The Art of Home Improvement: A Personalized Approach

As I began my home improvement project, I knew that it was going to require some finesse and attention to detail. The paint would dry, and it would be hard to fix, so I was determined to make the most of this opportunity. With a fresh coat of paint and a new roller, I set out to tackle one of the room's most prominent features: the fireplace mantle.

The mark on the ranch-style home, which was built in the 1960s, was clear - someone had recently renovated the space, and it showed. The addition of track lighting and skylight highlighted the era's design aesthetic, while the flat front facade seemed a bit dated compared to the beautifully designed mantle. I couldn't help but think that my grandfather had played a role in designing and building this piece, and I was grateful for his input.

As we continued our tour of the home, it became clear that one of its most notable features was the fireplace doors themselves. Built into the front of fireplaces to regulate air flow and prevent drafts, they were also known to steal heat from the room. The owners had tried various solutions over the years, but nothing seemed quite right. That is, until we decided to tackle the problem head-on.

With a new door custom-made to fit the unique dimensions of the opening, we set out to remove the old doors and install our new ones. It was a simple change that would make a big transformation - no more struggling with stuck doors or lost heat. As we worked, I couldn't help but notice the candles on the mantle, a touch that added warmth and ambiance to the space.

With the old door removed, we were left with a sleek, modern frame waiting for its new hardware. The installation process was surprisingly straightforward - four screws provided all the necessary support, and the tempered glass made it easy to slide the door in place. As I clamped the door into position, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at our handiwork.

Once we had finished installing the new doors, we took a step back to admire our handiwork. The transformation was almost instantaneous - the once-dated look of the fireplace had given way to something sleek and modern. As I leaned over to take a closer look, my partner couldn't help but agree that it made all the difference.

With the new door securely in place, we turned our attention to securing it with screws and bolts. It was a simple process, one that required only a few minutes of effort - but would provide years of reliable service. As I tightened the last bolt, I felt a sense of satisfaction at a job well done. The homeowners were thrilled with the result, and I couldn't blame them.

As we wrapped up our tour of the home, I realized just how much of an impact a simple change like this could have. With new doors installed and a sleek, modern frame to boot, the room was transformed - no longer did it feel dated or stuck in time. Instead, it felt fresh and revitalized, ready for whatever the future might bring.

The key to making such a transformation was clear: attention to detail and a willingness to adapt. With a little creativity and resourcefulness, even the most mundane problem could be solved - and transformed into something truly special. As I looked around at the beautiful home, I knew that this project would be one for the books.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday on ask this old house maker jen largesse is back to show us how to cut a perfect circle with a router so if you're going to make a cutting board a stool a round mirror frame this type of technique is always going to give you a much better cut if you live in an old house you may have some ungrounded outlets i'll explain what that means and show you how to fix them i'll share some good techniques for using a paint roller and we're going to start at the bottom just go like on a little angle like that little angle little angle and this fireplace screams 1980s but simply changing out the doors will make a big difference thank you so much hi there i'm kevin o'connor and welcome back to ask this old house we have got a packed show for you today heath our electrician is going to be talking with a new homeowner with some electrical advice maro is going to be sharing some painting techniques and our mason mark is going to be installing some new fireplace doors but first our maker friend jen largest is here and she's got a brand new project hey jen hey how are you all right good to see you again thanks for coming back and working with us thank you for having me and to continue sort of your mission which is to kind of inspire people to get involved yeah getting people starting to use tools for the first time or really challenging themselves with a new skill or new task all right so the tool of choice today is this one yeah this is a router it's not something that a lot of homeowners have in their tool kit but if you're just starting out with woodworking maybe you're building a first piece of furniture or you're just moving into a new home because you're starting a family congratulations by the way your second one we're excited for you very excited but this isn't something that you would typically think to gravitate towards but it's a really versatile tool and it has a lot of different applications great so what do you want to make with it today well i think most new homeowners would pick this up and use it to put a decorative edge on a diy piece of furniture but today we're going to be using it for a cutting application and we're going to use it to cut a perfect circle okay let's do that so the first thing we need to do is replace this plate remove these screws so now we can take this plate off and use it to trace on our board and mark the location of our holes so i'm using a countersink drill bit so that the screws that go into the plate will sit nice and flush all right and so now that center hole will clear out with the spade bit so that our bit can clear the sawdust as we cut this is the board we're going to be cutting and i just want to go ahead and check the width of the board which is 11 and a quarter and so just to be safe i want to make sure the diameter