Cold Weather Myths and Your Home

Posted on by Tim Carter
water running from vanity faucet

If this water runs all night, will it cost 1/20th of what it will cost to repair a burst water line? Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Cold Weather Myths and Your Home - Easy Ways to Save $$$

When I woke up just before writing this column, it was a balmy -15F here at my house in central New Hampshire. A gale was blowing and the wind chill was -41F. You may be reading this column in sunny Florida or southern California where it never gets bitter cold but you may have family or friends up in the frozen north that may benefit from what I’m about to share. There are several cold-weather myths to dispel.

How Much Water Should Drip From a Faucet?

As you might suspect, when a cold blast of Arctic air washes over those of us that choose to live where the air hurts our faces, the requests for help at my Ask Tim page on my www.AsktheBuilder.com website go through the roof. Just minutes ago Autumn, who hales from Newport News, VA, asked me to debunk an old wive’s tale. She asked about how much water needs to drip from a faucet to prevent water pipes from freezing.

If you really paid attention in your high school chemistry and physics classes, you know that motion interferes with water wanting to go from the liquid to solid state. This is why a pond freezes but the stream feeding the pond still contains liquid water. That said, if the temperature drops low enough, there’s the possibility the stream might freeze.

If you could see inside the copper pipe that is feeding your kitchen or bathroom sink while you have the faucet dripping or even a tiny stream flowing from the faucet, you’d see virtually no motion in the water within the pipe. Visualize a huge crowd of people on one side of a single turnstile. While you perceive movement at the choke point, farther back in the crowd the people are pretty much standing still.

To prevent an expensive service call from a plumber, you need to have lots of water running through the water lines. As the temperature gets colder and colder, more water needs to be tumbling around in the pipe. While your local water works may not like this, if you use $10 worth of water and $3 worth of natural gas or electricity during a cold night, it’s so much cheaper than a $300-$500 repair bill.

There are numerous ways to prevent frozen water lines. First, you need to do whatever you can to keep the temperature of the pipe above 32F. I’m not a fan of heat tape because it can cause fires if installed incorrectly. I’m a huge fan of adding more insulation, relocating the pipes so they touch the actual warm wall or floor surface, and/or replacing the section of pipe with PEX tubing. Water that freezes in PEX tubing will cause the tubing to expand but it won’t burst the tubing.

How Can I Lower My Heating Bill?

One of the top questions I receive is, “How can I save money on my heating bills in bitterly cold weather?” The honest answer, and most don’t like it, is to turn down your thermostat. You want to use far less fuel. Installing a programmable thermostat is the best way to control how much natural gas, propane, or electricity you’ll use. Allow the temperature to drop to 50F while you sleep. Sleep under a puffy insulated blanket.

Forget about caulking air leaks, adding more insulation, etc. in periods of frigid weather. The caulk might freeze, you may not get a fast return on investment on added insulation. A column I shared with you just two weeks ago showed how it can take decades to recapture the cost of foam insulation.

The better thing, and you may recoil at this, is to just wear more clothes when you’re inside. My wise father-in-law grew up on a rural farm during the Depression. He recounted stories of going to bed as a child with frost coating the covers. He survived to tell the tale.

Think about this for a moment. How many nights have you been eating outdoors at a restaurant, perhaps at a football game and the air temperature was 60F? You might have had on a light jacket and been comfortable.

I routinely keep my thermostat low at my home saving lots of money. I wear long underwear, a knit hat, wool socks, and often a hoodie with the hood pulled up to keep my neck warm. Yes, I may look like a nut inside my home, but I’m as snug as a bug in a rug.

Do I Need Replacement Windows?

What about those drafty windows? Guess what? The air leakage around the windows may be so little as it wouldn’t even cause the smoke from a burning stick of incense to waver. Put away your credit card! Don’t sign a contract for new replacement windows!

