If you’re looking for a one-stop portal for free guides on how to perform all your do-it-yourself home repairs, you’ve come to the right place. At DIY-Repairs.com, we’ll teach you how to do a wide variety of household tasks at all difficulty levels. Read through our pages and you’ll learn how to do all kinds of do-it-yourself home repairs including plumbing repairs, electrical fixes, safety improvements, door and window repairs, and tons more.
DIY-Repairs.com is written and provided by veteran home repair professionals, and we’ve put together this project out of a love for our work. Some of the do-it-yourself home repairs that you’ll learn about include:
- Basement fixes, including how to fix cracks in the foundation and how to make improvements.
- Bathroom repair, including how to resolve all sorts of issues relating to sinks, tubs, toilets, and tiles.
- Door & Window fixes such as how to fix problematic doors and how to replace broken windows.
- Fixing electrical problems, including how to reinstall light fixtures and switches and how to troubleshoot power problems.
- Exterior improvements, including how to build things like porch swings, decks, and tool sheds, as well as simple improvements to make your yard a more pleasant place for your family.
- Heating & cooling repair, including how to keep your air conditioning and heating systems in proper working order.
- Kitchen repairs, such as how to install a garbage disposal, how to optimize your kitchen space, and how to fix a stove.
- Lighting repairs, such as how to make lights more energy efficient and how to repair your light fixtures.
- Plumbing fixes, such as how to fix leaks, how to unclog pipes, and knowing when to hire a plumber.
- Wall and floor repairs, including how to paint a wall, how to fix up a floor, and how to know where it’s safe to hang a heavy picture.
In addition to instructions for these do-it-yourself home repairs, we also provide extensive guides on how to stay safe as you’re making repairs and how to make your home more safe for your family.
If you’re not an experienced handyperson, don’t worry. We provide instructions on how to become handy and what types of tools and supplies you’ll need, and we provide plenty of guides to tasks that anyone can do, even if you’ve never handled a hammer or screwdriver in your life. Meanwhile, if you’re someone who know how to get things done but just needs a little step-by-step guide as a reminder, we also provide guides to a number of advanced tasks that require a good deal of skill and experience.
Choosing a color scheme for your home is not as difficult as one might think. It starts with a very simple visualization—just close your eyes and imagine the color scheme that you see in your home. No doubt it’s possible to put together an unappealing color scheme, but if you use your intuition and rely on your personal tastes, there really is no wrong set of colors. It’s all a matter of what you like and what you don’t like, and if you can achieve your vision, you’ll be happy with your colors.
Most interior designers consider one of four different approaches when choosing a color scheme:
- Monochromatic: In a monochromatic color scheme, all the colors in a room are different shades of the same color. For example, you might have light green for the baseboards, a darker green for the walls, and shades of green for many of the furniture items.
- Analogous: In an analogous color scheme, you’ll pick one color that you want to emphasize in the room, and then you’ll choose two or three adjacent colors on the color wheel to provide highlights.
- Complementary: In a complementary color scheme, you’ll choose two different colors that complement each other—for example, orange and purple—and use two or three different shades of each of those colors. This is a great approach if you have two favorite colors that go well together.
- Triadic: Triadic color schemes are a little more advanced. As the name implies, a triadic scheme involves three different colors—for example, red, blue, and yellow. It’s hard to do this without going over-the-top, but if you don’t mind the risk, it’s a fun adventure to try.
If you’re not sure how to choose your color scheme, start with existing pieces of furniture or rugs that you already have. Use them as starting points, and find colors that complement them.
Also, it’s a good idea to check decorating magazines (both paper and online) to get a look at different color schemes that people are using in their homes. Not all of us are good at simply imagining an appealing color scheme. In this case, there’s nothing wrong with using some photos to help you come up with ideas. If you find a photo of a room that you like, take it to the paint department at your hardware store, and they should be able to help you identify the perfect paints to use.
