HERE ARE YOUR MONTHLY HANDY HOMEOWNERS TIPS

  • Door Stack-Drying Trick
    We wanted to paint all 20 doors in the house, but where do you put them while they’re wet? By screwing short 2×4 blocks to the ends, we were able to paint both sides of each door and then stack them neatly while they dried. Just make sure to keep the same spacing between every pair of blocks.
  •  New Path From Old Stone
    I made a brand-new-looking flagstone pathway to my gazebo just by flipping over the weathered stones that were there and washing them off. The tricky part was fitting the shapes back together, but with a little finessing I managed it.
  • Of Tee Bolts and Toilet Bowls
    When installing a toilet bowl, mark a line on the threaded ends of the tee bolts to show the orientation of the tees on the bolts’ other end, which hold the bowl to the flange on the floor. Without that mark as a guide, you could turn the bolt 90 degrees as you tighten it and pull it out of the flange, making a mess of the wax ring. Trust me: I learned this one the hard way.
  • Hand Protection
    I reuse those long, narrow plastic bags that newspapers are delivered in as protective gloves and sleeves when spray painting and pulling weeds. They’re really good for uprooting and containing poison ivy and other stuff you shouldn’t touch with bare hands; just remove the bags by pulling them inside out.

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