I know you’re feeling air moving when you sit next to the glass but it’s not air leaking in from outside. The air in your room makes contact with the cold glass surface. The air cools and as you know cold air is heavier than warm air. The cold air starts to move toward the floor. This conveyor belt of air doesn’t stop until the glass surface warms up.

Pull the curtains closed or drop the window shade to corral the cold air next to the window. You’ll be amazed at how within minutes the draft seems to have disappeared.

Column 1494

Loan Prepayment Benefits

Posted on by Tim Carter

table showing interest savings by prepaying a loan

Loan Prepayment Benefits - You Can Save Thousands of Dollars

My youngest daughter moved out West thousands of miles away from me in 2022.  Once in her new city, she had to purchase her first car. She bought a used car from Carvana.

At the time of the purchase, she had a job prospect but was not employed. She had an excellent credit score very close to 800 and a hefty rainy-day fund. Within a month of purchasing the car, she obtained a very high-paying job as a private flight attendant for a multi-billionaire. Making her car-loan payments as well as her apartment rent was not an issue.

Her lack of a job at the time of buying the car caused her to get raked over the coals with a 10 percent rate. The term of the loan was six years.

Big Christmas Bonus

My daughter informed me that she was given a sizeable Christmas bonus from her employer. She wanted to take part of the bonus, $5,000.00, and invest it. She had gone to a local bank and discovered she could get a one-year certificate of deposit for 3.5%. She also knew she could send the money to the professional investment firm that handled her rainy-day fund.

I told her that the best thing to do would be to apply the $5,000 to pay down her car loan. I decided to poll my newsletter list because I knew that any number of my subscribers were financial experts. As you might suspect, I was flooded with a plethora of excellent advice. I decided to share it with you.

Let's get started.

"Does She Have a Rainy-Day Fund?"

A vast majority of the responses that poured in wanted to make sure she had a rainy-day fund that would cover all of her living expenses for a minimum of six months. I had NOT SHARED with my newsletter list that she had one of these funds.

This was, perhaps, the best piece of advice offered up by my newsletter subscribers. If you don't have a rainy-day fund, you should. My next-door neighbor who is a retired CPA is far more conservative. He feels you should have five years' worth of living expenses saved up. Very few people can achieve this goal, although it's a very noble goal to aim for.

The bottom line is you SHOULD HAVE a rainy-day fund.

Prepayment Penalty?

One of the things I told my daughter before polling my newsletter experts was, "Be sure you read the loan agreement. Discover if there is some hidden prepayment penalty. If there is, the penalty may negate all the benefits of paying off part of the principal early."

That same advice was offered up by quite a few of my subscribers. When you are negotiating for a loan, be SURE THERE IS NO PREPAYMENT PENALTY. Make the loan officer show you in the loan agreement the language that says you can PREPAY the loan early with NO PENALTY.

Get a NEW Loan ASAP!

You may have been one of my subscribers that suggested my daughter re-negotiate her loan ASAP. With ten months of on-time loan payments PLUS a great job, she'd be able to get a much more favorable interest rate. She can apply the $5,000 to the new loan principal right away to get lower monthly payments. Then she can do an extra trick you'll see below to pay off the new loan in HALF THE TIME.

Guaranteed 13 to 15% Interest?

Several financial experts pointed out that if you wanted to get a HIGHER return on investment rather than apply the $5,000 to prepay down the loan, you need to find some investment that GUARANTEES you an annual interest rate of better than 13%. By paying down the loan you effectively are getting a 10%, roughly, return on your investment for the $5,000. You'll see this detail shortly. Hang in there.

The reason you'd need to get at least 13% is that you have to pay Federal taxes on interest income. You may even get DOUBLE TAXED on this as your state may have a tax on interest income.

