Recent content by ScottCh

Hi Folks, I'm having trouble getting our gas log fireplace to start. It has a pilot light, which works. When I set the knob to the pilot position, I can light the pilot. The pilot light warms a thermocouple, which is supposed to enable the gas to flow. The knob has a plate with...

Thanks for all of the good information everyone. I lean strongly towards fixing this problem by adding drainage rather than starting a legal conflict with a currently neutral neighbor. Given that the ground has a pretty good slope at this end of the block, the water is always going to run down...

Hello Nealtw, That's food for thought. We have some drains in the lawn on the upslope side of the house. It's not obvious where these go, and we do not have a plan for the house (the town did not require them back then). It seems impractical to tap into those. We would have to pipe under...

Hi Folks, I looked through all of the topic areas and didn't see a better one for this problem. I hope this is OK. Our house was built in the early 90s. When we moved in a few years ago, the concrete driveway was cracked, heaved, and buckled in places. We had it repaired, which involved...

I totally agree with the OP. A bit over 2 years ago we moved into a house that has a lot of recessed lighting. I bought a whole carton of the FEIT 60 Watt equivalents (13W), 48 in all, in order to bring down our new home's electricity bills. In particular, these are their "daylight"...

We got estimates from a few different companies before replacing most of our windows with low-E gas filled windows last year. One company I was originally considering told me that they ensure that there are no leaks by filling all of the gaps between the window and the framing with spray-in...

Hi Folks, I'm updating our late 1980's kitchen, including refinishing the wood cabinet doors. The cabinet hardware is also worn out looking, especially the door pulls. Since there are so many kinds of pulls available, I thought I could buy a bunch of replacements (there are 26 doors...

One of the great things about thinking "green" when making home improvements is that it can be done at many levels. For example, a lot of energy savings can come from fairly small changes made during a project. We had our asphalt shingle roof redone late last year. We switched from using an...

Hi Folks, I'm trying to update our kitchen, including refinishing our wooden cabinets. It was all built in 1987 and looks run down. I also tried to replace the cabinet pulls, but I can't find anything like them in the same size. Here's what they look like: As you can see...