New Feature- Ask Ed.
Many of you guys know Ed from our many GMg Man vs Food Challenges. or you might know Ed from his work each weekend cleaning up sections of the City as part of the One Hour at a Time gang with Donna Ardizzoni and Co. Maybe you saw him in our videos volunteering his time to help clear I4C2.
In any case Ed has been in the home repair and construction business for ever and as a FOB (friend of the Blog) I asked him to do a weekly segment where you the GMg reader could write in your home repair questions in the comment section and at the end of the week I would ask Ed the questions and he would answer them in a weekly video on these pages.
Watch the video for more info-
Ed offers honest and fair handyman services.
you can contact him directly for Home repair work at 978-479-6401
or his email housedoctors@verizon.net
Feel free to ask Ed a Home repair Question and we will answer it in a video segment
Good Morning Gloucester 
Ed!
Pleased to have met you at the parade and what a great idea! I will have many questions for you as we are constantly working on projects with our 1929 home.
What should you do with a junction box in the ceiling that you no longer use (in this case for a fire alarm that we no longer hard-wire). Should you get a junction box cover, and then patch, seal, and paint, effectively removing it from sight, but leaving those lovely little mysteries for future owners to “discover”? Should you have it removed by an electrician to avoid potential problems (if this is even possible)? Should you just tape a superman poster up over it and pretend the ugly little problem never reared it’s tiny head?
—NOT an electrician
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Ed is the best and looking forward to this series… He fixes and also cleans up and finishes on time.. Thanks Ed
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Hi Beth,
It was a pleasure meeting you as well. You should never just ‘hide’ a live wire even in a covered junction box. Always go with the Superman poster for protection. Seriously, if you can, move the detector so that it can still be in use is one option but if you can not reasonably do this find the power source and disconnect making sure that your not affecting any other detectors. Once there is no power to the box your can patch and paint. Hope this helps, Ed
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We have an old house that hasn’t seen much love from the previous owners. It’s a pier and beam foundation with a main beam down the center of the house. Over that should be the main load bearing wall, however, the previous owners moved that wall 4′ to one side. We know that the structure needs to be restored but we want to keep the area as open as possible. We were wondering if we should put a beam in the ceiling to carry the load to some supporting pillars or if we should just put the wall back
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Not all walls are load bearing. I always have an engineer go over any plans to remove a wall on our remodels and would suggest that you speak to one. If you need a name just drop me an email, the piece of mind will be worth the small expense.
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