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Taping Carpets for Paint

So you want to paint and have carpet. Here is a quick guide to taping carpets for paint.
You need some blue painters tape and a 2” putty knife. Blue painters tape adheres very well and does not leave residue like masking tape does.

First vacuum the carpet around the baseboard.

Start your tape on an angle like this photo, so you have a small trough, about the size of a pencil or ball point pen,(this depends on how high the pile of your carpet is) lightly smoothing down the center of the tape with your finger to start. Only work about 2-3 feet at a time.

Next use your finger to tuck the tape over the edge of the carpet. Your finger is acting as a wedge to tape the edge of your carpet and keep it away from your baseboard. If you find carpet fibers in your baseboard as you are taping, they did not use these directions.

Next take the putty knife to gently press the tape into the edge of the carpet.

Next use the flat of the putty knife to gently press the tape into the carpet fibers.

Use the putty knife as a cutter as you go along so not to rip your tape loose.

You can add another strip overlapping this one or use a drop cloth.
When your paint is dry, use the corner of the putty knife to separate the tape from your baseboard. Trash the tape, fluff the carpet and you are done.

Storage Project 3

In our last exciting episode we had done the demo, framed the new walls, filled in the old pocket door area, ran wiring for CATV, network, and electric.

Here is the inside of the new storage area. This is looking east.

On the left side is the pocket door opening and the new doorway framing. The door in the center of the photo leads into the house. Note the switch and push button on the left side of the door. They are the garage light and the garage door opener. Moving right, is the original wall. the two wires on it are the CATV and Network cables for the dining room.

Note the two electric boxes on the right side wall. We removed the outlets and are covering them with blank cover plates. As it turned out, the boxes were also a feed for outlets further in the house. So after tracking and reconnecting the necessary wires we will be using blank cover plates.

Tip. If you are removing outlets or switches and not removing the boxes, Do Not Bury Them!! Wire nut whatever connections are necessary and use blank cover plates. Make a note with a sharpie on the back explaining what they fed or/are feeding.

Moving toward the right is a dark vertical line. This is where we removed the stud on the short wall. Further right are the horizontal lines left from the shelving in the old storage room. Also note the drywall stops there and the concrete block continues. This marks the end of the house framing and the concrete block formed a wing for the front porch.

Here is the west view. On the left is our dining room wall and beyond it the concrete block wall which also turns the corner and becomes one of the garage walls.

We will be dry walling the block, patching the drywall, and skim coating the inside. It is about half new sheetrock and half old wall with a relatively heavy texture. It is a judgment call. I can skim coat much faster than I can texture so that is the way we will go.

We have run our wiring, marked the location of the studs on the floor and ceiling,(this is so you know where to screw your drywall) and are insulating the wall. This will act as not only an energy feature but also sound control.

Drywall is up.
Here is the west garage wall where the pocket door was. Note that the right side does not extend into the storage cabinets on the right side. This is by design. It is much easier to float the mud this way and get a smooth wall.

Here is the east garage wall with the door installed. On the left are the garage light switch and the door button. In the center of the photo are two outlet boxes on top of each other. the bottom is the outlet, the top is the network and cable for the flat screen TV when this becomes a play room or man cave. In doing these projects, I always cover the outlet boxes with tape before drywall. This keeps mud and dust out of the boxes, and makes installing outlets and switches much easier if you are not excavating the boxes and the screw holes.

The new storage area.
This is looking east toward the house. The blue tape on the trim will prevent extra labor when taping and skimming that wall. The box above the new door is one of three for new energy saving florescent lights. All the flat joints are mesh tape and the corners are paper tape. The first coat is done with 90 minute ‘speed set’.

This is looking west. We have covered the block wall with drywall fastened with PowerGrab adhesive and short spiral shank masonry nails to hold the drywall as the adhesive sets.

Next post I will show some of the details of blending old and new work.

Fascia Repair

Normally the things I post here are projects that most DIY’ers have the ability to do. This is not one of those projects. This is a demonstration of what can be done in a similar situation.

Arizona is brutal to anything containing moisture. Especially exterior wood. Most homes in Arizona are of either block or wood frame with stucco exteriors. Roofing ranges from shingles to clay or concrete tiles, and in some cases closed cell foam. The trim boards at the bottom edges of the roofs are almost always wood, and are called Fascia. Recently I repaired some fascia that had been savaged by the Arizona sun and rain.

Be advised that this is not a novice repair nor is it recommended if you are on your first skil saw and have less than a couple of hundred hours of cutting time. Call a pro for this.
First, you are not on the ground.
Second, you will be cutting at eye level, in order to control your cut.
Third, removing and replacing the fascia is heavy and awkward.
You have been warned!!