I used a fantastic savings calculator that shows what happens if you invest $5,000 for 4.5 years at 13% interest rate. You use 4.5 years because that's the amount of time left to pay down the loan should you make a one-time payment of $5,000.00 on the principal. You'd get $3,386.65 in interest at 13% for 4.5 years. But remember, you need to pay taxes on that income.

table showing interest income on savings

 

Calculating Interest Savings

When I reached out to my newsletter subscribers, I shared that I thought the projected savings in interest on my daughter's car loan by making a one-time $5,000 principal payment would be $6,430.83. I used an inferior online template that didn't calculate the savings the correct way.

I was WRONG. I wasn't even close. Not only that, I didn't use critical-thinking skills - SHAME ON ME - to think about what the total interest might be. You'll see that just below. I also goofed up by thinking that the $5,000.00 would be a savings when in fact it's just re-paying principal owed.

Ken, one of my subscribers, sent me this fabulous page where you can download and use all sorts of loan calculators. I used the first one at the top - Loan Amortization - to calculate the TRUE interest savings.

Using the template suggested by Ken and NOT making an extra principal payment you can see rapidly what the total interest would be on my daughter's car loan. Look:
table showing loan interest

The table above shows the original car loan of $23,000 for six years at the 10% interest. If you make the 72 payments of $426.09, you'll end up paying $7,678.96 in interest over the life of the loan.

You can see that my original calculation was so far off as to be laughable.

Look what happens if you make a one-time $5,000 principal payment ten months into the life of the loan.

table showing interest savings by prepaying a loan

One simple payment of the $5,000 after just ten months into the loan saves almost $3,000.00 in interest! The actual amount is $2,778.46 in interest. What's more, the loan is paid off in 54 months, not 72 months. Look at these two giant tables to see how that one payment of $5,000 CHANGES the amount of interest and principal in the subsequent payments starting in month 11. I'm sorry but I could only grab a screenshot of 52 months on my monitor.

loan amortization table

This table above shows NO extra principal payment. Look at the principal and interest payment on payment #11.

loan amortization table

Look at how the interest payment in month 11 is DRASTICALLY LOWER than the previous month. This is because the interest is calculated EACH MONTH ON THE UNPAID PRINCIPAL. Since the principal dropped by $5,000, the interest MUST BE LOWER.

But It Gets BETTER

A few days after polling my subscribers, Rob reached out to me. He had stellar advice. It's important to realize a few others offered up similar advice, but didn't outline exactly what they had done to achieve paying off their loans early.

Rob noted up front that his suggestion deviated from my proposed one-time principal payment of $5,000.00. His method is more complex and it becomes a multi-variable calculation because you only use part of the $5,000 each month and whatever is NOT used to pay down the loan is invested. The issue is what kind of interest can you get that PROTECTS the remaining $5,000.00 so it's not at risk as might happen should you invest in stocks or some other risk-based investment?

Rob's method is simple. You create an amortization table as you see above - I'm talking about the table just above that does NOT have the green arrow in it. You can see the interest and principal you'd be paying each month with your regular payments of $426.09. This is very powerful with long-term loans such as a 15 or 30-year home mortgage. With my daughter's car loan, it's different.

Rod said, "Look at the table your loan officer will give you. When it's time to make payment #1, look at how much principal would be paid in your SECOND payment. Add that to your first payment and repeat this each month." In the case above you'd be paying the scheduled $426.09 PLUS $236.38 for a total payment of $662.47.

What you see below is Rob's method but I STOPPED when I exhausted the $5,000.00 at payment #20. But remember, over those 20 months you would be earning some interest on the money you had not paid out yet. It's very interesting to note that the amount of interest saved is nearly identical to what you'd save had you made the lump-sum $5,000 principal payment in month ten of the loan.

Doing it Rob's way the loan is paid off in 54 months if you make NO OTHER principal payments. But if you continue to add more principal with each payment you might pay off the loan in as little as 36 months.

loan amortization table

The Bottom Line

I think it's obvious that you can save vast amounts of interest if you prepay off a loan. In my daughter's case, should she make a lump-sum payment this month she'll save almost $3,000.00.

