Archives: Home Improvement

Heating A Large Building

By Todd Fratzel on Air Conditioning

Heating a large building can be a real challenge. We are building a 9,000 sf assisted living facility right now at work and I thought I’d share a picture of a really great heating system. This building is using two Buderus Logano G215 oil fired boilers. These boilers have a high efficiency – A F…

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Basement Storage Room Is Finished

By Todd Fratzel on Basements, Closets & Storage

Basement Storage Room with Shelving Today I finished our new storage room in the basement. This storage room was needed badly so we could organize all of our stuff that has been piling up in the basement. Two of the walls have these 24 inch deep shelves spaced approximately 30 inches apart. I still plan…

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Creating Storage Room with Attic Trusses

By Todd Fratzel on Closets & Storage, Design, Framing

Attic Trusses Create Attic Space An inexpensive way to create additional storage space in your new home is to use attic trusses instead of conventional “common trusses”. Most modern homes that are built today use a common truss that doesn’t really leave any usable space for storage. Older homes were framed using rafters and collar…

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Basement Storage Room

By Todd Fratzel on Basements, Closets & Storage, Insulation

Building A Basement Storage Room The basement storage room project is coming along nicely. I recently wrote a couple of posts, Finished Basement – Step 1 Insulation and Basement Framing and Insulation Update, about how to properly insulate a concrete foundation wall in a basement. Now that the walls are insulated I’ve started finishing off…

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Finished Basements – Insulation Method

By Todd Fratzel on Basements, Insulation

Finished Basement Insulation I’m preparing to “finish” one of the rooms in the basement. The room is actually going to be a storage room so I use the term “finish” with a grain of salt. I plan on building some shelves to store some of our “junk” that has accumulated in the portion of the…

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How To Install A Split Jamb Pre-Hung Door

By Todd Fratzel on Doors, Finish Carpentry

Split Jamb Pre-Hung Doors Hanging a split jamb pre-hung door is a very easy home improvement project. We ordered all the doors for our new house at the same time, including the basement ones. The basement doors have been sitting in the basement in the original packaging for over a year now. So I decided…

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Schluter-DITRA Tile Underlayment

By Todd Fratzel on Flooring

I tiled our bathroom and mudroom in the new house. One of the issues I needed to figure out was the transition between the 3/8″ thick engineered wood floor and the adjacent rooms with tile. Traditionally I would have installed 1/4″ cement board under the tile. Then the adjacent wood floor would have needed a…

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Painting The Chair Rail

By Todd Fratzel on Finish Carpentry, Painting and Finishing

Tonight I started painting the chair rail. I like to use Sherwin Williams Semi-Gloss paint. One tip that I learned from a painter years ago really applies to painting this chair rail. When ever you paint trim work, casing, crown molding, chair rails, etc, it’s best to paint the trim work first. When you paint…

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