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Home improvement and renovation tips

How to de-ice your eaves with heating wires

We've talked before about how ice can build up on your eaves in the winter. If your roof isn't well insulated, heat escaping from the house can melt the snow. This drips merrily down the slope of the warm roof until it suddenly hits the eaves. The eaves, of course, aren't warm, so the water ...

Fascia treatments for gable ends

The fascia on a house's gable can be tackled in a number of ways. Here are a few examples. Simple and straightforward. In this case, the soffit on the side of the house is level, and the corner closes the end. More elaborate bargeboard - or gingerbread -- trim from days of yore. A return, ...

Metals that don't mix

While you might think that metals like galvanized steel, copper and aluminum will last forever, there are certain circumstances under which they will corrode. The trick is to avoid those situations. Refined metals are unstable, and can be affected by interaction with other metals and materials. And that can lead to real problems when it ...

Cantilevers – Where to use them

Last time, we gave you a sense of how cantilevers work. Here are some ways you can use them around your house -- from simple, functional uses to elegant approaches. You probably already have a few cantilevers already. Shelves are often built using the concept. You can take this to a larger scale in terms ...

Understanding cantilevers

Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe used them famously in buildings they designed. You can, too. The cantilever principle has numerous uses around your house, from simple storage solutions to dramatic architectural features. Here's a primer. A normal beam is a member that carries the load above it to two supporting points. A ...

Roof pitch, rafters and how to calculate angles

Roof pitch is measured in a rise to run ratio, with the vertical rise always shown first. The traditional method has been [rise inches]/[12 run inches]. So if your roof is a 45 degree angle (that is, for every 12" along the horizontal (run), it rises 12") it's a 12/12 pitch. If it rises only ...

Attic ventilation help

We've talked about the importance of attic ventilation in the past. By removing the hot air that sits up above the insulation in the summer, you help to keep your house cooler and protect your shingles. And by allowing the warm air that makes it up there in the winter to escape, you prevent ice ...

How to build a cathedral ceiling (Part 3)

So far we've looked at two techniques for creating your cathedral ceiling. You can install rafter ties (of sufficient strength and at specific prescribed intervals) to replace the conventional ceiling joists. Or you can use a ridge beam of sufficient strength for the particular plan. Your third method is to use scissor trusses. As you ...

How to build a cathedral ceiling (Part 2)

Last time we outlined three methods of constructing a cathedral ceiling. Let's look at some of the relative merits of each. The first option was to install a series of rafter ties to replace the joists that would otherwise be installed in a normal flat-ceilinged room, and which tie the opposite walls together to keep ...

How to build a cathedral ceiling (Part 1)

A cathedral ceiling does wonders to make a room seem larger than it is. Soaring space and high walls also give you the opportunity for large windows, which bring in outdoor light and create the illusion of even more space. But building a cathedral ceiling is not simply a matter of leaving out the ceiling ...