of my circle is no more than let's call it 10 which means the radius or half that can't be more than 5. so i'm going to take that radius and put the 5 in the center of my hole where i know my bit will be so now i can mark that on my jig and that'll be my pivot point now we can attach our board to our router now i have our board secured to the table i've screwed it down through all four corners and i'm going to go ahead and mark the center and just two lines cross corner to corner and then i'll use that as the point for my pivot point okay so now i can line my nail up on the pivot point and lower the jig i'm going to be using a nail instead of a screw so that it doesn't bind as i turn so i have my bit set just below the surface of the board and i'm going to turn on the router and then plunge into a shallow cut so now i can lower the bit and do another pass to complete the cut do until you're through right yeah so now we can go ahead and just remove the nail and remove the router and jig and i have a perfect circle look at that so that is perfect and way more precise than if you went after it with a jigsaw very true so if you're going to make something small like a cutting board a stool a round mirror frame this is going to give you a much better application you can also use it for larger applications if you wanted to cut out something like a round dining table this type of technique is always going to give you a much better cut all right good information jen thank you thank you for having me now you can watch this old house and ask this old house anytime anywhere download our new app to stream full episodes to your tablet your tv and your phone binge classic episodes catch up on recent renovations and get step-by-step help projects all around the house best of all it's free the most trusted home improvement information is now available on amazon fire tv roku apple tv ios and android devices download the thistlehouse streaming app today well he thanks a lot for coming by and helping me out thanks for having me this house is 100 years old but you can see they renovated the basement in the 1970s was the bar here is that something you built this was my first home improvement project this was the first project not painting not anything else the bar i cleared it through the wife so i knew i had to run with it maybe if we finish up early we can have a drink it does look great the problem is in here on the unfinished side we were going through the whole house with the home inspector and um he told us that this outlet was ungrounded okay i've been kind of afraid to use it because honestly i don't know what that means sure um so we can look at it right away and tell that it is an ungrounded receptacle and you're only two prongs we have the hot and the neutral we don't have any terminal for the ground wire so i can kind of explain how all this works and hopefully make it make sense a little bit more to you when you call for power on a device current is sent from the breaker in the electrical panel through the black wire often referred to as the hot the current will travel through the wire and into the appliance giving it power the used electrical current will then return back to the panel through the white or the neutral wire thereby completing the circuit for ease these two wires are usually encased together in a jacket when everything in the house is operating properly there should be no issue with the flow of electricity technically houses are powered with alternating current so the current alternates back and forth as it distributes power but for the sake of keeping the explanation simple this is a general flow of electricity now if a fault occurs somewhere in the device or the receptacle that electric current will travel where it's the easiest if the device being powered is made out of metal like many appliances the whole thing has the chance of becoming electrified and can shock someone that touches it to control fault current code added the requirement of a grounding wire which is usually just a bare copper wire that goes inside of the jacket with the hot neutral wires the bare copper is extremely conductive so if there's ever a fault the current will travel through the grounding wire back to the panel and the surge of current will trip the breaker cutting power from that device all right colin so we have a couple of solutions for this problem okay so the easiest thing that we can do is we can leave the existing wiring as it is and install a ground fault circuit interrupting receptacle how this works is he senses a certain amount of power coming in and a certain amount of power going back out it wants to see the same amount so let's say we have 10 amps coming in it wants to see 10 amps coming back on the other side if it sees 9.995 amps something as small as 5 000 of an amp this is designed to trip and give you an added layer of protection it sees that power going somewhere else that it shouldn't and that's why it trips that's why we use them in something like a kitchen outdoors we don't know if the power is going to water somewhere that shouldn't be going so we want to have this in place the good thing is we have to have this in an unfinished basement if we're installing a receptacle anyway so we have to put this here the downside is we still don't have the equipment grounding conductor that i really want to have in this system so what i prefer to do is since we have access to everything it's a wide open basement and a short run i'd really rather run a new cable with the equipment grounding conductor in it so everything is sized properly everything is safe clean and new sounds great all right colin now we're going to turn that circuit off take the multimeter plug that into the receptacle and let me know we don't have power all set all set that's it heath all right perfect now that's off we can take that apart not only is that receptacle and grounded but over here behind the washing machine this receptacle has a bunch of violations as well i think the best thing to do is take both of these out install a single new dedicated laundry circuit to make everything correct all right one down that's up so now we