Improve the value of your home with a garage upgrade

A garage is used not only to protect your car; it is also a great storage space for all sorts of household items, tools and sports equipment. But most don't have much more than a roof, walls and a door. A little weatherstripping and insulation could really improve the climate of your garage and make it more valuable and more versatile, not to mention more comfortable.

A concrete floor is OK, but a better floor would be sealed to prevent dust and stains. An epoxy-type garage-floor paint is easy to apply, doesn't cost much money or time and will do the job and last for a long time. It also will stand up to car traffic and chemicals.

If you don't have a good garage door, you can buy and install one yourself fairly easily. Metal tracks go in first, and then a sectioned door is installed. Most are lightweight and easy to manage without a lot of special tools. Insulating the door panels can be done with foam insulation boards. You even can buy them pre-cut for standard-size doors.

Special weatherstripping also is available for garage doors. Some are tacked in place, and others are glued. It's a very inexpensive, easy way to seal up your garage door to keep out cold, moisture and bugs.

The walls can be insulated with batts of insulation or with foam panels. Both are easy to install in an exposed stud wall and don't cost very much. Just make sure you are careful when installing your material over wiring and plumbing.

Lighting is also an easy upgrade. If you have an overhead fixture, then you can easily and inexpensively replace that fixture with a set of track lights. These will give you more light in strategic areas where you need it, and make it easier to work out there when you need to.

Having a garage already is an asset, but having a better garage is a great investment in your home. So spend a little time and a few bucks, and build it up. It will pay off.

Caulking big and small

Caulking is great for filling in gaps and cracks around the house. The problem comes when you have cut the end of the tube off to fill large cracks and find yourself with additional small cracks to fill. A good way to deal with this starts before it happens. The next time you are using caulk with a small tip, cut the entire tip off, and clean and save it when you have finished with the caulking tube. When you find yourself in a spot where the tip is too large for what you need to caulk, just grab the smaller tip, tape it in place over the larger one on the end of the tube and finish the job. Save that small tip for use again.

Safe transport

Small propane tanks for barbecue grills and other small outdoor appliances can easily be picked up and carried - when empty. But when they are full of gas, they can be heavy to tote around. And, since dropping them is a no-no, you have to be very careful when transporting them. One easy way to get a better grip on one is to put it in a plastic milk crate or plastic storage cube. These have great handles that make it easy to pick up and carry the tank, and also make it easier for two people to carry together.

Super hints

• To easily remove popcorn texture from your ceiling, mist it with a fine spray of water and use a wide-blade putty knife to scrape it off. Now you can put new texture on and paint!

• If you are trying to dry clothes without using the dryer more these days, you are not alone. Many of us are trying to be more "green." I have installed a second shower-curtain rod inside the bathtub stall, over the tub, to hang clothes on. Hanging them on the actual shower-curtain rod didn't work, as a lot of the drips occurred outside the shower and on the bathroom floor.

Reader tips

• I work at home now and have set up a nice home office. I find that a lot of the things I used to use at my office come in handy around the house, too. For example: paper clips. I use them a lot in the workshop. They are great for holding things together while they are being glued, keeping up with receipts and instructions, and I've even created a small screwdriver from one. I just straightened it out and hammered down the end to make it flat. It works great on really small screws.

• Our bathroom-door hinge squeaks, and I had finally had enough. Getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom is bad enough, but waking everyone else up in the process is not good. I grabbed a little petroleum jelly from the bathroom cabinet, put some of it on the hinge and moved the door back and forth to distribute it. It worked! It's quiet now, and should last a good while.

• Here's my favorite tip for wearing rubber gloves. You know how they often stick to your hands when using them? Well, if you put some powder on your hands before putting the gloves on, they come off a lot easier. I've done this for years and just remembered what a great idea it is, and wanted to share it with you and your readers.

• I've used chemical paint strippers before and have a great tip to share that makes cleanup easier. These strippers, when combined with the loose paint, become a liquid mess. When it's time to scrape the loose, messy paint off the surface, I throw a little sawdust into it to mix with the paint. This makes it easier to scrape off and get into a trash bag for disposal.

• We have a floating pool cover that goes on every winter to keep leaves out of the pool. I use my shop vacuum to clean up the leaves. I have added an extension pole to the vacuum so I can reach all of the leaves. It's simply a piece of PVC pipe that I can add to the end of the hose to reach the leaves that pile up in the middle of the cover. It's lightweight and easy to hold on to. I can make sure the vacuum doesn't get too close to the pool this way also, which was a concern to me as well.

Q. I got a great deal on some carpet that I want to use in my bathroom. Should I use tape or adhesive to stick it to the floor, since I don't want any tack strips in there?

A. Double-sided carpet tape works pretty well. You just need to make sure you cut it exactly to fit the room so the edges are not exposed. Another option might be to cut the carpet a little smaller than the floor size and have binding put on it by a carpet dealer. This would allow you to easily clean it or remove it if you need to.

Q. Every day I am finding a puddle of water just under the front of my refrigerator. What could be causing this?

A. Most refrigerators have a daily defrost cycle, and it might just be that the pan the condensation drains into has become dislodged or cracked. It's a very shallow pan, just under the front of the fridge, so check it and adjust it so that it is sitting in place properly to catch the drips. Replace it if it's cracked.

Q. We have sealed up our garage and put down new flooring to turn it into more of a "man-cave." Now we are getting a lot of built-up humidity. What can we do about this?

A. A dehumidifier should work just fine to take care of the excess moisture, but you should try to find out where the moisture might be coming from and cut down on it permanently. Does your dryer vent into the garage? Do you have condensation on the walls, indicating a lack of insulation? A leaky roof? Moisture coming up through the floor?

Shoptalk

• Brushed nickel and copper are very popular finishes for today's kitchens and baths. If you've thought about replacing all of your hardware with knobs and pulls in one of these finishes, then you know it can be quite costly. Krylon, the spray-paint people, make a line of great-looking "brushed metal" finishes. It is a spray, so it goes on easily and dries quickly. It can be used on wood, metal, wicker, wrought iron, glass, plaster, ceramic, fabric and paper. So, you can turn just about anything you have into a new and improved accessory for your home. Check it out at your paint or hardware store, or at krylon.com.

• Stone walls, surrounds and other outdoor structures are beautiful and tough, but they can be costly and hard to erect, not to mention backbreaking. NextStone is a fake stone component system that allows you to get the look of real stone without all the backbreaking labor. Sold in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes, along with all of the necessary accessories, you can have your stone wall in much less time and with a whole lot less effort with NextStone. Check it out at nextstone.com. The video shows you just how simple it is to work with and gives you some great ideas for projects you might want to do for your home.

• Write to Al and Kelly Carrell in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006 or visit the Carrells' Web site at thesuperhandyman.com.

© 2010, Cowles Syndicate Inc.