Remodeling: Expert Guides and Resources

Every home improvement project requires a budget. Whether you're painting a bedroom or gutting and remodeling a kitchen, you need to come up with an accurate estimate of the project's cost so you can look at your current finances and make sure that you have enough money (or a way to get enough money) to pay for everything.

A home improvement project that involves new flooring means using simple math to find the right amount of vinyl or carpet needed for the area you want to cover. If you are planning to paint or wallpaper, use easy formulas to determine how much paint or paper to purchase.

Ceramic countertops are popular, and making and installing one is a manageable DIY project for most homeowners. You need straight-edged tiles and bull-nose tiles for your countertop. Bull-nose tiles come in two styles: a single rounded edge for use along a straight edge, and a double bull-nose (two adjacent rounded edges) for use on outside corners.

A major kitchen remodel must be done in the right order for maximum efficiency. Time is money, and remodeling your kitchen in the right order will save you loads of it. Because of the time required to remodel a kitchen, it is best to understand the order to expect, regardless of whether you do the work yourself or you hire a pro.

Install wall cabinets before you install base cabinets so you don't have to work above the base cabinets. The open area of the floor allows you, your helper, and your step ladder clear access. These steps describe installing framed cabinets. Frameless cabinets are installed in much the same manner except when connecting adjoining cabinets.

When you're installing a new kitchen countertops, installing the sink means you're near the end. Most sinks come with a paper or cardboard template to help outline the area you're going to cut out. Quite often, the cardboard template is part of the shipping box for the sink. Use a utility knife to cut the template from the box.

If your walls were straight and true, installing your countertop would be a little easier. But your walls are likely to be off. To ensure a perfect fit for your new countertop, you check your walls for square and then scribe the contours of your walls onto your countertop laminate. The best way to check whether a corner is square is to use the 3-4-5 method.

After you have hung your wall cabinets and installed the corner base cabinet, you can finish your cabinet installation. Finishing the base cabinet runs is less strenuous than hanging the wall cabinets because the cabinets rest on the floor and don't need to be supported while you secure them to the wall. However, it's still a good idea to have someone nearby to help make adjustments.

After you’ve scribed, trimmed, test fitted, and applied any end caps to the countertops, and the glue has set at any mitered corners, you can begin the job of securing your countertops to the base cabinets. Follow these steps to attach it: Don’t start securing the countertop to the cabinets until the mitered joint has dried.