can mount the metal electrical box to the concrete wall we've chosen an electrical metal box because we don't need additional lumber to mount this to the concrete so this conduit coming down the wall is going to house the wire coming down to our electrical box we have to put a slight bend in this conduit in order to fit in the box since this is a standard connection size they actually make a conduit bending tool that'll let us bend this conduit to the exact size that we need since this receptacle is going to be used for a laundry circuit we want to make sure we run a 12 gauge wire because it is code and it can handle a heavier load we want to make sure that we turn the power off at the main breaker that way when we take the panel cover off there are no energized parts inside we're going to use an arc fault breaker with a hot and neutral tied to the breaker the white pig tail will tie to the neutral bar and the ground we've just installed will tie to the grounding bar all right we're just going to plug this last machine in that's all powered on you're all set that looks awesome thank you so much for the explanation thanks for having me it's functional much safer install should be happy perfect do you have time for cold drink yeah let's go take a look at that bar you built all right i think you've earned it always five o'clock somewhere right hopefully so if you have an outlet a receptacle that looks like this with two prongs you might know that is ungrounded no ground if you see one with three prongs is it grounded not always the case and that's why you want to grab a little tester like this for six or seven dollars at your home center you can pick one of these up and it can kind of tell you the situation you have going on inside that receptacle three prongs on one side three lights on the other side a little grid up there and so if i plug it in i get one light in the middle uh that says open ground what does that mean it means the exact same situation as this even though they put a three-prong receptacle in there's still no ground no ground wire no ground wire they just did it to adapt to their device tricky okay and if i put this one in here two lights that tells me hot neutral reversed right so that actually on the wrong terminals they've swapped the black and the white wire are on opposite sides but it's working so what do i care about that you care about that because if you have an appliance or a device plugged in the on off switch isn't really turning it on and off anymore it's stopping the circuit from being complete but power is still flowing through the system instead of stopping at the switch don't put your knife in the toaster not put your knife in the toaster okay and then the final one two lights over here yeah all good that's what it should look like oh all right you just earned yourself another cold one all right thanks thanks want to tackle all your home improvement projects with confidence join this old house insider a new streaming service from this old house the iconic emmy-winning series that inspired a generation of home enthusiasts stream over 1 000 episodes of this old house and ask this old house commercial free watch it all in the this old house app and join live online q a's with our experts best of all you can try insider free for seven days to join go to this old house membership hi mark hey kevin what are we talking about today today we're talking about uh paint rollers okay rollers are measured by the naps and the length of the fiber that makes up the rollers so we've got three right we've got three samples here short medium large and how do you measure them okay this one over here is a quarter of an inch quarter inch nap okay this one of you is three eighths and one inch okay that's thick so different naps i presume for different types of surfaces different type of surface let's say we got this surface here so you notice this is very nice and smooth the proper roller for that is the quarter of an inch okay nice for this smooth surface you will not add any texture to it beautiful and then as you move over here there is some texture to this you see like the semi-rough surface this one the 3 8 roller nap will do the work for you we'll get all the lower spot we'll added a little bit of texture to it but you won't see much because this it's already there gotcha and then this is super rough this is kind of that popcorn this is the popcorn looks a lot of texture in that this guy here will do the work for you this is one inch thick yeah okay then we get all the spots and we'll add it a little bit of texture to it today also but you don't see much because this is full of textures it will blend in so when i go to the store i figure out what kind of surface i have in my house when i go to the store how do i pick the right roller obviously look for the label the label will tell you uh how thick the nap is and what kind of surface that is good for oh nice so this label will say quarter inch nap and for smooth surfaces smooth surface absolutely was this quarter inch this escorted me beautiful okay all right so now i get the right roller um most importantly though from you technique let's do it what do you got for us okay let's start with the 3 8 on this semi rough surface okay i'm in roll the cover on the actual roller cover paint this board paint tray let's saturate the roller enough for the first pass yeah and we're going to start at the bottom just go like on a little angle like that little angle little angle because you don't want to leave any bro roll of marks on the surface here so asymmetrical helps you absolutely okay you can see it actually going into those depressions and see like that everything with the roll of three eighths get a good coverage right at the lower spots did not skip over any of that just filled it in might not have gotten that with a quarter inch nap it would be hard to cover the whole thing okay so now you've got an overlap a little bit i noticed that the second pass you came over a few inches notice that i i overlap it's i would say 30 to 50 percent okay by design that's what you want by design because once you get rid of the any roller marks you can go all