SideQuest 15: Pushing Through the DIY Wall, Four Seasons Gardening, & Secret Command Strips
Welcome back to another Sidequest, besties! This is our weekly, unfiltered mystery grab bag episode where we let ourselves off the leash a little bit and answer your burning DIY questions.
Don't forget, you can now submit all your listener questions directly through the form on our new website, howtohandymaam.com!
Let's dive into this week's listener Q&A!
Question 1: Fixing Water-Damaged Wood Cabinets
Sherry asks: "The fronts of my kitchen cabinets on the sink cabinet are worn down from water damage over time as I wash dishes. Is there anything I can put on them to patch them up a bit without replacing them?"
First of all, this is incredibly relatable! If the finish on your wood cabinets has worn down, we have two different recommendations depending on how you want them to look:
If you want to keep them stained wood: You need "Restor-A-Finish" by Howard. It acts like Old English scratch guard, but it contains a polyurethane that actually seals the wood. It comes in a ton of different colors (like mahogany, cherry, walnut, etc.) so you can match your cabinets perfectly. You just wipe it on, and you can do multiple coats to build up the color. It's a miracle product!
If you want to paint them: Use a wood hardener first (like J-B Weld Wood Restore). It acts like a resin that soaks into the pores of the wood and toughens up the structural integrity. Once it hardens, you can safely prime and paint right over it!
Question 2: Why Is My Grout Cracking?
Julie D. asks: "Why is my grout cracking and what can I do about it?"
If your grout is cracking, it is almost always because grout was used in a place where it does not belong!
Houses move, settle, and shift. Anywhere there is a "change of plane" (meaning where two walls meet, where a wall meets a ceiling, or where a wall meets a countertop), you need flexibility.
Grout is rigid and will crush and crack when the house moves. You must use a caulk product in any corners or seams.
Our Pro-Tip: The brand TEC (sold at Menards) makes a line of sanded caulk that perfectly matches the color and texture of their grout! If you use a different brand, you can actually buy a couple of different tubes of sanded caulk, squirt them onto a paper plate, and custom-mix them to perfectly match your existing grout color!
Question 3: Is MusselBound Legit?
Tess M. asks: "Is this legit?" (While showing a video of someone using MusselBound).
Yes! It is completely legit! MusselBound is a tile adhesive mat that acts like a giant piece of double-sided tape.
It is an incredibly beginner-friendly way to install a backsplash without the mess and intimidation of mixing traditional mortar.
Because you don't have to wait for the mortar to cure, you can stick the mat to the wall, stick the tile to the mat, and grout it all in the exact same day!
The Catch: It is expensive! A single roll costs around $40 and covers about 15 square feet. We also ONLY recommend using it on dry wall applications (like a kitchen backsplash)—we do not recommend using it in a shower or wet area.
Crucial Warning: You absolutely cannot stick a wet tile to MusselBound! Stickers and water do not mix. If you use a wet saw to cut your tiles, you have to dry them completely (we use a toaster oven or a heat gun) before sticking them to the wall.
If you have questions of your own, email us at hthm@myhandymaam.com, or go submit a form on the website! We'll see you on Friday!
Episode Transcript:
Here we are. Hello folks. Welcome. Back welcome. To the side, I guess that's sticking. That's what we're doing now. I know I released the side from this week without it at the beginning and I thought about singing it in the solo intro I did and I was like. I can't do. It yeah, you. Should have. You should have. I was just in my office and I was like. This is weird. It works better with all of us. All right, so we're back for one of our short episodes, and we're going to keep it short because we have another short one and a long one to record after this. So we're going to answer some listener questions. Peek behind the curtain. Are you ready? I'm I'm. Ready. OK, Thanks. Sherry F. Hey, Sherry. Hey, Sherry. Hi. Sherry, the fronts of my kitchen cabinets on the sink cabinet are worn down from water damage over time as I wash dishes. Totally relatable. Is there anything I can put on them to patch them up a bit without replacing them? I just mentioned something funny. You know, for 10 points. So it's not relatable. OK, so first I. Have to talk about The Four Seasons Freaking Valley. Sherry, Sherry Baby. Sherry, Sherry Baby. I didn't even know. I thought she was talking about The Four Seasons Landscaping and I was. Like no. Please tell me in your ADHD brain how this connects, no? Freaky Valley. Have you seen just like corks basically perform on stage lately? What? No. He's been dead for like a century. No, he's still alive and he's still performing. How? I don't know. They were the band in the 50s. They were like a boy band of the 50s. And he's like 89 or something. Like. Bad for him but he like walks out like I. Thought you were going to say some shit. Like just. Like put me down, alright. Well, you got a little extra side heap of nonsense with your question. How about our answer for sure? Did you clarify if it was pink or wood? It is wood, yeah. OK. So what I'm thinking is wood hardener, it's AJB product, it's called JB Weld. I think it's the brand and it's basically it looks like a bottle of Modge Podge, Modge Podge, whatever it's called. Podge. Mod