Tag: DIY

DIY…Kind Of…

My wife came in with two dish towels. “Look at this. These towels have stains that just won’t come out.” Exasperation was etched into her face. “How can we get these out?”

“Have you tried Mom’s stain remover?”

She brightened. “I didn’t think of that.”

I got out the ‘recipe’. Mom didn’t come up with it but passed it on to us. Mom got it from Hints from Heloise when it was published in the Pittsburgh Press, the evening paper Mom used to get.

Collecting and mixing the ingredients, I used a toothbrush, as directed, and scrubs the spots for about five minutes each. Then I let the stain remover soak a bit and scrubbed more. Presto. After rinsing and drying in the sun, the stains were gone.

2

Twozdaz Wandering Thoughts

I was deep into my DIY project. New breakfast bar lights. My wife came running in. “I need to take a bath and get cleaned up. The rapture is tomorrow!” As my eyebrows climbed, she enthused more deeply about how it’s on the Internet that the rapture would take place on September 23, 2025. It’s on the net, so it must be true.

“So don’t be surprised if you can’t find me,” she finished.

I nodded. “Yes, I know I’m going to be part of the left behind.” I’d long resigned myself to that. Don’t know if resigned was the right word. I think the world might be a better place with less people. Better if God plucked them out and took them elsewhere rather than having disease, starvation, pestilence, war, and violence take them away.

“Maybe you’ll be allowed to visit. Came up to the holy gates and talk to me.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see.”

This morning, she asked, “Hey, what happened to the rapture?” She then confided, “I had a plan. I was going to hide and leave a pile of clothes on the floor so that you’d think I was taken in the rapture.”

“What happened?”

She grinned. “I forgot.”

Guess the joke was on her.

0

‘Nother DIY Done

I reaffirmed my firm position as a budgeteer DIYer. My wife kicked this one off.

“I think we need new breakfast bar lights.”

A zillion responses went over my brain’s hill and dale. One landed. “Sounds good. What do you have in mind?”

She had a general description. Phase I began: we began the search. Found them. My wife asked, “Do you think you could install those?”

“Of course,” I confidently replied without consulting any Neurons. The Neurons freaked. “You fool, what are you saying? Did you learn nothing yet?”

“Pshaw,” I replied. The Neurons knew I was nervous but my wife’s easy acceptance that I could the job. I couldn’t let her confidence in me down.

Phase II, we ordered them, received, and inspected them. They came across the country from Philadelphia, PA, on a truck. Eight days in transit.

Next phase: install the suckers. Installing lights aren’t a BFD. Technically. However…they’re mounted on a high vaulted ceiling. I dragged out our tallest ladder and climbed. At a few hairs short of being five feet eight inches tall, I could’ve used two to three more inches to have a comfortable reach for the screws and wires. Beyond that physical limitation, the hardest thing was removing and adjusting the stems to make them level and a height that satisfied us.

But it’s done. Results achieved, and no injuries scored. BTW, those bulbs are our emergency bulbs. Batteries built into them. They work like normal digital bulbs. But when the power goes off, they become emergency lights which provide illumination for six to eight hours. They’ve proven to be a great buy in the last two power outages. Coolest of all, they can be unscrewed and carried around like flashlights.

Next: a new dining room light. I have no doubt I can pull that off. The Neurons are a little worried, though.

3

It’s Not DIY Without Some WTF

I took on an easy DIY project yesterday. This was a new foyer light.

The new foyer light.

This was my wife’s idea. I thought the old one was fine. We’d installed it shortly after moving in back in 2005. It worked, putting out light and everything. Click on, click off.

My wife said, “We need to update our lights. It’ll make the house look newer.”

Sure, I thought with a mental shrug. I had no reason to buy a new light but had no real reason to oppose buying a new light. They don’t cost much, and the old one will be donated to Habitats for Humanity and re-used.

We went on a light search together, an outing I found tedious and boring. I found this light and offered it as a possibility. “Let me think about it,” she answered, walking away. A little while later found her back at the light. We discussed its pros and cons.

“It’s black,” I said. “With seeded glass.” She’d specified those things. That’s what attracted me to it. I’m a hunter; she established those parameters and that’s what I sought.

“It’s flush mounted,” she said. “Can you install it?”

“Yes.” I was surprised she asked. I’m a budgeteer DIY. There’s little that I don’t think I can do, given time, tools, and video instructions. But the reality is, I’ve installed over a dozen ceiling lights in my life. The first was in Germany, where I shocked myself in an episode which will only die in memory when I pass away. I’ve been a lot more respectful of electricity after that.

So, she was out yesterday — Girl’s Night at the Movies, done at 1 PM because none of them want to drive at night. The feature was Earth Girls Are Easy. With her out, I pursued the new install. Half an hour, I figured.

I’m such a stupid optimist.

