Pro Handyman Blog

There are lots of carpentry projects that require you to anchor something heavy, or that will support something heavy, into wall studs. In the event you are anchoring shelving into the wall, the entire span of the shelving should be anchored into each wall stud.

I prefer using lag bolts when mounting lumber to a wall. Place a large washer over the lag bolt to increase the bearing pressure on the lumber. You must pre-drill the hole into the wall stud to the approximate diameter of the shank of the bolt (that is, exclude the threads on the bolt and use a drill bit that is just slightly smaller than the shank).

Use a stud finder and hold it against the wall. Move the stud finder horizontally and watch the lights. You want to determine the center of the stud face and install the lag bolt there. If you hit the edge of the stud, you won’t have as much holding power as in the middle. The stud finder will locate the face of the stud. When the sensor lights up, it has contacted one edge of the face. As you move it across the face the lights will die off and that typically identifies the other side of the stud. You can draw a light line on the wall when the sensor picks up each side and aim for the middle.

If you are installing baseboard and you come to an inside corner, you will need to join the two pieces of molding for a nice looking corner. You can use a miter saw and cut two 45-degree angles for this, or you can cope the corner.

Coping is very tedious but leaves a flawless looking corner. That’s why many crown molding installers cope the corners of these very noticeable trim pieces. Coping the joint involves cutting the exact profile of the molding into the edge of the joining piece.

If you are experienced with this, you can use a table saw and nibble out the profile, otherwise, use a coping saw.

You cut install one piece of molding along the wall and not worry about mitering the edge of it. However, on the mating piece of molding, you will need to cut an angle on it so that you can see the profile stand out. Use a coping saw and angle it back. You will need to remove enough of the material so that when you push the molding against the mating piece, it will fit like a glove.

Since the coping saw has a skinny blade, you can make tight radius cuts and then clean everything up with a file. The file will make the fine cuts so that all the curves and angles in the profile of the molding will exactly match the profile of the mating piece.

Carpentry noises generally are not very good. A squeaky floor can drive you nuts. If you have floor joists and one of them is uneven, the floor will not have the proper support. If one joist is out of plane with the others, there will be deflection in the sub floor causing movement.

This movement can be very small, but generally the joist that is an eighth inch lower than the others will not be supporting the weight of a person, for example. The neighboring joists will have to carry the load of the one that is not in line.

This situation will also cause a noise over time as the movement of the sub floor will ride up and down on the shank of the nails causing a shrill squeak. The noise can be fixed in a variety of ways. If you have access from below, you can use wood shims and glue to span the gap between sub floor and joist. You can also install bracing from one joist to the next using either mechanical fasteners or additional lumber, or you can shoot nails through the sub floor into the joist and opposing angles. There is also a tool that screws a fastener into the sub floor and then breaks the head off of the fastener. Here is an article on a squeaky floor repair.

For your carpentry projects, nails and screws are unattractive. A glued joint is stronger than any nail or screw, particularly when applied to the long grain of the wood’s surface. Biscuits can also be glued at the joints to make a very strong joint..

If you are using nails or screws, you can countersink them to make your project more attractive. To countersink a nail, you can use a nail set. This is a stiff sharp tool with a blunt end on it for hitting with a hammer. You simply hammer the nail close to the surface of the wood and then place the nail set on the head of the nail and tap it just below the surface of the wood. Then you can fill in the divot with wood putty. The key here is to hit the nail very close to the surface of the wood before you use the nail set. If you leave the nail ½” out and use the nail set, you will likely bend the nail.

For screws, you can use a countersink bit, which is tapered in the same way the head of the screw is tapered. As the bit drills a hole, the tapered device cuts the taper for the screw head. Some screw heads also have small burrs on the underside of them that will cut a taper for countersinking.

Here's a great carpentry project. If you are installing chair molding, you can finish it with a return and make it look very professional. A return is where the molding doesn’t appear to have a cut end, rather the profile of the molding returns into the wall. It doesn’t really, but with a couple of well-designed cuts, it looks that way.

Using a return will enable you to start and stop the molding wherever you want, in the middle of a wall for example. You are no longer bound to begin and end at a corner.

To make a return, you will need two pieces of molding, a long piece that runs along the wall, and a short piece for the return. You will cut each piece of molding at a 45-degree angle to form a right angle. I usually cut the long piece first and secure it to the wall. Cutting the short piece is dangerous. Use a piece of molding that is much longer than you need and cut the 45-degree angle in it, then cut it to length. Using a miter saw is perfect for this but keep your fingers away from the blade. Clamp the piece of wood onto the miter box table and cut it rather than using your fingers next to the blade.

Once the pieces are cut, use wood glue and painters tape to hold it in place until it dries. If you use a nail gun, you risk splitting the small piece in half. The glue certainly takes longer, but the appearance is great.

Here's an easy carpentry job. When you install a new laminate counter top, the end will typically be unfinished. Depending on how you want the end to look you can either buy a piece of wood and finish it to match the profile of the countertop, or you can buy a piece of pre-cut laminate and stick it on the end.

The pre-cut laminate is pretty easy to install. They are sold along side the countertops and are cut to fit the profile of the countertop, including the backsplash. You can either install them prior to installing the countertop, or wait until after the counter has been installed.

