Tricks Improve Task of Home Improvement

There’s a trick to most home-improvement chores. Here are a few:

* Hauling long lumber in a pickup truck: Cut a 2-by-6 brace about one-eighth of an inch longer than the inside width of the truck bed. Wedge it crosswise under the upper lip of the bed about a foot behind the cab. Then leave the tailgate up and slide the long boards into the bed and under the brace. The brace will hold them down while they rest on the tailgate. Be sure to tack a bright-red or bright-orange flag onto the trailing end of the lumber to alert other drivers.

* Scraping out old grout: You don’t need a specialized grout saw to remove grout from between wall tiles. All you need is a 2-inch finishing nail and a short length of wood dowel. Bore a small pilot hole about an inch from the end of the dowel, then use a hammer to drive the nail through the hole.

Hold the dowel up to the wall and place the nail point in a joint between the tiles. Then use short downward strokes to carefully scratch out the old grout. If the nail point becomes dull, sharpen it with a metal file.

* Smoothing out rough-cut tiles: Manual score-and-snap tile cutters make quick work of trimming glazed ceramic tile, but the fresh-cut edge they leave typically is rough and uneven. That isn’t a problem if the tile edge will be hidden by baseboard molding or wall tile. But you will want to smooth the rough edge if it goes up against a tub or some other place where it will be exposed.

Hold the tile on edge against a concrete block and rub it back and forth three or four times. Check the smoothness of the edge and, if necessary, repeat. Don’t have a concrete block? Try rubbing the tile against a concrete surface.