June 30, 2007
Ed. Note: The Hardware Aisle will feature the most unabashedly patriotic products we can find, every day, until our nation celebrates its 231st birthday. This is part 1 of a series we call This Old Glory.
My fellow Americans: the flag-draped Lady Liberty you see here is one of quite a few home products out there that are, for better or worse, unexpectedly emblazoned with the stars and stripes.
This 2-by-4-foot mural embedded in Cogir glass block could be the centerpiece of your master bath remodel—just don't be surprised if every shower induces an overwhelming urge to belt out the Star-Spangled Banner.
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June 29, 2007
It's been a lighthearted couple of weeks here at the Hardware Aisle. Before yesterday's homage to the world of wobblers, we began with Mark Powers' reluctant headlamp conversion. Later, he followed up with his endorsement of the Bil-Light, a ballcap-brim work light that bears vague resemblance to the robot Number 5 from the film Short Circuit (BELOW).
Today I feature Strait-Line's Grip-Light, a dim little tool that unfortunately doesn't live up to either half of its name. The idea is that its two rubber-tipped fingers grip to either side of a nearby surface, allowing you 10,000 hours of hands-free fluorescent illumination. Sadly, the bulky, short-corded light's "clamp" has almost no tensile strength and the wan 26-watt bulb is just bright enough to make a surface look slightly shiny. Maybe a little jaundiced.
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June 29, 2007
Man oh man, am I sick of pink brick veneer and beige vinyl siding. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just take a drive through any suburban development dubbed Royal Oak or Chesterfield Glen and you’ll get my drift.
But deep in the heart of North Carolina, Marty and Chris McCurry are offering an alternative that’s best described as retro-Appalachian. Their company, Highland Craftsmen, is reinvigorating the practice of using plain old tree bark as a viable siding option.
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June 28, 2007
The lighting world lost a big one this week: George Kovacs, the prolific designer who introduced the US to halogen torchieres, passed away at age 80. Reading about his 1971 Wobble—a floor lamp with a weighted, bulb-shaped bottom that rocked when knocked and weeble-wobbled itself upright again—reminded me of the Wobble Light, the indestructible plastic work light that Tom Silva says is the best he's ever used.
Silva's right. You could get a delicate halogen bulb in a rickety tripod that goes down every time you kick its cord. Or, you could have this reeling, rocking impact-resistant dome with a metal halide bulb that doesn't blink if you hit it with a hammer. There's even an integrated power outlet on its side. The only thing that tops the flawless functioning is the fact that it's just so charming—just try to knock it over and watch it wump-wump back into place.
Thank you, George Kovacs, for lighting the way.
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June 27, 2007
A point of esoterica on jigsaw blades: every saw either uses the U-shaped "universal" blade or the bayonet-shaped "T-shank" blade. Like all hardware store purchases, you're guaranteed to get it wrong the first time and have to return to the store once you get home and realize it doesn't fit.
Thank you, Starrett, for combining both styles in 16 new patented, unique Unified Shank Blades. By merging the two shank profiles (right) the company has produced the first blade that can be used in any brand jigsaw. It must have been quite a daunting engineering challenge, or someone would have thought of that sooner, right?
"We just punched a hole in it and gave it a taper," said a Starrett rep. "It didn't seem that complicated."
I assume that, after our interview, he then laughed all the way to the bank.
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June 26, 2007
By even mentioning this product, I realize that I’m confessing my shortcomings as a painter. But because I suspect that I’m not alone, I've decided to share my secret weapon.
Believe me, I’ve read—at times, written—all about proper painting etiquette. I’ve talked to pros who say that the only way to fix peeling or cracking paint is by scraping or sanding down to the bone. Sadly, a solid understanding of the importance of prep work and strong can-do spirit were not enough to the overcome the reality of this summer’s situation: a large swath of cedar siding that resembled a snake ready to shed its skin.
Dutifully, I scraped off the worst patches of failed latex and feathered down the rest with my random-orbit sander. But each morning I was greeted by new loose chips and freshly tattered edges. I think the previous painter forgot to use a primer.