The trick is to use an iron to activate the adhesive on the back of the end piece. Use an old iron and set it on a medium to medium-hot setting. Clamp the laminate piece to the end of the countertop and heat up a section of the end piece. You might find that the end piece gets a little slippery once the adhesive has been activated, so be ready to quickly move the piece back into place if this happens. Once that section has dried, move the clamps and finish the ironing. When you are done, you may need to file off some areas to get the piece to exactly match up with the countertop.

Here is a way to really make your cabinets stand out. By installing a piece of glass in place of the solid door panel, you can make an area for display of certain items of your choosing. Maybe you want to display the heirloom serving bowl, a wine selection, or maybe showcase your collection of cookbooks.

Choose a cabinet or two that is in a conspicuous area and remove the door. I wouldn’t do more than 2 cabinet doors as it will diminish the overall effect. You will need a router for this job with a straight cutting bit to remove the panel. The panel typically floats in a mortised groove. You want to remove the back lip only of this groove so that the panel can lift out of the back of the door.

Set the door face down on a soft surface to avoid scratches and make sure you have the depth set correctly on the router. The last thing you want to do is plow through the front of the cabinet, so test the depth on a piece of scrap wood. Clamp the door frame to your work space and look for any signs of metal staples or brads. These will damage your bit and maybe injure you in the process like flying shrapnel.

Start the router and slowly cut through the back lip. Keep an eye out for how wide you need to go to free up the panel. Once you have cut around the perimeter of the panel, the panel may lift out, or you may need to clean up the corners as the router bit will cut a corner as a semi-circle, and the panel is square. You can chisel out the corner if necessary. I generally don’t worry about how the back of the door will appear as the door will remain in a closed position.

With the panel removed, take the frame to a glass shop and select the style of glass you like. There are many choices here: clear glass, wavy, birdseed (little air bubbles), tinted, etc.

With the glass cut, lay down a bead of clear silicone around the perimeter of your groove and push the glass into it. If you like, you can additionally install some plastic clips to hold the glass down, but the silicone works very well. Wait 24 hours and reinstall the door.

I had some customers call about some cabinet work that they needed done. In this case it was that the crown molding at the top of the cabinet had become loose and they wanted it reinstalled. The wall cabinets hung below the ceiling with a gap between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling so that the space created a display area.

Having the crown molding look good is very important, especially since these were quality wood cabinets. Perfect corners are a must.

Since the pieces were already cut and mitered, reinstalling them would be easy, the hard work of cutting had been done. You can use a compressor and a nail gun shooting the appropriate sized nail or brad, depending on how thick the material is that you are using. Start at a corner and squeeze the trigger, making sure the edge of the molding matches perfectly with the corner of the cabinet. Continue nailing the length of molding along the top of the cabinet, realizing that the more nails you install the more blemishes you will have to fill and repair.

When it’s time to do a corner, secure the mating piece of molding along the other side of the cabinet to form the corner. I usually squeeze a small amount of wood glue along the back of the joint to make sure it stays closed. You can also fire a nail into both pieces at the corner, but this is dangerous if you misjudge the shot. If you splinter the wood, you get to do it all over again.

After adding the glue, you can use corner clamps to hold the joint together until it dries, but I like painter’s tape. Tape one length of molding, add the glue, pinch the corner together and tape the other side closed. I tape along the entire length of the joint so that it won’t pull apart. Wait 24 hours to remove the tape and you should have a perfect corner.

This is a carpentry job that is more of a band-aid approach that a permanent repair. If you look at the desk you are sitting behind, chances are it’s made of particle board and laminate (unless you really forked over some money). This furniture usually needs to be assembled in steps. It goes together simply using a cam system that fits into a small hole. When you turn the cam, it causes pressure to be exerted inside the hole to hold the two pieces together. Moving the piece of furniture can cause some problems. Occasionally, the parts will separate and leave the cam system broken.

Without the cams to hold the pieces together, I’ve found that angle brackets work pretty well. If the desktop separates from the side, use a 90-degree bracket and some screws with large threads. The large threads are important as they will bite into the particle board better than those with small threads. Just make sure the length of the screws aren’t so large that they poke through the surface on the other side.

Clamp the two pieces together and hold the bracket into position. Pre-drill small holes and then install the screws to hold everything together. Tighten the screws until snug only. If you over tighten the screws, they may destroy the particle board that the threads are biting into.

For those of you that haven’t seen a door get kicked open, it would make you nervous to see how easy it is done. A well placed foot near the handle or deadbolt will force it open. Not that the hardware is weak or breaks. No way…it’s the wood that splits and allows the door to open.

The hardware is held in place with weak ¾ inch screws that barely bite into the jamb. At the very minimum, use long deck screws that penetrate not only the jamb, but the rough framing behind the jamb. If you want to go a step further, install an armored strike plate.

An armored strike plate is a thick metal plate that gets installed into the door jamb in place of the standard flat strike plate. An armored strike plate is much larger and has a pocket to accept the dead bolt’s latch. Long deck screws should be used here also to secure it to the door’s rough framing. This gets mortised into the door jamb so it lays flat with the surface of the jamb.

Even having an armored strike plate installed won’t make the door impenetrable. Where it may have taken 1 kick to open the standard door, maybe now it will take 3 or 4. But it is much more solid.