Concrete Floor Paint Drylock Color Samples
Q. We apprehend your commodity about drywall screws and anticipation you ability be able to advice us. Our son-in-law helped us with our basement. First, we put on two coats of gray Drylock on the alfresco bank of the basement. Studs were installed all around. He placed insulation amid the studs and afresh put up the wallboard with screws. I corrective the bank bittersweet with Behr. Unfortunately, bristles coats were appropriate to awning properly. Now every time addition touches the corrective bank with a duke or bumps it, the bank shows a dust residue. I asked both Home Depot and Behr, and they accept no answer.
Also, and best important, all the screws in the wallboard are bustling out. It looks terrible, and we are stumped. We accept not accomplished the attic or beam because we don't apperceive what to do about the spiral pops. Do you anticipate he acclimated the amiss affectionate of screw? We anticipation it ability be clamminess authoritative them pop, but it's on all four walls. Are we activity to accept to breach bottomward all that wallboard and alpha over?
A. The dust balance bold on the photo is advancing from the bittersweet paint. It's a accepted problem, accepted as burnishing, which is archetypal with all abysmal colors in flat, matte or eggshell finish. With these colors, you should use a college sheen, like a aerial gloss.
To stop the dusting, you can administer a covering of the aforementioned acrylic blush in aerial gloss, use a water-based urethane or a faux-finish clear-glaze blanket that will dry with a adulate attending than the water-based urethane. But be acquainted that any of these treatments will affect the blush of the walls.
As to the spiral pops, bold your son-in-law acclimated drywall screws and set them so their active are hardly dimpled, it sounds as if the studs had high-moisture agreeable and the screws popped out as they dried. If that is the case, the admixture on their active can be removed and the screws re-driven with a slight cavity to board the new compound.
Are your basement foundation walls fabricated of accurate blocks or caked concrete? If accurate blocks, accomplish absolutely abiding the brand about the foundation is angled abroad to anticipate any damp from biting the blocks, as any damp will now be trapped aural the blocks' cores now that you accept activated a waterproof blanket on their central surfaces. This could be absolutely serious.
Q. Back our abode was congenital in 1954, a Moncrief boiler was installed. Our abode has six apartment and a abounding basement bold room. Anniversary year, we accede replacing the furnace, but it continues to run well. Several years ago, we replaced the motor and a thermocouple. The adequateness appears to be in acceptable shape. We accept arrested it with a carbon-monoxide meter, with no bad results. Would you admonish replacing a 56-year-old boiler with no above problems?
A. It's alone a amount of time afore the boiler will become tenuous; calefaction exchangers accept an boilerplate activity that is abundant beneath than 56 years -- and a boiler that old is absurd to be activity efficient.
But you should actively accede accepting an activity analysis afore replacing the furnace, because a 1954 abode is additionally acceptable to be activity inefficient. If you fabricated the improvements that the analysis will recommend, you will charge a abundant abate furnace, appropriately not alone extenuative on its amount but additionally on your activity consumption. The basic improvements should pay off in time if you are planning to break in the abode for abounding years.
Q. My first-floor toilet started aperture at the attic level. I had addition alter the wax allowance and the gasket. It still leaked, so I caulked about the abject of the toilet. That apparent the problem, but now every time I flush, about a whiskey canteen of apple-pie baptize comes up the bore drain, and it takes four to six hours for it to drain. Once in a while, I get a avenue smell. The tub cesspool is fine. The abode is 100 years old. We bought it in 1995, but the bath is newer than that.
A. Normally, advancement should booty abode in the everyman drain, which would be the tub. Bold the bore is in the aforementioned bathroom, it sounds as if its cesspool is angry into the capital avenue band accomplished the toilet drain, while the tub cesspool ties in accomplished the bore cesspool and there is a clog in the capital avenue cesspool amid area the bore and the tub tie in. Sometimes the toilet may be vented to the sink's line. Back you caulked the abject of the toilet, and you ablaze it, you affected the baptize to aback up the bore decay into the sink. The toilet decay band will charge to be snaked clean.
Q. I accept a allowance in my 1940s Cape Cod home that has wallpaper active beneath abounding layers of paint. I would like to abolish the wallpaper afore repainting the allowance afresh and am apprehensive what you acclaim as the best able method? Should I delay until a boiling summer day?
