When it comes to home improvement, you need information you can trust. Inside each issue of The Family Handyman, you’ll find see-and-solve expert repair techniques, a variety of projects for every room and step-by-step, do-it-yourself photos.
We used to have a door and shelves under the steps adjacent to our kitchen, but you had to crawl in to reach anything. The under-stair storage project from the Winter 2021 issue solved everything! I used our actual cookware, slow cookers and recycle bins to determine the height of the boxes while I was building them to make sure the pullouts were the sizes we needed. Build it yourself! Find the original step-by-step instructions for this under-stair storage project on our website. The Book Every DIYer Needs Don’t pay a professional hundreds of dollars for household repairs you can do yourself. Instead, learn essential DIY skills in our book Before You Call a Pro. Buy it now for only $10 (and free shipping) at FamilyHandyman.com/C2403.…
While I was visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, my mom complained that the dishwasher was not draining. I volunteered to help fix it, so my dad and I spent a couple of hours taking apart the small pieces, trying to figure out why it wasn’t draining. After not finding a smoking gun, we just assumed the pump had failed. My parents bought a new dishwasher and, lo and behold, the new one had the same problem. A couple of days later, my dad awoke at 2 a.m. with an epiphany: He had recently installed a new garbage disposal. When he went to check it, he realized the plug blocking the drain port was still in place. He hadn’t mentioned the brand-new disposal as we were troubleshooting or even to the…
Whether the goal is to perfect skating skills, host neighborhood hockey shootouts or enjoy daily pickup games with the whole family, a backyard ice rink is a winter lover’s dream come true. Sure, it’s possible to completely DIY your own, but an easy-to-assemble kit such as the EZ Ice Pro Home Arena System (above) makes putting together an at-home ice rink a breeze. 1 MEASURE OUT THE SPACE Make sure the diagonal from one corner to the other is the same in both directions. 2 SET THE BRACKETS IN THE GROUND Once the brackets are in place around the perimeter, it’s time to start placing and interlocking the walls. 3 RUN THE LIGHTS Adding underliner lights is optional, but it will make the whole set up look a lot more professional. Run…
Always-Clean Litter Box Common kitty wisdom states that you should own one litter box for every cat in your family, plus one extra. As a mom of four fur babies, I simply didn’t have the space for multiple boxes and couldn’t stand by to scoop their poop the moment it happened. I was hoping Whisker’s Litter-Robot 4 would be the answer to my prayers. This podlike self-cleaning litter box is the Rolls-Royce of automated cat toilets, if you will. Once kitty finishes their business, the rubber-lined drum quietly spins to sift away the clean litter, dumps the clumps into a sealed compartment and returns the clean litter to the main chamber. With built-in Wi-Fi, the Litter-Robot 4 has a companion app that notifies you when your cat has used the…
1 CUT THE WOOD AND ANGLE IRON Preseal the wood with a coat of polyurethane and let it dry. Use a miter saw to cut the long (A and C) and short (B) sides of the shelves, legs (D), cross supports (E) and kettlebell supports (F). Use an angle grinder with a cutoff disk to cut the angle iron (G) to length for the dumbbell support on top of the unit. 2 BUILD THE OUTER FRAME Join the mitered ends on the long (A) and short (B) sides to create frames for the bottom and middle shelves. Use wood glue and 18-gauge brad nails to pin and hold the miters tight, then, to strengthen the joint, toescrew a 1⅝-in. screw from the underside into each corner. NOTE: Predrill each hole to…
Red/Orange Bold red or orange walls are ideal for intense workouts such as highimpact cardio or circuit training. “They will help evoke energetic feelings, giving you that extra psychological boost to power through your reps,” says Old Crow Painting’s Travis Nolan. His pick: Emotional from Sherwin-Williams, a blend of both hues. Sage Jamie Gold, author of Wellness by Design (Tiller Press), finds sage green soothing thanks to its biophilic quality. Nature-inspired paint colors such as Saybrook Sage from Benjamin Moore make a calming backdrop perfect for yoga lovers flowing through sun salutations or settling into Savasana. Blue Blue tones can elicit calm, composure and concentration, ideal for focusing on fitness. “For a home gym, where you know you’re going to make your body temperature rise, a shade of blue visually…