After turning off the power to the light (see, lesson learned), I pulled out the ladder and removed the old light with relative ease. So far, so good. But I needed to remove the installation plate as well; the new light and old plate did not match up. No big thing, right? Just two screws.

Here’s where WTF entered the project.

I could not get one screw to turn. At friggin’ all. Different screwdrivers were tried. WTF, over? I mean, I screwed it in. I should be able to screw it back out.

By now, my body was running with enough sweat to fill a bathtub. Repositioning the ladder a few times, I positioned myself to apply max torque. I realized that part of my issue was that the mounting plate was not perfectly aligned with the screw, and that extra pressure was hampering my efforts. So, I wedged that thing around just a little. With the slowness of a MAGAt realizing that Trump lied to them, the screw finally began turning. Of course, it’s a two-inch long screw, a bolt, really. I finally got it out, though.

The rest was as easy as eating pizza. I was just finishing as my wife arrived home.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“No sweat,” I answered.

We agreed, it looks better than the old one. The photo doesn’t do it justice. It’s a lousy camera phone’s lousy photo. But the change was startling. The other light hung down about half a foot more, so it had more of a ‘presence’. The change to this light opened up the space.

I told her all that. She agreed.

“Now we just have to do the breakfast bar and dining room chandelier,” she said.

I’d installed them. Sure, that was twenty years ago, but I nodded.

“No sweat.”

5

Finished A DIY

This one took me a while. It turned out to be a pain in the ass. But as a dedicated budgeteer, I refused to give up.

We have Hunter-Douglas bottom-up/top down blinds in three rooms, including the office. My wife calls the office ‘the snug’, but that’s another story ripe with reverberations about words and their meanings and intentions. Anyway, I pulled on the cord to lower a blind and it snapped. Thus began my DIY project.

That happened in May. I researched and researched and researched but couldn’t find guidance or parts about our particular blinds and how to fix them. In early June, I reached out to Hunter-Douglas. Through a two week session of correspondence with photographs, we learned that my honeycomb Duetto blinds were manufacturered before 2007 so they had a different mechanism from what they currently make. Coming through like champs, though, Hunter-Douglas identified the parts I needed and said, “We’ll send them to you.” And then did, no charge for anything.

The parts arrived at June’s end. Meanwhile, the snug, excuse me, office, is the house’s warmest room. It’s also our most used. With only a desk, wall-mounted TV, a few book cases, a desk chair, recliner, and accent chair, we spend hours each day in that room reading, watching television, surfing the net, playing ‘puter games, and on the phone. It would clearly and easily win a household poll for ‘most popular room’. The cats are there just because we are. That’s their M.O.

One reason this room is so warm is that it has a standard ceiling. Much of the house has a ‘high ceiling’. That lets summer heat climb. Yes, it doesn’t do much to help us keep warm in the winter. The other reason for this room’s warmth is that its big window, which takes up most of the outside wall, faces west. The sun starts blazing through it at 3 PM in the summer. It doesn’t stop until the sun sets five hours plus later. The weather station is in there. When it’s over 90 F outside, this room will easily climb into the upper 80s. We use a vertical electric fan to chill us.

I’d taken the blind down for repairs, so that window was exposed. I dealt with that by hanging a large white bath towel on the window via clothes pins. Didn’t look pretty — you should have seen my wife’s scowl when she contemplated it — but it protected us from the sun and gave us needed privacy.

The parts arrived and I commenced on repairs. All went well. At first. The DIY corollary to Murphy’s Law says, “If complications are possible, they will happen.” For me, the complications came when I tried sliding the entire thing back together. It would not go as shown in ten million online videos. Talk about aggravating. Infuriating. Frustrating.

My wife was sanguine. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

I shook my head. “I think I might have to take it in for repairs.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

That was in mid-July. I researched repair centers while studying the blinds. Every third day or so, I’d try again to slide it all together. I tried carefully greasing pieces, and I tried different angles. But in studying the blind issue, I became convinced that the top fabric piece was the culprit. It was hitting against the pull/cranking mechanism. I think, I decided, I might need to cut that thing. I really didn’t want to cut that that thing, though. It’s not just fabric; it is fabric and plastic, and holds the mounts for the spools and shafts which operate the up/down mechanisms. It keeps it all aligned. Besides, I tasked myself, how exactly are you going to cut it? Exacto knife? Pocket knife? Box cutter, carpet cutter, tin snips, wire cutters?

No, I finally said: nursing shears.

With the plastic/fabric slid in as far as possible, I picked up the nursing shears. These are scissors which hospitals use to cut away clothing when people come in with injuries. With them, I cut two inches on either side of the end of the recalcitrant plastic/fabric piece. Lifting it up, I slid the thing home and closed my little flap.

Well done, I exulted.

Except, the lines were now hopelessly tangled.

