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Contact Mag: mag@toolgirl.com

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Do You Need a Personal Visit from ToolGirl?

If you've recently become a homeowner and you're starting to wonder how much of a mess you've gotten yourself into, or if you've received bids from contractors and aren't sure how to decipher them, maybe you'd like a friendly visit from ToolGirl.

If you're up for it, I'll bring a small camera crew to your house and interview you about what's gone wrong so far, what things are bothering you most about your new dwelling and what skills you think you'd need to feel better and start making changes and improvements.

Visits are free and last about two hours.   Your consultation will include an on-camera interview, a walk-through of your house, and a short hands-on tutorial from Mag to help you get started in your handy homeowner adventure.  We'll be videotaping the whole visit.

Once again, if you're a new-ish homeowner (you bought within the last 2 years) and you're a little freaked out about how to move forward with your house, please send an e-mail to help@toolgirl.com.

Thanks, and hope to see you at your place. 

Lathe Bloomer: How to Become a Woodturner

I love my lathe.  There.  I've said it.  It's an actual love relationship.  I pat it every time I walk past it in the workshop.  I bring it gifts (new chucks).  And I think about it when I'm cutting the lawn.

We recently finished a video that shows my very first woodturning project, which was making the voluptuous legs for my new desk.  Sure, I could have started small with a candlestick or a wine-stopper, but I really needed legs for my new desk and the idea of turning raw, angular blocks into silky-smooth curves made me feel like the Goddess of Undulations, if there was such a goddess. 

If you search YouTube you won't find very many woodturning videos with girls in them and I think we should change that.  Here's my entry:

Your Daily Tool: What to do about lawnmower cheese

AudioBoo / Your Daily Tool: What to do about lawnmower cheese

Shared via AddThis

My girls (and one guy - can you spot him?)

Sorry about the fuzzy focus on the left side!  (photo stitched with AutoStitch for iPhone)

Women's Leadership Exchange

I had a blast last week meeting a cool group of business women in Kitchener Ontario. Thanks for having me girls - and one guy, bless his brave heart! I gave a talk on What To Do When You Don't Know What You're Doing (I should know by now). I'll try posting the panoramic shot I took of my lunchmates but it may be dodgy since I'm on the road today. Wish me tech luck. Sent from Mag's iPhone

Relief for Would-Be Decorators and Designers!

I got some feedback from a member of ToolGirl.com: 

"I'm clueless when it comes to decorating. I find the seemingly infinite choices, even in something as fundamental as color scheme, let alone all the other options, overwhelming to the point of paralysis. I want some decorating advice."

I can relate.  I once painted a floor 7 times before I got the colour right.  If I have to pick out tiles or flooring or fabrics I just want to go to sleep until it's over.  As men abhor chick movies, I loathe making decor decisions.

Fortunately, there's now a new, fresh, free online resource to help those of us who are decor-challenged. RONA (Canada's largest hardware and home improvement dealer) offers a way to make choosing your decorating style really simple and maybe even fun.  They even provide free plans for DIY projects like canopy beds and storage - complete with materials lists and cut lists.  

Watch this ToolGirl video report for a tour of the resources available to you online at rona.ca.

How to replace the screen on a sliding screen door

To Screen the Impossible Screen

Summer entertaining outdoors is great because the spills don’t have to be cleaned up.  But there are risks.  For example, having people over for drinks is a leading cause of extroversion.   And feeling jovial makes you a target for summer perils, like forgetting that the screen door is closed when you’re carrying a tray full of refreshments. 

Charging into a closed screen door is perfectly normal.  If you don’t believe me, then next time you’re at a friend’s place, notice all the little rips and dents in THEIR screen door and say “How did this happen?”  They'll either avert their eyes (if they're the culprit who ran into the screen) or do a snot laugh (if it was a relative).

No matter how your screen got holey, replacing it is easy.  But there is towering potential for irritation. For one thing, screen doors are flimsy once you’ve taken them off their rigid tracks, so they twist, rack and skitter around.  If you’re feeling short-tempered or hormonal, it’s probably less stressful to just sell your house and start over in a home with intact screens.  OR, you can try my screen defeating tactics.

Wet/Dry Stream Bed

My friend Sue got free tickets to go on a garden tour and took some great photos. I kinda suck at gardening so I found this stream bed thing fascinating. It took somebody days of work to lay out all of these blue stones. That's just an insane amount of work but what a cool way to avoid gardening.

clipped from suemitchell.posterous.com

This is a dry stream created out of blue pebbles. They have been all carefully laid down to mimic the look of flowing water. AMAZING!  (See the effect of the whole stream bed at Sue's Musings.)

