Drywalling Tips

There's a couple of things about drywalling, and I wanna make one thing very clear. I get a lot of questions and I see a lot of mistakes about this. Number one, when you finish drywall, when you mud it, you're gonna need to put three coats of mud on that drywall. Don't think that you can go through there and just put one thick coat, it's not gonna work.

Drywall mud shrinks when it drys and when that happens, you might get little cracks and especially if you do a really thick coat like that.

So you're gonna go and you're gonna put a fairly thin layer of mud down. And then you'll tape. And then you just wanna flatten that out so that there's no air bubbles or places where there isn't any mud in contact with the tape.

Now mudding is a little bit of an art. So I'm not gonna be able to describe to you exactly how to do it and you're just gonna do it right. It's gonna take some practice, but you don't want a whole lot of mud left over. Spend a little time on it, but again it's something that you're gonna have to take some practice at and you'll get better at it.

Then you're gonna let that coat dry. If you're just using regular mud, like you get in a home improvement store, then you're probably gonna let it sit at least a day you'll come back the next day and you're gonna do your second coat, but you're gonna use a wider knife. With the first coat, you use maybe like a 4 inch knife. With the second coat, you might jump up to an 8 or 10 inch knife. And then your last coat, you're gonna do the same thing, put it on there, make it nice and smooth and let it dry.

Your last coat, you're gonna try to get an even bigger knife, like a 12 inch knife. When you're first starting to do this, you might need to sand in between coats. You're gonna very lightly sand, do not over sand your mud because you're gonna just take it right off again. One of the goals here of using the mud is, you have to have a little bit of a layer there and you're gonna create avery gradual and almost un-noticable hump. But it's got to cover that paper. If there's not enough mud to cover the paper or the screw hole, whatever it is, then you're gonna see it through the paint and that's not what you want.

So if you are having to sand between coats because maybe you've got some ridges there that just are gonna make it real hard for you to put the next coat on, sand very lightly, just enough to knock down those ridges. Dont' try to just completely eliminate them, just knock them down and then try to mud over the whole thing. Do your second coat. You want everything to be wider. If you're doing joints, make sure that you widen up that joint, widen up the mud so that it spreads out farther because you're gonna want to try to thin it out towards the edges.

Then you've got your third coat and hopefully it's a final coat. You're gonna try to make everything look real pretty now. One tool that is really gonna be helpful to you right now is a halogen light. Make sure you put it on an angle with the wall. And what that's gonna do is create some serious shadow contrast. Any imperfections in the wall are gonna look a lot worse. So most of the time you're gonna be able to catch any of the problems right here.

Make sure that light's on there. That it's making shadows. And then when you go through and you mud, make sure that you cover up everything that needs to be covered. You will be able to come back and either sand or lightly sponge down the wall.

I personally prefer sponging. So any kinda work that has to be done after I mud, I'll usually do it with sponging. I don't like the dust from the drywall and I really like the kinda smoothed out and spread out look that sponging gives you. If you haven't tried that, go to your home improvement store and see if they've got in the drywall section a sponge with a little, it's kinda like got a brilo pad side to it and then the other side is just a regular sponge. So you can use that brilo pad for some really rough spots and use the sponge to smooth everything out.

Now aside from your joints, I also wanna point out your screws because this is an area where a lot of people try to skimp on because, let's face it, there are a lot of screws. If you go in and you do a remodel job you might have a lot of screws and some people don't want to deal with them. With the screws, it's just as important, you've gotta have three coats on there.

Also I wanna give you a little trick, a technique that'll help you get a better job and get through it quicker. Instead of just smearing on a little bit of mud on one screw and wiping it off, and going to the next one, smear and wipe. Take your knife and your mud and do a streak down the wall, let's say you've got three screws vertically. Okay. Take you knife and wipe it down the wall so that you now have a white stripe kinda going from the top screw, all the way across to the middle one and all the way down to the bottom one. So one long wipe. And then you're gonna take your knife and wipe that up and flatten it out.