Podge. I like mine better. It's a it looks like kind of Milky and you. Just like glue. Yeah, but like a little bit thinner than that. OK. But anyway, you just take a brush that you don't care about. So like a paintbrush that you don't care about and you just like put it on there and let it like soak in. I don't know exactly what it would do to the varnish on your like what kind of finish it has. But basically what it does is it goes into the pores of wood. It just gets like sucked all in. And then it has like this resin effect where it like hardens like an epoxy would. And then it basically just like reinforces the structure of the wood. But then can you stain it? I don't. Because I'm envisioning cats that are just like. Kind of rough. Like worn out over time, but so in order to look good again would need to be stained. Or. I was going to say or Emily's queue to Emily for the wait. What is commercial? From what you read, it made it sound like the structural I. Think it's just worn out? Like the finish is worn down. Oh. Well then, ignore all of what I just said. But that's good for if you're going to paint them, that would work to toughen up the wood and then you paint. Over it like structurally not. Great but Restore Finish by Howard is a miracle product. It basically is like old English scratch guard but it has like a Poly in it so it seals it but. And it comes in a lot of different colors. Like you get the colors. Old English comes in light, medium and dark, but restore finish comes in like. Bog Cherry. Walnut. And you can do multiple layers too, which I can. Build it up but I have a dog who scratches the crap out of doors and it literally makes it. Like obviously it doesn't feel it scratches in, but it's really good at color. Match. Yeah, it looks really good. OK, if you do the one area then it's easy. You literally just wipe it on. So if you want to do all of your cabinets so that they all have the same like nice refreshed luster that you can do all of them. It's like a facelift free of cabinets. Also it's only $10 and it goes along way. Yeah, and it doesn't. If it doesn't work, like if it doesn't do a good enough job, it doesn't prevent you from doing whatever the next fix is. Yeah, it's not like you can't do. Low stakes, low cost, low stakes. OK, Thank you, Sherry. Now Julie, who has given us questions more than once, has another question. What's her name? Julie D. Julie D. Why? I. Know who Julie D is. I know. You do we hear from her. Girl. I'm just making the connection. All right, why is my grout cracking and what can I do about it? And this one is like, oh damn spite and. Water. Obviously this isn't you because you're the. Bad I know I I love and hate this so much if your. Grout. Is cracking 1 unlikely reason is because it was grout that had to be mixed by the installer and it's incorrectly mixed. That's usually not the problem. Usually what the problem is, is that grout has been used someplace it does not belong. So anytime you have a change of plane, so if listeners you don't see what I'm doing for viewers, but basically if you have something that is vertical and then runs into something horizontal, you have the line where the two of those meet. That's called a change of plane. PLANE anywhere there's a change of plane. So where two walls come together, where a wall and a ceiling come together, where a wall and a counter come together, you cannot use grout because houses move and you need a little bit of flexibility. So when they move and like the tile above your countertop, it like they grind and it will basically crush and crack your grout. So anywhere you have a change of plane, you should have a caulk product, not a grout product. And queue to a sponsor that we don't have yet, but we hope we do, which is tech TEC them. I think you can buy them online, but we buy it at Menards. They have a grout and sanded caulk line that go together. So you have the exact same color. So you'll grout everywhere but where there's a change of plane and then you caulk where there's a change of plane and they're exactly the same color and they're exactly the same texture. And it looks beautiful. And also use it to touch up. Like if it's like cracking in the middle of your floor, your floor can crack because there's too much bounce in your subfloor and it wrecks your tile. But. Yeah, and it's beautiful. It blends in. It's easy to do. It's pretty easy to. Clean. Up water cleanup yeah so it's not it's a little bit different to handle than normal caulk so it might take like a little bit to get the hang of it but it's pretty fantastic so if you have. Here's my tip. Oh I have a tip. So I use sanded caulk a lot and first of all the bright white of the tech brand. The grout is not the same color as the. That's. Good to know. Standard clock. It's the only one so far. That I don't use white grout friends. Yeah. Yeah, we're in the white grout hater club anyway. Well, the optic white is the same color and the one that's right after the bright white, like I think it's called like standard white or something like that, but the bright white is not the same color, just AB2W. But if you get one of those, they're like little spatulas for caulking and you put your cockpaid down and then you run the spatula across. It makes the sanded caulk so much easier to apply because it like scrapes the edges and you only get it where you want it. And it's like the perfect thing to do. I do it's I've tried like a million other things, but unless you're like really good at applying a bead of cock perfectly without getting like any