Cool garden bench for beginners

I really like some of the plans these people (PlansNow) come up with.  They're also the editors of Workbench Magazine.  I haven't tried this bench but the plans are only $5.95 and it's a pretty imaginative design.  Also, they seem to carry a wild array of plans for different projects, with lots of different styles to suit your whims.  So if you're not the kind of person who likes to eyeball things and guess at dimensions, working from plans might be your thing. 

Joinery Used

Suggested Power Tools

Full lap joints, threaded rods and glue

Table saw or circular saw, hand drill & drill guide

Built a House Yet?

Meet some of the fantastic women who worked on the Toronto Habitat for Humanity building blitz in May.  If you're inspired, join us!

Great Father's Day Gift

Just in time for Father's Day, we've got a second printing of We're All In This Together ready to go and Canadian Tire has picked up the book. 
I'm on the road for the next couple of weeks signing books at Canadian Tire stores, so drop in if you're close by.  Check here for a detailed list of appearances.  Hope to see you there! 
In the meantime, here's a 2-minute clip from a recent book reading event where Steve and I tried to explain our decision to sell the book only in Canadian hardware stores.

Grief for DIYers - And...fixing a stuck emergency brake

I read a New York Times article on the weekend that will scare a lot of people away from doing their own home repairs.  And then another article citing more bad combinations of humans and tools. 

Dammit Jim, they're just trying to scare us.  Like Star Trek explorers, we do-it-yourselfers know that disaster is always a possible outcome.  If you don't believe that, you haven't really tried it.  Of course things can go desperately wrong in DIY.  That's why we like it.  We are hardwired for adventure, and we can find our excitement under a sink or behind a washing machine or inside an electrical panel.

What those articles fail to mention is that a lot of things actually go well for DIYers.  I can't think of any examples right now, but I'm sure I've had one or two successful repairs in the last decade. So don't be discouraged by naysayers in the press.  They're just looking for something fresh to scare people with.  

Speaking of DIY, I learned how to fix a stuck emergency brake underneath a Toyota Landcruiser. 

So here's the trick if you ever have the Emergency Brake "!" symbol light up on your dashboard.

There's a cable that runs along the rear axle to the disc brake.  (It's usually the left side that gets stuck on my car.)

A short swift tug on the cable should free it from the stuck position. 

Women building 16 homes this week in Habitat Women Build

This is blitz week for Toronto Habitat for Humanity and 2000 women are slated to put up walls and roofs on 16 new homes.  I'm shooting lots of video and photos and meeting fantastic women who've volunteered to strap on toolbelts.  I'll post some video as soon as I have it edited.  You can follow the build's progress at the official WomenBuild web site.

Cool 4-plug adapter with rotating outlets

Transformers are receptacle hogs.  They clog up power bars and often take up two spaces.  So someone really smart came up with this beguiling little unit with outlets that rotate 360 degrees so you can put four transformers to work at once without a bar fight.  Not bad looking either, and way tidier than a gawky power bar with its stiff unwieldy cord.  By the way, it's also a heavy-duty surge protector.  $16.95 

Where to buy:  Lee Valley Tools.

Recession Rekindles Love for Do-it-yourself

From Hardlines, the rockin' Canadian company that follows trends in the home improvement industry ---

MOORESVILLE, N.C. — It turns out that people aren’t just turning to DIY projects to save money — they actually like doing home improvement projects.

Lowe’s Cos. conducted a consumer survey recently of more than 500 U.S. homeowners, who revealed projects they’re planning over the next 12 months and what motivated the process. Of those people planning a DIY project, 35 percent say they will do it themselves to save money. But in a very close second, 32 percent cited “pleasure” as the reason they do it themselves.

“Purchasing a home is one of the largest single investments a person will make during his or her lifetime. In good times and bad, homeowners remain committed to preserving their investment by maintaining and improving their homes,” says Larry Stone, Lowe’s president and COO. “While time constraints encouraged many people to say ‘do it for me’ in recent years, perhaps the silver lining of the current economy is that homeowners can save while they rediscover the fun of doing projects themselves.”

Avonlea online Q&A tonight

Tonight at 6:00 pm Eastern I'm going to be typing as fast as I can to answer questions posted at Avonlea Kindreds by fans of Road to Avonlea and Anne of Green Gables.  Join us if you have an hour and ask me anything, I mean anything. 

A good friend told me that my photos belong elsewhere so...

I got a Flickr account.

My new bamboo plywood desk - oh baby.

I finally finished my desk. 