the way here and then you can always go back yeah and make sure everything is nice and smooth you don't see roller marks you don't see any imperfections if you miss anything go back and so i can always go back but you've got this rule about i think what do you guys call wet to wet you got to keep the wet edge that's what you guys say yeah so you don't want anything to set up because you don't want to take a wet roller and go over something that's set up absolutely you don't start here and then in the mirror decide to take a break don't do that because the paint will dry and it's going to be hard to fix that right we're still wet so you're fine with me going over that absolutely look at that i went right on the other way on this surface it's unbelievable very good all right very helpful tomorrow know what's uh which roller to pick and a little bit of technique thank you so for every surface you're gonna have the right roll of nap and the right technique absolutely so mark the ranch itself was built in the 1960s but as you can see this room was clearly renovated in the 80s i can see some track lighting even the skylight kind of tells me 80s yeah um when we purchased the house there was just a flat front okay my grandfather helped us design and build this mantle right here i think is great but the doors definitely take away from that right so as you can see um the doors themselves are pretty difficult to open they get stuck and you kind of have to wiggle them to get them to close okay the same goes for the screen well all these problems are pretty typical with these doors they were really put on the front of these fireplaces to help with the draft sometimes the air would build up outside and come down that flu and blow ash all over the living room that's a problem and the other problem is that it would steal heat from the room so if the fire was dissipating it would start to pull air from the room and you would lose heat the doors definitely help to regulate the air so they could find a sweet spot and make it draft properly today if you have a gas insert that's what you're going to see is that glass door so they're very typical for aesthetics these days as well but i see you have candles in there are you guys burning wood we do during the winter time we burn wood but throughout the rest of the year we like to have the candles going okay so i think we can make a big improvement over here so why don't we get this door off and check it out great all right all right so this door is only held in by a screw and a bolt which i can undo right now so if you want to hold that for me sure i'll just take this screw out take the nut driver for this one all right that's done okay so this side's out okay all right we'll just pop that out so if you grab that side yep okay all right now it should just slip out all right nice so pick her right up and let's walk it right out all right so there's the new door how do you like it they look really nice okay so this one was a little bit odd because of the size of your opening it's a little bit shorter here and a little bit longer here so we actually had to have this door custom made so this is 16 gauge steel it's black powder coat paint and this is tempered glass and it's also on a trackless frame the other great thing about this door is it's easy install the last one we took out was just a couple screws this one actually has four so let's take this door off and we're going to work on it when it's flat yep right down watch the glass and then just drop it right down onto the styrofoam so we're going to put in two of the four straps before we install the door once we do that it's going to be very easy to find out where we have to drill on the inside find that hole in the strap poke it through go back to the brass twist it a little and then tighten her up with your screwdriver just make sure it's flat alright so just make sure you grab the glass and just flip it up all right just remember you have half inch of coverage as do i okay now let's peel this tape off the doors all right now we're gonna be able to open the door great so just hold it into place and i'm gonna lean over and do okay that mark and then you can lean over and do mine all right great let's get these doors out and then drill the holes all right melanie so i'm clamped in nice and tight i just want to check level that looks great now let's start driving these screws in all right melanie what do you think wow such a simple change makes a big transformation oh i really love the way it looks but after you go to bed just make sure you keep the doors closed that way you don't lose any heat up to the flue but other than that keep adding logs and keep that fire roaring great thank you so much thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feedtoday on ask this old house maker jen largesse is back to show us how to cut a perfect circle with a router so if you're going to make a cutting board a stool a round mirror frame this type of technique is always going to give you a much better cut if you live in an old house you may have some ungrounded outlets i'll explain what that means and show you how to fix them i'll share some good techniques for using a paint roller and we're going to start at the bottom just go like on a little angle like that little angle little angle and this fireplace screams 1980s but simply changing out the doors will make a big difference thank you so much hi there i'm kevin o'connor and welcome back to ask this old house we have got a packed show for you today heath our electrician is going to be talking with a new homeowner with some electrical advice maro is going to be sharing some painting techniques and our mason mark is going to be installing some new fireplace doors but first our maker friend jen largest is here and she's got a brand new project hey jen hey how are you all right good to see you again thanks for coming back and working with us thank you for having me and to continue sort of your mission which is to kind of inspire people to get involved yeah getting people starting to use tools for the first time or really challenging themselves with a new skill or new task all right so the