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Hello! I'm Danny Lipford . I'm really excited about becoming a new contributor for bhg.com and Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I've been in the business of

sand where we want it so that we can begin laying the pavers . The pavers we're using are 12 inches by 12 inches and approximately 2 inches thick. Now, there are so many different kinds of pavers out there, you know, a lot of your personality may play into that, and the size and shape of the different pavers also will reflect the style of the patio that you end up with. Here, we're going with 2 different colors, using the gray for our perimeter around the patio . Then, we're placing the red ones on the inside. Now, it's very important to start off nice and straight when you're starting to put the pavers down. We have the brick wall to use on this side and the wood forms also help us out on either end, and basically, you just keep putting

Now, my focus is on getting ready to install the pavers themselves. Now, Greg is doing a little bit of breaking here to try to start grating out this dirt. We don't necessarily want the patio to be perfectly level. We wanted it to have a slight grade, where when rain hits it, it goes this way and not towards the house. So, we're going to be setting up some form boards on each side so that we can ensure it has a slight grade this way. At the end, we'll put 1 here, just take it down, and I'll put another 1 on the other end, a few strings on top of it to serve as the gauge to make sure the brick pavers turn out just right. There's already a slight slope moving away from the house, so, getting that form boards right, doesn't take

treated 2 by 4 and sweep sand into the crevices between the pavers .

everything's working here. One of the nice advantages of having a folding ironing board like this, you have a time control on it so that when you turn it on, your light comes on. You can plug your iron in and if you have an iron that doesn't have an automatic cutoff, you can position it right in here and when the time expires, it will cut everything off. Also with the light itself, it has a push button there that when you close it, it'll also turn the light off. Now, you may have a couple of different people that do the ironing in your home, 2 different heights. Well, this one adjusts from this size and you can lift it up and it'll raise

that it will last as long as it should by applying a stain or sealer . Because stains and sealers tend to be thinner than paint, the application is in some ways easier. For example, you can use the same pump up sprayer you use for the deck cleaner to apply the sealer . Once you coat the surface, you wanna back brush the sealer to work it into the cracks and crevices. The ability of these products to soak into the pores of the wood is what protects the deck, but also means you have to work fast. If you don't brush out the drips and puddles quickly, the deck can look uneven or splotchy because more sealer will soak into those areas. But, if you work carefully and cover one small area at a time, the results can be

A crucial part of assembling a chandelier is determining the right length to the support chain. The supply wire will be a bit longer. In this case, after we thread on the fixture's trim ring, we'll add the ceiling medallion tube before we connect the whole thing to the electrical bulbs with the Faraday tube. The electrical connections are made next using wire nuts before the medallion and then the trim ring will be pushed up to the ceiling. A lug nut threads on to hold them in place and the chain hook goes on just below there. A perfect complement to a chandelier is a dimmer switch, so we're installing one here while we still have all the power turned off, but be sure that you select a dimmer with enough capacity for the fixture you're installing. The directions on these things, they're pretty clear about how to hook them up, but often the challenge is stuffing

A room looks so much better and one of the reasons, the hardwood floors refinished. Thanks to Cindy Heuer's company who took care of this. This wasn't a very easy hardwood floor

Now I know that you do a lot of refinishing of hardwood floors . What do you recommend to home owners? A semi-gloss or a high gloss or a flat, what's the best?

Yeah, yeah. The old hardwood floors like this especially the pine, they do have a lot of color and everything in it, but is this the natural finish?

That's one of the big advantages of using a solid-surface type of countertop like we used here. But you can have a countertop like this one. It's about 15 feet long without any seams visible at all. The guys did a great job.

Major bathroom model, which usually involves completely gutting the bathroom . All fixtures has been removed and then an upgrade on the overall look of the bathroom like we've done here as well as many times people are looking for a little extra space in order to make the bathroom besides they really want. We were able to get that extra space here by encroaching into an existing area and clinging in area of 4 foot by 12 foot to expand this shower and the closet right beside it. Of course, a successful major bathroom model involves a lot more than just selecting pretty fixtures . The desire to get rid of the old-dated fixtures usually brings on these projects. Creating a layout to maximize the available space is where the challenge lies. In doing that, some relocation or addition of plumbing line is inevitable, which isn't cheap, so planning to minimize it will help you to control the budget. Hiring a professional designer or architect for a major bathroom model is often a good investment because they understand these issues and can create a design that addresses them as well as

than anything else is the change, the look, and style of your kitchen cabinets . After doing a lot of alteration that may require relocating appliances or basically changing the layout of your kitchen, you may need all new kitchen cabinets , but here's a few other alternative to change the look of the cabinets themselves. Now, these home owners chose to replace all of the hardware at a very inexpensive, very do it yourself way to

we're gonna use it to our advantage, to build a nice sturdy workbench . With the workbench , we have a couple of choices, free standing or built-in. Both work well, but we're going with the built-in unit to economize our space and materials. First, we marked our hide all the way across the back wall, and begin figuring out how many supports we'll need. These supports will be made up from short pieces of 2 x 4's and 3-quarter inch plywood cut into triangular gussets. With careful layout, you can get a whole lot of these out 1 sheet. The supports were assembled using wood glue and drywall screws before they go on the wall. On each end, we nailed a 2 x 4 to the sidewall, then we began attaching the gusseted supports to the studs along the back wall. This is where the open stud base really worked to our advantage. A 14-foot 2 x 4 is nailed across the front of the support, tieing everything together and giving us a sturdy base with the 3-quarter inch plywood top that we nailed on it. Okay. Now, I have a good sturdy workbench . And you may have noticed we've only made this 24 inches wide, so that it wouldn't be so wide that you couldn't reach any of the pegboard or shelf we're about to build. Another thing we did with the plywood is we allowed it to overhang 2-1/2 inches. This will make it a lot easier to clamp anything that we may need to clamp out on the edge of the workbench itself. And what Greg is doing now is bringing us in a 1 x 4 that we'll nail to the studs on the back and along on the sides almost like a, kind of a kitchen back splash. The reason we're doing it here, so that nothing rolls off behind the workbench itself.