I forced the chair mat and mousepad into matching the carpet (using my iron-on technique, covered a few weeks ago).  The floor of the house slopes so much I had to prop up the south legs to make the desk surface horizontal.  You'd slope too if you were 150 years old.

This is how the project looked in February of 2008.  

P.S.  I got my FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council, meaning the bamboo was harvested sustainably) bamboo from a great local supplier, SilkRoad Toronto.

The tenon at the top of each bamboo leg fits into a mortise (hole) on the underside of the desk.  Rudimentary but enduring.  Like leg hair.

Shellawax - nice food-safe wood finish in just one coat

I'm finally finishing the bamboo desk I started last year.  I just love the finish I found at Lee Valley Tools - Shellawax Liquid - it's made by an Australian company and it creates a tough semi-gloss finish in one coat.  That's beyond awesome.  And it smells good too, kind of like men's aftershave mixed with pipe tobacco and good port.

Shellawax is actually meant to be used as a polish for woodturning projects on a lathe, but I've been so happy with the finish it's given me on my turned projects that I decided to try it on a (huge) flat surface.  I'm working in small 6-inch squares to apply the finish, then hitting the area with the heat gun to simulate the heat caused by friction on a lathe.  Then a quick rub with a cotton rag to even out the warm finish, which is dry-to-the-touch pretty much instantly after heating.  Shellawax is non-toxic after curing, and low-odor during application (even my chemical-sensitive husband wasn't bothered by it).  After three weeks of curing the Shellawax finish is alcohol and water-resistant - good news for us spillers. 

A small setback for the 'Spring is here' thing

A good excuse to hang out in the workshop thinking up new stuff to build.

My moment in the New York Times this week

Short feature by Steve Kurutz about shopping for tools in Manhattan with Mag

Gear Alert: Camping season is almost here...

...and who can live without a wearable sleeping bag?

PRO:  Limits potential intimacy with unattractive tent mates.  

CON:  Limits potential intimacy with attractive tent mates.

CON:  Difficult to get dressed inside your sleeping bag without loss of dignity.  

PRO:  Attractive loungewear for sitting around the campfire at night.

CON:  Difficult to put shoes on to visit potty in middle of the night.

PRO:  Fun to tighten down hood so only mouth and nose show, then go for a Zombie Walk at 3:00a.m. and freak out other campers.

5 Reasons to Gear Up with Power Tools

1. Owning your own cordless drill makes you want to rush home after work.
2. You get to use suggestive terms like 'torque' and 'ratcheting chuck'.
3. You can say stuff like, “With this much torque, screwing is more satisfying”.
4. Putting on a tool belt makes you look like Cat Woman, only with more torque.
5. When they watch you working, your male friends will experience an increase in their angular momentum.

No really. Spring is here.

Sap running down the armpits of one of our Sugar Maples.  Bring on the fecundity. 

If It's Not One Thing, It's a Gutter

At your house, is there a flood in the basement every spring because you didn't clean out the gutters last fall?  So rainwater backs up in plugged downspouts and cascades over the sides of clogged gutters?  And soon the basement walls are weeping torrents and annoyed relatives are rolling up carpet and putting down newspaper to soak up the deluge?  And that’s when it seems like a good time to go and hide in the garage?   I'm like that too. 

But this year I've matured, and so can you.  Here’s the secret for cleaning out your gutters in a timely manner: Get in touch with the ancient power of irritability. 

When you're feeling pissy, you're in a metabolically enhanced state.  You’re ready for physical and emotional confrontation.  In fact, you're begging for it.  This is your opportunity to channel annoyance into productivity by, say, cleaning the dead mouse out of the freezer fan, or - if life hasn't yet offered you that particular serving of repugnance - scooping fetid glop out of gutters. 

Remember, timing is essential.  Don't ruin a great mood with a reeking, dirty project like cleaning out gutters.  Wait till you're in a bad mood.  Also, don't do it on a nice day.  The worse the weather, the more propulsive your irritation will be, and the greater the odds that you'll complete this job in record time. 

Finally, wear ill-fitting clothes that accentuate bulgy spots.  Don't wash your hair that day.   Work barehanded.   Feel the rebirth of your inner hellcat.

Give Inky Dinky What For

Downspouts get compacted with rotting leaves.  Give your downspouts a high colonic.  Set the hose nozzle on 'Stun', insert the hose as far as possible up the downspout and blast repeatedly into the bottom end of the downspout until there is a soggy expulsion of rotting clumps.   You will be utterly soaked by now, and the sleeve of your shirt will look (and smell) like you've been delivering calves.  Press on.  It's just starting to get good.