With Spring upon us and Summer right around the corner, many people are already making use of their grills. You can cook just about anything on a grill, but some of my favorites are burgers, bratwurst, corn and steaks. I love grilling. This post goes over some of the features that I find most helpful in a grill.

Grill Features To Look For

Fuel Gauge. Some grills locate the propane tank on a side hook. Often this hook is connected to a fuel gauge. This gauge will determine how much propane is left based on the tank weight. It’s a helpful addition to let you know approximately when you’ll need that next tank.

Extra Side Burner. An extra burner on the side of your grill is great for preparing / warming side dishes (like chili, mmmm). This keeps the main grilling area available for other food.

Rotisserie Burner. Want to cook a whole bird? Rotisserie burners are located along the rear. Be careful as motors and spits are often sold separately.

Smoker. Smoking uses smoldering wood and low temperatures (200 - 275 F) to slowly cook the food. This process may take time but results in tender, flavorful food. A suitable grill will trap heat and maintain a consistent temperature.

Stainless Steel. Much is made about stainless steel. But after your grill has spent time outside it won’t look nearly as good unless you’re prepared to clean it on a regular basis. And not all stainless is equal. Often a grill is composed of different grades of stainless. Cheaper composites will rust.

Grates. Your grill grates should transfer heat without causing food to stick. My research and personal experience point me toward coated cast iron. These grates do not rust or chip easily and they heat well. It’s important to clean and oil your grates to keep them in top shape.

My Grill: Weber Spirit E310

My grill is a Weber Spirit E310. It has three stainless steel burners and push button ignition. Some will say that an electric starter is better, but I’ve never had any problems. The grill heats up quick and doesn’t have many flare ups. The stainless cart doesn’t show any signs of rust despite limited attention. It may not have all the bells and whistles, but I can cook an amazing burger on it.

What do you think? What kind of grill do you have? What features do you enjoy most?

Image courtesy of Woodley

That’s a picture of our tank.  We’ve been raising discus and angelfish (along with neons, corycats, and other tetras) for about 4 years.  At first, we were very diligent about water changes in the tank.  We changed out 1/3 of the water each week.  (We weren’t willing to do the 10%/day change that the discus would really love - that would be too time consuming).  Over time, we got lax on water changes - pushing the envelope to 3-4 weeks, and in worst cases, to 5 weeks or more.  

During times when we didn’t change the water for extended periods, green and brown algae would begin to develop on the walls of the aquarium, and all over our plastic plants.  We were fearful of trying chemical algae preventers due to the harm they might cause the fish.  For those who don’t know, Discus can run anywhere from $10-$200 at retail stores, with prices only slightly better from wholesalers.  At those stakes, it’s not like killing a feeder goldfish; these fish are an investment.  Of course, we weren’t worried about harming plants; we prefer the low-maintenance aspect of the plastic ones we’ve picked.

We finally had a friend recommend Algae Destroyer Advanced by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals.  We added it to the tank.  Wow!  We were impressed.  Algae Destroyer worked almost immediately (2-3 days).   Both the green and brown algae have abated.  In fact, the algae used to be our warning sign that we were overdue for a water change, now we don’t get any algae - even if we don’t change the water for 6-8 weeks.  I haven’t noticed any distress among the fish (nor have we lost any in the last 6 months since we’ve been using Algae Destroyer).

You may want to use caution if you have young fish or live plants.  I have not tried this algae preventer under those conditions (although AP claims it will work for that situation).

What do you think? Has Algae Destroyer or another product worked for you?

I bought the Melnor AquaTimer Duo Hose Timer for $29.99 from Home Depot with high hopes. I’ve always wanted a fancy in-ground automatic sprinkler system, but haven’t been willing to spring for it. The Melnor AquaTimer promised the middle class alternative: just hook it up between the hose spigot and the sprinkler, set up a watering program, and you’re good to go for hassle-free watering.

Unfortunately, the Melnor turns out to be hassle-free for only seven days.

On or about the seventh day, you’ll find the plastic coupling on the top of the timer has broken and disconnected from the spigot (see below). Of course, the water will still be flowing at full force, flooding anything that’s down grade from where the timer used to be connected.

Our Experience

We’ve owned two of these units now. The first I connected directly to the spigot per the instructions from Melnor. It worked for about a week before the coupling failed. I realize that any product can fail once, so I took it back to big orange and exchanged it for another. I figured that the weight of the timer and hose hanging from the spigot may have contributed to the failure. So, I attached a small 5 ft. hose to the spigot, then the timer, and then the long hose to the sprinkler. One more week passed, this time with the timer sitting on the ground, and it failed again, dumping hundreds of gallons of water into the back yard.

