Thomas Martinez

There’s a truck load of concrete mix sitting in the driveway and a heap of bent looking steel in the front yard. You look at … Read more

Your wrist is at an angle of sixty degrees, not ninety, and you’re using a breaker bar as if you were delivering forty pound feet … Read more

The general rules around tenons are pretty straight forward. For example, most woodworkers follow this rule: the tenon should be roughly one third as thick … Read more

Everyone assumes a 6×6 post is hunk of lumber you toss in some concrete and move on with your life. That’s a mistake, and a … Read more

The problem with most estimates for pipe welding projects is they is based off arc time. If it takes a welder forty minutes to strike … Read more

It’s a two-by-four, just another piece of lumber on hardware store rack… Until you realize that it is holding up your roof system, bracing walls … Read more

Leave the math to stringer angle calculator, but knowing why it matters will help avoid an expensive mistake. Most do-it-yourselfers begin by determining overall height … Read more

This happens until you build concrete steps, stand on them, and find out that each one vary by a fraction of an inch. Sure it’s … Read more

The roof is flat. No, you don’t call it that because the surface are actualy horizontal, you call it that because that’s where you stand. … Read more

Okay, maybe that’s what you thought: Snow load simply measures the height of the pile of snow sitting atop your roof. Nope; thats not it … Read more

Garage doors are heavy so you need to plan how to open your wall. Why? If you remove studs to have a bigger door (for … Read more

A bad deck feels bad before it’s seen. When you walk across the floor, you’ll notice it bouncing. That bounce is like a warning light … Read more

All spans aren’t created equal: If you assume each is alike, your ceiling sags. Nailing in two-by-sixes might seem like a job, but wood isn’t … Read more

Before you take your first cut, you have to do some careful math to frame a gable roof. That angle will be the difference between … Read more