We’re moving into a house with high ceilings. Where should we paint the walls, so it looks good. Is painting every wall the only option. Or do you have any other tips?
I’m currently replacing a couple of doors in my 1950s house and I’m replacing them with these hollow core doors, the closest measurement I could get to the existing door was 30”x80” and the existing door measures 30”x 77 5/8” my question is is this too much to take off? I know it will void whatever with the door but I don’t want to replace them with slab doors and pay double for it. Any tips? If you need any more info just ask, I’m trying to do this right lol
Wife and I are considering redoing this bathroom in her parents house. It's a two bathroom house but only one has a shower so we want to add one to this bathroom. Weve never done this before so we're not sure if the window being there will be a problem. The house also has a noticeable lack of windows/ventilation so we want to keep that window, even if it means we can't put a shower there.
I imagine any shower would have to be tiled in by hand since I doubt there's an insert that would work without cutting a hole for the window. I imagine a major drawback would be that water would want to collect on the sil and around all the openings. Are there any other issues with this?
We are doing some renovation and have a great old door from our bedroom that led to the outside that we would like to swap for the front door.
Our front door is annoying because they placed the deadbolt and opening handle too close together. So it’s hard to open and we can’t install a touchpad because there is not enough room.
The good news is that the bedroom door is solid and larger than the front door.
So my question is… how big of a pain would it be to retrofit the bedroom door to the front door frame?
There are some stains on my wall (newly painted about 4 months ago) and I touched it up with roller brush using the same paint the contractor left behind.
It has been 30 hours since and it still looks wet. I am in perth and the temperature these few days range between 10 to 18deg outside and a bit rainy.
Is this normal? Do I have to worry?
We pulled up the carpet in my new house and the floor is partially plywood and partially hardwood. There is an addition behind this photo that has only plywood under the carpet. Any suggestions?
Hi I messed up big time. I needed to touch up my wall yesterday but saw the word “whisper white” on my paint cans and just used it without giving it much thought thinking all whisper white are the same. I used the can saying indoor skirting (in the picture) on my wall instead of the ecotint whisper white (the other one in the picture) . I assumed this is what cauzed the shiny spots on my wall? It has been 30 hours since. Is it ok if i used use the correct “wall” whisper white to paint over now? Will it look ok? Thanks very much.
Hello. Need some advice on how to paint a small wall. I have roller brushes and normal brush and masking tape as well As the right Matt wall paint. Other than roller it on, is there a need to tape the cornices and skirting before painting near them? What about the external corner edges. Can I just brush or roller it outward at the edge? Pls note This wall is newly painted (4-5m old). The patch is because i screwed it up and painted wrong colour (used skirting paint rather than wall paint)
How do I support the angled beam above while I replace the damaged section (circled)? The flippers before me put in a 2x4 that moves easily. The damaged beam slopes downward slightly due to lack of support.
Hi, last year we bought the home we have been renting for the last 10 years. Now that we own it, I CANT stop obsessing over how much needs done and updated. Dont get me wrong, I love our home and it has always felt like home but everywhere I look, there’s things I want/need to do and everything is SO expensive or time consuming! I got a quote just to knock out a kitchen wall to open it up a little and since it’s a load bearing wall, that alone is $17,000! We really need new siding and that’s another $15000 not including downspout,etc. We are already at our max for the mortgage payment so I don’t understand how anyone affords this kind of thing. I don’t believe in making payments on everything either and that’s what they always try to get you to do. Either way, I know we can’t get everything done right away but I guess what I’m asking is how do I not obsess over everything that needs done?! I bring myself to tears and it’s all I can thing about sometimes and I just want to be able to enjoy our home and the things we’ve done to it already instead of obsessing but I feel like I’ve gotten stuck in this and can’t get out! Is this normal and has anyone else been through this and doing better with it? Thanks!
My stepdad's house had a leak coming through the roof for a year and got scammed by someone who said they'd repair it. Fast forward a year and it finally got fixed but the stairs are screwed. All the black is affected by mold and we don't know if it can be treated and sanded off or we just need to replace all the wood.
Today was the first full day I have spent framing my basement after a putting up one section of wall the other day as a trial. I’m nailing the first top plate directly to the bottom of the joists above, building the wall on the ground, and then lifting into place. I’m mostly satisfied with the outcome, but either getting larger gaps than I’d like at the top or it’s too tall and I have to take it apart and trim the studs down before I can slide it into place.
EDIT 1: Thank you all for your input! PT Lumber is being used for all bottom plates, galvanized nails for the PT wood and sill gasket underneath to keep it off the concrete.
