With sweltering heat making life rough in much of the US for the last couple of weeks we thought we would share some cooling tips from the US Environmental Protection Agency that are low cost and can be applied by any and every body to try to stay cool.

Most of the items are methods that we all have heard before but sometimes we may forget and it doesn’t hurt to have a little nudge to get us to make those small adjustments that could make our lives a little better and more comfortable.

No-Cost Cooling tips from the EPA:

Program your thermostat to work around your family’s summer schedule—set it a few degrees higher (such as 78 degrees) when no one is home, so your cooling system isn’t cooling an empty house. With proper use, programmable thermostats can save you about $180 a year in energy costs.

• Check your HVAC system’s air filter every month. If the filter looks dirty, change it, but change the filter at least every three months. A dirty filter will slow air flow and make the system work harder to keep you cool, wasting energy.

• Run your ceiling fan to create a cool breeze. If you raise your thermostat by only two degrees and use your ceiling fan, you can lower cooling costs by up to 14 percent. Remember that ceiling fans cool you, not the room, so when you leave the room make sure to turn off the fan.

• Pull the curtains and shades closed before you leave your home to keep the sun’s rays from overheating the interior of your home. If you can, move container trees and plants in front of sun-exposed windows to serve as shade.

Apply some of these no-brainers to your home or office and surely it will make the day a little better.

Enjoy your summer!

For those about to take on a bathroom remodeling project that involves a new shower, listen up! In most cases your contractor will be the one to take on such a job since waterproofing and tiling a shower takes skills beyond those of most weekend DIY warriors. What you can do is to talk through the project with your contractor and it might be worth it for you to ask about the use of products from Schluter Systems before the project begins.

Schluter continues to improve and expand their product line for waterproofing shower installations. They offer a KERDI Shower Kit that sells for less than $500 in most cases for a decent size shower floor and includes “each of the components required to create a maintenance-free, watertight shower assembly without a mortar bed.

Schluter Systems has been developing innovative tile installation products for more than 30 years and continues to excel as a leader in the industry. Talk to your tile installer about installation products available from Schluter Systems.

With Spring just around the corner it is time to start thinking about performing inspections and checks of your homes systems to ensure their continued proper working condition. Summer is just around the corner and we want our homes systems functioning properly as we move from colder to warmer temperatures.

While there are many things we should be doing around the home to continue proper maintenance here are three of the basic checks we like to do as the warmer months approach:

* Inspect your plumbing regularly for leaks. Look under cabinets to make sure connections aren’t dripping, and turn all valves off and on to ensure the system is operating properly. Addressing leaks when they start is much cheaper than repairing the damage leaks cause over time.

* Check your homes heating and cooling system by having it inspected by a professional. Regular checks and servicing as needed is recommended, especially on units more than five years old. Continue to replace or clean each systems filter and vents as often as the manufacturer recommends.

* Inspect your homes water heater for leaks and empty any sediment from the bottom of the unit if this has not been done in some time.

Most of us will agree that it is always less expensive to maintain than it is to repair and spring is the best time to start checking your homes systems for problems that might rear their heads over the summer.

Since most of us may only choose and work with an architect once in our lives the process of choosing an architect may seem overwhelming for some. What are the important considerations to keep in mind when selecting an architect and how does one begin the process? Following are some guidelines to follow when embarking on a search for an Architect that may be helpful to your efforts.

First, decide if you need an architect and what we mean by that is, does the size and scope of your project justify the professional services of an architectural firm. Consider these points when making that decision:

Hiring an Architect might be a good idea:

* When building an Addition: architectural professionals can blend existing spaces to new ones, research setbacks, and usher your project through any architectural board reviews.