Here is a photo of the damage a few years created. This is not just peeling paint and warped boards. This is dry rot. This creates an interesting problem. This is a carport with a foamed roof. The fascia is 2×12” material. Removing the fascia completely is not an option.

A foam roof’s drip edge also forms the dam for the roofing foam. So removing the drip edge to replace the fascia would entail removing about a foot of foam roofing and the drip edge to replace the entire fascia. This is not a repair you want to undertake at home. After you removed the foam, drip edge which will end up needing replacement, replacing the damaged boards, you will need to install new drip edge of the proper type and find a roofing company to foam the space you created,(the foam in a can looks like roof foam, but it is not) and re-coat the roof.

What I am doing is cutting the fascia at the bottom of the drip edge, replacing it with new material, gluing and screwing it in place, priming and painting.

The plywood outriggers are screwed to the roof joists and the arms extend beyond the fascia to act as a holder for the old fascia and as a guide for the new material. Here is a side view.

Next up is a photo of the area I am repairing. Notice that the fascia below the drip edge is in good condition, which is why this type of repair will work in this situation.

The new material is ripped to depth,(In this case I started with a 2×10 -9 1/2”actual. and ripped it down to 8 1/2”) and cut it to length. I am using PowerGrab glue on the top of the new fascia and on the faces of the roof rafters, and screwing it in place with 3” deck screws. Note: The top screw is angled up at 45 degrees to pull the new material tight to the existing fascia. Then there are an additional three screws in the field. I also used 1 5/8” deck screws through the miters to hold them tight. I used a countersink bit to pre drill my holes.
Here is the result.

I used DryDex ”pink stuff’ spackle for the screw holes and a 35 year paintable latex caulking, for the edges and the gaps on the back side where the old and new material joined.

I used Glidden Gripper Primer for this. Fantastic Primer. Couple of coats of Behr Exterior Latex and it should be good for 5-10 years.

Home Depot’s Curious Faucet Section

6a00d8345237e469e20115715fefa3970c-800wi I was in the Home Depot last week looking for a repair kit for this
faucet. I was in the orange store as the client remembered getting it
there. It is a Delta Cierco Around 170 bucks.

Here in Arizona the water is bad, not being toxic
or smelly, but in having large quantities of dissolved minerals. Folks
in other parts of the country probably wonder what products like lime
and scale removers are for but here in the southwest they sit next to the glass cleaners.

These minerals act like abrasives on seals and the moving parts of faucets, so they leak. They all leak. I don’t care what the ads or salesman tell you, sooner or later your faucets will leak. So when you are spending money on a faucet you should make sure that repair kits are available. Really. If the place you are buying it from does not have repair kits in the same section as the faucets, run away! Unlike a lot of products, faucet manufacturers have pretty explcit instructions for repair. Plus faucets are not like electric outlets where the only decisions are amperage and color. They are different and do not share parts.

Home Depot and Lowes both offer a selection of faucets that will work
fine and look good. What they do not do but should, is on those cute
little tags with the price and model numbers is to put the model number
and location of the repair kits for them. I mean really, the repair
kits are right there on the other side of the aisle. I mean you are already installing the thing, so knowing that you can fix it later will make you a hero.

Some expensive faucets have parts that are only available through plumbing supply houses. These require a plumber, usually twice. First to figure out what brand it is, then another service call to install it after ordering the parts hoping that they are, 1-available, 2-not on back order,3-not more expensive than the faucet is worth.

If you are apprehensive by the selections in the orange or blue store, a plumbing supply
house will have you hearing the danger music from Jaws screaming in
your brain.

Lightyear Sunken Bath Episode 12 Solid Surface Installation

Before and After
Here is where we started and here is where we are finishing.

Before and After

In our last episode I was working on the access panel for the jacuzzi. Having sorted that out, I spent time finishing up the skim coating and priming and painting in anticipation of the solid surface.
Tuesday Morning.

Morning Light

Painting is done on the soffit ceilings and the walls up to a few inches behind where the solid surface will go.
Here are a couple of the lads from Pro Tops Inc. setup and cutting the large side panel.

ProTops lads assembling walls

On the left is a portable swamp cooler as the temperature was over 100. With the canopy it is a pleasant place to work if you have to work outdoors in Arizona in the summer.

The big panel has been installed and they are building the template for the back panel. They built the sides of the three glass block openings and attached them to the panel before installing it. Slid Right In.

Long Wall installed. The lads are building the template for the back wall.

