Chauncey grew up on a farm in rural northern California. At 18 he ran away and saw the world with a backpack and a credit card, discovering that the true value of any point or mile is the experience ...

Christin Perry is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous outlets, including WeddingWire, The Knot, Parents and Verywell Family. When she's not working, Christin enjoys reading, ...

INDIANAPOLIS — If your deck feels a little bouncy underfoot, it might not be the top boards at all — it could be the joists underneath that are starting to rot. I ran into that exact problem on my ...

Many years ago I wrote a blog post detailing one of the most common deck defects that I find: improper joist hanger nails. The issue detailed in that blog post was the use of 1-½" nails in places ...

Q: We lived in our home for 22 years and recently noticed a hump in a floor between the kitchen and the living room. The home has a basement where we can see the floors, and I cannot see anything like ...

Building codes governing framed floors include an allowance for sagging, which sounds bad. But the allowable limit is 1/360 of the span, which isn’t much. Spread over a 45-foot-long joist — if you ...

Q Am I right that when sections of plaster break away from the lath, an accepted repair technique is to roughly fill in those gaps with drywall and then drywall over the whole wall or ceiling? — M.H., ...