Author Archives: Tony

How to Do an Oil Change

The basic tools you need to change your oil

Changing your engine’s oil is perhaps one of the most common maintenance items we have to deal with. Long term, it can also be one of the most expensive ones, because, depending on how much you drive, you may need to change it often, at least several times a year. Fortunately, though, it is also one of the easiest ones to do yourself.

Until not too long ago, I would go to one of those quick oil change type places to get it done. Then, I realized that I was paying as much as twice what it would cost me to do it myself. I said, no way!

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Our New Porcelain Tile Garage Floor Installation

Garage floor prior to porcelain tile installation

The garage floor right before we started this project

This is the third and last part of our new garage finishing project.

On our previous two posts, we showed you how we insulated, dry walled, primed and painted our new garage. With all those projects out of the way, it was time to move on and install a nice porcelain tile garage floor.

We did it last because we didn’t want to get our new nice porcelain all dirty while working with drywall, primer, and paint.

As you have read before, in our previous two garages, we used epoxy, however, as you have also read, I was not very satisfied with it. So I decided to try something different in our new garage.

After looking at different options, I decided to give porcelain a try, mostly because as you may know by now, it is one of my favorite flooring options. We went with a two color, white and gray design.

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How We Primed and Painted our New Garage

Priming and painting our new garage

This is the second part of our new garage finishing project.

Just like when we worked on our previous garage, right after insulating and drywalling this new garage, our next step was to prime and paint all the walls and the ceiling. You all should know by now that I can’t stand an unfinished garage. Well, I can’t stand an unpainted garage either.

As I’ve mentioned before, a coat of paint is an easy and inexpensive way to transform any room, in this case, our usually neglected garages, into a more comfortable and pleasant place to be or work in.

I definitely recommend everyone to finish and paint their garages, believe me, you will not be disappointed.

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The Least Popular Posts Of 2016

No Caption Needed

The end 2016 marked the end of our first full year blogging. In case you have not realized, this blog went live on October 20^th, 2015 the day I posted My First Project Ever! So on December 31^st, 2016, the blog was 1 year, 2 months and 10 days old! Exciting huh?

When we first started, the only traffic we were getting was from friends, family and some spammers. Eventually, though, our organic and referral traffic started showing up! The excitement of seeing the traffic grow is what has kept us going until now (well, we could have kept blogging without traffic anyway, just with less excitement), so we would like to give thanks to all of you who decided to check out our blog. We hope our posts have been helpful and have also encouraged you to complete some DIY projects. That’s the reason why we’re here.

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How We Insulated and Drywalled Our New Garage

This is how the walls looked before starting the work

From what we’ve noticed and our personal experience, most builders do not finish garages. They usually just finish the one or two firewalls because it is required by code.

Other than cost cutting, the reason may be because, as far as I can tell, this is not an issue for most people. When we walk around our neighborhood, we see that most garages look just like they did on day one (except they’re full of stuff now). I have counted only one or two that have been drywalled. It was about the same in our previous two neighborhoods.

Unfortunately (or is it fortunately?), as you may have realized by now, I cannot stand having an unfinished garage. Before we even moved to this house, I agreed with Carla that the garage was going to be one of the first things we would work on after moving in. And so we did.

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How to Fix a Toilet Leaking from the Tank Bolts

New toilet tank bolt, washer, and gasket

Fixing a toilet is perhaps the last thing a homeowner wants to deal with. It is one of the reasons why renters enjoy being renters and the most common argument against land lording you read about on the Internet. I agree with both of them.

Unfortunately, though, I had to deal with one leaky toilet tank a few days ago. It was not the first time I had to deal with one either, it is part of being a homeowner.

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How to Add a Gate to an Existing Wood Fence

Adding a gate to an existing wood fence

Right after we started working on our low maintenance, low water, no grass landscaping project, it was obvious that an extra fence gate on the east side of the house was a must. Unless we really wanted to carry all of the materials the long way around the house, adding the gate was actually our first priority.

Luckily, it is very easy to add a gate to an existing wood fence. There are obviously different ways to do it, but, assuming you do not need to somehow modify your fence (add an extra post for example), this is a project you can complete in a couple of hours.

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How to Set Up Your Own Blog

Learn how to set up your own blog in one blog post

For as long as I’ve had an Internet connection (I can’t believe it has been for almost two decades now), I’ve enjoyed reading online content, participating in different forums, and for the last few years, following and reading a few blogs.

Blogging has become a great avenue for regular people like you and me to learn and share ideas. As you may know by now, there are blogs about pretty much any topic you can think of: Home Improvement (like this one), Personal Finance, Self-Improvement, Health & Fitness, Travel, Food, and many, many more.

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Our Low Maintenance, Low Water, No Grass Landscaping

Our landscaping without grass; west side of the house

Side of the house before completing our landscaping without grass

When it comes to landscaping, well, pretty much everything around the house, actually, I’m one of those neighbors that tries to stay on top of its maintenance. Pulling weeds, mowing every week, picking up leaves in the fall, in other words, always making sure it (and the house in general) looks nice.

However, the fact that I stay on top of everything does not mean that I enjoy the work. In fact, I do not enjoy landscaping work, at all. You may have guessed this by now, though. Because as you know, I like using lots of rocks, which usually help a lot with weed control, meaning, less long term maintenance, even though they’re harder to spread than other materials.

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How Hard is it to Install a Garage Door Opener?

How hard to install a garage door opener

The Chamberlain garage door opener we installed

When I tell people that we installed our own garage door opener, they look at me like I’m some kind of genius. A professional installation costs about $500 depending on the unit, so it must require some special tools and skills, right? All I will say is that if you have the time, some basic tools and the willingness to learn how to do it, then the answer to the question of how hard is it to install a garage door opener is: as easy as it gets!

As with any other project, there are several steps you need to follow. In this case, you need to first assemble the unit, then install it, adjust it and finally test it to ensure its proper operation.

On this posts, I present the steps we followed to install our chain drive garage door opener. The instructions may vary slightly between the different garage door opener brands and models, however, most of them follow almost the exact same sequence.

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