The templating system that they use consists of 1/8” luan ply and hot melt glue to measure for the panels. Works slick. When you are working on material that has no room for error, it is important to get it right.

Here is the finished product.

Finished and done

Here is the access panel for whoever may have to work on this in the future.

Finish Access Panel

It is mechanical and all mechanical things break down eventually. The guy who will have to fix this years down the road will thank me. So will the client not having to tear up the bathroom to fix a pump or leak.

Drywall Skim Coating - Inside Corners

In remodeling you sometimes decide to bridge the new work to old or existing work. Matching or changing your wall surface becomes a consideration. This is a short guide on skim coating existing walls to match the new construction.

The previous wall surface is a heavy knockdown texture. Basically what happens is that the walls are taped and second coated, and then taping mud is thinned and sprayed on the walls with a texture hopper, and after a few minutes, it is ‘knocked down’ with a taping knife resulting in a textured wall. It is a cheap finish system and all too often is done badly.

This is the alcove where the toilet sits in the Lightyear Sunken Bath Project. In this case we decided to make the walls smooth. This has just about every thing you can run into when remodeling with drywall between old and new construction.

The left of this photo shows the edge of the drywall that covers where we installed a pocket door. The back wall shows where we installed a glass block for light and replaced the piece of drywall we cut out previously. You can also get a good idea of the ‘knock down’ texture.
The right side shows where we framed up the new partition between the toilet and the shower with the opening for the open shelf unit.

Throne Alcove with New and Old work.

Here is the beginning of taping this area. We use mesh tape for the flats, and paper tape for the inside corners. Taping on texture has its own issues. When you feather your mud, the knife running over the texture telegraphs and creates ripples in your mud coat.
When taping inside corners on these areas, mud and embed your tape, and wipe down the new flat side first. This creates a guide area for wiping down the other side and give you a clean smooth corner.

Taping cracks and establishing Inside corners

Here the process is a bit further along with the introduction of the open shelf unit and the metal bead. This unit is trimless, so I installed ‘L’ Bead along the outside edges of the shelving unit. Not shown in this photo is a piece of mesh tape applied diagonally just below the high side of the bead. This strengthens the joint, minimizing cracking, and reinforcing the gap made by the bead and the drywall. We also taped the flats and installed the corner bead.

Wall and Shelf Detail

Look at the bottom of this photo and notice the grey triangular area. This is where I did not cut through the corner deep enough when I removed the old drywall prior to rebuilding this.

Here is where I have prefilled this area thinking that I had gotten all of the loose paper removed. Bzzt! not so fast. You can see the bubbles from a bit of the paper that had separated. You have to remove these and fill them in. If you do not, succeeding coats of mud will bounce, and look bad. You can also get an idea of the texture filling with the splotchy area outside of the triangle.

Paper Detail

Here is where I have taped the flats and the corners. You can see the diagonal line of where the two ‘L’ beads do not match up perfectly. This will be fixed on succeeding coats. The magazine rack also gets taped. If it is an inside corner it gets tape.

Reading nook detail

The most important part of skim coating is taping the inside corners to provide clean sharp angles.

Inside Corner Taping

Once your corners are done, you can then begin the process of skim coating to smooth your walls.

Wall Skimming

Cleaning your LCD Screens

If you have any LCD screens, either monitors or TV’s, they attract dust and dirt. You cannot clean them with standard glass cleaners, especially those with ammonia. Ammonia dissolves the plastic.

There is an easy, cheap and effective solution.
You need Distilled Water and Isopropyl Alcohol. About 3 bucks.
Lcdcleaner You need distilled water, as it has all of the crap that is in tap water removed. The alcohol should be at least 91% without any additives like perfumes or dyes. (No Rubbing Alcohol) You also need a lint free cloth of some sort, old clean t-shirt, hanky, microfibercloth.

To clean your LCD Screens
Turn them Off.
(you will destroy them if you try cleaning while they are on)
Mix a solution of distilled water and alcohol 50-50 in a container that you can label and store.
Lightly apply the solution with your cloth, with soft strokes.
Lightly wipe the screen to remove any residue.
Put your stuff away and you can go back to what you were doing.

Here is an explanation at WikiHow if you don’t like mine:)

By the way, you can use this mix on glass, plastic, and other hard surfaces.
Easy, Cheap and Organic.

Shower Valve Replacement

Josh at Bungalow 23 has a great tutorial on replacing a shower valve.