Ok this one's a bit of a mindbender so bear with me, but I think it's the most interesting stat I've come across
Everyone assumes Toronto is the most expensive place in Canada to get a reno done, and historically that's fair, it's just not for the reason you'd think anymore
StatCan actually runs a proper price index for this (the Residential Renovation Price Index), tracks 37 different project types across 15 cities every quarter, mandatory survey of contractors and everything so it's not some vibes based ranking. Zoom out to the big multi year picture and yeah, Toronto earned the reputation. From 2017 through mid 2024 the national index rose 66.5% overall, Ontario blew that out of the water at +91.8%, the single largest increase of any province in the country, and StatCan flat out says in the release that was driven specifically by price pressure in Toronto. So the "Toronto reno prices only go up" thing, historically correct.
Here's the part that actually got me though. Look at the last few quarters instead of the whole multi year run and Toronto has quietly been the calmest city in the entire index. Q1 2025, Toronto was literally the only city out of all 15 tracked where renovation costs went down, -0.5%, while Victoria and Quebec City were both up 1.4% that same quarter. Q2 2025, same story again, Toronto had the smallest increase of any city at +0.3% while Quebec City jumped 3.0% and Regina and Saskatoon were both up 2.2%. And that Q2 was the quarter Canada slapped the 25% retaliatory tariff on US steel, aluminum, appliances, textiles, so basically the rest of the country ate that cost way harder than Toronto did.
My read on it, and it's just a read, is Toronto already did its explosive run up years ago so contractors here are kind of sitting near a ceiling at this point, and on top of that the market is genuinely soft right now, resale sales have been down, condo presales are basically dead, so there's just less demand pulling reno prices upward the way there is in hotter markets. Checks out with the renovator sentiment surveys too, Ontario reno businesses reported the highest share of "extremely concerned about my business" of any region in the country heading into 2026, CHBA's been tracking that.
Kind of a fun one to drop on anyone who assumes Toronto pricing only moves in one direction. It went up the most, historically, and has basically been sitting still while the rest of the country catches up to it lately.
worth poking around the actual statcan releases yourself if you're into this stuff, they're way more readable than people expect, linking below in 1st comment.
Started renovations on my bathroom to have marble floor installed by a reputable company. The floor looks amazing but the floor is now raised by 1 inch. I understand it needs a cement back for protection but is this normal amount of elevation compared to the hallway floor? I’m afraid people are going to trip.
We're slowly finishing our daylight basement (~750 sq ft, 1920s house, PNW) in a house we bought recently. I refinished half already, now we're moving over to this rickety staircase (first and second pic). The clearance is unfortunately too tight to frame out and rebuild the staircase away from this basement wall.
My current plan is to bring the basement framing up close to the landing, remove the existing basement paint, and parge the walls to fill any voids. I have been skim coating the basement floor to fill any voids and make it walkable. I just finished waterproofing the exterior wall on this side and installing a perimeter drain, so I'm not too worried about water intrusion and our basement is fairly shallow (3 feet at its deepest).
What are people's experience with parging? Is it a waste of time? will the parging eventually fail and bubble off, the way that drylock does? I'll note that this wall on the other side, that has not been waterproofed on the exterior (yet) appears to have a very poor attempt at parging that bubbled off at some point, likely from moisture (last pic)
So much to do on this old house, so much jank plumbing I need to replace. But it’s working with no leaks so far! Love working with pex, I’m already planning on replacing everything with it.
First time I turned on water I was looking for leaks and a fitting behind me blew (old plumbing) so that turned into another project. Just need to finish strapping this all in… then fix that damn window lol edit; the down pipe after filter is for flushing filters into bucket, I’ll be tidying the drain and power hookup for water softener when I strap everything down
Just had foundation redone(block) and my house never had a rim joist installed when built in 35. I’m adding one, I know usually the sheeting would overlap and siding would continue down.
The issue is the framed wall sticks out 3-4 inches past the foundation and cannot continue with siding plus I cannot find a match.
Does anyone have an idea on what I can do, I was thinking of covering it with stucco mesh and continuing up with the parging to the underside of the siding?
What’s are your thoughts ?
I think I've messed up a couple things here transitioning the goboard to drywall. Hoping to get some advice on here:
At this point, I've refilled the gap and taped with hot mud, and floated out the with regular all purpose mud. The tile I'm installing is going to come out to about the point where you can see the tape bump, and my intention was to finish floating out the wall to the right after. I assumed I needed to seal up th drywall compound with a primer, as its in a high moisture environment. I picked up Killz2 All Purpoose Primer.
-Im reading online that the thinset won't stick to killz, so I dont think I should put the primer on until the tile is up, so I dont apply it under where the tile will be put up accidentally.
-If I dont do anything to the all-purpose mud that is spread out on the goboard, won't it get moist behind the tile, soften, and create risk of the tile falling off the wall?
-Im thinking I should draw a line where the tile will be coming out to, then sand off the drywall compound as best I can up to that point. Is this the right way to handle this or should am I concerned over nothing?