Pros, Cons, and Verdict

Pros:

• Easy-to-use digital interface.
• Multiple programming options for watering on specific days, odd/even days, etc.
• Second non-timed connector for regular hose use.
• Promises to use only one 9-volt battery for the full watering season

Cons:

• Similarly-priced models can control two hoses (although usually lack digital programming)
• Works for about 7 days, then fails in the worst way

Verdict:  Great for spontaneous mud pit creation and flooding the neighbor’s basement. Fortunately, the 9-volt still has enough charge after 7 days to be used for something else.

What do you think?  Have you had a better experience with a Melnor product?  Can you recommend a hose timer that actually works?

I recently “made-over” our home office, painting the walls and refinishing the furniture. I used four different brands of paint on various components of the room in order to evaluate which paint brand was worth using in the future.

Valspar

$17.98/gallon (primer), $28.98/gallon (signature, eggshell)

As you may have seen in an earlier posting, I used Valspar One Coat Primer to refinish the furniture. I have used other Valspar products and found similar results.

Pros: Great customer service, even coverage, average cost.

Cons: Requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage and therefore is more work.

Conclusions: For a small job, you will need only one can of paint and therefore it may be the most cost efficient. But it’s not worth the time and effort, in my opinion.

Duron

$40.35/gallon

I used Duron One Coat White (OCW) for the furniture, doors, and trim. For other rooms, I have used Duron Plastic Kote, eggshell finish. I found similar results across the different types of Duron paint.

Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for lighter colors, OCW only requires one coat when using a paint brush, Plastic Kote is easy to clean.

Cons: Cost, Plastic coat requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage for darker colors, OCW requires multiple coats when using a roller (for example, on doors and furniture), plastic coat tears away from wall easily when removing painter’s tape.

Conclusions: OCW is worth the money. Otherwise, Duron is too much money for not so great results.

Behr

$23.98/gallon

I used Behr Premium Plus paint on the walls above the chair rail. I have used Behr, eggshell finish in other rooms, as well.

Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for lighter colors, low cost

Cons: Requires multiple coats of paint to provide full coverage for darker colors, still needed 2 coats for the light color

Conclusions: Behr is well worth the money. I would buy Behr paint for smaller jobs that will only require one gallon of paint, even with two coats.

Ralph Lauren

$27.98/gallon

I used Ralph Lauren (RL) paint, eggshell finish on the walls below the chair rail.

Pros: Great color choices, even and full coverage for ALL colors using only one coat, requires less paint in one coat therefore avoiding annoying paint drips

Cons: Cost

Conclusions: RL paint is well worth the money and time it will save you. I will happily spend the few extra bucks on RL considering the time and work it saves!

Overall Conclusions

So was the cost worth it? Valspar or Duron are not worth the cost, even though Valspar is comparatively inexpensive. Duron One Coat White is a good option, since one gallon goes a long way, but overall is rather expensive. Behr is a good cost-effective option, but like most paints requires 2 coats (you might be able to get by with just one). Ralph Lauren was worth the cost - it was by far superior, and in the end will save you money because you use less paint, and save time and effort.

What do you think? Do you agree with the pros and cons? What’s your experience been? What brand would you recommend?

One of my friends just told me about a new DIY site that’s just kicking off called Home Refurbers (HR).  Since anything surrounding home improvement on the web intrigues me, I had to go over and check it out. 

The plan for Home Refurbers is to become an online community of home improvers who share videos, pictures, and stories about their homes (sounds familiar, huh?).  Unlike HouseBlogs.net that syndicates independent house blogs (like this one), Home Refurbers is a self-contained site providing everything the average home improver needs to get started sharing on the web.  Think Facebook or MySpace and you’ve got the idea. 

So what did I think?

First impression: it’s really nice.  The layout and format are adapted from two similar sites the company also runs:  The first is LumberJocks, a place for woodworkers to discuss their projects, post videos, pictures, and stories of their work, and the second is GardenTenders, a similar place for those with a green thumb.  The folks behind these sites have put a lot of thought into how people interact with each other on the web.  All of the sites are easy to navigate and use, and pretty powerful.  Here’s my review of some of the pros and cons I found on HR:

The Positives:

1. Everything on this site is intuitive, from posting a discussions and pictures, to uploading videos.  Even the most novice user will find it easy to navigate. 
2. Sign up is simple and painless.  It took me 2 minutes to get set up.  I even uploaded a buddy icon for my account!
3. The site is jam-packed with features that are very great for home improvement bloggers.  You can set up projects to share, post questions in the forums, blogabout your own homeowner experiences, and comment on everyone else’s.
4. You’re likely to get a question answered.  If you post a how-to question to your own blog, odds that one of your readers will have the answer is slim.  As House Refurbishers grows, the community there will be more likely to get you an answer that works.
5. The site is not advertising heavy.  There are a few well-placed ads throughout the site, but overall, the ads won’t bother you too much.  And hey, they have to stay in business some how.

