If you've recently become a homeowner and you're starting to wonder how much of a mess you've gotten yourself into, or if you've received bids from contractors and aren't sure how to decipher them, maybe you'd like a friendly visit from ToolGirl.

If you're up for it, I'll bring a small camera crew to your house and interview you about what's gone wrong so far, what things are bothering you most about your new dwelling and what skills you think you'd need to feel better and start making changes and improvements.

Visits are free and last about two hours.   Your consultation will include an on-camera interview, a walk-through of your house, and a short hands-on tutorial from Mag to help you get started in your handy homeowner adventure.  We'll be videotaping the whole visit.

Once again, if you're a new-ish homeowner (you bought within the last 2 years) and you're a little freaked out about how to move forward with your house, please send an e-mail to help@toolgirl.com.

Thanks, and hope to see you at your place. 

We recently finished a video that shows my very first woodturning project, which was making the voluptuous legs for my new desk.  Sure, I could have started small with a candlestick or a wine-stopper, but I really needed legs for my new desk and the idea of turning raw, angular blocks into silky-smooth curves made me feel like the Goddess of Undulations, if there was such a goddess. 

If you search YouTube you won't find very many woodturning videos with girls in them and I think we should change that.  Here's my entry:

Shared via AddThis

"I'm clueless when it comes to decorating. I find the seemingly infinite choices, even in something as fundamental as color scheme, let alone all the other options, overwhelming to the point of paralysis. I want some decorating advice."

I can relate.  I once painted a floor 7 times before I got the colour right.  If I have to pick out tiles or flooring or fabrics I just want to go to sleep until it's over.  As men abhor chick movies, I loathe making decor decisions.

Fortunately, there's now a new, fresh, free online resource to help those of us who are decor-challenged. RONA (Canada's largest hardware and home improvement dealer) offers a way to make choosing your decorating style really simple and maybe even fun.  They even provide free plans for DIY projects like canopy beds and storage - complete with materials lists and cut lists.  

Watch this ToolGirl video report for a tour of the resources available to you online at rona.ca.

Summer entertaining outdoors is great because the spills don’t have to be cleaned up.  But there are risks.  For example, having people over for drinks is a leading cause of extroversion.   And feeling jovial makes you a target for summer perils, like forgetting that the screen door is closed when you’re carrying a tray full of refreshments. 

Charging into a closed screen door is perfectly normal.  If you don’t believe me, then next time you’re at a friend’s place, notice all the little rips and dents in THEIR screen door and say “How did this happen?”  They'll either avert their eyes (if they're the culprit who ran into the screen) or do a snot laugh (if it was a relative).

No matter how your screen got holey, replacing it is easy.  But there is towering potential for irritation. For one thing, screen doors are flimsy once you’ve taken them off their rigid tracks, so they twist, rack and skitter around.  If you’re feeling short-tempered or hormonal, it’s probably less stressful to just sell your house and start over in a home with intact screens.  OR, you can try my screen defeating tactics.

Getting Started

First, you have to remove the screen door from the doorframe.  Put on your lucky shorts and call for beer.  The repair has begun.

Lift the bottom corner of the door a little so you can see a spring-mounted plastic wheel sitting astride a narrow aluminium track.  Wedge the blade of a screwdriver underneath the wheel.  Goose it up a little so the wheel retracts, and then pull the bottom edge of the screen door toward you a bit, so the wheel is no longer on its rail. 

TIP:
If the wheel won’t easily pop over the rail, loosen it by backing off its adjustment screw.  The screw, usually a Phillips head, is located on the frame of the door near the wheel.  Turn the screw counter-clockwise a few turns and try again to pop the wheel over the rail.

Free the other bottom wheel the same way, then swing the lower edge of the screen door out.  With the timely help of gravity, the door will now drop out of the top groove, and you can carry it away to begin the meaty part of the procedure.   

The Meaty Part
Lay the screen door down on a horizontal work surface.  Pause.  This is the moment when you must choose one of two forks in the river of life.  The first leads to annoyance, the other to cataclysmic aggravation.  TIP:  You need to prevent your door from skating around as you work or you will shorten your lifespan. 

The lifespan-lengthening secret is to fasten the door in place with scraps of wood screwed to the work surface.  (The bonus here is that you can screw right through the old screen into the inside blocks, because the old screening is toast anyway, so why not add another hole.) The blocks keep all four sides of the door in position, and also hold it square so you don’t end up with a freshly screened parallelogram, which won’t fit back into any doorframe, ever.  Don’t ask how I know this.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that the old screening is held in place on the frame by a length of “spline”, a flexible cord which runs along a channel on the perimeter of the door.  To remove the old spline, find a loose end and yank the whole length out with pliers.  You’ll probably have to remove some of the latch hardware at this point.  I usually lose the screws, so I’ve found that taping them together somewhere safe (I use my forehead) saves search time later. 