You tell me what SAFE investment opportunity offers you a GUARANTEED payment of $2,778.46 over 4.5 years if you invest $5,000.00. I know I can't think of one!

How to Use an Old Drywall Lath Hatchet

Posted on by Tim Carter

How to Use an Old Drywall Lath Hatchet - Keep it Razor Sharp

This video was probably recorded in the 1950s. The installer is putting up 3/8-inch-thick drywall lath panels. These lath panels were often 16 inches wide and normally 4 feet long. They were introduced in the early 1900s. Some call it rock lath. The use of the word rock stuck with it as gypsum board transitioned to the dryall you see today in the year 2023.

A 1/4-inch to 3/8-inch-thick scratch coat of plaster would be installed over this followed by a thin coat of silky-smooth white veneer plaster.

The reason he uses so many nails is because of the combined weight of the plaster lath and the actual plaster.

The hatchets were used originally to cut the actual wood lath strips to length. Back in the 1800s 1.5-inch-wide by 1/4-inch-thick wood strips were nailed to the wall studs. There was about a 3/8-inch-wide gap between each one. The scratch coat of plaster would ooze through the gap and hook itself onto the wood in this manner. The hatchets were used to cut the wood strips to length.

Below the video is a photograph of my own hatchets. The one with the wood handle is about 45 years old!

Spray Foam Pros and Cons

Posted on by Tim Carter
closed cell spray foam in 2x6 wall

This is closed-cell foam insulation. The entire wall cavity is not filled because it may be step one of a hybrid combination of foam plus fiberglass. If they just leave this alone and cover the studs with drywall, the R-value of the foam is about an R-19 or the same as if they had put in a 5.5-inch-thick batt of normal fiberglass. NOTE that the thickness of the sprayed foam in this installation is NOT CONSISTENT. If this happens on your job, you'll not get the benefit you're paying for. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Spray Foam Pros and Cons - You Better Do the Math!

A new home is being built on my street. I have to drive past it anytime I leave the community. I’ve visited the job site countless times to check on the progress and to weigh in on the quality of the workmanship. So far I’ve recorded nearly 40 videos showing mistakes and shortfalls.

Thirty-seven years ago I was the first person to install foam insulation in a residential large room addition project in Cincinnati, Ohio. The homeowner owned a poultry slaughterhouse business that sold succulent chickens to the five-star restaurants and all the butcher shops in the greater Cincinnati area. He had deep experience with foam insulation because it was used to insulate all his refrigeration equipment and cold rooms at the factory.

This forward-thinking customer of mine insisted it be used in his job. Who was I to challenge him? It turned out excellent. The foam sealed all air leaks that plagued normal fiberglass insulation methods. Air infiltration is a silent energy thief. Even my own current home suffers from this wretched disease. It’s important for you to realize I didn’t built the home I currently occupy.

heat loss photo

This is a thermal image taken of my own home. Look at the blue and magenta spot under the framed art on the wall. That's a box with light switches. There's a VAST AMOUNT of air leaking because of poor workmanship. It's the same on all light switches on all outside walls. The insulation contractors did a bad job. I didn't build this house, so it's not my fault. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

The walls of my customer’s room addition were all 2x6s and my customer insisted the foam be sprayed to fill the entire cavity. Once the foam hardened, it was shaved smooth to the face of the studs. These fully-filled foam walls also helped make the walls stiff. There was no way the walls would rack out of square with the rigid foam in between the wall studs. Decades later our industry would see similar wall characteristics once structural insulated wall panels (SIPs) became mainstream. SIPs were invented, believe it or not, in the 1930s by the Forest Products Laboratory.

The most important thing to realize when comparing any insulation material against another is the R-factor per inch. Most closed-cell foams have an R-factor of 6 or 6.5 per inch of thickness. The pink fiberglass that might be in your walls is between 2 and 3 R-factor per inch. If you put in the same R-factor in a wall no matter the material, the thermal performance will be the same as all insulation does is slow the movement of heat. Heat travels to cold. Never forget these things as you evaluate what insulation to use.