The Negatives:

It was hard to come up with negatives for this site.  In fact, I think most users wouldn’t even care about these negatives.  But, to be fair, I thought I should post the ones that I could see as drawbacks for some users.

1. No external blogging capability.  For those who don’t already have blogs and want a simple place to get started, Home Refurbers is a great choice.  For the rest of us, HouseBlogs.net offers the RSS syndication we all know and love.
2. No import for other blog types.  There’s no RSS import feature to move over posts.  Many of us have hundreds of posts written on our personal blogs.  Moving would just be too painful.  WordPress offered us the ability to move posts from Blogger; an essential component of the move.
3. Very limited look and feel customization:  For many of us, our blog design is an extension of who we are.  For instance, I recently ran across Bungalow23, a beautiful WordPress blog.  Bungalow23’s design makes the blog fun to read.  It would be sad to see that go away.
4. No Ownership.This is important to some of us house bloggers who really like owning our own domains and content.  If HR goes away, so does all of your content with it!  (Of course, this same argument could be made against Google’s Blogspot, but the limitations are different).  And, you can’t sell products or ads on HR’s site.  They get to do that instead.

Summary:

Home Refurbers is an excellent choice for folks who want to get started in the home improvement / housebloggers community.  For those who don’t really care about the negatives I listed above, the site has a lot to offer.  Just remember: if you do go to HR, there’s a whole lot of us out here who aren’t a part of that site.  You should still visit us too!

What do you think?  Will you sign up with Home Refurbers?  Take a look at their site and post a comment here with your impressions.

A few week’s ago I wrote a before and after post on using Rustoleum High Heat spray paint to refinish our fireplace ventilator.  The results were great and I decided it was definitely worth singing the praises of Rustoleum in a separate post.

After three weeks of fires (about 8 total so far), the ventilator is still looking like the day it was sprayed.  We even broke the rules a bit and used the paint on the area of the ventilator that is exposed to flame. Rustoleum says not to, and yes, we did it at our own risk.  Even on the parts of the ventilator exposed to flame, the finish still looks great.

Rustoleum recommends their High Heat product for an array of applications, including grills and wood stoves.  They do caution that the paint shouldn’t be used in areas that come in contact with food (like grill grates), or in direct contact with flames as I mentioned above.  Application is fast: it took us only 10 minutes to refinish the ventilator.

If you’re looking to get the product online, Amazon sells the entire range of Rustoleum High Heat products.  The first in the list is the BBQ Black Spray Paint that we used and were very happy with.

I looked around to see if other’s have had similar experiences with Rustoleum.  House In Progress also had a great experience with Rustoleum paints, noting that Rustoleum’s website is very helpful for finding the right paint to solve a problem.

What do you think?  Have you had a good experience with Rustoleum or another spray paint?  Have you done any high heat restorations?

About two weeks ago, I wrote a review of Valspar’s High Hiding Primer (a “one coat primer”) after Jocie used it to prime a dresser and an end table. Soon after, we received an email from Jeff, a technical support supervisor for Valspar.  Jeff contacted us to discuss my experience with their product. I didn’t even know they had technical support! He was very knowledgeable and friendly, and not confrontational at all. I enjoyed the conversation.

Jeff stood by Valspar’s product. He’s used his competitors’ products and believes Valspar’s primer is superior. He apologized for the lack of performance and offerred a few suggestions for getting better results in the future. In the end, he let me know that I could return the unused primer for a full refund at the store I purchased it from.  If the store wouldn’t honor the return, Valspar would refund my money directly.

Customer Service Matters

What did I take away from the exchange? Valspar cares about its customers.  If you have questions on one of their products, definitely give them a call.  In addition to answering my concerns on the primer, Jeff offerred several other painting tips, like using Goof Off to remove latex paint. 

We all know that you can’t overlook product performance. But customer service is important too.  In this case, Valspar’s technical support was great, and that will tip the scales in their favor on future purchases.

What do you think? Are you impressed with Valspar?  What customer service has impressed or disappointed you?

Picture courtesy of Chris Metcalf

A few weeks ago I wrote about the toilet heck we seemed to be stuck in. We had four serious toilet problems (clogs or leaks) in less than a month. I hate toilet problems. Every one of them required us to pull one of the toilets and reseat it (requiring a new wax ring). The fourth problem was actually caused by a poor wax ring replacement on the third — leading to this post.  Here’s the details:

After I fixed the third problem and reseated the upstairs toilet (see the toilet heck post for details), I decided to go cheap on the wax ring. Home Depot offers Bol Wax as the low-cost ($1.39) alternative to No-Seep. I thought, “one wax ring is as good as another.” I guess I was wrong. The pictures speak for themselves.

