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My wife wants to repaint a bathroom cabinet that is currently Oak with a clear finish. As she wants a brush free finish, she wants to spray paint it from cans. What choice of primer and spray paint would guarantee no (bad) interaction between the current finish and the new paint? Thanks!

My 43 year old chimney (in Michigan) has loose bricks and spalling in the top 10 rows for bricks. Looking at it closely, I can see that it never had much of a crown - just mortar spread from the tile liner to the edges of the top brick layer. I just installed a high efficiency furnace (PVC vent...

I'm upgrading to a two stage furnace and I need to run new wires to my new thermostat . The problem is that the basement ceiling is drywalled. I know that you can't run 110 volt wires through a duct, but it is kosher to run low voltage thermostat wires through a cold air duct? Any other...

I recognize the importance of correctly sizing a gas furnace. I used a spreadsheet program to do my own Manual J calculation and came up with 31,400 btu / hour heat loss at 5 degrees, for SE Michigan for my 2100 sq ft. Colonial house. To cross check this I looked at my gas consumption for 2008...

I have a few back burner wiring projects on hold. My question is whether copper wire prices have come back down in keeping with the steep fall in copper commodity prices. Anybody that keeps an eye on this care to comment? Thanks.

The cheap garage wall covering thread rocked my memory. I have a 2 1/2 car attached garage that has open trusses supporting the roof. When I temporarily heat it for a car repair, etc, most of the heat goes out the roof. Any ideas for an inexpensive material to attach to the underside of the...

I thought I'd share this since it worked so well. I had to insulate a small cavity that I only had access to through a 2" hole. I made a mini cellulose insulation blower from a cat litter bucket, a shop vacuum and a piece of 2" plastic pipe. I just tossed the loose cellulose into the bucket and...

Here is what is puzzling me; I have an upstairs bathroom with a shower with formed base and lead liner, a toilet and a sink, all original from 1966. Every couple of days, I will get about a cup of water leaking from the ceiling below. Then for several days nothing. My schedule is pretty...

I'm trying to improve my home heating efficiency and am in the process of sealing my forced air ducts. In the process, I have noticed that the cold air returns from the 2nd floor to the basement are just the stud space between the outside wall and the inner drywall (no sheet metal liner). Was...

Has anyone found a gutter cover that really works? I have large white pine trees (long needles) as well as a variety of deciduous trees that surround my house and my gutters get full easily. My house is a colonial with a walk out basement , so the roof is 3 stories up from the backside -...

My house, built in 1966, has all copper plumbing, including drain pipes. I have discovered a dripping drain pipe connection that takes the bath sink waste water away (in the wall, just downstream from the J trap). If I use a torch to take this apart and resolder it, am I risking an explosion...

I built a 12' x 25' enclosed porch about 18 years ago off the back of my garage in Michigan. The porch is supported by 10 concrete piers , each 42" deep in the ground. About 5 years ago I noticed that the French doors on the south and west sides have a larger top gap on the latch side than the...