Pull off the old holey screen.  The spline channel is probably full of crud, so tidy it up.  Nobody likes a dirty channel.  If you don’t have a vacuum handy, a stiff-bristled brush will do.

Lay your fresh screening over the door.  Make sure you’ve bought screening that is at least 2 inches wider than the door you’re repairing.  I bought stuff that was too narrow and the ensuing anguish was worse than having pantyhose on backwards.   

Screening is available by the yard, or in rolls, and comes in nylon, aluminium, fibreglass and various other materials.  Nylon is the easiest to work with. You’ll also need a new length of spline long enough to fill the channel, and a spline roller, which looks like a pizza-cutter.  Spline rollers are cheap and shoddily manufactured but they do the job.  Alternatively, you can push the spline into place with the tip of a screwdriver, but it won’t provide half the romance of using a spline roller.

When you’ve installed the fresh spline, trim off excess screening with a utility knife.  Re-install the door by inserting the top wheels first, then swinging the bottom into place and lifting the wheels up and over the rail.   Adjust the screws so the door is sitting square and riding saucily once again. 

The beauty of this repair is that from now on, you don’t need to remember that the screen door is there when you’re rushing outside with a tray of beverages.  Because YOU know how to fix a busted screen.  There can be no greater confidence in this life. 

Tools:
Screwdriver
Spline roller
Utility knife
Drill
Square

Materials:
Screening
Spline
Blocks
Screws

Special additional tip:  At the corners the spline roller craps out.  Use a screwdriver.

Dammit Jim, they're just trying to scare us.  Like Star Trek explorers, we do-it-yourselfers know that disaster is always a possible outcome.  If you don't believe that, you haven't really tried it.  Of course things can go desperately wrong in DIY.  That's why we like it.  We are hardwired for adventure, and we can find our excitement under a sink or behind a washing machine or inside an electrical panel.

What those articles fail to mention is that a lot of things actually go well for DIYers.  I can't think of any examples right now, but I'm sure I've had one or two successful repairs in the last decade. So don't be discouraged by naysayers in the press.  They're just looking for something fresh to scare people with.  

Speaking of DIY, I learned how to fix a stuck emergency brake underneath a Toyota Landcruiser. 

So here's the trick if you ever have the Emergency Brake "!" symbol light up on your dashboard.

There's a cable that runs along the rear axle to the disc brake.  (It's usually the left side that gets stuck on my car.)

A short swift tug on the cable should free it from the stuck position. 

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — It turns out that people aren’t just turning to DIY projects to save money — they actually like doing home improvement projects.

Lowe’s Cos. conducted a consumer survey recently of more than 500 U.S. homeowners, who revealed projects they’re planning over the next 12 months and what motivated the process. Of those people planning a DIY project, 35 percent say they will do it themselves to save money. But in a very close second, 32 percent cited “pleasure” as the reason they do it themselves.

“Purchasing a home is one of the largest single investments a person will make during his or her lifetime. In good times and bad, homeowners remain committed to preserving their investment by maintaining and improving their homes,” says Larry Stone, Lowe’s president and COO. “While time constraints encouraged many people to say ‘do it for me’ in recent years, perhaps the silver lining of the current economy is that homeowners can save while they rediscover the fun of doing projects themselves.”

I forced the chair mat and mousepad into matching the carpet (using my iron-on technique, covered a few weeks ago).  The floor of the house slopes so much I had to prop up the south legs to make the desk surface horizontal.  You'd slope too if you were 150 years old.

This is how the project looked in February of 2008.  

P.S.  I got my FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council, meaning the bamboo was harvested sustainably) bamboo from a great local supplier, SilkRoad Toronto.

The tenon at the top of each bamboo leg fits into a mortise (hole) on the underside of the desk.  Rudimentary but enduring.  Like leg hair.

Shellawax is actually meant to be used as a polish for woodturning projects on a lathe, but I've been so happy with the finish it's given me on my turned projects that I decided to try it on a (huge) flat surface.  I'm working in small 6-inch squares to apply the finish, then hitting the area with the heat gun to simulate the heat caused by friction on a lathe.  Then a quick rub with a cotton rag to even out the warm finish, which is dry-to-the-touch pretty much instantly after heating.  Shellawax is non-toxic after curing, and low-odor during application (even my chemical-sensitive husband wasn't bothered by it).  After three weeks of curing the Shellawax finish is alcohol and water-resistant - good news for us spillers. 