Aw, fuuuucccckkkk, I morosely groaned.

With some work, I untangled it all enough that I could mount it and close it 80% of the way, top to bottom. But I could not raise it from the bottom. I could lower it from the top, though.

“You did it,” my wife said when she saw.

I shook my head. “No.” I explained the remaining problem. Then came the gut-wrenching clincher. “I might need to take it back apart again.”

Eyes widening, she literally blanched. “Oh, no.”

I set my jaw. “I put it together once. I can do it again.” My fingers were crossed when I said that.

I left it like that for several days. Every once in a while, I gazed at it all and thought about what needed done, but I was chicken shit. I worried that I’d make it worse. Finally, sucking it up, I said, “Enough.”

I took it all apart again. I carefully worked on the lines and spools and untangled it all. Then, I put it back together.

I did it in the morning so the sun wasn’t beaming through the window. It was cool, in the high sixties as morning developed. I had the window open. Despite a cool breeze, I was sweating bullets.

But it’s up. Together. And it works.

Thank the DIY gods.

2

He Who’s Like God

My name is Michael. It’s supposed to mean ‘he who’s like God’ in Hebrew. I don’t know how I got the name. Mom blamed Dad; Dad blamed Mom.

I’m mixed about it as a name. Overall, it’s a good name but there’s just so many of us out there.

I’ve used different names at different times for different reasons. Just the other day, I used a different name when I was talking to my wife. I was on a DIY project to fix the oven. As a dedicated Budgeteer, I’m not a noted handyman. But man, I sure do try. So, as my wife was going out the door, I told her, “I vow that this oven will be fixed upon your return, or my name’s not Patrick J. Carpenter.” My name is not Patrick J. Carpenter, of course. That’s the humor of it. I hope.

As a stumbling novelist, I often consider adopting a different name. There are many writers out there known as Michael Seidel. Many are successful and popular. Some are German. There’s also a weather man named Mike Seidel. I think he might be retired. Either way, all those other Michael Seidels cast a shadow over this Michael Seidel. I since speculated, maybe I’ll seek publication as Taylor Sands. Except I looked up Taylor Sands, and that’s a porn star.

Back in the think tank, I changed Sands to Rush. Taylor Rush is a successful doctor. Other options were chased, like Taylor Chase, and rejected after research. For instance, there are 90+ profiles for Taylor Chase in LinkedIn. I finally came up with Taylor Booking.

Taylor Booking, novelist. That might work.

12

An Oven DIY Update.

Well. That’s over with. A new igniter is installed and working in my GE Profile range

It was not easy. Not the 30 minute job advertised. Noooo. Because, manufacturing. So.

Part arrives. Looks right. Saturday afternoon, I begin.

Turn off power to range. Remove top iron grills and burner covers. Empty bottom storage of the baking sheets and iron skillets. Remove oven door. Slide out from wall. Unplug. Turn off gas.

Now we’re cooking.

Remove racks. Remove two screws from the back on the fire shield. Shift back, lift up and remove fire shield.

It’s all going like a dream.

Locate igniter. Bingo, right there. Remove two screws. Remove two screws. Remove…two…screws…

One breaks off. Fuck Second one just turns and turns, apparently stripped.

Try a zillion fucking ways to get that screw out. No. Go.

Three hours have passed. I’m dripping sweat. I stop for the day. Realize sometime during the evening, I’m going to need to grind off that screw head. I need a tool for that, research options, and make shopping plans.

Ten o’clock. I get ready to go shopping. My wife pops off to a friend’s house. She calls as I’m walking out the door. The friend has a Dremel I can use to grind the head off. His son has it as his place, about two miles from my place. Off I go to pick it up and bring it back.

The friend’s son is a friend and a retired editor and literary agent, so we talk books and publishing for thirty minutes. He’s always a good visit. He’s also just lost his cat to cancer; another ten minutes is spent on sympathy and pain.

Back at home, gloves and goggles are donned, the grinder is plugged in, and the head is ground off. The igniter is freed from its bracket but remains wired in. To get to that, I should remove several more pieces but after that previous screw episode, that is not going to happen. I instead cut the wires to the igniter and remove the plug out the back. Next, I twist and shift my fingers, screwdrivers, and pliers until the new igniter’s connections are through the 1.25 inch through the back. I really could have used four more hands and much longer arms during this process. The igniter is put into place. New screws are installed.

Then, reverse disassembly. Just enough to let me test that puppy. Gas on. Power on. Plugged in. Fingers crossed, oven turned on.

Success.

The range’s empty space is cleaned, then the range is manuevered back into place. Everything is returned to its position and the tools are put away. It’s 2:30.

Time for lunch. Water. And rest.

5

Sunda’s Theme Music

Clouds have overtaken Ashlandia again. It’s a cool summery start to June, this being Sunda, June 2, 2025, and a pleasant way to ease out of spring, that being the current rotation, as we’re north of 0 degrees latitude.

