The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 111

8 Sunday, October 9, 1 994 ZONE 5 8.F. Sunday Examiner Chronicle i i CAREY BROTHERS ON THE HOUSE 1 its temperature for an unusually long period of time. A cool safe and a warm floor can mean condensation inside the concrete, creating hundreds of thousands of microscopic mildew motels. An all-steel safe with a cloth or painted liner can be a similar problem, the steel housing being the condensing material. A burglar might not be able to get into that safe, but mildew can and will.

if ii dew will die. You can still store valuables in the safe even if you cannot eliminate the smell. However, you will not be able to use it to store items that can't be easily sterilized. You may not like the fragrance it is somewhat hospital-like but the U.S. government makes a perfume product called neutrolium alpha which is used by the forest service to mask terrible smells in the wild.

A six-ounce bottle of the concentrate can be purchased for about $10 from the Pocatello Supply Depot, Pocatello, Idaho. Reader questions for James and Morris Carey can be mailed to "On the House," AP Newsfeatures, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N. Y. 10020. Letters may be used in the future columns, but cannot be answered individually.

Or tune in to the Carey brothers' weekly "On the House" show on KNBR radio 68, Saturday, 7 to 9 a.m. Set blade of saw to thickness of flooring. Make two saw Remove center cuts the length of strip with a damaged floor chisel. piarm. 0 I IS Pry leftover pieces to the center and remove.

Cut replacement board to fit. Remove bottom part of groove so that the new board can drop into place over tongue of adjoining board. Drill pilot holes for finshing nails slightly smaller than nail, and nail the replacement board In place. Stain and finish to blend with other floor boards. out with it), vacuum the area to ensure that it is clean and ready to accept new planks, and finally use finish nails to hold new boards in place.

Sanding, staining, if desired, and paint or wax complete the job. Complete sanding, refinlshing When patching a hardwood floor it is wise to commit to a complete floor sanding and refinishing. Matching a patch to the existing floor is almost impossible. Tongue-and-groove hardwood flooring can be a bit more complicated to repair than standard square-edged material. But, if you know how, it can be easily accomplished.

Getting the bad pieces out is the first thing. First, adjust the depth of your circular saw blade to the thickness of the hardwood flooring usually about three-fourths of an inch. Then, make two rip cuts along the length of one of the planks to be removed. The two rips should be about half an inch apart, near the center of the plank and should travel from one end of the plank to the other. With the rip cuts made, use a chisel to remove the half-inch strip from the center of the damaged plank.

It is important to realize that those portions of the plank that have either a tongue or a groove cannot be removed unless they can be moved away from the connecting joint directly toward center. This is why the center piece of the plank must be removed first. With the center of the first piece out, remove the remaining tongue-and-groove pieces and then any others that must be removed. Replacing tongue-and-groove flooring is even easier than taking it out. All you do to get the last piece to fit snugly into place is to remove the bottom lip of the groove side of the material.

A table saw is best for this task. Placing the last board at an angle, slip the new tongue into the old groove and use a hammer and a block of wood to tap the altered groove edge down and into place. The last piece cannot be blind- Poisoning the mildew The only way to get rid of the mildew smell in the safe is to kill the mildew. It can be eliminated by poisoning it with common household chlorine bleach. However, if the mildew is imbedded in the concrete inner layer of the safe walls, then heat is the answer.

If you can get the temperature of the safe up to about a hundred and thirty degrees for an hour or so, all the mil HARNEY from 7 High-tech approach to home financing cut his monthly nonhousing debt to just $206 down from $235 and come up with $1,300 for closing, he's got the house. The program doesn't solve all of Bass' financial problems for him, nor does it dispense money. But in the words of Fannie Mae's Gould, "it shows you how far along on the path" (to closing the deal) you are and offers guidance on where to slice debt and how much more you need to save. "It gives people hope, it opens their eyes that hey, yes, this is possible, I can do it," said Ed Flanagan of MANNA, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit housing de Amtrak station EXAMINER STAFF REPORT Emeryville's new $7 million Amtrak station, the first new train station to be built in California in more than 60 years, has won an architectural prize a 1994 Brunei Commendation Award for transportation related projects. Designed by San Francisco's Heller Leake architectural firm.

-i i mis I How to make hardwood floor look like new IKE DISCOVERING a hidden treasure is how -some people describe the feeling of pulling up I old carpet and finding a hidden layer of hardwood flooring. Why is it that we frequently install carpeting over an existing hardwood floor? The reasons are many. For one thing tastes change. Also, some of us feel that a hardwood floor is difficult to keep clean. Others feel that hardwood is too cold and too sterile-looking.

Stains and dulled finishes are easier hidden under carpet and pad. Fact is, hardwood is almost as easy to keep clean as linoleum. Yes, the finish does wear down and pets and potted plants can cause permanent black stains to appear. But there isn't a finish flooring made that will last as long as hardwood. Long after linoleum or carpet is replaced and long after tile and grout have cracked and faded, hardwood can be made to look brand new again.

Usually, black stains cannot be removed from, hardwood flooring. Some believe that when this happens there is no recourse but to cover it with some other kind of flooring. Not so! Most hardwood flooring is square edged and easy to replace. A hammer and a chisel do the job in short order. Chisel out the pieces that have black stains (the nails that hold the plank down usually come ASSOCIATED PRESS from one place to another, but rather looks for warm, damp places to reside and multiply.

The dampness to which we refer occurs most often as the result of everyday condensation of moisture, not water leaks. Usually, condensation occurs where air temperatures differ, such as between the inside and the outside of the house, above the floor and below it, inside and outside the shower, etc. The key to preventing a musty smell is to keep things dry. Really dry. Good air circulation and ventilation make the difference.

In the case of your safe we envision a similar situation. Fireproof safes are sometimes made by filling inside and outside layers of metal with a solid concrete center. Once heated or cooled, concrete can hold nailed and therefore must be top-nailed. Putty, sand, stain and varnish or wax to complete the job. Could you please take up the topic of musty smells.

I purchased a home safe some years ago that sat for a few years on the floor of a closet which had been built without a moisture barrier. Later I moved it to another inner closet, but the interior of the safe smells musty, and so does everything I put into it. That means silver wrappings, jewelry cases, etc. How can I remove the smell from the inside of the safe and its contents? Marjorie San Francisco. Musty is a word usually used to describe the odor of mildew.

Mildew does not travel randomly The first place to look for voor oream mouise is mere, veloper. Fannie Mae expects the Desktop software along with donated personal computers to produce a big surge in affordable, first-time home purchase transactions, especially in urban neighborhoods. The program is tied into Fannie Mae's new high-tech, "automated underwriting" initiatives scheduled for unveiling Oct. 10. Borrowers who are helped to qualify via Desktop may be able to apply for and close their loans within three to five days via Fannie Mae's forthcoming automated underwriting system.

The only Desktop participant in the Bay Area is the city of Oakland's Office of Housing Neighborhood Development For information, call (510) 238-3056. For information on other participants, call 1-800-7FANNIE. wins award the station is the only new one in the country to receive a commendation from the Foundation for Railway and Transportation Excellence of Philadelphia and the Watford Conference of European Railway Designers in Paris. Wareham Development, the city of Emeryville, Amtrak and the Heller Leake firm collaborated in construction of the station. Illf.liip v.

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