At this point don't push real hard, you're wanting mostly to get a lot of mud inside the screw hole. And then you don't wanna try to wipe everything back off because you're gonna actually build up a bit of a layer here. This is gonna do three things. It's gonna make the application of the mud go a lot quicker and second it's gonna make your sanding job a lot easier. Cause you're just gonna sand over one big broad area. And another thing it's gonna do is make the finished job look better.

A lot of times I walk into a house and I see little flat circular spots on the wall. And I can always tell that's where a drywall screw is because that kind of thing justshows right through the paint.

So with this technique, what you're gonna do on the second coat is actually use a bigger knife again, and you're gonna broaden that strip out so that it covers a larger area. You're gonna try to feather things out. When I get done with a wall. When I've done the screws, it almost looks like I have several butt joints down the wall, every few feet so. Because the third coat of mud is so wide, it's about 10 or 12 inches wide, just for those screws. But when the final job is done and the wall is painted, it looks a lot flatter, it feels a lot flatter, and you can not see those imperfections in the wall.

Garbage Disposal Maintenance

This week I've got a little bit of helpful information on your garbage disposal.

This is another one of those things where a lot of times people will make a call to a plumber, and that's usually a call that does not need to be made and you're going to spend a lot of money that you can probably just keep in your pocket. So let's get right to it.

A garbage disposal is an appliance that mounts underneath your sink. It's an electric motor and it's essentially got this wheel on it with some, kinda like impeller blades. Well, that spins real fast and the goal is for it to chop up all the debris that gets put down your sink. And that’s supposed to be mainly just food waste, right? So that stuff gets hit by these spinning blades and it gets ground into much tinier pieces. And those pieces will then flush down the drain pipe. A lot of times also if there’s a dishwasher in the kitchen, then that dishwasher’s also gonna connect to the garbage disposal and then anything that’s collected in the dishwasher is also gonna end up getting dumped down the garbage disposal.

One of the most common things that happens to this appliance is that it gets jammed. So I’m gonna tell you how you can free that up, and there’s also some maintenance tips we can perform on our garbage disposal and I’m gonna show you some of those too.

Now, before you do anything with a garbage disposal, it’s important that there’s no power to it. So you’re gonna open your cabinet doors, look underneath there, locate the garbage disposal, it’s probably a big black or chrome, large, cylindrical looking object attached to the bottom of one of your drains. There should be an electrical wire at the bottom of that, and follow that to the wall. Most likely, it’s just plugged in so you can simply unplug it, and then it’s safe to work on it.

If it’s actually hard-wired and there’s no way to just unplug it, then you’re gonna have to find the circuit breaker or fuse in some cases, where you can turn the power off to that appliance because you do not want some kind of accident happening an that thing getting turned on while you’re working on it.

So once you’ve got it shut off and it’s safe, the first thing that we’re gonna do to free it up, and let’s assume that it’s just jammed and it won’t turn, on the bottom of the disposal you’re probably gonna find a little place where there’s a hole for a hex wrench. And for those of you that don’t know, this is a six sided hexagon shape, it’s gonna probably be fairly tiny. The hole for this hex wrench is gonna be maybe an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch in size, or diameter. And if it does have one of these, sometimes the manufacturer places this hex wrench in a little pouch and it’ll be attached somewhere on the garbage disposal. So if that’s the case, you can just use that. If not, you’re gonna have to locate one that’s of the same size. Don’t try using something that is not meant for it, so in other words, don’t try using a flat-head screwdriver. Don’t try using a hex wrench that does not fit it properly, cause you do not want to strip it out and you might have to tweak on it pretty good so you want something that fits and something that’s actually meant for it.

So to get that flywheel turning again, you’re gonna put the hex wrench in there, and then you’re gonna give it a little pull. And you’re gonna try to spin it around in both directions. Try to spin it all the way around clockwise, and then try to spin it all the way around counter-clockwise. Do that a couple of times and make sure that it’s now spinning freely. More often than not, this alone fixes any kind of jamming problem where the disposal’s not spinning.

