My favorite power tool isn't my Delta table saw nor my router table. It's my central vacuum. In terms of sheer usefulness, it's done more work on the house and saved me more time than any tool in the shop. Before someone comments that a vacuum is a household appliance, not a power tool, check out my router table. That hose isn't attached to a commercial dust collection ...

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I recently posted about whether to repair or replace plaster walls in older homes when they start to crack and show their age. I argued that while repairing cracks is possible, if arduous, it's often easier over the long run to replace the plaster with drywall. Reader Andy Fisk rightly pointed out that "easier" isn't something that old house owners embrace, or even comprehend. (If you doubt me on this, check out this post ...

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In my previous two articles I talked about my experience with the X10 home automation protocol. After having been burned by X10, one might rightly assume that I would have to be a glutton for abuse to move on to an even more expensive and less time-tested protocol like Insteon. But that's in fact what I did. X10 is a very old protocol. It was developed in 1975, ...

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