The Cons of Spray Foam

What are the negative aspects of foam insulations? I visited the Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance (SPFA) website. On their FAQ page you’ll great information. The SPFA readily admits that foams emit chemical compounds and odors into the air. Some studies show that the release of volatile organic compounds are minimal after the foam has cured. As we all know from what’s happened over the past few years, different studies can produce polar opposite results. If you’re chemically sensitive, you best be very careful.

The next biggest negative in my opinion is the cost. Keep in mind that trying to calculate a return on investment (ROI) is harder than trying to roll a boulder up Mt. Washington. It’s a complex multi-variable problem. But using a small amount of common sense, you can determine if you’ll ever break even using foam insulation over the baseline fiberglass batts.

I decided to price out the insulation cost of the house that’s being built just down the street from me. The house has two stories with a total of 2,560 square feet of living area. It’s got 2482 square feet of wall area that requires insulation.

Keep in mind these prices are from January 2023 and the annual inflation rate at this time is north of 5%. The current price to install traditional fiberglass batts and a plastic vapor barrier is $3,917.00. The price for closed-cell foam that’s the exact same R-value as the fiberglass is $12,410.00. This means they only partially fill the 2x6 wall cavity with about 3 inches of foam as you see in the photo above that I took at the new house job site. The price for a hybrid system of foam plus fiberglass to fill the 2x6 wall cavity is $9,679.00.

All three systems would have the same R-value and heat loss or heat gain. The only difference is any heat loss attributed to air infiltration. Air infiltration can vary wildly but modern construction methods where a tape is applied over the seams of the exterior sheathing as well as around all windows and doors keeps it to a bare minimum.

black tape window leaking

This is a typical tape that does a superb job of eliminating air infiltration. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Let’s assume you pay $4,000 a year to heat your home and that air infiltration with a fiberglass system costs you an extra 5 percent. At $200 per year it would only take my new neighbors 40 years to break even using spray foam in their house! It really pays to think these decisions through! Here’s the URL for the video playlist:

New House Build Video Playlist

Column 1492

Dark Side of EVs Rumble Video

Posted on by Tim Carter

Dark Side of EV Batteries - Child Labor in the Congo

Build a Magic Playhouse or Clubhouse

Posted on by Tim Carter

Build a Magic Playhouse or Clubhouse - Create Memories

Many decades ago I was a small lad. You may have had a childhood similar to mine. I was right in the middle of the baby boom created by lonely soldiers and sailors who came back from the great World War II to make up for lost time with their sweethearts.

There were no less than ten kids on my street that were within two years of me in age. Two were brothers that lived just 200 feet from my house. Woods surrounded all the houses on our street. Behind their house, the previous homeowner had constructed a magnificent tiny cabin for his kids. We immediately made this our clubhouse and meeting place for all outdoor adventures.

Thinking back, this one-room cabin measured only 8 feet deep by 12 feet long. It had a small covered front porch. I can’t begin to share with you how much fun all of us had in this tiny building that looked not much different from POW bunkhouses that my own father slept in. The inside walls were not covered, you could see the wood wall studs and the roof rafters. We didn’t care because we didn’t know any better being 8, 9, and 10 years old. We just wanted our own private little space away from our parents.

victorian child playhouse clubhouse

The playhouse you build for your grandchild, daughter, or son doesn’t have to be this elaborate. Simple works well too. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Mid-winter is a good time as any to start to plan to build a similar playhouse or clubhouse for that special young person in your life. It’s not that hard to do when you consider the job to be not much different than eating a pachyderm. Those are best eaten one bite at a time.

You can have extra fun if you include your little ones in this planning stage. Look at photos online about playhouses and clubhouses. Ask your junior architects what they want in their playhouse. Try to accommodate as many requests as possible that make sense. Talk to them about helping build it so they’ll have rich memories of the project as they grow older.

