I have a Craftsman GDO that suddently developed the following problem. When closing the door with a remote the door will only travel a few inches and then stop (as if it struck an object) and reverse direction. I have to repeatedly press and repress the remote to coax the door all the way closed. When I shut the door with the wired button it will close all the way only if I keep the button depressed until closed. I have NO problem opening the door. I have adjusted the tracking force and distance switches and unplugged and replugged the unit to no avail. Thanks for your help. Ron Licata Weathersfield, CT

Kitchendetective, the pie rings are in this thread by Shirl36, including the way Grainlady uses them. Do it on a Silpat, and you don't even need the extra wide plastic wrap to make it pie crust heaven. :) Which is a good thing. I too use Stretch-Tite, and always hate that the box wears out before the wrap is done and ends up living on the counter so it won't be a mess in the drawer. Thanks to Nancedar, I too got the plastic cutter box. I'm still using up my fairly new box, so it might be a year before I get there, but with the silpat trick, I'm thinking other uses, like pounding meat for roulades, might be in my future...

Mike, I'm in SoCal and the IKEA-referred contractor who assembled my kitchen did a fantastic job. My own contractor didn't want to touch it as he was not familiar with it. Could I have DIYed it? I honestly don't think so. If I had, it would have taken a long time, lots of frustration and sore knees from bending and squatting. I got all the pullouts and other innards as well, so it would have taken even longer. So yes, I COULD have DIYed but I'm sure happy that I didn't. If you have the budget, have it done and over with. My days of putting RTA furniture together are gone! Your mileage may vary! This time with my PAX closet, I am letting my current contractor do it as he is familiar and comfortable with it, so I decided to pay him instead of the referred installer. And, no, I am not working overtime to pay for it. An L-shaped walk in closet with mirrored doors and all the nice organizational innards cost me $1200, and any other similar closet system would have been $8-10k. We built the closet to fit the PAX so that it will look custom when done.

The metal strips are embedded in the underside crosswise to the parquet strips to hold the tile pieces together because these strips are not glued to one another. Presumably any cut edges will be hidden by edge molding so a jigsaw is ok, even if the cut is rougher. When I installed my oak parquet the same way as you are, I used a radial arm saw for most of my cuts: I simply marked where my cuts would be, and then pulled out and snipped off the part of any metal strip that would be in the way of the radial arm saw blade. You will have to use a jig saw for any complex cuts, but bear in mind that the metal strips can get dislodged by too much vibration, so it's not a bad idea to put masking tape on temporarily to hold everything together. When you have applied the adhesive, set a tile down as close as you can to the adjacent ones so that, when you slide it into position, you don't have adhesive being forced up by the sliding action and showing on the top surface. Keep some paper towels and solvent handy, because you will occasionally have some smear to cleanup. Use the solvent sparingly if you have prefinished parquet. Like any tile job, doing the layout, and then getting the first tile row completely straight is the critical part.