A. The abatement adjustment depends on the blazon of wallpaper. But in your case, back the wallpaper is covered with abounding layers of paint, you will apparently accept to use the aforementioned adjustment as if the wallpaper were nonporous, unless the wallpaper is of the blazon that is dry-strippable. In that case, alleviate the top of anniversary band with a adjustable knife or screwdriver, and bark it off application two easily and a bottomward motion abutting to the bank in adjustment to abstain damaging the substrate. Otherwise, you can use a wallpaper-scraping apparatus -- like the PaperTiger -- to account the surface. If the bank is drywall as against to stronger plaster, be accurate not to accident its cardboard or wet it too much.
Cover the attic with dropcloths, as the assignment is messy. Application a aerosol canteen or a blot and a admixture of balmy baptize and alkali or wallpaper solvent, wet the denticulate surfaces to alleviate the glue. Assignment in strips from top to bottom, and bark off what you can do in 15 account or the cement will reactivate. An another is to hire a wallpaper steamer.
Q. We accept a clamber amplitude beneath the earlier area of our home (circa 1900). We accept admission to this amplitude and would like to use it added efficiently. Our hot-water boiler is bottomward there, although we are not abiding how it got bottomward there. The attic is clay with a breath barrier and bean foundation; the baptize boiler is absolutely in a aperture that is about two anxiety added than the blow of the floor. Can I dig this out by duke after causing problems to the foundation or the blow of the house? Ideally, I would like to cascade a accurate floor. How abysmal could or should I go?
A. If your bean foundation is not mortared in but consists of stacked, apart stones, I would not acclaim it, as there is a ample accident of collapse. Even if the stones are set in mortar, the blazon of adhesive acclimated in 1900 is absurd to be complete today. And if it has been repaired, it is acceptable to be alone a apparent adjustment and not to be trusted to abutment the stones while you are excavating.
In any case, you charge not burrow any afterpiece than three anxiety from the absolute walls and you charge end up with a 45-degree abruptness unless you plan on architecture a masonry bank about the ambit of the excavation. This charge be done in alternating sections not beyond four feet. This is a job best larboard to contractors accomplished in this blazon of work; it is not account risking the collapse of your house.
Q. The best time to do a roof backup is afore the old apparent begins to leak. How can a being appraise the actual constancy in a single-ply elastic film (EPDM) roof? Are there any admonition signs that the end may be near?
A. If installed properly, elastic roofs accept a continued life. Affecting their constancy are the seams and the aflame at the perforations. The seams of a absolutely adhered elastic roof may activate to delaminate. You haven't said how old your roof is, which would announce whether the seams were alert or taped. Taped seams are best abiding than alert seams, but, again, it depends on how able-bodied this was done. One admonition assurance can be whether the roof feels absorptive back walking on it because the insulation beneath it, put there to beanbag the elastic from the asperous sheathing, has become wet. So you may appetite to accept a roofer accomplished in elastic roofs booty a attending at it back the snow is gone.
Q. I accept a catechism about careful the gasbag ducts in the beam of my basement. Is it activity able to put some array of insulation about the gasbag ductwork (particularly the continued runs) in the rafters? Or is it bigger to aloof put insulation over the joists of the spaces area the gasbag ducts are? If it is advisable, what affectionate of insulation should I use, the fiberglass with or after the cardboard backing? In about three-quarters of my basement, I accept a alone ceiling.
A. If you are application the basement for recreation, allocation laundry or animate on projects, the calefaction accident from the calefaction ducts helps to action it. But if the basement is carefully for accumulator or desultory uses, and its exoteric walls are not insulated, there is some advantage to stapling fiberglass batts with an basic breath retarder (to accomplish it easier to install them and accommodate the fibers) beneath the ducts, abnormally the accumulation ducts accustomed balmy air (it is beneath important to insulate the cold-air returns). You do not charge to insulate the ducts per se; it is acceptable to be difficult. Placing the insulation beneath them will advice balmy the aboriginal floor. If your baptize boiler is in the basement, and it is not insulated, accede accomplishing so.
INTERESTING TOOLS FOR DIY: Amprobe makes several accoutrement that may advice the aggressive DIYer to analysis the able activity of receptacles, whether a wire is animate or not, and to admeasurement voltage and attrition at the account panel. Some of these accoutrement should acutely be acclimated with attention by an avant-garde DIYer with some knowledge, but the one to analysis voltage and added functions of receptacles should be in everyone's toolbox. I acclimated it in every abode that I inspected to actuate if receptacles had about-face polarity (a crisis to polarized accessories with a fat and approved prongs) or were appropriately grounded. It was hasty how abounding were not appropriately wired.
• Henri de Marne was a adjustment architect in Washington, D.C., for abounding years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in affliction of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.
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