Question: The plating on the door handles on several of the doors in my house has worn off and they look bad. It is worst on the outside of the room. I would like to take the new looking ones on the inside of the closet doors and swap them with the worn ones, but I don’t know how to do this.
Answer: There are two screws holding the handles to the doors. Remove these screws and pull both handles away from the door. Select the inner and outer handles and insert them into the handle hole in the door. Be sure to properly line up the square rod that runs between the two handles with the square hole in the latch mechanism.
Before you go to all the work of swapping door handles, you should check out new handles sets at the big box or hardware stores. They are rather inexpensive.
Question: My Del Webb house is now 14 years old. The woodwork is showing its age and needs to be repainted. What brand of paint did Del Webb use and where could I find the color?
Answer: Del Webb used Benjamin Moore paint. Even if you had the original paint formula, you could not match the paint on your woodwork. Over 14 years the base coat and some of the tint colors have probably changed. The paint has faded at different rates depending on the light exposure. This is really not a problem. Pick any quality paint brand and get 6-10 white (I assume your woodwork is white) color chips. Bring them home and see if you have a good match. If you don’t like any of these, go back and get some more color chips.
When you have selected a color, buy enough paint to paint all of your woodwork. Don’t try to touch up only the bad areas. You will want the same color and gloss on the new paint job.
Reader Solves His Own Problem
One of our readers wrote to us asking for help removing an old sink faucet cartridge. Before we could get to his problem, his neighbor pulled the old cartridge out. Here is how he did it: He clamped a pair of vise grip pliers horizontally on the stem of the old cartridge and placed a block of wood on the sink under the vise grips. Then he used the handles of a pair of lineman’s pliers to pry the old cartridge out. Replacement then was straightforward. I hope that this info will be helpful to others who may encounter this problem.
If you have suggestions for future tips or have questions about maintenance around your home submit them to ask.the.woodchucks@gmail.com