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June 25, 2007
Obviously taking a cue from our coverage of Home Depot's Eco-Options program, today's New York Times discussed consumers' appetites for green products, the retailer's efforts to identify those that are truly green, and to distinguish them against those that are merely marketed as such. If you're planning a green remodel, you'll certainly sift through a lot of options. We face a challenge similar to Home Depot's when choosing products to feature here at This Old House, in an environment of conflicting standards and certifications that the article summarizes nicely:
Home Depot executives acknowledge that they are navigating largely
uncharted waters because the government and private-company
certifications that do exist on environmental impact tend to be
narrowly focused.
It took weeks, for instance, to choose among a
multitude of paint toxicity standards that local governments have set
around the country. (Home Depot said it chose the strictest standard,
set in Southern California.)
For now, most Eco Options products
rely on independent certifications like Energy Star, which measure
energy efficiency and is run by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.
Even though Energy Star is a widely accepted barometer for how much
electricity a refrigerator or washing machine uses, it does not measure
other factors, like how much energy was used to make the appliance in
the first place or whether the manufacturer used recycled materials and
encouraged its product to be recycled at the end of its life.
Home Depot is working with Scientific Certification Systems, a
private company based in Emeryville, California, that audits and certifies
company claims, to develop new broad-based standards. They will grade a
product based on its environmental record over its entire life cycle —
including the sustainability of its production process, its efficiency
and longevity and how it can be recycled when it is no longer useful.
Kudos to Home Depot for using its influence to encourage more responsible manufacturing. We're doing our own evaluations to determine which products will make our October Green Issue—before that, though, you'll see a few of our favorites on the Hardware Aisle in the next few weeks.
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June 22, 2007
Remember that raised bed we taught you how to build back in April?
Well, right about now the tomatoes are a-bloomin, the bees are a-buzzin, and the birds are about to dive in for a free snack on the fruits of your labor. But you can scare them off mid-swoop with the inflatable garden snake, a slithering vinyl scarecrow that's guaranteed to ruffle a few feathers.
Just keep it moving, advises the Knoxville-based inventor Neal Caldwell, who devised the inflatable snake in 1981 after realizing a length of old garden hose was scaring birds out of his cherry tree. "You've got to move the thing around," he says, "because once they find out it's fake it don't fool them anymore."
About 4 or 5 days, Neal says, is the longest it should be left still. If you keep the snake inside a 27th-floor office, as I do, even a sessile serpent will protect your garden from varmints.
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June 21, 2007
By now, everyone either owns an LED lamp, has used one, or has lost one. Manufacturers are putting these bright little low-energy lights on key chains, on the nose piece of safety glasses, and even integrating them into drills. But the new Bil-Lite is the only LED light I actually keep on me and use (well, with one exception).
Despite the light emitting diodes' prevalence, discovering the Bil-Lite actually got me excited about them again. It clips to the brim of a baseball cap, pivoting 360 degrees in a ball-and-socket joint to disperse light over your work. The lens magnifies the beam evenly (rather than giving an intense hot spot in the center surrounded by weaker light) and the substantially wide clip can also work as a foot, allowing the lamp to stand alone on a table. I like it's robotic styling, and so do our soldiers in Iraq—I recently saw a Bil-Lite clipped to the side of a soldier's helmet, looking like a mini security camera as part of his full high-tech regalia.
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June 20, 2007
The arches of Ancient Rome, as the saying goes, weren't built in a day—and they had slaves.
But times have changed. With the Flex-C-Arch framing member from Flex-Ability Concepts, you can unpack a prefab arch in the morning, and by nightfall, you'll be marching beneath it like a conquering emperor. The 20-gauge steel framing member bends like a toy snake to fit most widths of door and window studs. Then you screw it into place, do a little fancy drywall work, and a coat of mud later you've got your very own monument to Septemius Severus.
The arch is part of the company's expanding curved-wall empire, which includes the Quick Qurve, a product we featured as one of our favorite building materials from the International Builders' Show.
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Ed. Note: The Hardware Aisle will feature the most unabashedly patriotic products we can find, every day, until our nation celebrates its 231st birthday. This is part 1 of a series we call This Old Glory. 