* When a Professional opinion counts: When you are needing space in an area that doesn’t appear to have any options to add space, adding energy saving alternatives to your current layout, making changes to a stock floor plan, or style adjustments to your home’s exterior

Hiring an Architect is not really necessary for:

* Small projects like adding, fixtures, cabinets, flooring, or any combination of the above do not require the use of an architect and can be planned by the homeowner

Prepare ahead of time before contacting any architects to arrange an interview. You should prepare for those upcoming meetings by knowing what you want the architect to design and being able to communicate your vision in both words and pictures. Whether you have to draw a sketch of what you like or better yet, you have photos of other similar structures to what you ultimately want, you need to have something tangible for the architect to begin with. Some architects also suggest clients bring to the first meeting pictures of things they don’t like. This allows an architect to zero in on a tighter focus of what the client truly wants and also allows both clients and architect to determine more accurately if the clients needs mesh well with the architects design style and capabilities.

To find an architect in your area, visit the planning department in your community for a list of architects who have worked on residential projects in your community. Alternatively, visit the website of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and you can find your local chapter by starting with the national organization at www.aia.org

While there are new homes being built all over the US everyday, the typical American house is still about thirty-four years old. What type of condition that house is in depends on the owners and how well they maintained the residence over the years. Many things can and will go wrong with a home through the years and there are certain items a homeowner can look out for depending on the age of your particular home.

In the initial years most major repairs or flaws resulting from potential construction errors will surface and will show themselves as needing repair. The exterior paint job will probably need to be re-done in the first four or five years since builder grade paint is often thinner than paint sold at home improvement and home & garden centers. And the heating and cooling system, also known as the HVAC system should be inspected and serviced in years four to seven to have any heat pumps and air conditioning compressors recharged.

In years eight to fifteen in the typical home, items that had been maintained on a regular basis in earlier years will now be starting to wear out and need replacement. Depending on their frequency of use the dishwasher, disposal, and laundry equipment may be worn out and need replacement. Water heater elements usually fail after eight years too, and tanks rust out in about 12 to 14 years even if they are drained of sediment on an annual basis.

The years 15 through 25 are a critical period because most key components must be replaced during this timeframe. Keep note any unwary buyer of a 15 – 25 year old house can be hit with a series of large replacement expenses. This means that homes in years 25 to 30 are usually enjoying a second prime period in their useful lives because all of the key components have been replaced and (somewhat) recently installed.

Homes over thirty years old will have components that have been replaced on such a varied time schedule that it is hard to determine with any accuracy when or if one item or another may fail soon. The recommendation for homes over thirty years in age is to maintain a regular maintenance schedule as much as possible and stay on top of the major components of your home.

Thank you to Lew Sichelman and the Los Angeles Times for much of the information contained in this post.

Last week we talked about a product we stumbled upon for installing tile without using mortar. Well now it seems that everybody is on the bandwagon and there is another product called SimpleMat available at Home Depot that claims to do the same thing.

According to the SimpleMat website, “SimpleMat is a double sided, adhesive mat specifically designed for bonding tile to countertops or backsplashes. The back of the mat has a flat adhesive which bonds to the backsplash wall or countertop. The front side has a raised adhesive which bonds to tile or stone. SimpleMat replaces traditional thin-set mortar or mastic adhesive.”

Again, if the product works as advertised then this is a great product for the homeowner and do-it-yourselfer. You will still need to grout any project where SimpleMat is used but tiling a backsplash or countertop will be in the realm of possibility for many more folks with a product, or shall we say, products like this on the market.

We often hear the question from our customers about what trim piece should be used when installing ceramic beveled subway tile in one’s home. This question is an easy one to answer though not so obvious to those who may be tiling their kitchen or bathroom for the first time.

Our beveled ceramic subway tiles are unique because the edge of the tile slopes down on all four sides of the tile so the edge now is thinner than the center body of the tile. A bullnose trim piece can normally be used with standard ceramic tiles but since there is no beveled slope on a bullnose trim piece the beveled field tile and the bullnose trim tile will not match up together. Therefore, one can and should only use Quarter Round 1” x 6” trim pieces as your edge piece when installing together with a beveled ceramic subway tile.

If you have any additional questions after reading this post feel free to call the AnchorBayTile team and we would be glad to offer assistance, suggestions, and any other advice on your ceramic tile project.

