Tag: DIY

More DIY Success

Another little victory in the DIY repair realm.

In a previous post, I mentioned that my Black & Decker BH3000 string trimmer had died. A plug-in electrical tool, it went without a whimper. No sparks and few complaints. Intermittently, it wouldn’t begin when I held in the trigger but then operated after tapping it against the ground or jiggling it hard. This time, no jiggling, thumping, tapping, whacking, or swearing brought it back to life.

To the net! I put in the results. Naturally, unrelated things with my search were the first pieces of information provided. Going down past them, I found a link that looked promising.

It was. I watched part of the video three times and then went to work. Twenty minutes later, success.

Yes, it’s a small thing. The device is prolly five years old and cost sixty dollars when I bought it. But I really didn’t want to buy a new one, as that would mean getting rid of the old one. And not having to do the wasteful consumer shuffle is the real victory.

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More DIY Success

Another minor problem, another simple repair, and more gratitude for the net and its plethora of DIY videos.

This case involved a running toilet. First thought: change the flapper valve. But when I was checking it out, I saw how much the Fluidmaster fill valve was leaking. Ah. How is thing fixed or replaced? I have minor to zero experience with these things, so it was to the net!

First, toilets are fascinating modern devices. Their designs have been refined. They’re pretty efficient relative to the past, robust, and modular. Fixing things on them is stunningly easy.

Second, I was astonished to learn recommendations that the fill valve be replaced every five years. I have never in my life seen one replaced.

Once I identified what I had installed inside my toilet, I headed down to our local Ace hardware. The right piece was quickly found and paid for, eight dollars after my loyalty coupon was supplied.

Videos demonstrated how remarkably easy it all is. They usually took five to fifteen minutes. I figured that I would need thirty to forty. I was right. It wasn’t a matter of incompetence, but access. The fill valve connects to the feed line through a port in the cistern’s bottom. The toilet’s water supply needs to be shut off, the cistern drained, and then the feed line disconnected. Getting my hands around the plastic nuts to disconnect the water supply — and then tightening them again at the end — was the most challenging aspect.

Yes, I feel pleased, even satisfied. I’ve learned more, saved a little money, and was rewarded with a muffin for my effort.

It was all win.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

We’re in cloud city this Sunday, March 27, 2022, facing a temperature of 54 F. It’s expected to go up to 70. The sun bounced a feeble few rays our way at 7:02 AM. Sunset is expected at 7:31 PM.

Some of my balance has returned. It feels like a proper Sunday. Yardwork plans are in the offing. I’ve gone out, pulling weeds and trimming things, in the afternoon a few days this week. We cleaned yesterday, then I walked for a few miles on my own. The sun was full and strong, and it was beautiful to see the flowers in bloom, green flushing the lawns again, and leaves filling trees’ branches.

On the DIY front, I did buy a new thermostat and installed it Friday, which fixed the heating issue. Fifty dollars at the local hardware store, it’s a mild upgrade to the one I’d installed in this place about fifteen years ago. I reckon it’s the fifth thermostat that I’ve installed in my lifetime. The first was one with a mercury switch, a long time ago in a duplex that we rented.

My neurons are having fun with me this morning, inserting an old song, “Polly Wolly Doodle”, into the morning mental music stream. I haven’t heard that song in ages but remember singing it in an elementary school class with the teacher at the piano. You should hear my neurons snickering and chortling as the song goes round and round. I answered their efforts with that classic retort, “How old are you?” That should’ve put them into their place, but they reacted by pumping the 1999 Blink 182 song into the stream, “What’s My Age Again”. More of their mischief. Although it’s been a featured theme song before, I haven’t had any coffee and don’t feel like arguing with them. So, here we go, folks.

Stay positive, test negative, adjust as needed to the changing situation, and stay alert. Don’t let complacency take you down. I won’t, once I have some coffee.

Cheers

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Another DIY Success

We have a single handle Moen faucet. We bought the house new back in 2006. This week, the handle began going wonky on us. It was growing stiffer to turn and then added a squeaking noise. A little net sleuthing and I identified our model, homed in on the problem, found a step-by-step video, and ordered the “Moen 93980 Replacement Handle Mechanism Kit for One-Handle Kitchen Faucet Repairs” kit from Amazon for just less than $23. It was supposed to arrive Monday but came today.

