ToolGirl

Silk - The secret to a good night's sleep

Off the Sleep End!
Instant relief from congestion and night sweats

This is a mid-life quiz.  Check all that apply. If you score higher than 5, you’ve hit mid-life.  If you score higher than 10, you’ve hit it hard.  

• You sleep with someone who snores, has sleep apnea or sinus congestion
• His or her congested breathing causes them to emit short, sharpsnorts
• You wake up every time he or she snorts louder than 70 decibels
• Which is often.  And deafening.
• Mid-life hormones wake you up at least once per night, drenched
• You get up, stand on the icy bathroom tiles and blow-dry your body 
• You go back to bed and thrash around trying to find a dry spot
• The snorter awakes, somewhat irritated
• The only dry spot left in the bed is right next to the snorter, so you make your move
• The closer you get, the more irritated and restless the snorter becomes
• It’s too darn hot snuggling and the perspiration starts to flow again
• You back off to your original spot, organize the pillows around your ears to reduce snorting volume and thrust out a bare leg to moderate body temperature; Sometimes both of you go back to sleep.  Not often.     

Up until one month ago, I had not slept well in years for ALL of the above reasons.

How to make chair seats from old neck ties

Reupholstering with neckties

Once our Christmas house guests finally left (after I asked them to rip up the laundry room floor and find the radon leak) I drove to Boston, where I’m now tormenting relatives with the fine art of being a house guest. So far I’ve overslept, overeaten and over expressed myself as often as possible.

Are they enjoying my company? So much so that they gave me some stuff to do, like finding the freon leak in the freezer. And then they all went out. It’s a pacing thing. They can’t have too much fun all at once.

And speaking of fun, ever wondered what to do with all of those old neckties that your male relatives never wear anymore? My sister had an idea. She turned them into sittable art. Weaving ties into chair seats is way easier than, say, finding the freon leak in a freezer, plus there are no painful accidents with your tongue.

How to Make Baskets and Hats from Recycled Neck Ties

To Tie For!
Silk ties make gorgeous art

They say that talent is hitting a target that no one else can hit, whereas genius is hitting a target that no one else can see.  My sister Gillian Danner falls into the latter category. 

  She has a habit of coming up with designs that nobody else would think of, plus they actually look good.  I’ve been trying to figure out how she succeeds in creating art, where I produce stuff that the church auxiliary ladies quietly omit from rummage sales.

One of Gill’s techniques is that she repurposes objects to serve functions they were never intended for.  For example, she’ll turn magazine photos into tiny hand-rolled lacquered beads, or convert antique farm implements into toilet paper dispensers or sculpt gentleman’s ties into silk baskets.

How to get the look of a stone fireplace in one weekend!

Mag ambushes a friend and does a complete makeover on her fireplace!  (This video features a sweeping cinematic score that Mag created with her GarageBand software!)

How to make easy sterling silver earrings

Hearts and Crafts

Do-It-Yourself Bling
One day, I lost an earring to the sucking vortex of the toilet.  After the shrieking stopped, I vowed to cheat the toilet gods forevermore.  I’d make my own earrings, so whenever I lost one I could replace it.  No more orphaned bijoux, no more toilet-centric anguish.   

I was further inspired by Ann Wylie-Toal, a designer and artist living in Flesherton Ontario (www.awtdesigns.com).  I visited her studio and in 7 minutes flat, she whipped up an amazingly complex pair of gold wire earrings for me. Ann has a 3-D aptitude to rival Leonardo da Vinci’s, but I didn’t realize this until I decided to make earrings for Christmas presents.

Green, Sustainable and Eco Friendly Flooring

 

Guilt-free flooring

Modern flooring is veering away from synthetic carpets and vinyl.  This is largely because people keep hearing about all of the potentially harmful compounds resulting from the manufacturing process.  Who wants floors that will be off-gassing dioxins, lead, cadmium and phthalate plasticizers for the foreseeable future? 

And while most of us aren’t rabid about using exclusively green products, few people enjoy hearing that 5 billion pounds of worn-out carpet are discarded in North American landfills every year.  And that stuff doesn’t break down, ever. So ten thousand years from now, future humans will be able to mine ancient landfills for synthetic carpet fibers to use as home-heating fuel in their ultra-low-emission furnaces.  Oh wait, according to global warming experts, no one will need a furnace by then.