Having a bad odor in the home can really put a damper on one’s life. It hangs in the air and can’t be escaped, and it makes you reluctant to have anyone over. All in all, it makes the home a much less pleasant place. And because many home odors are so difficult to get rid of, they can also be endlessly frustrating. Fortunately, there are some tried-and-true methods for getting rid of home odors. If you try one and it doesn’t work, move on to the next one. In fact, many people find that they don’t get good results until they perform several different methods multiple times. That’s how persistent home odors can be.
1. Scrub: The first thing you’ll want to do to get rid of an odor is to scrub the surface where it’s coming from. Even if you suspect that the odor is coming from deep in the floorboards, you’ll want to give the area a good cleaning. The best way to do so is to use multiple different materials. Use the traditional store-bought cleaner for the surface, then clean with a specialized odor-removing product, and finally scrub with a half-water-half-vinegar mixture.
2. Cook: Next, if you have an odor in your kitchen, you can try to neutralize the smell by boiling some water on your stovetop. You can also make a natural air freshener by putting a few tablespoons of vanilla extract in some aluminum foil and cooking it at moderate heat in the oven.
3. Freshen: There are a number of air conditioners on the market that do more than just cover up smells, but also emit freshening agents in the air to help completely neutralize the odor. Place a few store-bought air conditioners around the home, with an extra freshener or two around the area where the odor is worst.
4. Other scents: In addition to fresheners, you can also use things like incense and scented candles to fill your home with pleasant smells. These will help cover up the odor in the short-term, and if you use them persistently, they can actually help to permanently bury the bad smell in the long run.
5. Be persistent: If you try all these different cleaning methods and the bad smell doesn’t go away, don’t give up. Take a couple of hours every weekend to repeat your steps, and keep it up for several months. It may seem like a lot of work, but you will eventually begin to make headway.
Every home has a circuit panel, most of which contain a set of switches that can be flipped to turn power on and off to different areas of the house. What many people don’t realize is that most circuit breaker boxes control several different types of circuits. Since every area of your house has different electrical needs, each area has to be specially wired, and there are different concerns having to do with different areas.
What all circuits have in common, however, is that they have both hot and neutral wires. The hot wire is usually black or red and leads out to the outlets and electrical fixtures in the area controlled by the circuit, while the neutral wire is usually white and exists mainly to complete the circuit.
Types of circuits
Most circuits in private homes carry 120 volts, although you will occasionally see 240-volt circuits. When a circuit draws too many amps (i.e., the demand from the appliances and fixtures plugged in to the circuit is too high), the breaker will trip or a fuse will blow. To prevent unsafe conditions, home circuit systems are designed to automatically shut off when this happens.
A typical 120-volt circuit can serve a few outlets with normal power demand. However, some homes have specialized circuits devoted specifically to high-power items such as dishwashers or refrigerators. When this happens, many circuits and breakers automatically shut down.
Grounding and polarization
Because short circuits can cause shocks, circuits need to be grounded so that any excess electricity will be neutralized. That’s why most circuits have a grounding wire that gets attached to a neutral bar within the service panel. The bar is connected to the earth so that any electricity it conducts gets immediately grounded. Without this, the electricity might find its way into places where it could pose a danger.
Polarization is the process of ensuring that the electricity flows in the direction that it’s supposed to. In many of your plug-in devices you may notice that one of the prongs in the plug is wider than the other. This ensures that the electricity flows in the proper direction into the device. In items that have two prongs of the same size, it doesn’t matter which direction the electricity flows in. Polarization essentially acts as a cut-off, ensuring that devices don’t draw power even when they’re not in use.
There are many ways that crooks break into private homes, but having exterior doors that are not very secure is like sending out an open invitation for any thief to just walk right in. It puts your family in danger and greatly increases your risk of losses due to theft. Most non-secure doors have a few simple things in common, and fortunately these issues are very easy to rectify. Here are a few ways to bolster your home security by making your exterior doors more secure.