I’m not a DIYer by nature. Poor mechanical skills, you know? Other than fixing cars and computers (and painting the house rooms), I have little to no DIY experience except what I’ve gleaned from learning how do to things in this house. That includes installing a new central vac unit to replace the dead unit a decade ago, swapping out control modules on the air conditioner about four years ago, replacing the garbage disposal a few years ago, fixing the microwave a few months ago, and then replacing the master sink drain stem in December. I don’t think I could have done any of these things except for the first two without the net. For the air conditioner repair, the repair guy showed me how he fixed it a few years before. I took notes so that when the time came, because he warned me that it would fail, and it was a common, recurring failure, I knew what to do. For the central vac unit, it was straightforward as replacing a car battery. So I watched the Moen repair video again, sucked in a deep breath, and went at it.

Success! I’ll drink to that. The question is, coffee, beer, or wine?

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Unfinished Business Dream

My wife and I were young folks, in our twenties, in this dream, and very realistic to who we were in RL, including our clothes. She was busy with cleaning. I was tinkering with the kitchen faucet, which wasn’t going well. I’d change one thing and it would start spraying sideways. Something else would be adjusted, causing the water to shoot straight up. But I was determined: I will fix this. Yet, I was laughing, telling my wife as the water shot off in a new strange arc, “Check this out.” Unbelievable.

Surrendering to that temporarily because I thought I needed to think about what to do, I went off for more DIY. I’d noticed a younger person holding up a wall in the corner of another room. That might be something that I needed to address. I went in there and asked them about the situation. They were holding up the wall because it would fall over if they didn’t. “Let me see,” I said. “Step back.”

They did. The wall started toppling over.

The two of us jumped in and held it up. “But is it the wall coming down or just, like, wallpaper?” I asked. I thought that’s what I’d actually seen. We tentatively released the wall, confirming that it wasn’t the wall coming down, but just the cover.

Then I was arriving at work. Dressed in a suit with tie, I joined others in a small but well-lit office with lots of windows. “Hello, Michael, about time you got here,” I heard. Stepping into a small office where the voice seemed to emanate, I found the one accosting me was Jeffrey Donovan, of “Burn Notice” and other television shows and movies. “I’m your new boss,” he cheerfully informed me. “You’re working for me now.”

Then, I was arriving at work again, sighing because it seemed like I was just hear. “Hi Michael, good morning,” I heard from Donovan. WTH, why was he singling me out like that?

I arrived on a third morning and sighed. “Hello, Michael,” Donovan called out.

“It wasn’t me,” I shouted back, lying. Then I leaned in around his office door. “How did you know it’s me when you’re in here?”

“I have eyes everywhere,” he answered.

I was done with work. Instead, I was cutting grass and doing general landscaping chores. I was part of a crew of four others. One was a friend and the other two were strangers, but we all got on well. While we worked, we saw an area where another crew had worked; we scoffed at the job they’d done. We could do better.

The home’s owner, an elderly and tall, white woman with silver hair who looked and sounded like Bea Arthur, came out and complimented us on our work. We pointed out where the other crew had been and told her that we could improve it. After some back and forth, she agreed that we could the other area, too. Happy that we’d won more work, we set to work improving it.

A large pool was alongside our work area. Others were swimming. Four young men staged a race. We mocked them because we thought ourselves better swimmers. Then we wondered which of the four of us was the fastest swimmer.

The owner appeared. We asked if she minded if we had a race in her pool. “Go for it,” she answered.

We lined up in our trunks. After counting to three together, we dove in and raced to the far end. I came in second to my friend.

Dream end.

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Microwave Outage

We went through another microwave outage this weekend. Saturday afternoon. My fault, I think. I’d heated food up for a cat so I could put his medicine in it. Opened the door while it was running. Pop, goes the fuse. Fortunately, I’ve been through this exercise. Pulled and replaced the fuse. Which didn’t fix it. Blew that one, too. Went off to buy more fuses once the stores were open.

The door micro-switches were the most likely source on this three-year-old GE Profile appliance. I pulled those. Examined and reset them. Installed a new fuse. Reconnected the control panel so I could test the microwave. Success. Put everything back together. Ordered new door switches to have on hand, in case this happens again.

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Time to Paint

The blinds needed to be removed.

This was a requirement to paint around the frames. Somehow in the madness of life, I’ve decided that I need to paint the living and dining rooms. Together, they are, ‘The Great Room’.

Point of order: my wife hectored me into doing it. “These rooms are too dark. We need a lighter color.”

Me: “Huh-huh, you’re right.”

“When can you do it?”

“Wait, what?”

Life sometimes needs a rewind function.

Into the garage! To the tools! My tools are not greatly organized. Shelves hold several power tools and their requirements, along with a large toolbox. It’s augmented by a small thing with a work surface and four drawers. One drawer has lost its front. (I’m going to fix it sometime.) The top drawers are well organized with screws, anchors, glues, nails, sandpiper. The bottom two drawers are stuffed full of whatever I can get in there. I avoid opening them, except to retrieve tape and edger/trimmer string. My tape variety is impressive.

