Materials:

1. Purchased peephole
2. Measuring tape and pencil
3. Power drill
4. 1/8″ bit
5. Spade bit

1. Install the peephole at a height that’s convenient for you but still accessible to kids — 5′ from the ground usually works well. Make a pencil mark at the height in the direct center of your door (measure first to be exact).

2. Put on safety eyewear and then drill the hole for the peephole in two steps. First, drill a pilot hole all the way through the door using a 1/8″ drill bit.

3. To complete the drilling, attach a spade, or “paddle,” bit to an electric drill. Drill only halfway through the door, using the pilot hole to get started. Then shut the door and switch the spade bit to the other side to drill completely through. Make sure the drill is nice and level. Drill only half at a time to avoid having the door splinter.

4. Place the two parts of the peephole mechanism in the hole in the door, making sure that the proper piece is facing out. Thread them together and hand-tighten the connection with one of your arms on each side of the door.

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In this article we will discuss how you can hang wallpaper at your home without the help of a professional.

Tools:

1. paste (use the strongest available recommended on the wallpaper)
2. bucket
3. sharp knife (like a trimming knife)
4. pasting brush
5. dry hanging brush
6. seam roller
7. pasting table (they’re cheaper than you think!)

Planning

As wallpaper will look the best when hung according to the layout of your room, it is important to determine where to start wallpapering before anything else. If you’re going to wallpaper above the fireplace, you must start here. Find the middle of the fireplace and decide whether you want a piece of wallpaper on each side or whether you want this to be the middle of your first piece. If you don’t have a fireplace, or you’re not going to wallpaper it, you should start on the wall with the main window, working away from the window on either side. This will ensure the pattern will be the same either side of the window. Although this might cause an overlap in another area of the room, it will look better around the window. It will also prevent joins showing up more than necessary. As both sides of the wallpapering will have to meet somewhere, make sure it’s in a less conspicuous corner (for example, the corner behind the door). This will give a much better finish than when you start at one end of the window and wallpaper all the way round.

How to get started

Draw a plumbline to ensure the wallpaper will hang straight. You can hang a weight from a piece of string to mark the plumbline. Measure the height of the wall, adding about 100mm. This will help you hang the wallpaper, and after hanging, you can trim the excess paper.

Cut the paper with a sharp knife, for example a trimming knife. Now cut the next piece of wallpaper, making sure the pattern aligns with the pattern on the first piece of wallpaper. Then, after you’ve hung the first piece on the wall, the third piece can be cut, aligning the pattern again with the second piece, etc. This is the best way to prevent any major mistakes in cutting the paper!

Paste the first piece by (on one side) overlapping the edges of the table with the wallpaper. This will prevent paste from getting on your table on this end. Starting at the centre of the paper, work the paste to the overhanging end of the paper. Then move the paper up and hang it slightly over the edge at the other side of the table. Now paste this end of the paper. Carefully fold the pasted end of the paper before moving along and lining up the paper. This will help soak the paste into the paper and prevent any paste from sticking to your carpet! After pasting the other end, fold the end neatly to the already folded part, aligning the edges. Let it soak for a while in order to make the paper easier to work with and it will also ensure a better adhesion to the wall. While this is soaking, you can paste the second piece of wallpaper. Make sure however, that you keep an eye on the soaking times.

To hang your wallpaper, make sure you only unfold the end of your wallpaper that will reach the ceiling. Start hanging it along the plumbline. Make sure you do leave an overhang, so that you can trim along the ceiling later. While you’re hanging the paper, smooth it by using your dry hanging brush. Work towards the edges of the paper. Now you can unfold the bottom end of the paper and press it slightly against the wall, pushing any air bubbles out to the sides. You can now trim the overhang with a trimming knife.

The following pieces can now be lined up to match the pattern. It is best if the paper overruns slightly to the other wall. As the walls hardly ever will join at a straight angle, this will prevent any gaps. You will then have to double-check the next wall by drawing another plumbline. Now continue papering the wall.

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INVADING ARMY: Ants are having a feeding frenzy in your kitchen, and you don’t want to use a toxic brew to defeat them.

THE QUICK FIX: “A 50/50 mix of peppermint oil and water will get rid of ants,” says Amy Devers, co-host of the DIY Network’s “DIY To The Rescue” show. “Fill a spray bottle, and spray wherever you see them coming out of hiding.”

SPEAR FACTOR: A weed-ridden asparagus patch has you about ready to give up on your favorite crop.

THE QUICK FIX: Add salt. “Asparagus is the only vegetable that can withstand salt,” says Penny Griggs, an organic farmer in Vermont. “Spreading salt around your plants will kill the weeds but leave your asparagus unharmed.”

SPILLED JUICE: The battery in your laptop is losing its charge much faster than expected.