Another kind of problem that you can have would be a leak. And there’s two main places where a disposal can leak, either hoses that are attached to it, or seals that are like gaskets. So what I like to do is just kinda rub my hand around the disposal, touching it everywhere and feeling for wet spots. That’s gonna help you find where it’s actually leaking at. If you can see water dripping, that’s obviously a bonus. Tighten up any fittings that are attaching hoses to the disposal. If you can’t find the leak around hoses, then probably, especially if the leak is right underneath the disposal, probably it’s actually leaking through the flywheel seal.

Now if that’s the case, you gonna have to take the disposal out. You’ll be required to disassemble it and locate that seal and find a replacement for it. If that’s too much for you, you can take the disposal itself into a repair shop and have them do it for you.

And the last thing we’re gonna talk about is, believe it or not, those impeller blades inside the disposal, they do get dull. A lot of times, when it seems like the disposal just doesn’t work too good, that’s because those blades are dull and at that point, sometimes people will go out and just buy another disposal. That’s not really necessary, those blades can be sharpened and they can be replaced.

Last time I checked, a new garbage disposal is gonna be like a minimum $55 or $60, but in this case, if the motor’s spinning real good and you can tell that the flywheel is spinning around and the disposal seems like it’s not chewing things up right, you’re gonna want to sharpen or replace those blades. So you’re gonna have to again, take the whole thing out, you’ll have to remove the fittings, remove the disposal out from underneath the sink and then you’re gonna have to take the disposal apart.

Now, if you wanna try your nack at sharpening, sometimes you can even do that with the impellers still in place. In other cases you might have to remove them. If you’re getting a lot of clogged drains in your kitchen, if water keeps filling up in there and it’s kinda like a slow drain, then chances are this is what your problem is and it’s just draining very slowly because the food is not getting chewed up like it’s supposed to. A lot of times, if you can get those impeller blades off the disposal, you can take them to a grinding machine and just sharpen them that way.

If they’re beyond repair and you can’t get them sharpened, you’re gonna have to replace the whole flywheel assembly because more than likely you won’t be able to find the impeller blades themselves.

Leaky Faucet Repair - Drip

We're gonna try something new today, I'm thinking about starting a podcast for www.home-improvement4u.com, so this is the test pilot! Make sure you check it out and let me know what you think. You don't have to read the article, you can hear me instead!



Today I've got a tip for you to stop your faucet from dripping. This is one of the most common problems out there in bathrooms and I get calls like this all the time. In fact, here at the orphanage I just had to do something yesterday relating to this. What we have is a situation where there's a seal, it's actually a washer, inside the faucet, that's not sealing right and that causes the faucet to drip no matter how hard you turn the handles off. Not only is this a big waste of water, but that dripping sound can certainly be annoying. If you have a repair man come out to fix something like this, you could pay anywhere between $50 and $100 to have them come out to do this. And it's something that you could do yourself and it doesn't take a lot of effort, it does take a little bit of time though. The instructions that I'm gonna give you are for a double handled compression faucet. So this isn't going to apply if you've got one of those single handles that rocks back and forth, this is just for an old fashioned double handle.

The first thing you want to do is shut the water off to that faucet. Underneath the sink or behind the pedistal there should be some shutoff valves there. You can either shut both of them off, or if you want just shut the cold water off and see if the faucet stops dripping. If it does, then you know the problem is with the cold side of the faucet. If that doesn't stop it, try the hot water and as long as your shutoff valves are working, you'll have your drip off. If you think you've located which handle is giving you the problem, what you're gonna do is remove a screw that's on top of that handle. Sometimes there's a little decal or button on there, possibly labeled H for hot or C for cold. Usually that will flip up, with something like a pocket knife. Be careful not to scratch the finish of the faucet. You can usually pop the cover off pretty easy and then unscrew it and pull the handle off.

