The latest Mets free agency and trade buzz during the MLB offseason.
January 2025
Mets free agency and trade buzz: New York reportedly in talks with Padres for Dylan Cease
The latest Mets free agency and trade buzz during the MLB offseason.
NBA announces All-Star reserves, with Spurs sensation Victor Wembanyama making team for 1st time
The reserves will join the starters who were announced last week at the All-Star Game in the Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 16.
NBA announces All-Star reserves, with Spurs sensation Victor Wembanyama making team for 1st time
The reserves will join the starters who were announced last week at the All-Star Game in the Chase Center in San Francisco on Feb. 16.
NBA announces All-Star reserves with Wemby making team for 1st time
The second-year superstar has earned the first of what is expected to be a long line of All-Star honors. Here’s a look at all the reserves.
‘Creating havoc everywhere’ — House-NCAA settlement causing crunch for Olympic sports as roster limits come into focus
The new roster limits are eliminating thousands of Division I roster spots — mostly for football and Olympic sports. Here’s why, and what’s next.
Bills RB James Cook not interested in blaming officials after AFC championship loss to Chiefs
The Chiefs have two wins this postseason and both have had a controversial call.
Common Bathroom Repairs That Seem Difficult but Are Actually Really Easy
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Home improvement projects large and small can make us happier, our homes more comfortable and livable, and our property more valuable. But there’s a reason many people hesitate to take on some of these projects: They seem really complicated, difficult, and even dangerous. If you’ve never done any DIY home improvement projects, it’s easy to imagine that you’ll quickly get in over your head and make matters worse.
All of this is exacerbated in the bathroom, which is vital to our everyday health and hygiene. There are plenty of bathroom repairs best left to the professionals—but even if you’re totally inexperienced and wouldn’t know a Phillips-head screwdriver from a flathead, there are some basic bathroom repairs that seem a lot more difficult than they actually are. With a minimum number of basic tools and some YouTube videos, you can tackle all the things on this list.
Change a faucet
If you’re just looking to replace a faucet and there’s no leak or other problem to repair, you can most likely accomplish the task with just a single adjustable wrench. (A basin wrench, designed specifically for these tight spaces, makes the job even easier but isn’t absolutely necessary.) You can see what’s involved in this video—just follow the instructions that come with the new faucet and you should be golden. Not every faucet will be this easy, but the vast majority of simple kitchen and bath faucets will be. The hardest part is squeezing yourself into the tight space under the sink to do the work.
Number of tools needed: 1 (adjustable wrench)
Regrout
If your shower grout is beyond a simple cleaning—caked in mold and other stains that won’t come out, cracking, or falling out—you might assume replacing it is going to require finding an expert. But this is an easy—if labor-intensive—job that anyone can do. All you need is a grout saw (you can also buy a grout saw blade for multi-tools, if you have one—just make sure you buy the right size), a grout float, a sponge, and a bucket (and, of course, grout). The process, as shown here, is pretty straightforward, especially if you use a pre-mixed grout. Just be sure to follow directions in terms of wiping off the excess grout before it sets into a glaze that will make your tiles look dull.
Number of tools needed: 2 (grout saw, float)
Recaulk
Just like grout, changing out the caulk in your bathroom or kitchen might seem like a challenge, but it’s actually really easy. There are basically two steps, which you can see in this video:
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Remove the existing nasty, gross caulk that needs to go. Use a utility knife to scrape it out of the corners. You can use a caulk removing product to soften it up, which might make removal cleaner and easier, but it’s not a requirement.
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Caulk. Clean up and load your caulk gun with an appropriate bathroom caulk and apply a line of caulk to the gaps. Smooth with your finger and let it cure—done! For a better job, taping the joints with painter’s tape will give you nice, sharp lines.
Number of tools needed: 2 (utility knife, caulking gun)
Swap out the shower head
If your shower head is leaking or corroded, you don’t need a plumber. Replacing it will require two tools and about five minutes. Just disconnect the existing shower head using an adjustable wrench (this might take some elbow grease, and a lubricant like WD-40 can help loosen a corroded nut), clean the threads at the end of the pipe to get rid of any old Teflon tape, apply new Teflon tape to the threads, and attach the new shower head. That’s it! Tighten it up, test the water to make sure it doesn’t leak, and enjoy your shiny new shower head (but keep it clean going forward).
