After reading last week's tip, I got this sobering email from David Wick who's recovering from injuries in Molalla, OR:

"I was on an old aluminum 6-foot ladder on a flat sidewalk by our front door. The task was to clean out the gutter screen we have. I climbed up and was at the top (usable) step and the ladder buckled. The next thing I know I was on top of the crumpled metal, with one broken rib and a slight puncture of my lung.

I ended up being flown by helicopter to the ER. I am home recovering now, but I would like you to stress to your other newsletter subscribers to really consider throwing out the old ladders and getting a new one.

I should have tossed that one a year or two ago. I also now want a spotter when I use one because my wife was home, but upstairs, and I had to pick myself up and get inside which was hard to do after a fall. When on the ladder, I didn't reach out and change the center of gravity of the ladder. It just buckled. It's amazing how hard you hit when you only fall 5 feet."

David, that's a great tip and by all means get better soon! Thanks for sharing. On a personal note, I inherited a similar 8-foot aluminum ladder from my father-in-law years ago.

The spreader arms had a horrible habit of bending. I never fell, but it was a very dangerous ladder. I ended up taking it to the recycle center cut in pieces so no one else could be hurt by it.

I shared this one on Facebook on Super Bowl Sunday:

"Don't take the easy way out of building steps by making those sawtooth notch cuts. Create rabbets in the sides of the stringers so you maximize the strength of the set of steps."

You've seen steps cut the wrong way. Those are the ones that look like a saw blade. Remember, stair stringers are the beams that support your weight, that of the refrigerator, and the other person helping you. When you cut the sawtooth configuration, you turn a 2x12 into a 2x6!

Want to see how to layout, cut and make rabbets in stair stringers the way I do? Do you want to discover the most comfortable riser/tread combination for a new set of steps? You know, the perfect set of steps that are safe and easy to go up and down?

All of that and more are in this Building Deck Stairs eBook of mine.

Do you have a hardwood floor or a laminate floor? I've got both in my home.

Have you seen those advertisements lately on TV about the wonderful sweepers that also steam your floor at the same time?

Well guess what? Steam and wood go together like oil and water or a square peg in a round hole.

The last thing you want to do is inject water vapor - that condenses into liquid water - into a wood floor or the wood-fiber core of a laminate floor.

Many homes have gorgeous wide openings between rooms. Kathy and I had that at our Queen Anne Victorian home in Cincinnati, OH, where our living room connected to our entrance hall. If you want privacy in one of the rooms, you have all sorts of options. Keep in mind that regular swing doors take up lots of room.

To not waste floor space, you can utilize great hardware from LE Johnson to quickly install folding doors that give you the needed privacy, but not eat up floor space. This is a great alternative if you're on a limited budget and can't afford all the work needed to install pocket doors to achieve the goal. What's more, you may not be able to install a pocket door in that location, much less dual pocket doors that meet in the center of the opening.

This folding door solution will work in any home no matter what the architectural style. You don't have to use flat slab doors as you see in this photo. You can use panel doors, doors with some glass, whatever suites your taste! Click here to discover more about the LE Johnson Folding Door hardware.

I've used LE Johnson door hardware in my homes for years, and when I build my next house for Kathy and me, you'll find it there because it works!

Here are two links to larger photos of the opening above showing the door open and closed.

Last week on Ash Wednesday, I was invited to a first-ever-for-me visit to a United Methodist church service. I was in Richmond, VA, staying with great friends. When I arranged the visit, we both forgot that it was Ash Wednesday. They politely asked me if I would go to church with them after supper. Without flinching, I said yes.

We went to the St. Matthews Church that was close to the home of my friends. The pastor, Rev. Gordon Pruitt, gave an amusing homily where he talked about capturing monkeys with a box and how he replaced the worn-out carpet in the parsonage with a new carpet.

He talked about how he had rolled up the heavy carpet and lugged it to the garage where it sat in the way as it was such a hassle to get it to the dump. The homily was about changing bad habits and his way to ignore the carpet.

It was all I could to contain myself - not knowing the protocol about raising one's hand at a Methodist service. Of course, I would never think of doing such a thing at a Catholic mass.

I wanted to tell Rev. Pruitt that all he had to do when he removed the carpet was to cut it up in place in the living room. He just had to flip over one edge of the carpet about 40 inches onto itself and the backing of the carpet would be right there.

The backing would be elevated off the floor and using a sharp razor knife he could easily have cut the carpet into manageable 3-foot strips that could be rolled up, secured with twine or duct tape and easily put in the trunk of a car to take to the dump or recycling facility.

Don't let this happen to you. Don't break your back trying to carry the entire carpet out of the house. Only take it out in one piece if you know the old rug can be cleaned and reused by someone else.