u/_BikerPuppy

The fireplace tile in our dining room is a sort of dark teal that clashes with the stained glass windows above it. I have a piece of the original American Encaustic tile, and I know what color they were going for, but this is way too blue. Is there a way to tint the tile so it has a much greener cast?

Hi all. I am restoring a house built in 1908 that has a ton of gorgeous quarter-sawn white oak throughout. The house was divided into apartments for decades, and there are lots of small nail holes where people hung things (probably holiday decor) around the windows, at the top of the pillars, etc. There are larger holes where they put up and took down different window treatments, and even some holes drilled in the floors (for wires or cables or something, I assume).

The stain is a mid-tone color that I think Lowe’s can match for me, but I don’t know how to repair the holes so that I can stain them. The wood filler I usually use doesn’t stain properly. What should I do instead? Also, the wood around the window glass is deteriorating, so I was going to shore it up with wood putty and liquid wood sealant, but that leaves me with the same problem.

Can someone advise me?

Thank you so much!

I’m stripping 100 years of paint off very large double-hung sash windows that were (of course) painted shut at the top. The additional complexity is that they are in the turret of our house, so the curvature of the frames makes it impossible to remove the sashes from the inside. That will have to wait until I get a scaffold in place to remove them from the outside.

I’m concerned that when I remove the paint sealing the upper sash, it will fall down, possibly hard enough to crack the glass or damage the frame (because I can’t yet tell if the weights and ropes for the upper sash are intact).

Is there some sort of adjustable brace I can put under the upper sash to prevent it from falling and allow it to be lowered slowly if the ropes are broken? I’m thinking something like the mechanism on the clamp pictured below, but that is facing the opposite way.

I’m stripping 100 years of paint off very large double-hung sash windows that were (of course) painted shut at the top. The additional complexity is that they are in the turret of our house, so the curvature of the frames makes it impossible to remove the sashes from the inside. That will have to wait until I get a scaffold in place to remove them from the outside.

I’m concerned that when I remove the paint sealing the upper sash, it will fall down, possibly hard enough to crack the glass or damage the frame (because I can’t yet tell if the weights and ropes for the upper sash are intact).

Is there some sort of adjustable brace I can put under the upper sash to prevent it from falling and allow it to be lowered slowly if the ropes are broken? I’m thinking something like the mechanism on the clamp pictured below, but that is facing the opposite way.

We are prepping this room for new paint in our 1908 house, and I’m just about to tackle this bubbly-looking wallpaper. I haven’t sanded or cut into it yet (we have it in multiple rooms), so I’m not sure what it is. I’m guessing they just painted over wallpaper (there are about 20 layers of paint on the window frames in this room, and probably as many on the walls).

What’s the best way to address these areas? Will we have to strip everything? Or can we sand these down directly? Any help would be appreciated.

Note: I’ve been using a Cobra speed heater to strip the paint off the windows and doors, but I’m hesitant to do it here in case it’s a fire hazard. Thoughts?

Can anyone guide me on getting the glopped paint out of the fine scrollwork on the capitals of these columns? The house used to be apartments (we are reverting it to single family), and has had way too many landlord special treatments over the decades. I don’t know if you can see it, but they even painted over nails that someone put in (presumably to hang lights or ornaments). Ugh!

It makes me sad, because these look to be almost perfect mini replicas of the column capitals downstairs (which were thankfully NOT painted). I doubt I’ll be able to get the paint off these to the point where I can just stain them, but at least we can give them a reasonable paint job to show the details once the mess is removed.

Any help would be appreciated!

Hi all. I'm in Ohio, so keep cold winters in mind when reading this.

I need to fill this gap between my concrete porch and the house (either there was subsidence over the years and the whole porch slab moved about an inch away from the house or the person who put it in was an idiot and left a big gap). I was planning to clean it out and even it up with a masonry chisel, then put spray foam into the crack to fill the gap up to just below the surface, and then put concrete filler over the top, even with the surface of the porch.

I've been looking at self leveling concrete crack fillers, and they all show a much thinner crack than mine will be once cleaned up (it may be as wide as 2" in some spots -- maybe all the way along). If I use SIKA Sikaflex Self-Leveling Sealant, Gray Polyurethane, Fast Curing, for Concrete Expansion Joints (seems to be the most recommended and have the highest ratings), will it seal a crack this wide?

If not, then what would be a better alternative?

Thank you so much for any help you can give me!

I have a heavy cellar door on my house that I need to replace (it's split completely now, where the visible crack is in the photo). I don't need it for security, because there is a locking exterior door at the base of the stairs under this door, but I do need it to keep rain and snow off the stairs. I've looked at replacement doors and they are super expensive, so I want a diy cheaper alternative (at least for the next few years while we focus on more important fixes to the house). I'm considering using two pieces of marine-grade plywood (two doors that meet in the middle - with an overhang on one to cover the seam - instead of just one big door), sealed with epoxy resin and painted, or at least stained and them sealed with something like Thompsons deck sealer. Am I thinking along the right lines? Or is there a better solution?

Thanks all!

I’m switching out the casement window latches for my 120 year old house, and need a suggestion on what to buy. On these outward swinging casement windows, the swinging sash (moving part) sits at a much lower depth or profile height than the fixed frame (non-moving side) because the keeper is actually set into the side of the trim. As is the norm in this house, the mechanism was inexpertly installed (you can see in the first pic that it’s on a weird angle) and poorly maintained, so it doesn’t fit properly and none of these windows close tightly.

I’d prefer to avoid having to chisel the keeper out of the wall (there are lots of these windows), so is there a mechanism I can use that puts the keeper on the surface of the trim, but where the tongue of the handle can actually bridge the 1/4” height difference? Or would I be better off putting a wood shim under the handle side and trying to sand until the tinge goes into the keeper?

Hi all. I need to make a mold of a tongue that I can use to make replicas (probably clay) as a giveaway piece for my husband’s forthcoming novel (a middle grade novel about a witch who collects tongues). As luck would have it, the tongue on our old Halloween dragon display is just a bit bigger than a human tongue, and looks about right (smaller and less pointy than Gene Simmons’s tongue anyway), and since the rest of the dragon’s head has disintegrated I just cut the tongue out.

It’s latex, and is suffering from dry rot, but pretty intact. What would be the best way to make a mold of it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Erin