December 8, 1997
IS SOMETHING BROKEN, leaking, or shabby-looking in your house? Found a weird stain on your carpet and don't know how to remove it? The Tripod Handy Girls can help! Check out the latest questions they've answered, below. For a full archive of Handy Girls answers, go here. If that doesn't help, go ahead and Ask the Handy Girls. New here? Come on in and meet the girls.


Tripod member khurt asks:
We have two couches at home that have ugly upholstery. My wife and I bought some furniture covers but they are always moving and in two weeks the whole thing looks bad. Can you offer suggestions on what we can do to make these "old" sofas look liveable?
Handy Girl Bernadette replies

Tripod member Tvanwink asks:
I'm looking for a simple plan for making a full-size platform bed. Any suggestions?
Handy Girl Jennifer replies

Tripod member RearrangeIt asks:
Wouldn't you know... been renting for 13 years and never broke or stained anything. Now that I've got my own brand new place, with new carpeting, I sat a bag of groceries right inside the front door — unfortunately, the bottle of bleach I bought leaked a little onto the taupe carpeting. Don't want the look of a throw rug — any suggestions?
Handy Girl Candi replies

Tripod member DNeese asks:
I've been looking for a simple desk for my computer. All I need is a low, ergonomic surface to hold my keyboard, monitor, and CPU. All the models I've seen in stores have hutches and fancy storages spaces — which I don't need. I'm considering building one myself. Any advice for me? I only have a few tools and no carpentry experience, but would like to make this my first project.
Handy Girl Jennifer replies

Tripod member H_WILSON asks:
Help! I live in a loft with exposed bathroom plumbing pipes (running vertically between all the floors). I hear water running 24 hours a day, and I have to keep a bucket in my bedroom to catch all the drips that come out of the hole in the ceiling. Is there a way to fix this without tearing a hole in my (cement) ceiling? I can forget about asking the landlord to fix it...
Handy Girl Karen replies

Tripod member stevevaus asks:
I'm renovating a wonderful old house... wonderful except for that awful old linoleum flooring in the kitchen! The top layer of the linoleum/vinyl comes up fairly easily, but the bottom layer/adhesive is driving me to drink! Any removal tips and tricks would be appreciated — I am trying to save the wood floor beneath the tile (otherwise I would have nuked the kitchen by now!).
Handy Girl Al replies

Tripod member RichRoc asks:
Since you mentioned adding that phone jack in the closet... how exactly is that done? I've got the little modular extra jack thingy, but looking at all those colored wires makes me think of bomb squads (cut the BLUE one... I think...), so I'd much rather have someone with a clue tell me how to attach everything before I sever my phone service completely, or that of the neighbors downstairs.
Handy Girl Jennifer Replies

Tripod member Tripod_Josh asks:
Where are good places to look for quality scrap wood? I live in the city and don't see a lot of nice pieces of lumber lying around the sidewalk or in people's trash cans. I would like to make some cool shelves and other furniture but can't afford the materials.
Handy Girl Jennifer replies

Tripod member rosymare asks:
One of our interior doors has no doorstop. I fell against it and it punched a 2" hole in the plaster! I would like to fix this myself. How should I go about it?
Handy Girl Bernadette replies

Tripod member joshuaglenn asks:
How do you feel — morally — about painting over wallpaper? I used to do a lot of interior painting for a living and I always fumed when I had to scrape wallpaper that had been painted over. But recently I moved into a place with really ugly wallpaper. I don't plan to stay long, but I HAVE to make the walls a solid color. I don't feel like scraping — why should I do all that work for free? My landlady said I could paint over the wallpaper, but she won't pay me to scrape. What should I do?
Handy Girl Karen replies

Tripod member Mountain_Quail asks:
It looked so easy: Instead of paying outrageous prices for two cheaply made towers (skinny bookcases) which one is required to put together anyway, I thought I would buy real lumber (as opposed to the particle board stuff) and do them myself. The first problem I encountered was that it was hard to even cut a board straight across and evenly. I used a L-shaped thingy to mark it right, but had trouble keeping the power saw straight. Is there a trick a poor amateur like myself can use? Like clamping on a guide of some sort? Won't the saw cut that unevenly also? Am I hopeless — should I take the boards back to the lumber yard and have them cut?
Handy Girl Jennifer replies