The DIY cycle continues. This week, I bought and replaced a burned-out bulb in my wife’s car, replaced window blinds, and exchanged some bathroom faucet cartridges.
The blinds were for the guest room and are part of our modernization process. The window is 72 inches wide. We had wooden plantation blinds in there. While visiting Mom last year, we saw zebra blinds. Deciding that we liked them, we bought them online. They were frankly a very easy swap over. I did need different mounting brackets but that ‘weren’t no thang’. Whole thing of moving the bed to reach the window, taking down the old stuff, putting up the new, and cleaning up afterward took about 45 minutes. The results are very pleasing.
Changing the damn bulb for the car, though, was accompanied by a lot of GRRRRs and swearing. The bulb was in my wife’s 2003 Ford Focus driver side headlight. It’s a tight space, cleverly engineered, but TIGHT, and required a lot of working via just the feel of my fingers. Removing the old one took about forty-five minutes and ten thousand swear words. Most started with F. Putting the new one in required another fifteen.
The thing is, the bulb is held by a spring door, if you will, which must be pinched and swung aside to get it out. Man, that thing refused to obey my bidding.
But it’s done.
As for the Kohler faucet cartridges…
This is a regular thing. We have three bathroom sinks with these cartridges with two per sink. They seem to need to be replaced about every four to five years. It’s exasperating but easy. I only needed to do one cartridge, one sink on this round. Five minutes, in and out.
Now I’m waiting to see, what’s next?
Something always emerges in DIY world.
Michael Seidel, writer 