Can you save that wonderful batch of new tools? We are going to answer that when we come back.
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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: 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: Call us right now with your home improvement question or send us an e-mail by going to MoneyPit.com and clicking on Ask Tom and Leslie and hey, you can also check out our section on AOL.com where I’m privileged to be the home improvement editor. Simply go to MoneyPit.AOL.com because this weekend I’ve got a new article up about lightning and protecting your house from being struck by lightning. And if you think that you have about as much a chance of getting by struck by lightning as you do of winning the lottery, well think again because it’s actually a lot more common than you think.
LESLIE: Yeah, considering when I was younger I got zapped by lightning. It came through the phone line because I was sitting on the radiator admiring the most beautiful purple lightning while chatting away on the phone and next thing I remember my mom was picking me up off the floor. And we played the lottery the next day and did not win.
TOM: Yeah, but you have a sparkling personality from it. (Leslie chuckles) Well you can learn how to lightning-proof your home if you pick up my new article at AOL.com. Again, go to MoneyPit.AOL.com. It’s all there to help you out.
LESLIE: Alright, and while you’re surfing the web, like Tom said, you can click on Ask Tom and Leslie at MoneyPit.com and shoot us an e-mail question, which we are always happy to answer at this point in the show. And we’ve got one here from Elizabeth in Wittier, California who writes: ‘How do I clean rusted tools like hammers, screwdrivers, saws, et cetera? They’re good, brand-name tools but I left them out in the rain.’
TOM: Ah. Well the first thing that you could do is to very gently – usually you’ll get a surface rust on it. I mean we’re assuming here, Elizabeth, that you just left it out for …
LESLIE: One day.
TOM: … a brief period of time. It’s not like been undug from your garden from last year’s plantings that you found these tools. If it’s lightly rusted you can use a naval jelly, which has phosphoric acid in it and does a pretty good job. Takes a little bit of time and elbow grease of cleaning the rust off of tools. If it’s a little bit deeper than that then you have to sort of abrade it. You can do that with emery cloth; you can do it with a wire brush. And then it’s probably not a bad idea for you to prime that tool; especially like, for example, [if you had] (ph) a really rusty hammer. I like to spray them with like a rust primer …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: … understanding it’s going to come right off the head when I start to use it but it kind of seals in all those pores and stops that rust from continuing.
LESLIE: Well and even coating a tool with butcher’s wax is sort of a good preventative step.
TOM: That’ll work too.
LESLIE: And if you find that it’s still even really lightly rusted in the beginning, you can use WD-40 and steel wool. I mean those are all good tricks to give it a whirl.
Alright, we’ve got one here from Dale in Lincoln, Nebraska who writes: ‘I have an old wooden fence that is starting to not hold the nails. It appears to be untreated or painted. What is the best way to treat this to extend it’s life and usefulness? Linseed oil? Boiled or not? Stained? What?’
TOM: I would probably go for solid-color stains. Got a lot of pigment in it.
LESLIE: Sounds old, yeah.
TOM: Does a really good job of soaking into that old wood. But if it’s not holding nails what you might want to do is switch to screws because the wood itself is decaying internally and doesn’t have enough pressure to hold the nail. So I would switch to a galvanized or plated screw and use that to attach any of the loose pickets that are falling off.
LESLIE: Alright, we’ve got one here from Independence, Missouri asking about a dog that’s had some accidents on the lawn and now we’re dealing with some not-so-nice spots on the lawn. Doesn’t Stay-Green have like a spot treatment?
TOM: There are spot treatments available. It counteracts the acid that’s in the doggie do and will have that lawn patched and coming back bright green in no time.
LESLIE: And you know there’s also some good pet products out there. If you head to your local pet center there’s one called Dog-Gone-It (sp) and another one called Spot Away. Both work great to just instantly turn that brown spot green.
TOM: Well that’s about all the time we have in this hour of the program but do not fret. The show continues online at MoneyPit.com. In fact, you can reach us 24/7/365 at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. If we’re not in the studio we’ll call you back the next time we are and try to answer your home improvement question. And at MoneyPit.com you can even search years’ worth of past shows because I’m sure whatever question is on your mind, someone’s asked it before and I bet you it’s right there on our website 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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END HOUR 1 TEXT
(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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