THE QUICK FIX: Wireless operations are a little-known drain on laptop batteries. “If you can disable your wireless networking and still get your work done, do it,” says Andy Hooper, owner of Intelligent Systems, an IT security company. “Some wireless cards can eat up half of your laptop’s power.”

FROZEN OUT: Cold weather has stiffened the mechanism of your garage door opener, causing it to lose power.

THE QUICK FIX: Most garage door openers made in the past 15 years have pressure adjustments for both raising and lowering. Check and adjust these settings seasonally to keep things running smoothly.

SCREW LOOSE: You’re trying to replace a woodscrew, but the hole is stripped and the screw won’t grab.

THE QUICK FIX: Insert two short lengths of thin, insulated wire in the hole before adding the screw. They’ll allow the screw to bite.

TRAPPED BELOW: The water in the trap of your basement floor drain dried up-and now your cellar smells vaguely of nasty, nasty things.

THE QUICK FIX: Pour nontoxic plumbing antifreeze down the drain to fill the trap. You can use water in a pinch, but it evaporates faster than antifreeze, so you’ll need to repeat the process more often.

HOT WHEELS: The temperature gauge on your car is headed for the danger zone, but you’ve got no time (or place) to park and cool your jets.

THE QUICK FIX: Turn the heater on ful blast (opening the windows so you don’t fry). The extra volume of the heater core and its hoses, as well as the airflow of the heater fan blowing across the core, may dissipate enough heat to get you home–or to the garage–without a meltdown.

ICE RAGE: Your car doors freeze shut in cold weather.

THE QUICK FIX: “Spray the weatherstripping around the door frames with silicone,” advises Al Toutant, a technician at Heath Auto Service in Greenwood, Maine, where they know a thing or two about cold weather. “It keeps moisture from collecting and freezing your doors shut in the winter, and it keeps it from drying out and cracking in the summer.”

POWER INTERRUPTION: You need to remove your car’s battery, but don’t want to lose the settings on the car’s radio, alarm, GPS and computer.

THE QUICK FIX: A 9-volt battery adapter can plug into your cigarette lighter to keep those chips powered up. Result: No more auto amnesia.

DAMPNESS AT NOON: Your clothes dryer seems to have lost its zip.

THE QUICK FIX: Clear the vent duct by removing the vent pipe and pulling out any accumulated debris from the pipe and duct. It’s a 3-minute fix that can save you a $75 visit from a technician.

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Check out this cool video to learn how you can grow your own bonsai.

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Google?s calculator tries to understand the problem you are attempting to solve without requiring you to use special syntax. However, it may be helpful to know the most direct way to pose a question to get the best results. Listed below are a few suggestions for the most common type of expressions (and a few more esoteric ones).

Most operators come between the two numbers they combine, such as the plus sign in the expression 1+1.

Operator Function Example

+ addition 3+44

- subtraction 13-5

* multiplication 7*8

/ division 12/3

^ exponentiation (raise to a power of) 8^2

% modulo (finds the remainder after division) 8%7

choose X choose Y determines the number of ways of choosing a set of Y elements from a set of X elements 18 choose 4

th root of calculates the nth root of a number 5th root of 32

% of X % of Y computes X percent of Y 20% of 150

Some operators work on only one number and should come before that number. In these cases, it often helps to put the number in parentheses.

Operator Function Example

sqrt square root sqrt(9)

sin, cos, etc. trigonometric functions (numbers are assumed to be radians) sin(pi/3)

tan(45 degrees)

ln logarithm base e ln(17)

log logarithm base 10 log(1,000)

A few operators come after the number.

Operator Function Example

! factorial 5!

Other good things to know

You can force the calculator to try and evaluate an expression by putting an equals sign (=) after it. This only works if the expression is mathematically resolvable. For example, 1-800-555-1234= will return a result, but 1/0= will not.

Parentheses can be used to enclose the parts of your expression that you want evaluated first. For example, (1+2)*3 causes the addition to happen before the multiplication.

The in operator is used to specify what units you want used to express the answer. Put the word in followed by the name of a unit at the end of your expression. This works well for unit conversions such as: 5 kilometers in miles.

You can use hexadecimal, octal and binary numbers. Prefix hexadecimal numbers with 0x, octal numbers with 0o and binary numbers with 0b. For example: 0×7f + 0b10010101.

The calculator understands many different units, as well as many physical and mathematical constants. These can be used in your expression. Many of these constants and units have both long and short names. You can use either name in most cases. For example, km and kilometer both work, as do c and the speed of light.

Feel free to experiment with the calculator as not all of its capabilities are listed here. To get you started, we?ve included a few expressions linked to their results.

1 a.u./c

56*78

1.21 GW / 88 mph

e^(i pi)+1

100 miles in kilometers

sine(30 degrees)

G*(6e24 kg)/(4000 miles)^2

0×7d3 in roman numerals

0b1100101*0b1001

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