1. Get rid of hollow doors. Hollow doors make it very easy for crooks to break through. Check your doors, and if any seem flimsy, replace them with more solid versions that are heavy and thick.
2. Avoid openings: Make sure there are no openings that are large enough for people to reach their hands through. For example, a large mail slot may be wide enough for a small person to reach an arm through. Pet doors can also be problematic, as can glass windows in doors. If you want to have glass in your door for design purposes, make sure it is unbreakable.
3. Secure sliding doors: Many sliding doors are unfortunately not too sturdy. If you have to have one, make sure it’s made of unbreakable, double-paned glass and has a heavy-duty lock. Also be sure to secure the door with a length of wood in the sliding channel.
4. Install motion-sensor lighting. Criminals find a darkly lit entryway to be quite appealing, but you can counter this effect by installing motion-sensor lighting at all the doors.
5. Lock outer doors: If you have two doors in the entryway, don’t neglect to lock the outer one. It may seem superfluous, but two locks are always more secure than one.
6. Install three locks on the main door: Every external door has a standard bolt lock above the knob, but it’s a good idea to install at least two additional locks, including a deadbolt and a latch.
7. Secure your garage door: These days, not too many people still have those garage doors that can be opened by hand. But if you do have one, install a heavier-duty version that can only be opened electrically, and remove any backup mechanisms for opening the door. If your electric opener breaks down, you’ll get in another way.
Installing wall-to-wall carpet is a surprisingly difficult task to do yourself, so many people choose to hire contractors for this job. However, if you’re feeling brave and don’t mind investing in some specialized tools (some of which you can rent), then you can take care of it yourself. Here’s a step-by-step guide to installing wall-to-wall carpet.
Step 1: You will need several tools, including a hammer, a stapler, a utility knife, measuring tape, chalk, a seam cutter, tackles strips, a power stretcher, safety glasses, and work gloves.
Step 2: First, remove everything from the room. If there is existing carpet, you’ll need to strip it. Make sure the floor is completely clean and doesn’t have any protrusions such as old nails or staplers.
Step 3: Lay down tackles strips around the edges of the room, leaving gaps for any doorways. It should be about half an inch from the wall, and the tacks should face the wall.
Step 4: Staple the carpet underlay in place. Rather than overlapping the edges, just make sure they are very close together. Cut away any excess that goes over the tackles strips.
Step 5: Take measurements of the room, adding four inches on each side, and purchase your carpet. Cut your carpet to fit the measurements of the room.
Step 6: Bring the carpet into the room and lay it out so that it roughly fits its area. If you’re going to need a second patch of carpet, follow the same process but make the second patch overlap the first by about two inches. To make the two patches join evenly, use a seam cutter to cut through both patches at the same time, and join them with a piece of seaming tape.
Step 7: Hook your carpet to the tackles strips. The best way to do this is to use a knee kicker to force the tackles strip to grab and hold on to the carpet.
Step 8: Use an edge trimmer to cut the carpet along the edges of the wall. Tuck the edge under the baseboard.
Step 9: Use a power carpet stretcher to pull the opposite side of the carpet over its tackles strips, and attach the carpet with your knee kicker. Trim away the extra carpet and tuck the edge of the carpet under the baseboard.
Step 10: For the portion of carpet at the doorway, install a door edge to hold it in place.
Among DIY beginners, a common mistake is assuming that applying a couple of coats of paint to a wall is sufficient. But the reality is that if a wall is not prepared with a good primer, even several coats of paint may not be enough to adequately cover the surface of the wall. Even when the paint job looks complete, having no primer can lead to problems as the paint job ages. Here are the main reasons to prime before painting.
1. Creating a smooth canvass: Primer makes the surface smooth, which provides a nice surface for the first coat of paint. It also seals the surface, making the paint much easier to apply and facilitating even absorption of color along the surface of the wall.