Then you're going to use an adjustable wrench, like a crescent wrench, and loosen a nut and remove the whole stem and pull that whole assembly out. Now at the bottom of that stem is a rubber washer and that's held in place by a screw usually. Take the screw off and you're gonna take this rubber washer to the hardware store with you to make sure that you get the same size and thickness. Before you do that, feel down inside the faucet and there's what's called a seat down in there. Feel to see if that's rough. This is where the rubber washer is pushed up against when the faucet is in the off position. If the seat gets real rough, then the washer gets torn up and that's why your faucet is leaking.

If that's the case you're gonna have to either replace the seat, if it can be replaced, but if it's not removable then you're gonna have to dress it. There's a tool called a seat wrench and that can be used to remove and replace the seat, if it is removable. There's also a seat dressing tool to smooth the surface of that seat, if it's not removable. Either way you want to take care of that seat problem first, if it exists, before you try to replace that washer otherwise the new washer's just gonna get messed up too.

So then, after the seat's taken care of, we're gonna put the new washer back in place. Put that screw back on there, you've gotta save all these parts. Put them in a little container so you don't lose anything. And then put that stem back in the faucet. Tighten the packing nut. Replace the handle and put the screw back on that holds the handle in place and then if you had one of those little caps make sure you put that back on as well.

Then you should be good to go. Turn your water back on at the shut-off valve and check your faucet out. Open and close it. Make sure that everything is sealed properly and your drip should be gone.

I'm Ken Walker, this is Home-Improvement4u.com. Definately stop by and visit our forum and our website at http://www.home-improvement4u.com/.

This is a test…this is only a test

This is actually a trial…it's the Word 2007 Trial to be exact. I'm wanting to try out its new features for blogging.

Since it looks like I'm going to be doing a lot more blogging in the near future, I figured I'd try to find a tool that will make my life easier, so here we go. Will it simplify things? Will it make posting pictures easier? Will it make format and layout appear to be seamless tasks?

We'll see. It already makes 'breaks' work better. I just hit ENTER once and I get the 'new paragraph' gap. What about pictures?

Here's a diagram I just created in SketchUp.

I'm thinking about starting up a podcast on home improvement…let's see where that goes.

Home Improvement 4U - Kitchen Cabinets

I really have to apologize for the delay here. I've been quite busy. I will say though, that I have put together a great set of articles over at the www.home-improvement4u.com website. It's on building your own custom cabinets. This really is a task that any diyer can tackle. I made sure to make it easy to folow and step by step. Even if you've never built something like this before, you should be able to tackle it. And, as always, if you run into trouble, pop into the forum and ask a question.

Things have been going pretty well at the orphanage. Nothing really new and exciting, except that I was able to reroute some of the grey water from the main kitchen into a separate sewage tank. We were getting constant overflows from the main tank, which is a bad thing. There was already a lift pump in place, but it was dumping into the main tank, so we just rerouted it to the new drain line that we installed for the laundry room. Now no overflows and the system is sealed up much better so that it doesn't stink every time you run it.
:)

Electrical Problem Solved!

As the title shows, we found the illusive electrical nightmare. When I left you last, we weren't sure exactly what had caused our mysterious 'hole in the pipe', which actually occured in two pipes. Ironically, some other problems started popping up. People getting shocked while touching appliances, touching screws on light switch plates, and best of all...when turning the faucet IN THE SHOWER! I don't know how he didn't get killed, but a man on the second floor actually was shocked, and almost couldn't let go, while in the shower turning the faucet.

Some volunteers came down for the weekend to do some work and one of them offered to find the problem and correct it. I had not had time to work on it at that point, and didn't know about anybody else getting shocked. The only thing I knew then was that the same room with the water problem also had some electrical issues. Nobody had said anything else about it. Well, when he was investigating, that's when he found out that the man had been shocked and that other things were hot. Mostly, metal that was supposed to be grounded was reading about 48V. No big deal. Not good, but shouldn't kill anybody.

The problem was though that if you happened to touch two of the 48V items at the same time (like a pipe or water, and an outlet screw for example) you'd get the full 110V! That was definately bad.