You can get inspiration to build one of these by just spending ten minutes looking inside the pre-built sheds that are no doubt sitting on the edge of the parking lot of the big box stores in your city or town. These sheds are carbon copies, for the most part, of the clubhouse I spent time in. They have simple wood floors, plain-vanilla 2x4 walls, and the roof rafters can be 2x6s. Nothing about this is hard.

The first step in the process is to check with your local building and zoning department. You need to see what the stipulations might be for outdoor structures like a garden shed or storage shed. That’s what you’ll call this tiny building that you intend to build. You may discover that a structure like this can’t exceed a certain size and that it must be placed a certain distance from your property line.

In my opinion, the next biggest concern is wind. It’s not uncommon for windstorms and violent thunderstorms to blow outdoor sheds over. This happens if the tiny building is not secured to the ground. Buried concrete piers that extend below the frost level of your area do a great job of preventing your new clubhouse from tumbling. Inexpensive metal connectors connect to steel anchor bolts that are placed in these concrete piers. I have a series of videos on my www.AsktheBuilder.com website that show you how to build these piers and place the anchor bolts.

Building the floor and walls for this tiny building is also simple. I’d recommend you use treated floor joists as well as treated plywood. You can purchase this plywood at just about any traditional lumber yard that sells treated dimensional lumber. If you use untreated plywood or oriented strand board (OSB), within a few years it will start to rot and become spongy. You’ll discover more videos on my website showing you how to build the floor and the walls.

Framing the roof of your playhouse/clubhouse might be the most challenging thing for you. I have videos about this too and you’ll discover that there are many helpful videos on the Internet showing you how to cut simple rafters for a project like this. It’s very easy and all you need is a simple framing square and a circular saw.

In my opinion, it’s best to plan ahead. The little urchins that will use this will grow out of it. Think about how you can use the tiny building once they get interested in other activities. Maybe you’ll use it to store your garden tractor, snow blower, or other yard-care tools. If so, think about how you can add a ramp at a later date to get these things in and out of the shed.

Make use of natural light. The clubhouse I played in didn’t have a skylight. It had one small window. When the door was closed, it was pretty dark inside. With very little effort you can install a simple skylight in the roof that will make all the difference in the world. As crazy as this sounds, a simple piece of plexiglass plastic laced into the roof shingles will suffice. Be sure to cover the wood roof sheathing with 30# tar paper to prevent wood rot should you not be an expert roofer! This inexpensive material is installed before you nail on the asphalt shingles.

Column 1491

Paint Walls With Bold Colors

Posted on by Tim Carter
interior walls painted gray

Who wants the inside of their home to look like a battleship? Spice it up and introduce bold colors to create distinct moods. Look below at the after photo with bold colors! Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

Paint Walls with Bold Colors - It Might Look Fantastic

I’ve had the distinct pleasure to attend numerous editors conferences over the years sponsored by different manufacturers. I’ve toured tool heat-treating hand-tool plants, precision saw-blade factories, small-engine plants, and paint factories to name but a few. Each experience is similar to Christmas morning because I got to see new things that otherwise are hidden from the public for a host of reasons.

One of the most fascinating tours was of a paint factory on the West Coast. Part of the tour was timed so we got to see the early stages of making a batch of interior paint. I believe the size of the vat was at least 5000 gallons but it could have been as much as 10,000 gallons. You need a massive metal stirring paddle to blend all the ingredients. Forget about using a wood stick!

Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour for me was the session spent with the on-staff color expert. This woman appeared to have no less than 20 years experience and she explained to us all the nuances of color, how the slightest shades of color can affect how you feel, and most importantly how distinct colors can control, to a large degree, your mood.

