Pro Handyman Blog

Installing rubber or plastic lawn edging is a weekend handyman project. If you are going to add a lawn or remove grass and add landscaping rock, edging is for you. Edging allows you to create a dividing line between two different surfaces. For example, if you wanted to make an island of grass in the middle of a rockscape, edging would create a dividing line between the two.

Although rubber edging is inexpensive, it will take some elbow grease to install it. You will need a shovel and a lot of perseverance.

The edging comes in a roll and has a plastic barb that runs along the bottom. Start by pushing the shovel into the soil to create a cut in the soil. Stretch the roll of edging out and push the barbed end into the soil. You can then place the tip of the shovel into the barb and push it down further into the soil. You will have to do only a few feet at a time and then when the entire length has been installed, you can give it another pass to even out the depth. You can connect one piece of edging to another with push-in connectors if necessary. When you are done, you can tamp the ground to compact it somewhat.

As a handyman, I’ve done my share of landscaping. If you are installing new landscaping, you might consider using landscape fabric as a weed barrier.

Landscape fabric is a porous fabric that comes in a roll. This fabric has tiny holes in it to allow water, air, and nutrients to reach the soil underneath. The benefit of the fabric is that it provides a barrier to keeps the weeds from reaching the surface. Installing the fabric is an easy job. I would first plant the plants where you want them and then run the irrigation to each plant with drip emitters. Once you have tested the irrigation, you can lay down the fabric.

The landscape fabric rolls out over the soil. When you come to a plant, cut a slit in the fabric or an “X” and place the fabric over the plant. Push the flaps back in place up to the root ball. When you come to a tree, you will have to cut the fabric and go around the tree.

To hold the fabric in place while you roll it out, you can use fabric staples or even just place rocks heavy enough to hold it down. Once you have the fabric laid out, you can cover it with organic mulch or the landscaping rock of your choice.

Wood gates always seem to be calling for a handyman. Wooden gates are heavy and get slammed and pushed and generally abused. Over time, the fasteners will lose their grip and the weight will cause the latch side to sag toward the ground. You know it is time for a repair when you have to lift the gate just to move it.

Basically you want to give the gate some support so that it doesn’t drag anymore. There are a few things you can do to make the gate operational again. You can install a piece of angle iron (or for that matter a piece of lumber) on the back of the gate that goes from the bottom of the latch side up to the top of the hinge side. Before you secure this piece though, I would set the gate to the correct height. Stack wood scraps under the latch side of the gate until you have the correct height and then secure the support to the gate.

Better still would be a turnbuckle. It stretches along the same path, but you can adjust it by turning the mechanism in the middle. Each end is secured using a hook or other fastener and then adjusted by turning the buckle in the middle. You can raise or lower the gates latch side in this manner.

Lots of people might turn to a handyman for this project, but it is pretty easy and you can customize it to your own liking. Turning a small closet into an office area is a lot easier than you might think. You can buy pre-made kits or you can buy the different parts and assemble your own.

The first thing to do is to remove the closet rod and shelving, fill any holes and paint the closet to whatever color scheme you like. Once the walls are bare, you can start planning. Small closets convert nicely with a series of shelves. Two vertical support bars go against the back wall and the shelves slide into slots along the bars. A larger shelf is used as the desk surface and you can plan a variety of other shelves to go higher up the wall for files, desk accessories, etc. You can slide a rolling chair under the desk and also use a rolling file cabinet that fits under the desk. When you are done working, the file cabinet fits nicely under the desk, and you can keep or remove the chair.

If you want to get fancy, you can add an electrical outlet to power a laptop, calculator, etc. Here is an article on how to add an electrical outlet. When you are done working it is a matter of closing the closet door and nobody knows the difference.

A handyman installs shower doors, and a handyman removes them. In many cases, removing a shower door is the result of a shower or bathtub remodel. Removing the doors is one of the first steps.

Depending on what type of enclosure you have, whether it’s a full length shower enclosure or an enclosure that sits on top of a bathtub, you may have screws to remove. A typical tub enclosure will not have screws to remove as the weight of the doors keeps all of the parts in place. For these, remove the sliding doors first. You will have to lift up on the doors, tilt them and swing them out. Once the doors are gone, the top rail will lift off. You may have to cut through some caulking first to free the parts that touch the wall. With the top rail removed, you can remove the screws that hold the side rails to the wall. These are usually held in place with wall anchors. Again, you will have to cut through the caulking. The bottom track is removed in much the same way. Cut the caulking and lift it up.

