Anyone have any experience painting ceramic tile? Someone told me that would be a quick and easy way to get rid of the pink and red wall tile in the new house's master bath.

I must admit that I'm skeptical, but if it looks awful, I guess I was going to tear it out anyway, so I'm not out much.

Wondering if/how bad a water in the basement problem I have.

Some history: 5 year old house, walkout basement with no previous water issues. This spring they've been doing a bunch of sewer work in our neighbourhood but afaik that's completely unrelated to anything. Also this spring we noticed one of our outdoor faucets has somewhat lower pressure than the other 3. Not super low, but noticeably worse. I checked the valve is and it's fully open and don't see/feel any water there. Pictures of the connection:


In the second picture you can see some staining...we had some ants in the spring and I sprayed around the foundation. That's the only spot where it stained which I thought was odd but didn't think too much more about it.

On to the issue. We have a table top ping pong table we'd been storing in the guest room which is on the other side of that hose. It's been in there since end of May-ish. We took it out to set it up and noticed some water on it. Pics:

How it was stored


Picture of the water damage (not super obvious in the picture but it's noticeably raised in the circled part.) There were drops of water on it on the two halves on the sides that were facing each other, other half of table has similar damage in the same spot.

The carpet directly beneath the table felt slightly damp and smells mildewy. I checked around the baseboards, under that book shelf, the bed legs, etc. and can't find any other water. There's a small bathroom on the other side of the wall the bookshelf is on but again I see no water in there or around the toilet.

Basically I just cannot figure out how the water got there. That room doesn't always get much air circulation (my kids have a tendency to close the door whenever they're down there and sometimes it doesn't get reopened for a couple days) but again I don't see any water/stains anywhere else in the room.

So far I've dried the carpet, brought in a dehumidifier and aired the room out a bit the last couple days. Should I call in a plumber/professional? Is there something else I can do to figure out if there's a problem/how big it is? Any advice much appreciated!

Garick: There is nothing you can paint tile with that will last or look good.


Steve: Sounds and looks to me like that hose bibb is leaking. That's a frost-free bibb which shuts off the water 6-8 inches back into the wall, so it can be leaking only when it's on, but in a place you can't see. The crack in the caulk makes me think somebody whacked it with something recently and that's when the problem started.

I think you're going to need a plumber, and then you're going to need a drywaller to fix the holes the plumber is going to make.

Drywaller? I've been fixing the little holes myself like a sucker.

Are battery-powered edgers/weed eaters worth it? I’ve got a small-ish yard with a privacy fence in the back. Don’t really want to go to the trouble of a gas one (I think) and definitely don’t want a corded electric one. Just wanting to make sure I’m not blowing money.

I got a 20V Black and Decker rechargeable one for $60 on sale at WalMart this summer and it works fine and the battery lasts long enough for my smallish yard.

I had a battery powered weed eater for a while but it just became too much of a hassle to weed eat and then do the edging with a separate corded edger.

Spending the $$$ on a powerful gas Echo weed eater that can also edge with no problems saves me probably an hour of work.

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-string-trimmers/ I got the echo one on the bottom.

Wasn't confident that the Ego one can weed eat an entire yard + do 500 linear feet of edging on one charge so I went with the gas one.

I have a corded weed eater and I don't mind it at all. I'd certainly rather use it than a gas-powered one.

Those holes ain't gonna be little.



I have cheapo Ryobi cordless string and hedge trimmers. They're fine for the half-assed effort I put into my small yard.

Thanks. That's what I figured. The idea sounded pretty sketchy, but I thought maybe it was just a new technique given new paint formulae.

You might want to look into the TESA adhesive nails.

Thanks for the help/advice everyone. One more question (for the moment ).

I need to stain/waterproof the privacy fence in the backyard. A cursory YouTube search says that I can use a basic garden sprayer to do the job, with something like ReadySeal or such. Is that the case? Is there an easier way that doesn’t involve a lot of $$$?

Thanks again, everyone.

i've had that EGO trimmer and the corresponding blower for 3 years not and absolutely love it. I have a 1/4 acre standard suburban lot with only 1 side of fence (neighbor) and the other 2 sides wooded, and I dont even come close to running out the battery. The only time i run out is in the fall when i blow leaves. I have the 56V, 2.0 Ah battery. I think there is a 4.0 now with even better life. cant recommend one of these enough if you only have ~15 minutes or so of trimming/edging to do each time.

I'm sure it will work and be quicker than a brush, but it might be pretty streaky and blotchy. It's hard to spray stain even with professional equipment, and you're really going to struggle to get uniform coverage with a $20 pump sprayer.

But hey, it's just a fence. Even if it looks horrible it will weather out in a year or two.

I suspect this might be one of those jobs where once you've mastered the art you can probably do it well with almost any tool. On the other hand, it doesn't matter how good the tool is until you've mastered the art.

spraying the fence and then backrolling for complete coverage is still easier than brush only.
the horizontal surfaces are the ones that take the most punishment and will discolor quickly. vertical surfaces like a fence will keep their color longer (unless you have improperly directed sprinklers).

I found a few winged termites in my basement. I called an exterminator to come for a free estimate. He quickly walked through my house and said I didnt have a problem

I'm thinking of calling another place?

Thanks for the replies zikzak, will try to get a plumber in asap. Do I take it from the not going to be little holes comment that I shouldn't expect this to be cheap?

If the problem is what I think it is, it shouldn't be too bad. You'd be looking at maybe a half day for a plumber and another few hours for a drywaller, spread out over a couple days.

Judging from the pictures that hose bibb looks like it is above the ground floor. I am a plumber and if I was doing the job I would need to open about a 1 foot by 1 foot hole in the wall on the inside. You cant just unspin the hose bibb out from the outside because if it is plumbed directly into copper pipe it could break that pipe. Frost free hose bibbs have a tendency to split when a hose is left on them in the winter time.

So the hole inside is just to be able to back up the hose bibb and maybe to apply teflon tape and pipe dope on whatever the hose bibb is threaded onto. Good luck.

My toilet has started running for a few seconds every 5 minutes or so. I live in an apartment so maintenance will take care of it but it will probably be later in the week before they can get to it.

I don't know anything about this stuff so I'm just curious if there is any chance this problem could result in an overflow while I'm at work over the next few days?

I shut off water to the toilet (well at least closed the valve) before I left for the day today to be safe but the toilet kept running lol. So I guess I will need them to address that too

Any super simple tricks I could try to do to resolve the issue? Only suggestions from google were to replace the flapper which is beyond my skill set

(apologies in advance for the noob question)

I had no idea what a flapper even was before I had the issue you describe, and it took me $5 and 5 minutes to replace my flapper, and I doubt it's beyond anyone's skill set.

If you have an old-fashioned float-ball on an arm, you can fix this problem in five seconds by just bending the arm so the ball sits lower.