tool of choice today is this one yeah this is a router it's not something that a lot of homeowners have in their tool kit but if you're just starting out with woodworking maybe you're building a first piece of furniture or you're just moving into a new home because you're starting a family congratulations by the way your second one we're excited for you very excited but this isn't something that you would typically think to gravitate towards but it's a really versatile tool and it has a lot of different applications great so what do you want to make with it today well i think most new homeowners would pick this up and use it to put a decorative edge on a diy piece of furniture but today we're going to be using it for a cutting application and we're going to use it to cut a perfect circle okay let's do that so the first thing we need to do is replace this plate remove these screws so now we can take this plate off and use it to trace on our board and mark the location of our holes so i'm using a countersink drill bit so that the screws that go into the plate will sit nice and flush all right and so now that center hole will clear out with the spade bit so that our bit can clear the sawdust as we cut this is the board we're going to be cutting and i just want to go ahead and check the width of the board which is 11 and a quarter and so just to be safe i want to make sure the diameter of my circle is no more than let's call it 10 which means the radius or half that can't be more than 5. so i'm going to take that radius and put the 5 in the center of my hole where i know my bit will be so now i can mark that on my jig and that'll be my pivot point now we can attach our board to our router now i have our board secured to the table i've screwed it down through all four corners and i'm going to go ahead and mark the center and just two lines cross corner to corner and then i'll use that as the point for my pivot point okay so now i can line my nail up on the pivot point and lower the jig i'm going to be using a nail instead of a screw so that it doesn't bind as i turn so i have my bit set just below the surface of the board and i'm going to turn on the router and then plunge into a shallow cut so now i can lower the bit and do another pass to complete the cut do until you're through right yeah so now we can go ahead and just remove the nail and remove the router and jig and i have a perfect circle look at that so that is perfect and way more precise than if you went after it with a jigsaw very true so if you're going to make something small like a cutting board a stool a round mirror frame this is going to give you a much better application you can also use it for larger applications if you wanted to cut out something like a round dining table this type of technique is always going to give you a much better cut all right good information jen thank you thank you for having me now you can watch this old house and ask this old house anytime anywhere download our new app to stream full episodes to your tablet your tv and your phone binge classic episodes catch up on recent renovations and get step-by-step help projects all around the house best of all it's free the most trusted home improvement information is now available on amazon fire tv roku apple tv ios and android devices download the thistlehouse streaming app today well he thanks a lot for coming by and helping me out thanks for having me this house is 100 years old but you can see they renovated the basement in the 1970s was the bar here is that something you built this was my first home improvement project this was the first project not painting not anything else the bar i cleared it through the wife so i knew i had to run with it maybe if we finish up early we can have a drink it does look great the problem is in here on the unfinished side we were going through the whole house with the home inspector and um he told us that this outlet was ungrounded okay i've been kind of afraid to use it because honestly i don't know what that means sure um so we can look at it right away and tell that it is an ungrounded receptacle and you're only two prongs we have the hot and the neutral we don't have any terminal for the ground wire so i can kind of explain how all this works and hopefully make it make sense a little bit more to you when you call for power on a device current is sent from the breaker in the electrical panel through the black wire often referred to as the hot the current will travel through the wire and into the appliance giving it power the used electrical current will then return back to the panel through the white or the neutral wire thereby completing the circuit for ease these two wires are usually encased together in a jacket when everything in the house is operating properly there should be no issue with the flow of electricity technically houses are powered with alternating current so the current alternates back and forth as it distributes power but for the sake of keeping the explanation simple this is a general flow of electricity now if a fault occurs somewhere in the device or the receptacle that electric current will travel where it's the easiest if the device being powered is made out of metal like many appliances the whole thing has the chance of becoming electrified and can shock someone that touches it to control fault current code added the requirement of a grounding wire which is usually just a bare copper wire that goes inside of the jacket with the hot neutral wires the bare copper is extremely conductive so if there's ever a fault the current will travel through the grounding wire back to the panel and the surge of current will trip the breaker cutting power from that device all right colin so we have a couple of solutions for this problem okay so the easiest thing that we can do is we can leave the existing wiring as it is and install a ground fault circuit interrupting receptacle how this works is he senses a certain amount of power coming in and a certain amount of power going back out it wants to see the same amount so let's say we have 10 amps coming in it wants to see 10 amps coming back on the other side if it sees 9.995 