The screws holding the mounting brackets have a Philips-head X on it. They would not budge despite my grunting. “Get a screwdriver with more torque,” I muttered to myself. I already had the biggest. I would use the drill on it, but there’s not enough clearance. Bummer.

Sighing in frustration, I hit the ratchet wrenches. For some reason, I’ve acquired three complete sets. No, there’s more. At least two sets are metric. I bought them because I lived in Germany and Japan. Metric was used there, and I owned foreign cars – BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Toyopet. Plus, at least one set was priced at a dollar at a garage sale. Who can resist tools at a garage sale? They’re like books. You gotta look and see what might fill that imaginary hole in your library or toolbox.

The sockets are semi-disorganized. Most are in their proper places but the smallest sockets always go strolling. I go through them, looking for the 1/4 inch, along with the proper adapter to go from big to small. With all those socket kits, I have a multitude of options for changing spark plugs. Every manufacturer had a different size of socket required. Some had several. I also have a number of tools for setting the gaps on plugs and rotors, and wires for cleaning them.

Which reminded me of computers. Back in the office closet lives a set of shelves. On it resides office requirements like Wite-out, file folders, label maker, pens for the next century (if they don’t dry up), paper for the printer, ink for the same, assorted docks for laptops I no longer use, another printer I no longer use, cables for laptops and printers… You get it, right?

Disk drives also live on these shelves. Floppy 5.25 inch. Hard floppy 3.5 inch. Zip drives. CDs. All are ready to be formatted and written. I have not formatted anything in over a decade, maybe longer. I used to format things several times a week, back in, um, the last century. Strange that something that once was so common is now rare.

Not really. We were riding horses and trolleys more back in the last century, too. I only rode horses a few times for entertainment. Never mounted one to go to the store, or to visit the neighbors.

I don’t change my car’s oil any longer, either, although I have the wrenches for that, too, and the big wrench to remove an oil pan nut. I have baskets of computer and electronic gear. Ribbon wires, chipsets, an old power supply, old fan, along with a huge variety of RCA cords and adapters. There’s an extra monitor, too, and a VHS head cleaner for the VHS deck that I no longer use. I also own bearing grease, quart jugs of motor oil, and car cleaning supplies, like polishes and waxes.

Sometime, someone needs to go in there and clean all this stuff out. Not me, not today.

Time for me to paint.

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This Sunday

Sunday morning started with the usual Sunday morning white man with cat issues, which is replying to the demand, “Feed me, feed me, feed me, and get these other cats away from me,” in surround sound because I have three of them. They didn’t care that we’d fallen back an hour, clock-wise, here in ‘Merica. Their clocks weren’t affected.

Eventually, the beasts were fed, watered, and released back to the backyard wilds, freeing me to be me. I slid to the computer. That’s when the morning took an oomph turn. My mighty HP laptop wasn’t connecting to the net. Everything else in the household was connected; why was I selected for this cruel honor.

Something about the machine was off. Memories of being a younger person and working on my cars were awakened. I started car life with a 1965 Mercury Comet sedan. Forest green and automatic, a lively 289 V-8 was under the hood, as we said in those days. It was a stoutmobile. She’d run.

She was like my first girlfriend. I learned to do things, and did the standard stuff, from gapping and replacing plug and points (and all the wires) to brakes, muffler, and shocks, and all the fluids and fuses in between.

I think, because of that car, I’ve always since tried to fix things myself. Tried is a key verb in that sentence. (Is it a verb? I don’t know. I used to know these things.)

Details of what I did and the results will be avoided. No need to restore my stress levels by recalling those excoriating details. I worked on the computer for hours, returning it to connectivity. Doing so demanded a need to run recovery, a Microsoft Windows 10 process that’s not as nice as it sounds. Lots of personal files were removed (yeah, they said that wouldn’t happen, and they were wrong), along with apps and programs that I’d installed.

I had back ups of files, and MS does have some file recovery stuff. Eventually, though, I had almost everything. For some reason, I lacked the bible for the latest novel in progress. Don’t know what happened to that doc.

Reading old files slowed the process. Oh, there was The Soul Stone written years ago, never submitted nowhere. I read and enjoyed its first pages, along with Spider City, Everything Not Known, Everything in Black and White, and some stranger works, and the first draft of the self-published words, like the Lessons with Savanna series and Returnee. All still there, waiting for me to turn my attention back to them and do something more with them.

Not on this Sunday, though.

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