PRO:  Limits potential intimacy with unattractive tent mates.  

CON:  Limits potential intimacy with attractive tent mates.

CON:  Difficult to get dressed inside your sleeping bag without loss of dignity.  

PRO:  Attractive loungewear for sitting around the campfire at night.

CON:  Difficult to put shoes on to visit potty in middle of the night.

PRO:  Fun to tighten down hood so only mouth and nose show, then go for a Zombie Walk at 3:00a.m. and freak out other campers.

1. Owning your own cordless drill makes you want to rush home after work.
2. You get to use suggestive terms like 'torque' and 'ratcheting chuck'.
3. You can say stuff like, “With this much torque, screwing is more satisfying”.
4. Putting on a tool belt makes you look like Cat Woman, only with more torque.
5. When they watch you working, your male friends will experience an increase in their angular momentum.

But this year I've matured, and so can you.  Here’s the secret for cleaning out your gutters in a timely manner: Get in touch with the ancient power of irritability. 

When you're feeling pissy, you're in a metabolically enhanced state.  You’re ready for physical and emotional confrontation.  In fact, you're begging for it.  This is your opportunity to channel annoyance into productivity by, say, cleaning the dead mouse out of the freezer fan, or - if life hasn't yet offered you that particular serving of repugnance - scooping fetid glop out of gutters. 

Remember, timing is essential.  Don't ruin a great mood with a reeking, dirty project like cleaning out gutters.  Wait till you're in a bad mood.  Also, don't do it on a nice day.  The worse the weather, the more propulsive your irritation will be, and the greater the odds that you'll complete this job in record time. 

Finally, wear ill-fitting clothes that accentuate bulgy spots.  Don't wash your hair that day.   Work barehanded.   Feel the rebirth of your inner hellcat.

Give Inky Dinky What For

Downspouts get compacted with rotting leaves.  Give your downspouts a high colonic.  Set the hose nozzle on 'Stun', insert the hose as far as possible up the downspout and blast repeatedly into the bottom end of the downspout until there is a soggy expulsion of rotting clumps.   You will be utterly soaked by now, and the sleeve of your shirt will look (and smell) like you've been delivering calves.  Press on.  It's just starting to get good.

Now climb a ladder dragging a hose with you and try running some water into the top of the downspout.  If it's still backing up, blast the top opening of the downspout with your hose.  If you get a faceful of backspray, grunt with nascent rage.  Then try packing rags around the hose so that doesn't happen again.  If repeated blasts fail to clear the clog, resort to a drain auger or 'snake', a primitive appliance that almost never works well.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

TIP:  If your downspouts have elbows or angles, especially near the bottom, unscrew those sections and feed the hose into the main downspout.  Now you can attack the clogs more directly.  

Gutter Fingers

Once water is running freely in the downspouts, proceed with scooping the crud out of the gutters.  Move the ladder frequently as you progress along the gutter.  Frequent descents and ascents are good for your glutes.  TIP: The ladder safety authorities tell us “Always keep your belly button inside the ladder edges; no leaning out to one side.”  And they should know.  

If your gutter sludge is densely compacted, use a garden trowel to dig it out.   As you work, check for loose spikes or brackets, the fasteners that hold the gutter in place.  TIP: Some repair manuals recommend marking trouble spots on the outside of the gutter with coloured chalk so that you can find the problem areas later, when you're ready to repair them, which might be two years from now.  So if you’re a procrastinator, mark your trouble spots with permanent marker.

Turn the Other Leak

Once you've scraped the dreck out of all gutters, flood them with water from the hose, descend the ladder and scan the underside of the gutter for leaks.  Sometimes you'll notice gaps between sections of gutter, especially at corners.  Press the joints back together or use gutter sealant to patch holes and seal open joints.   TIP: Make sure you buy the correct type of sealant; gutters can be made of vinyl, aluminum or galvanized metal, and each material requires a different sealant formulation.  

Patch any holes by first cleaning the area with rubbing alcohol or acetone.  Then smear gutter sealant around the edge of the hole and lay a piece of fiberglass mesh or metal bug screen over the hole.  Coat the entire patch with several layers of gutter sealant and call it good.

Remember, the whole point of this ordeal is to protect your home’s foundation from leaks.  The water collected by an average roof in summer is enough to fill several swimming pools.  FINAL TIP:  If your downspouts are depositing rainwater right beside your foundation, your basement is likely to develop foundation leaks.  A quick solution is to buy plastic or metal downspout extensions so you can divert water at least six feet away from your foundation.  End of lecture.