This is the toilet I pulled with the Bol Wax ring on the bottom:

You can see that the Bol Wax ring didn’t make a tight seal all the way around the pipe. (Look to the left of the center hole). In this case I think the ring was just too thin and lacked the requisite structural integrity. Water was basically flowing out of the bottom back of the gasket and down into the kitchen!

This is the toilet after I applied the No-Seep ring:

Notice that the No-Seep ring has an integrated black gasket that fits into the drain pipe. This proved essential to making a good seal. Also, this particular No-Seep (a #10) was a little thicker than its Bol Wax counterpart.

Bottom line: since we made the switch we haven’t had any problems.

Now, I don’t think that Bol Wax is a terrible product. In fact, it’s currently in use on my downstairs toilet without any problems. I think it’s more an issue of the range of applications Bol Wax will work for vs. the range No-Seep will work for. The downstairs floor is perfectly uniform and has a small gap between the toilet and the plumbing. The upstairs floor is slightly unlevel with a slightly larger gap. I think the No-Seep just handled the height / level differences better.

The downside is that No-Seep is $3.99, or about 3x as much as Bol Wax. But for me, $2.60 is a small price for added peace of mind.

What do you think? Do you have a wax ring preference?

Back in February I wrote about my attempt to find a distributor who would sell me Custom Building Product’s LevelQuik ES underlayment. Most suppliers wanted a business license or Maryland Home Improvement Contractor (MHIC) number to make a deal. As a DIYer, I have neither.

Of course, I tried the big box. Big orange wanted $34/bag + delivery charge to get the product for me. Others I contacted told me I should be paying $25-29/bag, (even though most weren’t willing to sell to me - no business license). Since I require 60 bags for the job, a $7 per bag difference means an extra $420 on the bottom line. I kept looking.

Sita Tile Delivers Results

After many failed attempts with other distributors, I contacted Custom directly and asked for the names of companies local to Baltimore/Washington who would be willing to help. They gave me four companies to try. The only company that would meet my needs was Sita Tile in Capitol Heights, Maryland. Incidentally, they were Custom’s first recommendation to me.

I called the main number for Sita and was transferred to the voicemail of Jim Sita, Jr. This encouraged me. I like working with owners and owners’ families. I left a message explaining what I needed. Jim called me back within a day and already had a quote worked up based on my voicemail. I won’t reveal the exact price, but will say it met my expectations.

Jim ordered the product from Custom based on my verbal commitment to mail Sita a check. It came on their delivery truck the following Friday, and Sita was ready to ship it to me the following morning. Unfortunately, there were predictions of rain over the next 5 days in our area. I asked Jim if he would be willing to hold the product in his warehouse until it could be dropped off when the weather improved. He agreed, and held the product in inventory for another 7 days.

On delivery day, Sita’s driver called me on my mobile to verify he was at the right location for delivery. (Easy to identify by the white metal reindeer still standing in the front garden from Christmas). He then unloaded the product in the exact spot I requested (in my driveway, near the garage). The product was delivered on two pallets, both neatly and thoroughly wrapped.

I was very impressed with Sita Tile, and would highly recommend them anyone in the Baltimore-Washington corridor who needs tiling materials in the future.

A Note For the Skeptics

One more thing: Sita Tile neither asked nor paid for this endorsement. They didn’t know I write about home improvement. They simply performed excellently at their business. Every business deserves kudos for that.

What do you think? Did you have an extraordinarily good experience with a contractor? Have you shared your good experience?

photo by Jose Miguel Serrano.

We’ve been thinking about colors for our living room. We just painted an early American-style brown color in the dining room, and we’d like to find a lighter, complementary color for the living room. I’m no good with color selection, and Kim is knee-deep writing her term paper, so I immediately looked for an online tool to help. I ran across Sherman Williams’ Color Visualizer.

The tool requires you to select from a number of pre-canned rooms. The idea is to pick the room that reminds you most of the room you’re trying to work on. Once you have the room selected, you can “try” different primary paint colors on the walls, and the tool will show you complementary colors that will go well with your selection. It also offers a nice save and reload feature.

I picked a whacky combination in the room above to show the flexibility of the tool. Notice in the lower left how the tool will show you the colors that best go with the paint color you’ve picked. This is particularly helpful for me.

I noticed that Behr also has a tool available on their site but I have yet to explore it. It looks like Behr’s version will allow you to upload a picture of your room and paint it, but they charge $4.95/year for this functionality. I find it hard to understand why Behr would charge a nominal fee for this tool. Aren’t they likely to recover their investment in paint they sell to folks “painting” their rooms with the tool? The cost seems like a big deterrant, if for no other reason than the hassle of payment.

What do you think? Do you use a tool to help pick paints? Do you have any experience with a vendor other than Sherwin-Williams?