Bob's Home Repair Blog

Sometimes you come upon a home repair project that you decide to tackle with a checkbook instead of a hammer. You may decide to hire a professional contractor for a major roofing project or exterior home painting or any number of possible projects.

Getting Contractor Bids and Evaluating an Estimate is something you need to know how to do to protect yourself and end up with a successful project. It's also not fair to a good contractor who does a detailed proposal and includes a full scope of work, to have their price compared to a fly-by-night company who throws a low-ball number out there just to get your business.

Most contractors are hard working and knowledgeable pros who want to do a good job and an informed consumer is often their best customer. So read Getting Contractor Bids and Evaluating an Estimate and learn how to scope a project, understand what to look for in the bids of different contractors like painters, roofers, plumbers, etc. You'll learn that what is "Excluded" in a bid is often as important as what is "Included" in the proposal. And don't forget to read about how to evaluate price, payment terms and what it means if your contractor is proposing "incentives" to you.

With a little preparation you'll be able to communicate much more successfully with your contractor, and you'll both enjoy the process.

Just brought your baby home or expecting one soon? Making your nursery a cheerful, safe place for baby is a big part of getting ready for your new arrival. But not all paints are safe for children or adults.

In this article Top 6 Tutorials for Painting Baby's Room, I'll outline my 5 Top Pick articles (plus a 6th just for fun) on what you need to know about paint and how to paint your baby's nursery so it is a safe and healthy place for your little one!

Also, take a read through How to Baby Proof Your Home. Junior will thank you.

Is there a preferred sequence to follow when painting a room?
You bet!

Painting a room can be a lot simpler if you follow a specific order for painting the various components of the room. Do you paint the trim first or the walls? How about the ceiling? Doors before or after walls are painted?

If you want to reduce splatter and rework, then read these quick tips on How to Paint a Room. It will make the task a lot easier for you!

And also check out:

How to Use a Paintbrush

All About Paint

Selection, Care and Storage of a Paintbrush

Let's Talk Summer Safety...
...with a couple of additional interesting articles by our Architecture and Moving Guides at About.com.

Is Your House Making You Sick?
Our homes are filled with synthetic materials, and some of them can literally make you sick. Here's help.

How to Prepare an Emergency Contact List
One of the first things you need to do when moving into a new neighborhood or city is to create an emergency contact list so if you have a sick child, or even if you’re not quite sure if the medication you’re taking should be swallowed with food, you can get in touch with the right person...quickly and easily.

One thing that always bothered me as a safety minded Home Repair Guide, was that MacGyver never wore safety glasses.

I mean, the guy is making bombs, playing with chemicals and blowing stuff up, yet he never seemed to protect his eyes.

So I thought I'd come up with a MacGyveresque approach to safety glasses using duct tape, a hanger, a beer bottle and two plastic furniture caster cups. (You could use tube socks too, but as a carrying case...).

In the tutorial How to Make Duct Tape Safety Glasses I provide you a detailed, photo filled step-by-step tutorial on how to make your own stylish set of these specs!

Mysterious things these water softeners...and one of the least understood appliances in your home.

They come in smaller capacity cabinet models, and they come in larger two-tank models. But just how does adding salt to something make your water softer? And what is soft water anyway?

And when you try and get an explanation of how they work you're hit with words in which few are interested, like "ions", "ion exchange", "resin", "particle charge" and so on.

Well it does not have to be that hard to understand.

In the tutorial Water Softeners - How They Work, I'll explain clearly how they work and you won't even need a chemistry degree. Promise.

You'll learn the secrets of the softener and why water softeners can hurt septic systems if you use salt. You'll also learn why you should use potassium and not salt in your water softener for your health and the environment. It makes a difference.

Vinyl siding is a popular home siding material but can be prone to impact damage. (OK, the example in the photo is a little extreme but you get the point).

Siding also melts when exposed to extreme heat and becomes increasingly brittle as it gets cold. But even in the summer if a baseball or golf ball hits it, your vinyl siding can break or crack.

Then what? With colors and textures often not found in nature as we know it, matching existing vinyl siding can be hard to achieve. And without knowledge of how to separate and remove the strips of siding with a zip tool, you'll never get them apart.

Well, don't worry. I'll show you how to repair damaged vinyl siding for under $10 (if you have spare siding material). And I'll also let you know where you can find discontinued siding styles and colors so that repair looks great!

One of the last frontiers of creature comforts we continue to pursue is that of on-demand hot water.

Sure you can use a point of use tankless water heater under the sink for one location or invest thousand of dollars in a whole house tankless water heater but these options are out of reach for economic or practical reasons for most people.

But there is a way to get almost immediate hot water from that little old water heater you have chugging away in the basement.

How? By using a device called a demand delivery hot water recirculation pump.

OK, you're going to love this. For between $180 to $500 depending on how fancy a unit you want to buy (some have motion sensors built in, simple ones use just a timer), you can attach this unit to your water heating system and have hot water up to 80% faster (that means within seconds in the summer) than you get today from your standard water heating system.

And besides the comfort of hot water faster, you don't waste our precious resource of water! Did you know that the average household wastes between 11,000 to 16,000 gallons of water a year by letting the water run down the drain until it gets hot enough to use? That is a shocking and disturbing statistic.

Well, read How to Get "Instant" Hot Water with a Standard Water Heater and see how easy it is to enjoy hot water faster, while saving money and a precious resource!

The thermostat is what controls your air conditioning and furnace system. The thermostat have a mercury switch inside, or may be a mechanical switches, may be digital, and some programmable electronic models will do everything except wake you up in the morning!

With the tutorial Anatomy of the Thermostat you'll learn the differences between these thermostats, how they work and if you want to upgrade.

And learn how to troubleshoot and repair your thermostat too!

So get to know your thermostat and how to give it the tweak it may need to keep that air conditioner humming and well maintained!

Removing old dried caulk from your tub, sink or shower tile has been a difficult job at best. However, a couple of interesting products by 3M® and Homax® will now make short and easy work of the task.

In the tutorial Caulk Removal Made Easy, I describe the water clean-up caulk removing solution made by 3M and the handy manual caulk removal tool made by Homax.

A couple of tips for your toolbox so when you read and follow the popular tutorial How to Caulk Like a Pro, you'll be starting from a clean fresh caulking foundation. And that seals the deal!