Find Furniture Plans Online

Wood That I Could!

It’s that time of year when meteorological anguish compels many Canadians to attempt woodworking projects.  Maybe you got some new tools for Christmas, or perhaps you’re just seized with the nesting urge, but I’m betting that in the past week you’ve thought of at least one home improvement project you’d like to accomplish.  And now your only question is, “Is there some relative I can foist it on?”

If you come up empty on that one, your next question is usually, “Well, how hard can it be?”

ReStore Salvage Building Materials

Salvage-Ho!

A heap o’ cheapo building supplies
Canadians are starting to feel the pinch of winter.  I know, because I’m getting letters from every province, from every age group.  People are starting to plan their spring renovations now. 

And just like old-timers can predict weather patterns by the foraging habits of rodents, I can predict that 2008 is going to be a big year for being handy. 

My correspondents seek sisterly advice about cottage renovations, basement remodels, kitchen upgrades and exterior touch-ups.  The home improvement bug is clearly out of the larvae stage and starting to think about reproducing.

For example: 

Dear Mag, 

I own an old park model trailer that I will be painting this year.  I want to replace the existing decorative shutters with wooden ones. Something very simple structurally but with a cut-out design (ie: trillium, bird etc.) in the centre of the shutter. Do you have any suggestions?       

Request for Suggestions

Hi Everyone,

Our clever panel of experts at ToolGirl.com is looking for suggestions for new tools and products to review for this blog and for an upcoming site.  If you have a tool, product, project or technique that you think we should look at, please post a comment here, or send a quick note to mag@toolgirl.com. 

If you make a suggestion that we use, we'll throw your name 10 extra times into the random winner generator for the Daily Tool Draw! 

Thanks a million.

How to save time installing tongue-in-groove paneling, bead board or wainscotting

If you've ever installed tongue-in-groove paneling or wainscoting, you know how it adds warmth and character to a space (and new words to your vocabulary).

Even in a closet, a lining of aromatic cedar creates a sense of luxury, abundance and freedom from moths.

One persistent problem with installing traditional knotty pine and western red cedar paneling is that it comes unfinished, so after you've installed the boards you'll still need to give them a couple of layers of clear coat or stain so they don't collect dust, absorb fingerprints and start looking grimy.  And don't forget to seal the knots first with a couple of coats of shellac so the pitch doesn't blister through your finish.

Another issue is that most paneling boards are milled thin, so the tongues are fragile.  It's easy to bust 'em during installation, or split them with a mis-aimed finish nail. 

Also, if you've applied a finish only on one side of the boards, changes in humidity can cause the paneling to absorb moisture in an unbalanced way.  The naked wood surface on the back of the boards draws in moisture and expands, causing cupping and twisting.

A new entry in the market solves many of the issues that DIYers have struggled with in installing traditional knotty pine and cedar.   Ready Pine (available through most Canadian hardware outlets) is treated on both sides with a vacuum-coated clear sealer (to halt pitch pockets in their tracks), followed by a finish coat.  Thicker than most available pine paneling, Ready Pine comes in eight-foot lengths and can be custom-ordered in several shades.  If you're cutting the boards to make wainscoting you can create matching trim using standard MinWax shades.   The nice thing is that the pine still mellows after a year or so, even underneath the finish, developing the honey-gold  tones you find in the best Canadian antiques.

Cost is reasonable considering the time you save on finishing.  About $108 to install 10 lineal feet of wainscoting. 

One design note:  Ready Pine is completely reversible, with a different pattern on each side, so if you prefer the detail of a narrower v-grooved board, you have that option.

One other design note:  The finish on the wood is a little bit glossier than satin, so if you want a more matte finish you can buff each board with a fine 3M abrasive rubbing pad, (which you can stick onto the hook-and-loop surface on the bottom of a palm sander or random orbit sander to speed things up).  Taking down shine on the boards is still WAY faster than all the drippy duties involved in staining or clear-coating.