Jay Somerset

Choosing paint used to come down to a single decision: oil or water. Then the minor details: eggshell, matte, glossy–oh, the drama. But painting, as with DIY in general, has become more complex. Now we want paint with few...

Like most things in life, it came down to money for Anton and Selda Panshishin: “We couldn't afford the mortgage payments on our own, so we built an apartment within our house and rented it out,” says Selda. “We lived in the...

A few years ago, I helped my brother-in-law build his parents' new home in Huntsville, Ont. We left the heavy construction to the contracting crew, but before the drywall was installed, we ran speaker wire from a hub in the living...

For 20 years, interior designer Candice Olson has been offering Canadians her well-seasoned design expertise for all areas of the home, but her specialty is the dark, cave-like basement-"the most complicated room," as she puts it....

To the naked eye, the front lawn of Joe and Christina Kovalic's house looks like any other suburban sea of green grass, but a few feet below the sod and soil lay a concrete rainwater system and treatment tank. The tank, as the...

Christina Kovalik wrote a tearful seven-page letter to reno guru Mike Holmes, in 2005. Two years previous, Christina and her husband, Joe, hired a family friend to fix up their small bungalow in Toronto. The $200,000 job went off...

It looks like a gigantic piece of art,” remarked my Uncle Robert as we drove past the large wind turbine in Toronto. He's right. Like a piece of art, the turbine is one of a kind–the first large-scale wind turbine in an urban...

How's this for a sales pitch: join our club and save up to 70 per cent off regular retail prices on everything from home electronics to windows and doors, plumbing fixtures, furniture and appliances. Join today and start reaping...

Clockwise, from top-left: Shur-Line Pump & Paint Edging Kit: A pump affixes to the top of the paint can, allowing you to extract the right amount of paint every time without waste. The system fits a 1-gal. can and works well...

Every year there's a new type of hammer for sale, promising to be the ultimate nail driver. It seems to me hammers are similar to golf clubs; choosing one depends on the situation at hand and, like golf, how you swing the club is...