Installing Laminate Floors In Your Home
So your’re tired of the old stained carpet in your house, laminate floors is a great upgrade that will give your home a whole new look.
Installation of laminate floors is a pretty easy job, it just requires a lot of bending and working on your knees.
Tools Needed:
- Hammer
- Rubber Mallet
- Spacers
- Laminate Flooring metal tool (not really sure of the name but you can find it in the laminate flooring section of Home Depot or Lowes)
- Knee Pads
- Small Table Saw (You can buy the Ryobi small table saw at Home Depot for $99.00, or you can rent one for around $50.00 a day. I would buy it you don’t realize how handy a table saw is until you have one.)
Lets get started
- First thing you have to do is measure the room and buy the laminate wood flooring, you’ll also need to purchase the padding that goes under the floor. There are three different types the basic which styro foam and plastic, the medium witch is like a rubber material and then the top of the line which is a thicker rubber. The only one I have ever used was the cheap styro foam one and it has worked fine for me.
- After you bring the flooring home you need to leave it in the room for about 48 hours this allows is to adjust to the air in the room and expand. It will expand, it’s very little but if you install it and it expands; it will buckle.
- Now you need to make sure the floor is clean and dry.
- Cut the padding to size and lay is down to cover the entire surface you will be installing on
- You need to determine if you are going to leave the baseboards or remove them. Either way you will need to use the plastic spacers (purchased from the flooring section of the store). This is very important in the case of any expansion the floor has room to grow.
- You want to place your first row on the far wall and then build out usually the last board will be the one you have to cut, in the event that your floor fits perfect wall to wall you’ll still want to cut so your seams don’t run all together. See diagram below
All in all it’s a fairly easy job that most home owners can do in just a few hours. When it’s all done you will take a step back and feel good that you did it yourself, funny thing is after you do it you will laugh at home simple it is. But most people think it’s very hard. When I tell people I did it myself, they are like “wow, you are pretty handy”, and I just smile and think to myself, if they only knew.
Carpenter Ant control
So you are starting to see those pesky big ants around your house, some even have wings. Well fear not; they are not termites they are carpenter ants. Carpenter ants are a big problem what they do is find water damaged soft wood to nest in; sometimes it is in your house maybe in the attic and quite often right outside in an old tree stump or if you live in the south a palm tree.
Control of these pests takes a little detective work. Your best bet will be to start outside, you will find them swarming in the evening hours so you will want to head out with a flash light in hand. First check the obvious places, an old stump, a pile of branches or leaves, a fire wood pile. More than likely these will be the places you will find a nest. I once found a huge nest inside an old PVC pipe. It may take some time to locate the nest.
In the event that you do find the nest outside; it’s time to destroy it. You can use a hand duster with boric acid and shoot it inside the nest, or you can purchase a pesticide labeled for carpenter ant control or even use an organic method. Once the nest is destroyed I would eliminate the area they were nesting, now if it was a live tree you don’t have to cut it down, just maintain it and keep it clean.
In the event that you don’t find the nest outside it may very well be inside your home, and this becomes a little more challenging. The first thing to do is think of any areas where you may have had a leak and start there. The attic is a good place to look as well, check around the AC unit it’s generally a moist warm place to nest. If you cannot locate the nest in your home it may be time to call in a professional pest control company with experience in carpenter ant control. They have the right tools to get the job done; like an attic dusting and maybe even drilling into the walls and dusting.
Carpenter Ants are a a little harder to eliminate than most ants, but if you can find the nest you can eliminate the problem.
Do it yourself sugar ant control
Ok so summer is here and I’m sure you are starting to see ants all over the place. Because there are so many types of ants I’m going to post about them several times. This post will cover the tiny sugar ants in your kitchen and bathrooms.
You know the ones I’m talking about the tiny almost invisible ones. These are a huge problem and pretty hard to control, it does take a little patience and ignoring to control them but if you do exactly as I say you will get rid of them in a couple of weeks.
First things first, STOP spraying them with Raid or any type of bug spray, all you are doing is making it worse. See this type of ant nests in the walls of your home and you usually find them in the kitchens because they are after food and water. The ants you see are the workers their only job is to bring food back to the queen; killing them does nothing you need to kill the queen in the nest. So what you are going to do is make the workers work for you.
- You need to get some boric acid, boric acid is deadly to ants.
- Next you’ll need mint jelly and straws.
- You need to mix 1 part boric acid to 2 parts mint jelly.
- Cut the straws into 1 inch parts, now fill the cut straws with the jelly boric acid mixture.
- Next you will need a little brush of dropper.
- Now it’s time to do some work, the time you spend here will eliminate your ant problem faster. You need to follow the trail. Once you find the place the ants are going you want to place your bait in that trail, if it’s a flat surface you can use the straws, if it’s a vertical surface you can dab it in place with the little brush or dropper
- Monitor it over a few days, you’re gonna see hundreds of ants taking the bait, let them take it back to the queen, don’t kill them.
- Freshen up the bait after a few days if you still see activity.
In a short time your ant problem will be solved. Keep your counters clean and dry.
Another thing you should do is cut all trees and bushes that are touching your house, these ants come from the trees so any maintenace you do outside will keep you ant free in the future.
How to replace a wax ring on a toilet
Ok let me start by saying that I never attempted this before so I called a plumber and he quoted me $300.00. WHAT!! No way was I paying $300.00 just to replace a wax ring that costs $2.00.
So I took it on, this was the first time I ever did it and it took me 1 hour, now I have to assume a plumber who has been doing this forever could do it in about 20 minutes. Man he makes a lot of money per hour.
Now lets get to replacing a wax ring yourself.
- The first thing you need to do is shut off the water, and with a plunger push as much of the water you can down into the bowl.
- Now grab a razor or box cutter and just cut the chauking around the bottom away. Don’t worry about removing it all just enough to break the seal.
- Now on each side of the bowl you have one cap; remove the cap you may have to pop it a little with a screw driver or the side of the razor but they should come off pretty easy.
- Now you’ll see two screws sticking up; you want to remove the nut.
- Disconnect the piping that comes out of the wall and connects to the tank of the bowl.
- Ok, now you are ready to lift the bowl up, it’s not very heavy but you may want to get some help because if you drop it, then you’ll need to buy a whole new bowl.
- Now you have the bowl off and what you see is the pipe going into the floor, the old wax ring should be sitting there if not then it’s attached to the bottom of the bowl. If that’s the case flip over the bowl and remove the wax ring.
- You are going to want to clean up the pipe and the bowl just so you have a clean surface to apply the wax ring.
- The new wax ring may have plastic around it, so just remove the plastic cover. Now place the way ring on the bottom of the bowl opening.
- Now the tricky part. You need to lift the bowl and position it in place directly on top of the pipe opening in the floor, you get one chance to get it right.
- Now with the toilet in place do what you do best and take a seat and kind of push your weight down making the wax ring sit in place and seal.
- Last step is to seal the bottom of the bowl with chaulk reconnect the water pipe to the tank, screw down the nuts and pop the caps back on. And don’t forget to turn the water back on.
I would wait about 48 hours for the chaulk to dry and you should be set.
It’s a lot of steps but a pretty easy job when it’s all said and done.