2. Color changes: Primer makes it easier to make dramatic color changes on a wall. Even when the old color is dramatically different from the new one, having a layer of primer creates a seal that makes the old color easier to paint over. For this purpose, heavier-duty primers are usually the best choice.
3. Better adherence: Primer is designed to make paint stay on the wall better, so that it doesn’t streak or run during the drying process. It seals up the pores while also making slick areas easier to paint, which prevents streaking and eventual flaking of your layers of new paint.
4. Consistency: Using a primer makes your paint job more uniform and gives it a consistent look. Without primer, paint jobs can look patchy, streaky, and uneven. You don’t want to be stuck with a shoddy paint job, so take the extra time to apply a layer of primer first.
5. Priming seals in problem patches: If there are any stains, water damage, or patches of mold on the wall, priming seals these things in so that they don’t seep out through your new layer of paint. Without a primer, things like mold and stains can eventually rear their ugly heads on the surface of even a double-layer paint job.
When you’re doing a substantial remodeling on your home, you might run into a situation where you have a wall that you simply must get rid of in order to achieve the layout you envision. Many people assume that walls are too important to just get rid of, but this simply isn’t the case. Yes, you have to approach wall removal with the utmost caution, but most of them can be removed without causing problems. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: The first things you need to do are 1) determine if it is a load-bearing wall, and 2) find out if there are any pipes or wires running through it. If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then the process is going to be a bit more complicated. You may need an electrician or plumber to reroute the wires or pipes, and you may need to consult a specialist to find out how to provide proper support to your home without the wall in place. If the wall is not load-bearing and has no wires or pipes, continue with these steps.
Step 2: Clear everything out from the rooms on both sides of the wall, and close off the rooms by hanging sheets of plastic in the entryways. Also put some drop clothes down to completely cover the floors, and shut off power to both rooms.
Step 3: Start with the moldings and baseboards along the floors and ceilings. Pry them away with a solid metal bar and discard them. Then, use a large hammer or saw to remove all the drywall, starting in between the studs. If you’re going to have outside contractors come in to reroute wiring or plumbing, this is the stage to do so.
Step 4: Use your saw to cut through the studs a few inches above the ground and below the ceiling. Pull out the middle sections of the studs, and then use your hammer to knock out the short pieces from the floor and ceiling. You may be able to simply pull them out. If not, you may have to simply use your saw to cut them flush with the base of the floor and ceiling, and then redo those sections with new flooring and drywall.
Due to the rise of telecommuting and the explosion of web-based small businesses, more people than ever are finding opportunities to set aside the daily commute and work from home. Naturally, this shift involves a lot of changes to one’s life and routine, not least of which is the necessity for a home office. When beginning to work from home, many people quickly discover that working in any old room of the house just doesn’t work. To stay focused, one needs a dedicated space that’s for work and work only. When making your home office, here are some things to keep in mind:
1. Offices need privacy: If you don’t have a lot of room to spare, then this will obviously affect how you set up your home office. Of course, the ideal scenario is to have a separate room that can enable you to completely shut out the outside world while you’re working. If this isn’t possible, then you’ll have to set aside a space within a room that is devoted to nothing but your office. There are different things you can do to set it apart from the rest of the room. There are partition walls, or you can use a row of tall book shelves.
2. Make it look nice: If you’ve been an office drone for much of your live, then you may just assume that all offices need to be drab and boringly decorated. But you are in charge of this office, so you can do anything you want with it. Paint the wall a fun color, hang up any decorations that make you feel good, and make sure the furniture is appealing.
3. Keep it well lit: Mood lighting is nice for creating an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere, but when it comes to working, you’re going to need to have plenty of light so your eyes don’t get tired. The best home office setups usually have multiple light sources, including a lamp on your desk and a brighter overhead light.