like chunks or anything any like any large parts or whatever. Do you know what I'm talking about where you get like a little poof of extra cock, but also what else was going to say? We don't know. You didn't tell us yet. That might be it, Boo. Boo, Boo. That might be it. All right. Thank you so much. Remember. Oh OK, so this is one other tip that I have for. Some I promise we're not diagnosed, but something ain't right. I'm diagnosed with something, but not everything anyway. So if you don't know where your cock came from or your grout came from or you don't know what color it is, or you want to use the tech brand and you don't want to use the brand that you already had. I would get a couple of different options and they are kind of expensive. The tubes are, they're like 8 bucks apiece, which is kind of a lot for cock. But I'll get a couple different options. And you can squirt a little bit on like a plate, like a paper plate or something, and then mix it together and you can get the correct color to match your current grout. That's pretty amazing. It is. It makes this together really well and it looks great. So yeah, that's my other tip. Awesome. All right. Third one. This is from Tess M. Tess M. She said is this legit and what she was showing is a video of someone using muscle bound. Yes, it is ma'am all. Right. Which one do you want to take the muscle bone question, Arley, first you have to explain what muscle. Oh, wait. But I found muscle bound. You did find muscle bound? You're the OG muscle bound Finder. I'm the one who's always like let's try this. All right, you explain what muscle bound is and Arley can talk about it being legit. It is a tile adhesive mat which is basically a giant piece of double sided tape, but it has some slicey schmiency behind it so it works well. We use it only in wall applications that aren't wet. They do have tape. You can. Use the backsplash or accent wall. They have it where you can use it in a shower, but I don't. Don't do it. I mean I just not do it personally feel comfortable doing the muscle bound. If you would like to personally sponsor my shower I will try it, but other than that I'm not playing it in a client I. Allow your pants on butt. Yeah, to their marketing department. But it's really cool. It's a very beginner friendly way to a backsplash because mortar is really intimidating and usually you either have to mix it yourself or get pre mixed, which is kind of expensive. And I mean muscle bonds expensive alright. But it's really. What it is, Arlie? Tell us, is it legit? No, no, I'm just kidding. It is. It is legit it yeah, it's a basically a huge double sided sticker and you put it on either a painted wall or a primed wall. You usually don't put it straight on drywall. You can put it on top of existing tile too. I think it's really great. I mean, like we've tried to get the tiles off before and it it is insane. It takes, it's so hard to get them off. You really have to pull and pry and you usually have to use something else and you can get like some of the muscle bound off the wall with the dial. But then you usually have to like replace the muscle bound because it's so. You can. Yeah, come with it. The best space. We love those spacers. All right, muscle bound. If you hear this, this is a request. Please make them in bulk. I think you can. Oh no, you can buy the little Baggies without the tile mat, but you still only get 5 of each. We can be 10 like 1500 of. Every I know, but I would like to be able to buy a bag of 100 of the red ones, which is what we almost always use. Oh, they also come with three different size spacers and they're different colors, so you don't have to remember. I know. And you don't have to like and you can do a backsplash like in a day if you're an impatient, if you're impatient like. Well, for your boss, you're an. Impatient if. You've tried to do tile with mortar and you're now impatient. If you're an impatient human like us, then you can do a back slash in a day. Yes, because you can put the muscle bound up, put the tile up, and grout it. You don't have to wait for more to. The gear. OK, one expert tip before we wrap up this. What ain't you gonna say? You cannot put. Wet tiles I. Do it on muscle bound. Think about it. Wet things and stickers. They don't go together. Yeah, we learned. So if you use a wet saw to cut your tiles, you can just turn them upside down and put them in your oven for six minutes or use a heat gun. Yes. But just first of all, do not put wet tiles on your muscle. Bone does not work. Second of all, use your oven. We have a toaster oven that specifically for that that we take to customer sites because they don't really like us to put tile in their ovens. But you could put it in your oven. Yeah. All right, that's it. We did it. We did it. Side Quest was good seeing you folks. Thank you, Julie. And Tess and. Sherry. Sherry. I forget after Sherry. Yeah, show me guys. But anyways, sorry for this chaos. Not sorry cuz this is just we're. Never. Sorry. And This is why we did this before our main episode, yes? So Emily, please tell them real quickly how they can find us and how they can help. Spread the word. We have a website how to handyman at dot com that's will help you get to all of our other stuff. But if you want to follow us at how to handyman is where you can follow us on most platforms and the best way to support us is to listen all the way through which you would have if you're hearing this message and like subscribe and leave a five star because if not, you'll make us cry. Love you. Love you. Bye bye.