Well, he said he would not leave until it was done. That was Saturday afternoon. Monday afternoon he decided that he would put everything back like it was and give up. I had busied myself with other projects since he was working on it, but when I learned of his discouragement, I decided I'd better help. This place is big. Real big. And nothing is put together the way you might expect. In addition, there isn't really anybody around that knows much about it. There are about 12 breaker boxes that I know of. Here was my strategy:

1) Shut off every single breaker in the building.
2) Starting at the main, turn on each breaker and test the condition.
3) When the condition returns, you've now found the faulty circuit.

Well, this worked out well. We shut everything down and tested. No current. We shut the main on. Still no current. About the third breaker (fortunately there was a main panel downstairs and that was where the problem was, or this could have taken a very long time) all of a sudden the current on the ground reappeared. We traced this to a single cable that ran to an out of service meter.

The cable appeared to go up the pole and enter the meter box from the top. This was however, an illusion. There was a small hole in the top of the box, but only one of the wires in the cable actually went into the hole. And it only went in a little. You see, there was enough bare wire exposed that someone the cable had gotten thrown or laid on top of the box and arc welded itself to the box! The wires were hot, so when they touched the grounded box, ZAP! Once we removed it, the current upstairs was gone. This single cable lit everything up. Now we could safely shower, or touch the faucet AND the stove at the same time, or reach our hand in the washing machine and test the water.

With that mystery solved, I'm hopefully going to be moving on to other things, like updating my blog more regularly. I'm going to try to start tracking projects and taking pictures. To start with, my next entry will feature some detailed photos of the whole place.

Adios muchachos!

When Main Water Lines Break

From the title, I'm sure you can guess what this blog is about. I had a very interesting weekend. We had a small crowd of volunteers this weekend to help fix some things up. On Sunday, we had some sewer problems in the chapel. This usually comes from a holding tank in the cafeteria being full. That's where the chapel bathroom drains to. We usually pump it out into the main holding tanks buried in the courtyard. Nothing unusual so far, but then we started to have some overflow out of a crack in the cement. This flooded a hallway with raw sewage.

As it turned out, this 'overflow' behavior was normal here, but the problem was that it was not draining. We happened upon a vertical pipe that a child had shoved a small board down, blocking the flow. OK, so now we solved the overflow drainage problem.

Next up, we were thinking about why the tanks were filling up so quickly. After some consideration, we decided that the laundry room, with 4 washing machines going nearly every day, should not empty into the septic system. All that 'gray' water was filling up the holding tanks too rapidly.

We found an empty and unused holding tank in the far corner of the complex. It was a long way off, but we ended up routing a drain from the laundry room, 160 feet (including some vertical drop) to teh empty and unused tank. Fortunately, the laundry room was on the 2nd floor. It was quite a project, but did that bust a main water line? Read on.

Here in Chapultapec, the water pressure sometimes goes down to nothing ("nada" in Spanish). For that reason, most places have a holding tank for water and when the pressure goes down too low, you just use that reserve. Our reserve is about 500 gallons and with all the people here, it is gone in about an hour and a half. We had two 1,000 gallon tanks on the second floor, but they were both hooked up to the old water purifier that hasn't been working for years.

We decided to go ahead and hook all the tanks up together by connecting the pipes on the bottoms of the tanks. A great idea! Well, in doing so, we lifted the now very light 500 gallon tank and didn't notice the stress it caused on the main water line that connected to it. I'm on my hands and knees connecting a 'T' and 'SHHHHHH' water everywhere. And nobody could get the water shut off! I didn't have the right size to slam a cap on it. What a mess.

Someone ran to get the replacement pieces, and some others tried to find the shutoff. While they were doing that, I went ahead and hooked up the rest of the pipes for the storage tanks.

After getting the plumbing parts, elbows, T's, pipe, SHUTOFF VALVE, we got it all hooked back up. Best thing is that now we have a good 2,000+ gallons of reserve water. The third tank is on a little higher elevation than the other two, so it doesn't fill all the way up, but it's a lot more than we had before.

My next post will have to do with the solution to our ELECTRICAL nightmare from last week. We found the problem.....