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Cleaning, Home Improvement Library
The odor eliminating products are made by Fresh Wave and they are great. They are available at Bed Bath and Beyond, Ace Hardware, Whole Foods, The Container Store and on their website. I think you will like them as I do. They are made of plant extracts that remove...
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, Plumbing
FOR FLUSHING ISSUES Turn off the water to the toilet, flush the toilet to minimize the water in the bowl, and pour in a gallon of vinegar to remove scale and mineral deposits. Leave the vinegar in the toilet for 24-48 hours. This may improve the flushing. The goal is...
Brick & Masonry, Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, Painting
Cleaning Paint Streaks Off Brick I believe this is the white pigment from the powder coating on the metal siding that is washing down onto your brick. Yes, you can remove the streaks yourself but this will continue to be a persistent problem until the siding above is...
Brick & Masonry, Cleaning, Home Improvement Library
White Stuff on Brick is Efflorescence Q: What is the white stuff developing on the bricks of my home?A: What you are experiencing is efflorescence. Efflorescence is a white crystalline or powdery, often fluffy/fuzzy deposit on the surface of masonry materials like...
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library
I suggest using a deck cleaner and use it during or after a good or long rainfall. A deck cleaner will do a little better job than Simple Green but the soaking from the prolonged rain is the real help. Soaking, like soaking stains in laundry detergent, will help much...
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, HVAC
I suggest you decide according to how dirty the ductwork interior appears, how fast your filters fill with dust, or how dirty your house is from a dust standpoint. I suggest that a relatively clean house, as your sounds, have the ductwork cleaned about every 5 years....
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, Plumbing
Q: How do you get rid of black streaks in a toilet bowl? A: You have a lime-like mineral build up from the many little holes under the toilet bowl rim where the water flows during flushing. These water paths have left a mineral residue over the years and that...
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, Water & Moisture
Q: How can I remove mildew spots from my bathroom ceiling? A: Put a timer on you bath vent fan so that it runs for 20-30 minutes after a shower to better remove the moisture. The spots are from mildew growing on the surface of the paint, most likely from condensation...
Cleaning, General Construction & Repairs, Home Improvement Library, Plumbing
Sewer gas smell indicates a potentially serious health and safety threat. The simplest and more common solution to stop the smell is to pour water into the drains of all your plumbing fixtures to replace any water that has evaporated from your drain traps. Plumbing...
Cleaning, General Construction & Repairs, Home Improvement Library
The white dust you describe may be from several sources and also may be a little bit from each. If there is any carpet in the house there will inevitably be dust from foot traffic which usually shows up as “white dust.” Opening the windows for spring and...
Cleaning, Home Improvement Library, Siding
Any surface that stays moist will grow mold. I suspect the moldy vinyl siding gets little or no direct sunlight and the wind does not freely circulate around these moldy spots. This is like moss growing on the north side of trees in a forest, the sunlight never shines...
Cleaning, Gutters & Downspout, Home Improvement Library
Top Job, Krud Kutter, Simple Green & Whitewall Tire Cleaner will clean the milling oil streaks off the gutters and remove the difficult dark streaks off your aluminum gutters. I’m also sure that Goof Off would clean the gutters but might harm the gutter...
Cleaning, Concrete, Home Improvement Library, Painting
Yes, the paint can be stripped from the concrete, but it is usually a messy, tedious task with no real guarantee that the concrete will return 100% to its original appearance. The removal process entails application of chemical strippers to the surface and then...
Cleaning, General Construction & Repairs, Home Improvement Library
Good for you switching over to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). They use 75% less energy, produce 75% less heat and last 10 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. You’ll save about $30 (or more) in electricity costs over each bulb’s lifetime. Burned...
Cleaning, General Construction & Repairs, Home Improvement Library
Liquid Nails and other construction adhesives are very hard to remove, so much so that cutting them off is the effective method. To remove two wood pieces or other construction materials, I suggest you use Windshield Cut-Out Wire (also called music wire), available at...