amps something as small as 5 000 of an amp this is designed to trip and give you an added layer of protection it sees that power going somewhere else that it shouldn't and that's why it trips that's why we use them in something like a kitchen outdoors we don't know if the power is going to water somewhere that shouldn't be going so we want to have this in place the good thing is we have to have this in an unfinished basement if we're installing a receptacle anyway so we have to put this here the downside is we still don't have the equipment grounding conductor that i really want to have in this system so what i prefer to do is since we have access to everything it's a wide open basement and a short run i'd really rather run a new cable with the equipment grounding conductor in it so everything is sized properly everything is safe clean and new sounds great all right colin now we're going to turn that circuit off take the multimeter plug that into the receptacle and let me know we don't have power all set all set that's it heath all right perfect now that's off we can take that apart not only is that receptacle and grounded but over here behind the washing machine this receptacle has a bunch of violations as well i think the best thing to do is take both of these out install a single new dedicated laundry circuit to make everything correct all right one down that's up so now we can mount the metal electrical box to the concrete wall we've chosen an electrical metal box because we don't need additional lumber to mount this to the concrete so this conduit coming down the wall is going to house the wire coming down to our electrical box we have to put a slight bend in this conduit in order to fit in the box since this is a standard connection size they actually make a conduit bending tool that'll let us bend this conduit to the exact size that we need since this receptacle is going to be used for a laundry circuit we want to make sure we run a 12 gauge wire because it is code and it can handle a heavier load we want to make sure that we turn the power off at the main breaker that way when we take the panel cover off there are no energized parts inside we're going to use an arc fault breaker with a hot and neutral tied to the breaker the white pig tail will tie to the neutral bar and the ground we've just installed will tie to the grounding bar all right we're just going to plug this last machine in that's all powered on you're all set that looks awesome thank you so much for the explanation thanks for having me it's functional much safer install should be happy perfect do you have time for cold drink yeah let's go take a look at that bar you built all right i think you've earned it always five o'clock somewhere right hopefully so if you have an outlet a receptacle that looks like this with two prongs you might know that is ungrounded no ground if you see one with three prongs is it grounded not always the case and that's why you want to grab a little tester like this for six or seven dollars at your home center you can pick one of these up and it can kind of tell you the situation you have going on inside that receptacle three prongs on one side three lights on the other side a little grid up there and so if i plug it in i get one light in the middle uh that says open ground what does that mean it means the exact same situation as this even though they put a three-prong receptacle in there's still no ground no ground wire no ground wire they just did it to adapt to their device tricky okay and if i put this one in here two lights that tells me hot neutral reversed right so that actually on the wrong terminals they've swapped the black and the white wire are on opposite sides but it's working so what do i care about that you care about that because if you have an appliance or a device plugged in the on off switch isn't really turning it on and off anymore it's stopping the circuit from being complete but power is still flowing through the system instead of stopping at the switch don't put your knife in the toaster not put your knife in the toaster okay and then the final one two lights over here yeah all good that's what it should look like oh all right you just earned yourself another cold one all right thanks thanks want to tackle all your home improvement projects with confidence join this old house insider a new streaming service from this old house the iconic emmy-winning series that inspired a generation of home enthusiasts stream over 1 000 episodes of this old house and ask this old house commercial free watch it all in the this old house app and join live online q a's with our experts best of all you can try insider free for seven days to join go to this old house membership hi mark hey kevin what are we talking about today today we're talking about uh paint rollers okay rollers are measured by the naps and the length of the fiber that makes up the rollers so we've got three right we've got three samples here short medium large and how do you measure them okay this one over here is a quarter of an inch quarter inch nap okay this one of you is three eighths and one inch okay that's thick so different naps i presume for different types of surfaces different type of surface let's say we got this surface here so you notice this is very nice and smooth the proper roller for that is the quarter of an inch okay nice for this smooth surface you will not add any texture to it beautiful and then as you move over here there is some texture to this you see like the semi-rough surface this one the 3 8 roller nap will do the work for you we'll get all the lower spot we'll added a little bit of texture to it but you won't see much because this it's already there gotcha and then this is super rough this is kind of that popcorn this is the popcorn looks a lot of texture in that this guy here will do the work for you this is one inch thick yeah okay then we get all the spots and we'll add it a little bit of texture to it today also but you don't see much because this is full of textures it will blend in so when i go to the store i figure out what kind of surface i have in my house when i go to the store how do i pick