4. Make it ergonomic: Since you’re going to be spending lots of time sitting in your office, you want it to be comfortable. Of course, it can’t be too comfortable or else you’ll fall asleep, but see if you can invest in a nice desk and chair that are designed to create an ergonomic workspace.
5. Get your deductions: Most tax agencies allow small business owners to deduct expenses related to home-based offices. For example, you can calculate the portion of your home devoted to your office and deduct a corresponding portion of your rent and bills. However, the catch is that the office has to be devoted exclusively to work purposes, or else it doesn’t count as a business expense.
Having an outbreak of bugs in the home can be infuriating because the little critters can squeeze through the tiniest holes, and they just keep coming by the thousands, no matter how many you kill. These problems tend to peak during the warmer and more humid months of the year—especially the late spring and summer—but it can happen any time. The important thing is to keep a cool head and not get too angry or grossed out by the bugs. There are ways to get rid of them without paying for an exterminator. Here’s what to do.
Step 1: Head to the hardware store and purchase two types of bug spray—one for the outside of the house, and one for the inside. Spray along the perimeter of your house in the outside, and then come indoors and spray along the door jams and any windows where bugs may enter.
Step 2: Make sure the home stays clean. It’s important to get old food out of your home as soon as possible. Keep your trash and recycle bins outdoors—even outside of the garage, if you have one—and take your trash out every day. Don’t leave old or rotting food inside overnight. Also, while it may not seem quite as important, one should also try to keep the home uncluttered, as many types of bugs like to hang out in dark places. Take a minimalistic approach to your home design, and be sure to let in lots of natural light.
Step 3: Cut back on the moisture in your home. If you live in a humid area, or if your home often feels quite muggy, you might want to invest in a dehumidifier. When the dehumidifier is not running, just make sure to get lots of air flowing through the rooms by opening windows in all sections of the house and keeping doors open. Bugs like humidity, so all of these things will help.
Step 4: Try to identify the exact locations where the bugs get in. For example, if you have cracks in the foundation, these could be the entry points. In this case, you’ll want to seal up the cracks. Also look for spots around doors and windows where the clearance is large and seal them up wherever possible. Replace any ripped or broken screens, and make sure that doors close as they’re supposed to.
If you have a rough patch in your yard that you want to cover with grass or simply want to start from scratch with a troublesome area, you might find that planting new grass is actually a little more challenging than many people assume. Not only is it a delicate process in which you have to take into account many different factors, but it’s also a long process that requires regular monitoring over a period of weeks or even months. With this in mind, here’s how to plant a new layer of grass from seed.
Step 1: Select what type of grass you would like to grow in your yard, and choose the appropriate seed. Before making your purchase, it’s a good idea to ask around or go online to find out what types of grass people have had results with in your area. If you have a neighbor with a particularly beautiful lawn, you can even ask them directly what they use.
Step 2: If you’re going to be replanting an area where there is some sparse existing grass, first cut the grass as short as possible, remove any debris or dead grass from the area, and turn over the soil. If you’re planting on an area that doesn’t have any existing grass, first remove any debris (stones, sticks, etc.) from the area, break up any large soil clumps, and make the area as level as possible. In either case, prepare the area with a gentle grass fertilizer.
Step 3: For large areas of grass, you can use a mechanical seeder to evenly spread the seed over the lawn. If it’s a smaller patch, you can easily do it by hand, making sure to spread the seed evenly, with about 16 seeds per square inch of lawn. Obviously, it’s not easy to measure this, so practice on a small corner of the patch first to get a feel for what it should look like, and then proceed to the rest of the area.
Step 4: Cover the grass seed in about a quarter inch of soil and, if you wish, use some grass seed accelerator to help the growing process along.
Step 5: For the coming days and weeks, make sure the grass bed is always moist but never too wet. Water at least once daily with a gentle sprinkler, being careful not to oversaturate the soil. Once the grass grows in, you can generally water less frequently, especially if you live in a rainy area. The grass should begin to grow in within weeks.