I have seen grout bags in the store before and wondered why on earth people would want to use them. It seemed like such an unnecessary step.

Then I bought and installed an unsealed slate like floor. Cleaning up the grout off of the tile was a nightmare. The next floor we installed we sealed the tile first, and while that helped, it did not eliminate the problem since the tile has a very uneven texture.

Typically grout bags are used when the grout will stain the tile or where it would be difficult to clean the grout off when finished with the job. So even though some installers don’t like using grout bags because they feel the grout does not get properly pushed into all of the crevices, leaving air pockets that can cause the grout to chip out or leave the tile unprotected and cause the corners to crack.

To make sure that doesn’t happen, I still use the tile float, but try to contain the mess as much as possible.

Use the grout bag in the same way that you would use an icing bag.

Then using your grout float push the grout into the spaces.

The first step of wallpaper removal: NEVER put it up to begin with. Please. If you are ever thinking of moving out of your house, don’t hang wallpaper. You might think that there is no way someone won’t love your paper, but trust me it is a guarantee that someone will hate it.

And if you can’t follow that advice. Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t paper every single room. Confine yourself to one or two rooms.

Because one day you will sell your house. And the new owner will be faced with room after room like this:

And they will wonder how you could have ever thought that was worthy of hanging on the wall. Does this wallpaper make you weep like it does me?

Then when they are removing it and it has adhered to the plaster and tears the plaster off the wall in chunks, they will curse you slightly.

Hopefully whatever wallpaper you are trying to remove has been hung properly.

There are many different ways to remove wallpaper. Some people use a steamer, a method I personally don’t reccommend. Unless you like to be aggravated and burn yourself periodically.

Step One: Acquire your tools

You will need:

A scraper, I prefer to use a five-in-one tool above all over scrapers. (That link will being you to a site that sells them 5 for under $30. You can buy them and invite your friends over to help!)

A product such as DIF wall paper remover

Paper tiger, or something similar to score the wallpaper. If you are doing a small area using the pointy side of your 5-in-1 tool to CAREFULLY score the paper will work fine. But for larger areas you are much better off using a tool designed for the purpose.
A large sponge

Step Two:
Using your paper tiger score your wallpaper. Score it as much as possible. It makes the next steps easier.

Step Three:
Apply the wall paper remover using a roller and apply like you would wall paint. Allow it to sit until it has soaked under the wallpaper. Work in smallish areas because you do not want the remover to dry on the walls.

Step Four:
Pray that the person who installed the wallpaper used sizing so that the wallpaper comes off quickly and easily.

Step Five:
If you are like 95% of the homeowners removing wallpaper you will discover that they person who installed the wallpaper decided to skip the step of applying the sizing to the walls.

Step Six:

Using your 5-in-1 tool gently scrape the wallpaper off the wall. You might need to reapply your wallpaper removing product.

Step Seven:

Continue around the room until all the paper has been removed. At this point you might notice that there are bits of wallpaper glue still stuck to the wall. Using your sponge and a bucket of hot water, sponge down the walls to remove the residue.

Step 8:

Allow the walls to dry for a few days before you do anything else. Now you can decide if you want to wallpaper again or paint.

After all this, I am guessing you choose paint.

Drilling into your brand new cabinets in order to install the hardware is daunting. What if you make a mistake? It’s not like you can just fix it. Not to mention that cabinets are an expensive investment.

When it came time for me to put the knobs on our cabinet doors I made a little template to help ensure that the knobs would be aligned correctly.

I made this from a piece of scrap wood.

I first measured exactly where I wanted the knobs to be on the cabinet doors. Then I transferred this measurement to the scrap of wood.

For the love of all things, make sure that you label your template. You might think that you won’t forget, but you will.

As you can see from the photo I am holding up the template for the right door.

The best part about the template… when you flip it over it works for the left door.

You can now also use it on your lower cabinets, like I am doing in the photo above.

This is why labelling is so important.

Viola! Perfectly aligned knobs every time.