2020-23 Trend is Battleship Gray

Have you toured any new homes recently? If so, you may notice that many interior rooms are painted different shades of gray. Visit an art museum and you might not even notice that the walls are often painted gray. It’s an interesting color that actually is the absence of color. This is why gray is used in art museums so the paintings and photographs don’t compete against the background color of the walls.

Gray is most often created mixing pure white paint with some amount of black pigment. When most people think about color, they tend to think about every other color in the rainbow other than white or black. Gray provides a very interesting background for all other colors you might put in the rooms of your home just as it does in a museum.

All that said, you may be like my son. He purchased a new home that came on the market last spring. The builder had already painted all the rooms a medium gray for the above reason.

While that sounds like a good idea when I toured the house with my son, he said, “Dad, what the heck? I don’t want to wake up each day thinking I’m a sailor on a battleship. It’s just way too much gray! How hard would it be to paint the rooms over?”

I answered him that we could easily repaint half the rooms in the two-bedroom house in just three days. I told him it depended on the colors he’d choose as some lighter colors like yellow might require two coats.

He decided he wanted to do an experiment and go with some very bold colors. I thought he was making a mistake. His mother and I both shared with him that when he sees a color on a small strip of paper that you get at the paint store, once that color is on the wall it almost always appears much darker. This happens because there’s just so much color hitting your eyes vs looking at a sample that’s 2 inches wide and maybe 3/4-inch tall.

He said, “Dad, paint isn’t that expensive and since you’re helping and it doesn’t take long I can always repaint the room.” Oh, how convenient your dad can help you for the price of a free lunch! If you have children, I’m sure you’ve been conscripted to help with projects. To be honest, I loved working on his house.

The first room we painted was his living room. He chose a deep blue color. When I opened the can I gasped as quietly as I could thinking it was a huge mistake. The gray wall color happened to be a superb base and the blue covered it in one coat with ease. It was a bright sunny spring day and much to my surprise after the first wall was finished it looked amazing. I had thought it would make the room appear too small but I didn’t get that feeling. The other benefit to blue is it’s a calming color.

The kitchen was painted a stunning yellow much like a sunflower, the dining room was transformed using a deep spicy reddish brown, and his rear sunroom was coated with a stunning medium green.

painted interior walls with bright bold colors

What a difference! The blue is stunning in person. The spicy reddish brown is not bad at all with light fabrics on the wall. Copyright 2023 Tim Carter

After we were finished, I had to admit the bold colors in this open-concept house not only looked spectacular, but they also didn’t clash. Once he started to hang paintings and fabrics on the wall, the colors looked even better.

I suggest that if you’re on the fence as to what to do, simply purchase a quart and paint one wall. Realize the color may look somewhat different at night than it does in the day. Experiment with flat paint vs. semi-gloss. You may find that might make a difference. No matter what, if you don’t like the color, you can repaint a typical room in just hours. Be brave! Try a bold color or two and you’ll not think you’re swabbing decks on a battleship when you mop your kitchen floor!

battleship new jersey 62

Do you want to feel like a sailor? Then paint the inside of your home like a battleship.

Column 1490

Cleaning and Restoring Tile and Slate Floors

Posted on by Tim Carter

Cleaning and Restoring Tile and Slate Floors - Easy!

terracotta tile floor wax coating

This tile floor may look good to you, but believe me it’s got layers of wax that was applied over dirt. Copyright 2022 Tim Carter

A month ago you may have read my column about how to get ceramic tile grout clean. As you might suspect, I received quite a few thank-you notes via the Ask Tim page on my www.AsktheBuilder.com website. It’s always gratifying to hear from you knowing that I helped you save time and money.

Pamela, who hails from Kenosha, WI, reached out to me after reading that same column. But she had a bigger problem than just her tile grout. Here’s what she sent me: “I would like to know how to properly clean, restore, and maintain the terracotta floor in my kitchen, the slate floor in my entry hall, and half bathroom. I believe the prior owner may have waxed them to get a shine, so there may be some buildup. The floors really don’t look that good no matter what I’ve tried.”

