Can You Paint Pressure Treated Wood?

There is no shortage of old wives’ tales in the field of home improvement. As in many other aspects of life, there is guidance and methods of suggested approach regarding different aspects of enhancing your home that not only couldn’t be further from correct, but also may unintentionally cause pain in the long run when […]

How To Clean Old Paint From Paint Brushes

A good paint brush has always been a decent investment. Yes, of course you can buy what we in the industry refer to as a “throw-away” brush, but unless the project you are doing is literally a ‘one-time’ event, there certainly is value in learning to maintain this seemingly small investment. If you want to […]

The Purpose Of An Astragal

Imagine a big door, like the one you use to enter a school or a store. Sometimes, these doors are extra big and have two parts that swing open in the middle. These are called ‘double doors’. Now, imagine that the two parts of the door meet in the middle. There’s a little space where […]

How To NOT Damage Your Gutters When Working In & Around Them

I am an admitted Obsessive Compulsive. Although there are varying degrees of ‘OCD’ (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), outside of the normal items that you may see related to this way of life with a quick Google search, there are certain things that attract my eye like a magnet which may not normally bother anyone else. As […]

What Is A Cupola?

Falling under the category of features on your home that people often call one thing when they actually mean another would be the ‘cupola’. Perhaps my biggest pet peeve with these types of items is when someone refers to a ‘downspout’ on their home as a ‘gutter’. In the same realm, I see the term […]

The Widow’s Walk

It was DEFINITELY NOT intended to be creepy. And I have no idea what makes my mind go to the dark side of things when I hear them being spoken of. But ever since I heard the term ‘Widow’s Walk’ years ago, my thoughts always have traveled to this vision of a ghostly figure of […]

Baker Staging

Unique names which are synonymous with the contracting trades are always fun things for me to delve into the origins of. ‘Baker Staging’ is no exception to this. Years ago, seemingly every time we utilized it, I attempted to piece together in my mind, why this particular type of apparatus was called ‘Baker Staging’. Have […]

Hitching Posts

Chances are you have passed by one numerous times over the course of your life. Most likely, you have never given much thought as to what it was (assuming you even noticed it!), nor have you ever needed to. However, if this were “back in the day”, prior to the advent of the automobile, this […]

Mad Dog

In my younger years, in certain friend groups if you happened to mention the words ‘Mad Dog’ in conversation, imagery in the group’s mind would often jump to thoughts of an extremely popular (in various circles) alcoholic beverage at the time called ‘Mad Dog 20/20’ (these days I have no idea if this is even […]

How Do I Keep Birds From Hanging Around My Home?

Many years ago, I was approached by a Client with a bit of a dilemma. They had a number of birds that seemed to like to hang around their property. While they may have been pleasant to look at and sweet to hear their voices, the stuff that they left behind was not as pleasant […]