Posts of Note

One Project Closer has a great article on soldering copper plumbing fittings
How to Sweat (Solder) Copper Water Pipes for a Watertight Seal

Rehab or Die has a post on installing ceiling speakers with a cool way to minimize the mess of cutting ceiling holes.
Installing ceiling speakers

Drywall Taping – Taping Walls

If you are hanging drywall yourself, taping is the next step in finishing your rooms. Taping is a skill that can be learned. It requires feeling over brute force.

Here are the tools you will need for taping. In the upper left is a mud
pan. They come in plastic, galvanized and stainless steel like mine. On
the upper right side is a 6'' mud knife, the work horse of the taping
game. It is used to scoop the mud out of the bucket, and into the pan,
applying the tape coat of mud, corners and spotting nails. It is also
the first call for doing patch repairs, and fixing problems like electric box cutout misses.

On the bottom right is an 8'' taping knife for second coats and areas
that need a wider knife, such as corner beads, and cover or second
coats. On the bottom left is a 12'' knife for third or finish coats and
for running butt joints. Finally in the middle of the photo is a hand
sander. A necessary tool that creates the majority of the mess in
finishing drywall. How much mess you create and have to cleanup is a
direct result of your taping efforts.

In a perfect world we have smooth seams, no tears, damage, and the only butt joints are corners. Good Luck with that….

Here we have a wall that has a number of the most common features. We have seam joints,(the long factory edges) butt joints, (the short joints where two sheets meet) cutouts for electric boxes, cutouts for plumbing, a trimless window feature, and some common problems that may occur when hanging drywall, such as the damage on the seam joint and the damage from mis cutting an electric box opening.

I have checked my screws by running my 6'' knife down the wall and listening for clicks that tell me that a fastener is not below the surface. I have cut away the loose drywall and paper on my seams and around the electric box. The next step if your walls have any of these problems is pre fill.

Here is our wall with taping compound prefilling the damaged areas of our wall prior to taping. 'Regular' mud/joint compound has a 24 hour drying cycle. You tape today, you cover tomorrow, and the next day you apply your third coat, and if all goes well the forth day is sanding followed by priming. Just because your mud looks dry after a few hours, do not be deceived, it is only the top that is dry.

You can use speed set/hot mud/ to do your prefills and get your tape coat on in the same day. I show this here. I also spotted the fasteners.

I have also taped and prefilled the butt joints as there were holes around the plumbing and elevation differences on the wall.

Having finished my prefill, it is time for the tape coat. I use mesh tape on the flats and paper tape on the inside corners. Mesh tape is self adhesive and almost eliminates one of the worst problems(tape bubbles) with inexperienced tapers, and makes the mudding before tape application unnecessary in the flats, you still need to do it on your inside corners.

From personal experience you should tape the buttjoints first, running the tape within 1/2'' of your inside corner and a 1/2'' over the seam joints. This allows the butt joint tape to be underneath your seam tape and under your corner tape. After mudding and wiping the butt joints, with the 8'' knife, you next mud and wipe the seams. Then you do the corners with your 6'' knife and paper tape. Finally you coat any cornerbeads, box repairs, and spot the nails.

The next day brings us to our second coat. For those of you who are just starting the taping game, before you begin the second coat, take your drywall knife and lightly slide it across your seams from yesterday to remove any drywall mud that did not get wiped down or cleaned up from yesterdays taping adventure.

Like yesterday we will tape our butts first, our seams second, box repairs and spot nails/screws and finally one side of our corners.

Getting our walls flat is more about appearance than anything else. The seam joints are easy to make flat as the sheets have a depression from the factory that we are just filling in to make them level.

Butt joints on the other hand present us with challenges as the edges of the sheets have no depressions. With our tape and mud coat we already have a bump on our wall. Relax, unless you are using screw blocks this is normal, and will be fixed. What we do is to apply wider coats of mud on either side of our butt joint so the bump gets spread over a much greater distance and gives us the appearance of a flat wall.

The photo below gives you a look at how much wider our butt joint is than our seam joint. This is where we use the 12'' knife.

After your mud dries, and you sand your joints smooth, being careful not to scuff the paper with too vigorus sanding, this is the point where those that desire it get texture applied to the walls.

In either case, after finishing your walls, it is Primer Time! Always Prime Sheetrock. No I do not belong to the primer lobby, I belong to the lazy and easy lobby. Priming drywall seals it, and as an added bonus allows you to see any imperfections that can be easily repaired with a bit of wall spackle. Raw drywall sucks up paint in a major way. Primer is a lot cheaper than that custom finish color that you paid big bucks for.

Also by sealing the drywall, you will need less paint to cover the walls. We fed our thirsty walls with primer,remember?

After the primer, you are ready to apply your finish coat.

Flooring, trim and stuff, you can start living knowing that you did it.

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