the right roller obviously look for the label the label will tell you uh how thick the nap is and what kind of surface that is good for oh nice so this label will say quarter inch nap and for smooth surfaces smooth surface absolutely was this quarter inch this escorted me beautiful okay all right so now i get the right roller um most importantly though from you technique let's do it what do you got for us okay let's start with the 3 8 on this semi rough surface okay i'm in roll the cover on the actual roller cover paint this board paint tray let's saturate the roller enough for the first pass yeah and we're going to start at the bottom just go like on a little angle like that little angle little angle because you don't want to leave any bro roll of marks on the surface here so asymmetrical helps you absolutely okay you can see it actually going into those depressions and see like that everything with the roll of three eighths get a good coverage right at the lower spots did not skip over any of that just filled it in might not have gotten that with a quarter inch nap it would be hard to cover the whole thing okay so now you've got an overlap a little bit i noticed that the second pass you came over a few inches notice that i i overlap it's i would say 30 to 50 percent okay by design that's what you want by design because once you get rid of the any roller marks you can go all the way here and then you can always go back yeah and make sure everything is nice and smooth you don't see roller marks you don't see any imperfections if you miss anything go back and so i can always go back but you've got this rule about i think what do you guys call wet to wet you got to keep the wet edge that's what you guys say yeah so you don't want anything to set up because you don't want to take a wet roller and go over something that's set up absolutely you don't start here and then in the mirror decide to take a break don't do that because the paint will dry and it's going to be hard to fix that right we're still wet so you're fine with me going over that absolutely look at that i went right on the other way on this surface it's unbelievable very good all right very helpful tomorrow know what's uh which roller to pick and a little bit of technique thank you so for every surface you're gonna have the right roll of nap and the right technique absolutely so mark the ranch itself was built in the 1960s but as you can see this room was clearly renovated in the 80s i can see some track lighting even the skylight kind of tells me 80s yeah um when we purchased the house there was just a flat front okay my grandfather helped us design and build this mantle right here i think is great but the doors definitely take away from that right so as you can see um the doors themselves are pretty difficult to open they get stuck and you kind of have to wiggle them to get them to close okay the same goes for the screen well all these problems are pretty typical with these doors they were really put on the front of these fireplaces to help with the draft sometimes the air would build up outside and come down that flu and blow ash all over the living room that's a problem and the other problem is that it would steal heat from the room so if the fire was dissipating it would start to pull air from the room and you would lose heat the doors definitely help to regulate the air so they could find a sweet spot and make it draft properly today if you have a gas insert that's what you're going to see is that glass door so they're very typical for aesthetics these days as well but i see you have candles in there are you guys burning wood we do during the winter time we burn wood but throughout the rest of the year we like to have the candles going okay so i think we can make a big improvement over here so why don't we get this door off and check it out great all right all right so this door is only held in by a screw and a bolt which i can undo right now so if you want to hold that for me sure i'll just take this screw out take the nut driver for this one all right that's done okay so this side's out okay all right we'll just pop that out so if you grab that side yep okay all right now it should just slip out all right nice so pick her right up and let's walk it right out all right so there's the new door how do you like it they look really nice okay so this one was a little bit odd because of the size of your opening it's a little bit shorter here and a little bit longer here so we actually had to have this door custom made so this is 16 gauge steel it's black powder coat paint and this is tempered glass and it's also on a trackless frame the other great thing about this door is it's easy install the last one we took out was just a couple screws this one actually has four so let's take this door off and we're going to work on it when it's flat yep right down watch the glass and then just drop it right down onto the styrofoam so we're going to put in two of the four straps before we install the door once we do that it's going to be very easy to find out where we have to drill on the inside find that hole in the strap poke it through go back to the brass twist it a little and then tighten her up with your screwdriver just make sure it's flat alright so just make sure you grab the glass and just flip it up all right just remember you have half inch of coverage as do i okay now let's peel this tape off the doors all right now we're gonna be able to open the door great so just hold it into place and i'm gonna lean over and do okay that mark and then you can lean over and do mine all right great let's get these doors out and then drill the holes all right melanie so i'm clamped in nice and tight i just want to check level that looks great now let's start driving these screws in all right melanie what do you think wow such a simple change makes a big transformation oh i really love the way it looks but after you go to bed just make sure you keep the doors closed that way you don't lose any heat up to the flue but other than that keep adding logs and keep that fire roaring great thank you so much thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed\n"