Archives: Interior Spaces

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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How To Install Closet Wire Shelves

By Todd Fratzel on Closets & Storage

One of the tasks that I needed to do for the new baby’s room was to install some closet shelving. I like using Closetmaid shelving. There are many other products out there but Closetmaid stuff works great, it’s really strong, and they have tons of options to customize your project. The first step in any…

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Snow Blower Maintenance

By Todd Fratzel on Maintanence

Last year I bought a Craftsman 10HP Snow Thrower. Tomorrow’s weather forecast is for 6″ to 18″ of snow. So today I decided to do some maintenance in preparation for the years first snow storm. Each season you should get your snow blower out prior to the first snow fall and make sure it’s in…

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CABOT Decking Stains

By Todd Fratzel on Painting and Finishing

The other day I wrote about my deck staining project. Since then I’ve had several questions about which type of Cabot stain I used. I used Cabot Decking Stain, color 1480 Redwood. This stain works really good on pressure treated lumber. You can check out Cabot’s website for more information about this stain. I couldn’t…

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Staining Pressure Treated Deck Framing

By Todd Fratzel on Decks & Porches, Painting and Finishing

Our deck out back was framed with pressure treated lumber. We used cambara decking for the surface and it’s treated with Penofin sealer. In order to get the pressure treated to look more like the stained cambara decking I bought some Cabot’s deck stain in the “red wood” color. As you can see in the…

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Sealing Cambara Decking

By Todd Fratzel on Decks & Porches, Painting and Finishing

Last fall we finished building the decks and porches on the new house. We used Cambara decking for both the deck and the farmers porch. At the time a co-worker suggested that I use Penofin Penetrating Oil Finish to seal the hard wood. So I went to the hardware store and picked up a few…

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Great Kitchen Design

By Todd Fratzel on Cabinetry, Design

One of our favorite parts of the new home is definitely the kitchen. We probably got about 90% of what we would consider our dream kitchen. I think the only thing we didn’t do was go all out on the cooking equipment. This kitchen uses Kraftmaid Birch cabinets with all plywood construction. The door style…

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