Shower enclosures with swinging doors use screws where the frame meets. The door is the most dangerous part when removing it because is moves. Give support to the door as you unscrew the hinge screws and remove it. Removing the shower enclosure is a pretty common sense job. This will involve removing screws and cutting through caulking.

A common handyman job deals with laminate countertops. It doesn’t matter if it is from the kitchen or bathroom counter, if it has laminate edging, the repair can be completed using the same steps.

Laminate is held in place using adhesive. If you are installing a molded laminate countertop (meaning that you have a rounded edge that is laminated), typically the manufacturer will leave the edge bare wood and you will have to adhere the laminate edge onto it. This is done using a regular clothes iron. You heat up the iron and apply it to the laminate. This in turn activates the adhesive.

If you are installing a new strip of laminate edging, you will need to apply contact cement to each surface (no iron required). Typically, you cut the edging slightly larger that the surface. Apply 2 coats of contact cement to each surface. Let each coat dry somewhat before applying the next coat. After each coat has dried, the surface should be somewhat tacky.

You want to make sure you line up the laminate and the countertop before touching them. Once the two tacky surfaces touch, they stick and they stick VERY well. You can trim the laminate with a router and a laminate bit and then use a file to smooth it out for a finished look.

Running water lines to drip emitters is very straightforward handyman project. If you are planting bushes in your landscape, instead of irrigating the entire area, you can run drip lines to each individual plant. This will save a lot of water by directing the water to the root ball.

Unless you are irrigating a very large area, most typical tract homes will use ½ inch black poly lines. These will direct water to the general areas of the plants. From this line you will insert microtubes that will direct water to each individual plant. You won’t need any glue, rather the lines are held in place by barbed fittings.

The poly water lines come in rolls and hold their shape until you fill them with water to weight them down. Place them in the sun to let them warm up and become more pliable. Once you connect the poly line to the barbed fitting at the valve (after the pressure reducer and filter), lay it out in the area you want it to feed. Use a punch and poke a hole in the line and insert a straight barbed fitting. To the other side of the barbed fitting you will push on a microtube and run it to the base of the plant. I like to add a “T” fitting here and add to small lengths of microtube and then 2 drip emitters, one on each tube. These will sit at the base of the plant and enable the plant to get water in the event one of the emitters becomes clogged. Repeat for each plant.

When everything is connected, flush any debris out of the tube and then cap the end.

As a handyman, it is more of a rarity if I go into a house and the blinds don’t need work. Window blinds get damaged…that’s what they do. If you have a vertical blind, there are ways to repair these instead of replacing them.

One of the most common things I see is a missing vein for a vertical blind. These are long and hang from the head rail. All of the weight is placed on a small hole at the top of the blind. This hole is hung in a rotating clip in the head rail and allows the blind’s vein to be rotated open to allow light in or closed to keep it dark inside. These veins break due to the weight and the abuse they take. The top of the vein will rip out rendering the vein useless…unless you know what to do. You can reinforcement clips that will make the veins useful again. They simply clip on to the top of the blind’s vein and you can re-hang it back onto the head rail. This of course assumes that the broken veins are still somewhere in the house.

If the broken veins are missing, you can buy new ones. You can buy all new veins or you can buy just those that you are missing. Home centers sell them in packages of 3-5 and they simply unroll and slide into the clips.

Take a look at your kitchen countertop. I see a handyman opportunity to really make your kitchen stand out. You probably have a small backsplash against the base of your wall where your countertop meets it. Above your backsplash you likely have just the regular drywall surface painted like the surrounding walls. What if you added something jazzy from the countertop all the way to the bottom of the wall cabinets?

You can do a lot of things with a backsplash area…tile, stone, mosaic. When that boring area is dressed up with a decorative feature, it really looks pretty special.　

Mosaic looks very unique. It comes on a netting that allows you to install sheets of it at a time, cutting installation time. The pieces are glued to the netting and once you prepare the wall, it’s a matter of pushing the netting onto the wall. Some of these will have spaces so you can grout the areas in between the pieces, and some are close enough where you can’t grout.

For the mosaic or tiles that are on netting, I use mastic on the wall. Follow the manufacturers suggestions, but basically you will use a notched trowel and spread the mastic on the wall. The netting gets pushed into the mastic and it sticks. You will have to measure and figure out obstacles such as electrical outlets, and cut some tiles or netting. For the outlets you can use box extenders and cover any gaps with the outlet covers.