Number of tools needed: 2 (adjustable wrench, Teflon tape)
Replace laminate flooring
If you have laminate flooring in the bathroom and one of the planks has suffered water damage or some other problem, replacing it isn’t difficult as long as you have a spare piece of that flooring left over. If you don’t, you can try to match it, but be warned that different batches of flooring can sometimes have subtle differences in color and finish that aren’t unnoticeable in the store but show up pretty clearly when the planks are side-by-side under the same lighting.
If you have a spare plank or two, you can pretty easily pry up the damaged plank (you can make this easier by cutting down the middle of the plank with a circular saw—just be sure to set the blade depth properly so you don’t cut into the underlayment or the subfloor). Cut your new plank to size, then use a utility knife to slice off the “tongue” part of the plank (see it done here). This will allow you to just drop the replacement plank into place, but since you removed the tongue, you’ll need to use some glue to adhere the plank once it’s in. Weigh it down for a day, and you should be good to go.
Number of tools needed: 5 (utility knife, rubber mallet, prybar, circular or table saw, laminate floor glue)
Fix the toilet
Finally, there’s the toilet. People’s apprehension about working with a toilet is understandable, but it’s actually a really simple thing. If your toilet is leaking from the bottom, running constantly, or has a loose handle, these are all things you can handle with minimal tools or experience:
Leaking: If your toilet is leaking at the bottom, you need to fix it right away or you risk water damage and mold. The culprit is probably an old wax ring—but removing a toilet and replacing the wax ring is easy:
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Turn off the water supply and flush the toilet. Drain any remaining water (a siphon or pump can be helpful, but an old-fashioned cup and some towels will get the job done—still, expect to get a little damp).
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Pop off the plastic bolt protectors, and remove the bolts using an adjustable wrench.
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Lift the toilet off the floor and set it on its side.
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Remove the old wax ring residue from the bottom of the toilet and the flange in the floor using a putty knife. Place your new wax ring on the bottom of the toilet, reset it on the floor, and sit on it to mush the wax ring down into place. Then bolt it down, pop the bolt protectors back on, and turn the water on.
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Number of tools needed: 3 (adjustable wrench, putty knife, wax ring)
Running: If your toilet constantly runs, it’s probably the flapper in the tank. This is so easy you don’t even need tools:
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Turn off the water and flush the toilet.
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Remove the tank lid.
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Disconnect chain from flapper, and remove flapper.
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Insert new flapper (you can buy universal ones if you’re not sure what kind your toilet needs), reconnect the chain, replace the tank lid, and turn on the water.
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Number of tools needed: 0
Loose handle: If the flush handle on your toilet has become so loose it’s challenging to flush the toilet, you probably don’t need a new one. Just lift off the tank lid and check to see if the plastic nut that connects it to the flapper is loose. You can usually hand-tighten this in about ten seconds. If you think it needs a bit more oomph, you can use an adjustable wrench, but that’s probably overkill.
Number of tools needed: 0-1 (an adjustable wrench might be needed)
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How to Cast Your Phone to a Hotel TV
It’s hard to imagine a time when hotels TVs didn’t feel vestigial. Not all that long ago, some made their TVs a selling point, plastering “free HBO” all over their roadside signs. These days, guests are more likely to stick to their phones, sacrificing their room’s beautiful 48-inch flatscreen on the altar of TikTok and YouTube. But with just a little extra work, you can get the best of both worlds and cast whatever is on your phone to your hotel room’s smart TV.
How to cast your iPhone to a hotel TV
There are official and unofficial options to send what’s on your iPhone to a TV. Let’s start with the most legit.
Use AirPlay (provided your hotel supports it)
iPhones can now use AirPlay to stream content from their phone directly to a TV at select hotels. The feature is available at “more than 60” IHG Hotels & Resorts locations across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, so give it a try the next time you’re staying at a Holiday Inn or Candlewood Suites.