Pam used the image upload tool on my Ask Tim page and sent me a photo of each of the floors. I was able to see the problem right away and started a back-and-forth conversation with her. The first thing I shared was that her question was so good I was going to make a star out of her. I’d love to do the same with you with any problem you have at your home.

filthy slate entry floor wax

Look at how this slate floor was ruined by coats of wax and probably urethane. Look at how FILTHY the grout is in places. It was originally an off-white color! The owner may have to use paint stripper on the slate to remove what could be urethane.

Do you have tile or slate floors that look drab? Have you tried all sorts of polishes to only discover days or weeks later your floors look bad again? Have you been trained how to clean a floor? There’s absolutely no shame in admitting you’ve not been trained by a professional floor cleaner.

Finally, have you fallen into the trap of using those pad mops that come with disposable pads and have a spray bottle of cleaner/polish on them? Let’s unpack all of this so your tile and slate floors will look as fantastic as the day they were installed.

Once I peered at Pam’s photos, I could see she was right about the wax buildup. I suggested to her to go out and purchase a small quart bottle of a commercial wax remover and read the use instructions. I’ve used these for years when I’ve volunteered to help restore waxed terrazzo floors in my kids’s grade school. A group of parents got together to clean and restore all of the floors and stairwells in the entire school because it was just too much work for our older custodian.

I also asked Pam to take many photos as she worked on the project. I wanted to be able to share those with you. You can see them if you look up this column on my website.

The most dramatic photo that Pam shared with me, and I specifically asked her for it, was the one of the bucket of water that she dipped her scrub brush in as she removed the built-up layers of wax. The water was disgusting. Keep in mind Pam thought her floors were clean! Fortunately she didn’t bite off my head in our email exchange.

filthy cleaning water tile slate floor

This is the scrub water as layers of wax are removed. The wax stripper softened the wax and scrubbing with soapy water removes it. Look at how filthy the floors were when layer after layer of wax was applied. GROSS!

If you’re using real wax or those grocery-store pad mops on your floors, there’s a great chance you’re not really cleaning your floor. I was trained by a professional how to clean tile floors. This is but one way to get great results.

I start by sweeping the floor or vacuuming it. You want all loose debris off the floor. I then break out my old-fashioned string mop. I mop the floor with a solution of soapy water. I simply use the best liquid dish soap I can buy.

Many people don’t use a string mop correctly. Once you dip it in the soapy water and remove excess water, you spin the mop so the strings spin around like an amusement park ride. When the mop hits the floor, the strings should be pointing out in all directions in a circle. Move the mop sideways left and right working it back towards your body. Only clean about 10-12 square feet before rinsing out the mop to get fresh soapy water.

If the water gets filthy before you’re finished, discard it and get new soapy water. Otherwise you’re simply mopping the floor with filthy water for goodness sake. If you use one of the pad mops, you probably make the same mistake and don’t change the pad frequently enough. Such a waste of money!

After mopping the floor with soapy water, it’s time to rinse it. You put clear water in the mop bucket and do the same thing as you did with the soapy water. As the water gets cloudy, discard it and get fresh rinse water. Once you mop the floor and the water is no longer getting cloudy, you know it’s clean.

I wouldn’t recommend using any polish on your tile floors. Most tiles come from the factory with a glaze that’s a thin coating of real glass. That’s all the polish or shine you need. Slate has its own matte appearance that’s extremely attractive.

I have a theory that the pad mop polishes actually are designed to dull within days and attract dirt. This way you break out your pad mop, squirt their solution on the floor, and try to make your floor look good. Week after week you end up being like a hamster going around one of those metal wheels in a cage wasting your money. But what do I know? I used to each lunch for 20+ years sitting on empty overturned drywall mud buckets! Here’s to your new clean floors!

Column 1486

New Home Hacks

Posted on by Tim Carter

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