Dear Pat: We are building a room addition to our house. A group of friends is going to help frame and raise the walls. What is the best way to raise them, and how do we take care of bowed wall studs? ...

Pocket doors are the ideal solution for a variety of places in the home without room for traditional swinging doors or where they simply don’t make sense. Sliding sleekly into the wall, pocket doors ...

Q: We have a pocket door to the pantry in our kitchen. We plan to install 10-inch-deep wood shelving perpendicular to the pocket door wall. What is the best way to anchor the shelving to a pocket door ...

Voltaire wrote Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, often translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good;" he might well have been talking about residential construction. You run the gamut from the ...

Q: I’m trying to educate myself about new construction because I’m thinking of building a home. I see carpenters nail large sheets of wood onto the wall studs. What’s the purpose of this funny-looking ...

Shear walls are walls specifically designed to resist lateral loads, transferring the load from the wall above to the wall below and, ultimately, out through the foundation. This is a critical role in ...