Home remodeling ideas – simple ways to transform your home
You’re in the next room and hear it: a short burst of water refilling the tank, even though nobody flushed. It stops. Ten minutes later it happens again. This is often called a phantom flush, and it means water is slowly escaping from the tank into the bowl. Once the level drops far enough, the … Read more
A short hiss right after a flush is normal. It’s the fill valve refilling the tank, and it should stop within a minute or so once the water reaches its shutoff level. The problem starts when the sound doesn’t stop, when it returns a few minutes later with no one near the toilet, or when … Read more
Black or gray-green speckles along the caulk line are usually the first sign of mold in a shower, and they tend to show up where the caulk meets the tub or tile. Many people assume the caulk is ruined and has to be cut out. Often it doesn’t. If the mold is growing on the … Read more
A puddle outside the shower can mean very different things, and the floor won’t tell you which. Water slipping under a worn door sweep is a cheap fix. Water that shows up even when the shower is aimed at the far wall may be coming from a failed pan or a leaking supply line, and … Read more
A rotten egg smell coming out of a shower drain usually means hydrogen sulfide gas is getting into the bathroom. That gas comes from one of two places: bacteria feeding on buildup inside the drain, or sewer gas escaping past a trap that has stopped doing its job. The two causes smell almost the same, … Read more
A puddle on the bathroom floor after a shower doesn’t always mean the door is broken. Water escapes in a handful of ways: under the bottom edge, around the hinge side, through a gap at the curb, or from spray that never touches the glass at all. Each one has a different fix. Swapping a … Read more
Orange streaks in the bowl, usually starting at the waterline or fanning out from the rim jets, look like rust. Most of the time that is exactly what they are. But the stain has to be identified correctly before you pick a cleaner, because the wrong product can set it permanently or, in the worst … Read more
The pink usually appears low on the curtain first: in the folds near the hem, along the bottom edge that brushes the tub, or on the side that hangs against the wall. It looks like a faint rosy haze, sometimes orange-tinted, and it feels slightly slick. You wipe it and it smears. You wash the … Read more
Black spots along a shower’s silicone bead behave in one of two ways. Some wipe away with a sponge and stay gone. Others fade after a good scrub, look clean for a week, and return in the same places. The difference usually comes down to where the mold is growing: on the surface of the … Read more
You scrub the bowl, the water runs clear, and twenty minutes later that same brownish ring is sitting right where it was before. That’s the frustrating part of toilet stains near the waterline or at the bottom of the bowl: they aren’t dirt in the usual sense, so ordinary cleaning products often glide right past … Read more