The process is pretty painless: Upon turning your TV on, you should notice a QR code on the welcome screen. Simply scan it with a compatible Apple device to both connect to your room’s wifi and authorize AirPlay to that screen.
And that’s it—because the QR code is unique to your hotel room, you shouldn’t find yourself accidentally streaming to other guests’ sets, or vice versa. Apple says more locations will be added “in the coming months,” which makes sense—the limited rollout probably has something to do with the special LG TVs required for the setup, meaning it’ll take time for other locations to stock the new displays.
But what if you’re not staying at an IHG property? This is where the hacks come in.
Other ways to cast an iPhone to a hotel TV
There are plenty of dongles, like Roku and Fire TV sticks, that work with AirPlay right out of the box. The problem is getting a hotel TV to accept them.
Hotel TVs tend to be a bit strict about which devices they’ll let you plug in. That’s thanks to special control boxes that lock them down. Luckily, if you can physically get to your TV’s hookups, you can (carefully) remove these boxes. Lifehacker has covered it before, but the gist is to look for an ethernet cable (or possibly an HDMI cable), gently remove it, and restart the TV before hooking up your accessories. Depending on your hotel, you might also want to disconnect the control box from power if you’re able. Note that you do this at your own risk—it’s possible your hotel won’t be happy with you unplugging its hardware.
Once your device is plugged in, try swapping the TV input to your dongle and seeing if it works. If it does, simply connect it to wifi (you might need to open a browser page to do it, depending on your hotel) and you’re good to go. If using the hotel’s wifi isn’t an option, don’t worry—AirPlay can work without it, and you can always fall back on a mobile hotspot.
(Just be sure to hook your TV’s control box up again before checking out!)
How to cast an Android Phone to a hotel TV
Streaming an Android phone, like a Pixel 8 Pro or Galaxy S24 Ultra, to a hotel TV is much like streaming an iPhone, but with a few extra quirks, some of which can work in your favor. For instance, hotel chains like Wyndham and Hyatt already have Chromecasts connected to their TVs, letting you cast from your phone, or at least log into your streaming services, depending on how locked down they are. If you’re lucky enough to have a Chromecast officially set up from the start, just follow your hotel’s instructions and you should be good to go. As time goes on, you might also see hotels with Google TV Streamers instead, as the Chromecast brand has technically been discontinued.
Alternatively, your TV could have Google Cast built-in. Much like with Airplay, LG is now adding built-in Cast support to its hotel TVs, letting you sign-in via a QR code and requiring no extra hardware. LG says this will work on any hotel TV running webOS23 or later, which comes pre-installed on models released from 2023 on, and can also be applied to certain models from 2022. Theoretically, this should allow for wider availability than even LG’s Airplay support, although it might take a while for the hotel industry’s TV hardware to catch up.
That’s why you might also want to bring your own dongle, like a Fire TV Stick or Chromecast, with you. While it’s possible to stream content from an Android phone to a TV without a dongle, it’s probably not going to be easy in a hotel environment, since these workarounds usually require accessing specific smart TV apps or functions that you can’t depend on your hotel to have or allow you to access.
For the most seamless experience, I recommend a Chromecast (it’ll be cheaper and smaller than a Google TV streamer, and will still work despite being discontinued), as certain other dongles can only mirror your screen, rather than cast content across devices. With casting, you’ll ensure you get the best resolution, and generally have a more intuitive experience. (Note, though, that Chromecasts do require wifi when they boot.)
Once you’re in your hotel room with your dongle, you’ll want to connect it to your TV following the same steps outlined in the iPhone section above: gently remove the hotel control box’s connection to the TV, restart the TV, plug your Chromecast in, and swap to the proper input to test that everything worked.
If it did, try to connect your dongle to wifi (again, you may need to open a browser page). If the hotel’s wifi isn’t working, you can either use a mobile hotspot to try casting, or you can screen mirror without using wifi at all, depending on your dongle (the Fire TV Stick is a good choice if this is a concern).