Did you read about the mutation which they believe give orange cats their color? Scientists track down mutation that makes orange cats orange. The story comments, “It took researchers a century to find the genetic glitch that causes orange coloration in cats.” Turns out the Arhgap36 gene was involved. Go figure, right? They weren’t able to find any explanations for the orange personality, though.

Today’s song is in honor of PINO TACO. TACO, which means, “Trump Always Chickening Out”, has become PINO Trump’s favorite nickname. *snark*. The Neurons came up with it as I was breaking my fast. Into my morning mental music came “Macho Man”, the 1978 Village People song. But instead of the song’s original lyrics, The Neurons were singing “TACO, TACO man. PINO Trump is such a TACO man.” And so on. The revised lyrics don’t make a lick of sense, but it’s a rock parody, and it’s fun singing that PINO Trump is such a TACO man.” Heh.

Now, I must press on. My oven igniter replacement DIY project is underway. It’s been fraught with issues. Blood pressure has probably gone higher than any mountain. So, onward once again. I think I’ll start with some tacos. Some reason, I’m craving them.

And reminder, this is Jun 1. Big demonstrations planned for Jun 14. Be there or be a MAGAt. Cheers

2

Saturda’s Theme Music

Yesterday was a hot one, as they advertised. Today, Saturda, May 31, 2025, is expected to cool into the mid-80s. It’s 72 F and sunny now, and the clouds have ran away for grayer skies.

It’s May’s last day. Five months of 2025 are history. It’s been as chaotic as a Black Friday sale in the United States. As we spring into summer, I’m not enthused about what will come out of the Gold House, as Nan calls it. Her reasoning is spot on. It ssed to be the White House, but the present occupant, PINO TACO, is remaking it in the right’s craven, gold-worshipping image. They say that’s what the Bible says to do.

From Gold House, I crossed to Heart of Gold. My Neurons went onto a Neil Young kick. Soon they had “Old Man” playing in the morning mental music stream. The music faded for a while as I rambled through a litany of problems, stories, and challenges. Some were personal and narrowly defined from my novel-writing half of living. Thoughts about Mom’s health boiled in, and then came sympathy for a friend who is enduring a mess in his life. Prosaic matters like fixing the oven — the part has arrived — took over. Then there’s the ever-growing worries about the human rights, war, climate change, the nation, the world, and measles.

I read in MedicalXPress this morning:

There are 1,088 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., up 42 from last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Texas, where the nation’s biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, reported 10 additional cases this week for a total of 738.

There are three other major outbreaks in North America.

The Neurons shot a gap to bring “Don’t Let It Get You Down” by Neil Young into the morning mental music stream. It’s a 1970 song which will probably get you down, because it makes you listen, think, and feel. I once heard a DJ say that Young announced this song by saying, “This song is guaranteed to bring you down. It’s called “Don’t Let It Get You Down”.” It was a song I preferred to hear with a glass of red wine, either overlooking a body of water at sunset, or in a dark room, alone.

Into the day I go, with a cuppa coffee to help me carry the load. Funny, but our existence is fleeting in the great rush of time and space, but sometimes it seems so long.

Here we go. Cheers

2

Two More DIY Jobs

It’s another year. That means more do-it-yourself work.

First, praise be to the net and the help that it provides.

My DIY needs began without any foreshadowing. We have up / down Duette honeycomb blinds in the office. The right sash raises and lowers the blind’s top while the left sash raises and lowers the blind’s bottom. This arrangement allows broad and flexible configurations. We drop the blinds’ top halfway in the morning to let early daylight into the room. Later, we raise the top all the way and then raise the bottom about two feet. Bushes block most of the bottom window so we get light without direct afternoon sunlight, which can be scorching, but still have privacy.

I pulled the cord to make this arrangement the other day and won ‘snap’ for my efforts. The ribbon tape which controls the inside mechanism broke apart. First thing I did was remove the blind and take photos of the labels. Labels on products are packed with information.

Then, to the net! I researched how to repair it. I figured I could do it. As usual, the challenge is to find the right parts. Unable to do it, I reached out to the manufacturer, Hunter-Douglas. Six emails, four days, and two photos later, they sent me a link to a KB article for how to fix it and told me they’re sending the needed parts, free, in ten to fourteen days. I’ll update you after that.

The second job came to light an hour later. I preheated the oven to bake potatoes. Only the oven didn’t go on. The burners lit so it wasn’t a gas issue, nor a general electrical problem.

To the camera!

To the net!

Quick research pointed to the igniter for my eight year old GE Profile range model PGB911ZEJ4SS. I should trouble shoot to pin it down but I gambled, hunted down the part, WB13X25500, and put in the order. I’m waiting for its arrival.

Will it work? As with everything, time will tell.

0

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