Rob Robillard

In order to avoid having to deal with end grain, at the end of the half wall from a solid piece of wood, I use Birch plywood and Poplar ½ round applied nosing’s. Once I had my overall with I measured the poplar nosing’s and used this measurement to determine what to cut the plywood at. I ripped the plywood on my table saw and left the length long by 3-inches, in case I needed an angle cut to get it to fit against the wall tight. Once I had the plywood cut and my nosing on-site I cut my two long side nosing with a 45-degree miter.

Lufkin recently introduced the ShockForce tape measures and they’re the most perfect tape measure that I’ve found for me (in a 25-feet length). The Shockforce 25-feet tape measures have a 1 3/16 inch blade if flat, 1 1/16 inch wide blade when normally curled. Using both versions of the Shockforce 25-feet tapes in a dark room illuminated only by a small night light, once my eyes got dark-adapted the Nite Eye green-on-black tape was readable in dark corners where the regular version wasn’t. The Shockforce doesn’t have a finger brake, but most of us unconsciously brake a retracting blade with the index finger of the hand holding the unit, or the thumb and fingers of the other hand, so I don’t consider this feature necessary.

We advised the client that enlarging the door would leave scars, [2” deep holes] where the bluestone used to butt up against the old door jamb. As a cost-effective repair that could be accomplished easily I suggested that we fill the voids with cement and then grout the top with colored grout to match the existing 50 year old grout. The holes left by removing the door jamb left a 2” deep void and cold air could be felt coming in. We used a grout wheel and chose the closet color to the old grout.

Sense home energy monitor is a subscription free energy monitor device that installs directly in your home electrical panel and through a wi-fi connection and integrated smartphone app, gives you a great detailed view of the energy consumption in your home. the Sense Home Energy Monitor can also work for homes that have solar installed as long as that system integrates with the same electrical panel that the Sense is installed to. After the initial calibration was complete I was able to begin using the energy monitor features of the app immediately even before Sense had identified any individual devices. Sense informs its users that not all devices will be recognized but addition devices are continually being updated to the cloud library as more and more Sense energy monitors are installed and connected to the cloud.