Waterproof laminate.  Sound like an oxymoron to you?  Like saying Sharp-Dull (which by the way, I just found out two minutes ago is the Greek root for "oxymoron")?

Yes, for years you had to keep laminate flooring far away from high-moisture areas.  By high-moisture, we're talking about places that can flood.  Places where you might end up with a high water mark.  Places like basements (which can, and do, flood from outside sources) or kids' bathrooms (which can, and do, flood from inside sources...I'll say from personal experience that 5 year-old boys do not pay a whole lot of attention to where their stray water goes).

Oh wait, laminate flooring should be keep away not only from high-moisture areas, but even places with moderate amounts of moisture, such as bathrooms for grown ups.

So, what does the flooring industry have to say about all this?  Typically, they lace their warranties with all kinds of prohibitions against installing laminate flooring in places that could get even an eyedropper's worth of moisture.

Or, they try to better seal up laminate flooring's seams, essentially preventing the moisture from even getting to the water-susceptible fiberboard core in the first place.

I have found two authentically waterproof laminates out there.  One is Mannington ICORE, which patented the "waterproof laminate" idea in 2003.  Another lesser-known product comes from Foresta Flooring.

What these waterproof laminates do is strip away the spongy, water-loving fiberboard core in favor of a water-shedding thermoplastic core.

Image:  Mannington

Boo, hoo.  New housing starts are down.  The world is doomed.

When I mention that I write about home improvement, people often say, "Oh, things must not be going so well for you in the economy."

I scratch my head and think, "Hmm, that's the first I've heard about that."  But I usually say something like, "Things aren't like the boom times of five years ago--which means it's back to business as usual."

In good times or bad, homeowners still need to:  replace windows, refinish or install flooring, improve their kitchens, and so on.  The decay of our living structures does not halt (nor our desire to improve upon them) with changes in the economic climate.

What is different is our attitudes toward home remodeling.  During the high times, the installation of granite countertops in every house, new or remodeled, became almost a knee-jerk reflex by homeowners, designers, and builders.  Every house had to have slab granite, even if it wasn't appropriate to the overall style of the house.

Now, instead of everyone flocking to the one, obvious high-ticket item, you see other paths opening up.  In times of crisis, people get creative.

And why should new housing starts occupy such an important place in our discussion about our economy?  I have long wondered why ripping down an existing house to build an entirely new one, or building a new house on formerly vacant land, should declare to the world:  Yup, economy's doing just fine!

From the green perspective:  what about the twelve Dumpsters worth of broken-up house you just landfilled?  From the perspective of jobs and labor, don't you also employ many people by remodeling a house?  Is it the materials industries (plywood, lumber, drywall, etc.) we really care about when we talk about new housing starts?  After all, while they benefit from remodeling, they benefit much more from new construction.

Even though it's not well-advertised (i.e., it's not a national institution like the new housing starts index), the National Association of Home Builders does track home remodeling, too.  According to their Remodeling Market Index (RMI), the ultimate nadir within the last five years for home remodeling in the U.S. occurred last year (October 2008), with the peak happening sometime toward the end of 2003.

Sound about right to you?  Does to me.  Good news is that the RMI is nudging upward.

There's trouble in River City.  Except in this case, River City is Seattle, WA, and the trouble concerns a local plumber and a start-up find-a-contractor site called HelpHive.com.

What is HelpHive?

My first brush with HelpHive.com was at Seattle Home Show 2.  In the sea of miracle gutter salesmen and instant log cabins was Dave Richards of HelpHive.com.  We spoke for a few minutes, and later I blogged about my disappointment over the years with find-a-contractor sites and tangentially about HelpHive.com.

The Issue

Later, plumbing contractor Evan Conklin posted comments on my blog about his dissatisfaction with HelpHive.com.  Then, HelpHive's own Karim Meghji posted a rejoinder. I will not go into depth--read the comments yourself--but the thrust of Mr. Conklin's argument is he believes that HelpHive is harvesting contractor information and diverting phone calls through HelpHive.com.

Why You Should Care

The best way to find a contractor is always to talk to neighbors and relatives:  word of mouth.  But in this world of diminishing word-of-mouth, we need an online solution.  My own thoughts on the issue are:

HelpHive.com's Side

• Harvesting information, while not a well-loved practice, is all over the Internet.  Anybody who has landed on a DexKnows, InsiderPages, or SuperPages while searching for a local tile installer has seen this.
• Don't the DexKnows-type harvesters eventually result in business for the end companies?
• HelpHive.com is a start-up.  Even though it appears to be a well-funded start-up, why kill a service that could result in sweeping changes in this whole find-a-contractor chaos?

Aggrieved Contractors' Side

• Disclosure.  The phone numbers listed on HelpHive.com do not clearly state--in fact, do not state at all--that the phone number is HelpHive's, not the contractors'.  If I landed on the site, I would think that the number belongs to the contractor.  Even Insider Pages lists the real phone number.
• Will HelpHive.com's SEO eventually trump the contractors' own search engine rankings?  Searching for Joe's Drywall Repair, the first listing is HelpHive's rather than Joe's?
• As my mother--or somebody's mother--might say, "A little sugar goes a long ways."  Nobody likes to be pre-empted.  Even if HelpHive.com finds that this type of phone number listing is the best way to go about things, why not at least notify or get permission from the contractors?

It's more complex than this, and I'm happy to be corrected in the comment section.   But it's the last I'll say on the matter.

Repair your countertop?

It can be done.  It can' t be done.

Well, which is it?  Truth is, there is no rulebook for repairing countertops, and when you pull in other factors--DIY? professional? material type?--it gets even more confusing.

I think that most homeowners--myself included--are longing for an easy solution that allows them to press some kind of color-matching goop into the crack, let dry, and be done with it.  This is mostly not possible.

The worst countertop to repair is laminate--Formica, Wilsonart, etc.  It just doesn't bond well to filler materials.  Peel off the old laminate and re-bond new stuff?  Forget about it!  You'll end up pulling off half of your substrate in the process.

The best countertop to repair is ceramic tile.  A tile installer can chip out the old tile and replace one-for-one with a new tile--and he can do it in his sleep.  It's simple for a pro.  Want to replace it DIY?  It's harder--and you'll want to expect a cracked surrounding tile or two--but possible.

"That's not a tile repair!" you shout at me.  I say, "My point exactly (refer to paragraph 3 of this blog post)."  If you're dead-set on a tile repair, that's possible, too.

Recently, I saw a ceramic tile counter that Tyler Murphy and his crew at Miracle Method Seattle repaired, and it looked great.  They fill in the divots, holes, cracks, whatevers--then refinish the entire counter with the same material they use when refinishing bathtubs and showers.  So, they side-step the whole issue of "Why doesn't this patch material match the rest of my tile?"

Image of Corian Copyright DuPont