You can never have too much fabric.
Tomorrow is Saturday. Half price day at the thrift store. More fabric will be mine.
I’m taking advantage of any good weather days to knock off some window re-finishing.
3 small windows down! 4 large windows to go!
I don’t know WHAT I was thinking when we had the windows replaced way back when. Oh, wood is soooo beautiful! ==mocking eyeroll==
Humph. Vinyl would have been FINE.
Wishing everyone well on their fall projects!
I have a little humorous story to share.
Earlier in the week, H woke me up early one morning and said, “There’s no power in the basement!!”
I groggily get out of bed, and say something about checking the circuit breakers.
I shuffle through the kitchen towards the basement, smelling the coffee (we have it set to brew on a timer) and almost stop to pour myself a cup first.
But downstairs I go, and I check all the circuit breakers and nothing is tripped. I re-check. Nothing tripped. Huh.
H says, “It must be a bad circuit breaker! Should I call the electrician?”
I’m still barely awake, but it’s like my brain is poking at me to get with it. No, something is not adding up.
I go upstairs and go to the other end of the house and start flipping on light switches. Nothing.
So, laughing, I yell to H, “There’s no power in basement OR the rest of the house!!”
He just didn’t notice because the coffee had been brewed, and he didn’t need any lights until he got down to the basement. His alarm is his iPhone.
We had a good laugh over that. Good thing we did NOT have the electrician out.
Turns out a garbage truck had backed in to a utility pole and the whole neighborhood was out for several hours.
Our cabin in the Maine mountains is DH’s DIY project. It’s off-grid, in the middle of nowhere, so almost everything we need done is up to him. He’s figured out pressurized water, hot showers and kitchen tap water, toilet, etc. Keeps him out of trouble! I really think he should write a book, because he couldn’t find a lot on the subject.
@Maine that sounds like a real accomplishment! We have a phrase ‘I hate water’. Water is really really hard to deal with. Always too little or too much.
Just replaced an oven seal. The last one got a hot spill on it and really looked bad (maybe even not keeping heat in). Looked up the oven model and got the right part to it, ordered it on amazon, and watched a video. Easy.
Husband is amazing at DIY projects but we always hire someone to do the “finish work”. He’s installed pocket doors, raised a sunken floor and put up new sheet rock. The tape, bed, texture and installing new wood floors is something we always hire a professional to do.
Replaced the battery on key fob. Did not work. Learned by watching a video that you can use the valet key to open. Also, realized I put the battery in backwards…I have done this before but it is so infrequent I forgot which way.
We did more in our first “starter house” . Mostly DH, but I helped - I vividly remember gluing down a kitchen linoleum new floor was such a marriage-buster that we vowed “Never Again” for that chore).
Where do you go for DIY advise?
Example - Our back door/frame has settled such that only DH can wrestle the lock and deadbolt closed (and we need to do that to keep the West wind in CO from blowing it open). I’m bummed because he’ll be gone on a trip, and it will be a pain to get to back yard gardening after he puts it in lock-mode. (Garage door has worse issue. And outdoor gate, also 25 years old, also sags/sticks no matter how much we try to reinforce hinges etc)
@colorado_mom If you don’t plan on fixing the skewed door frame, you could just move the strike plates.
I have bought wider strike plates for almost all my outside doors for that reason. Also have had to hire a handyman who was exceptional with doors to fix them. He worked wonders. Recently he drilled metal pins through our very large and heavy front door and got it to straighten out better and not sag.
Thanks @rockymtnhigh2 ! I will look into wider strike plates. I’d be willing to hire a handyman, but I’m not sure there are any around us that do small jobs.
I got his name from our builder.
@TiggerDad = I know I talked with you earlier about resin counter tops. How are yours holding up?
Mine look good still (in the bathroom) but I have had a few stains. I’ve repainted a few small areas, and I’m getting up the nerve to cover those small areas with more resin. Know anything about pouring resin on top of resin? I’m talking a few square inches in size . . will it level out?
That’s weird that yours are experiencing some stains. No stains on any of mine – bathrooms and all the kitchen countertops. Whether or not to apply for resin or not would depend on the paint color and design underneath the original resin. Darker the color and more complex the design, less noticeable the new coating of resin. As far as I know, you can only get as leveled as you can when you fill but I doubt that it’d be perfect. Using a torch to melt the immediate surrounding area before pouring fresh resin - and only the amount needed - would be a way to go, but of course use all caution in doing so. If all else fails, then I’d just start the project all over by applying a prime on top of the existing counter, probably twice, then the paint and the resin.
I would experiment on a piece of plywood. Coat it with your resin and let it cure. Then sand lightly in one spot and see if you can fill it. I would not use a torch - just not safe. Heat gun - maybe, but by all means not a torch!
We are renting an apartment that is about 7 years old. It has a quartz kitchen counter. I would not have originally chosen it. But, it is amazing reliant to stains. It’s white.
Nah, torch is used all the time with epoxy resin countertops and other projects. I’m talking about the kind of torch that’s just a bit stronger than a grill lighter, not one of those used in industrial welding. Epoxy resin is not flammable; it’s whatever’s around the project, such as newspapers, cleaning cloths, etc. that’s of concern.
Totally agree @twoinanddone . And I have the fabric to prove it!!
Few people sew where I live so when they hear that I sew, they often give me fabric - from when they thought they might sew and bought all kinds of supplies in preparation. And then never touched it. So, I rarely actually buy fabric. I also do a lot of upcycleing of clothing. Last night I took one of my daughters old college tshirts and made a dress for my granddaughter. Found the pattern on a sewing blog.
Reviving this thread. So excited, I had to post this. We have a 20 year old state of the art then, alarm system and fire detector. When the dust gets in the one of 9 detectors in the halls, bedrooms, etc. it blinks every second instead of every 20 seconds. Last night while in bed I happen to notice ours blinking alot. Last fixed one in 2014. Two of the 9 were doing this. This is the stage before a full false alarm, usually at 3 AM. So, I finally found my house alarm paper file, my 2016 preordered optical chambers, my airdust cleaners, ladder and a H helper. Usually I let him tackle this but he said why don’t you figure it out. I finally after much trial and error got the alarm cover open and cleaned out the alarm and replaced the optical chamber. Waited a few hours, reconnected the system, and voila it’s back to normal blinking.
Thrilled by the latest DIY. The driver’s side window of my 16-year old Volvo XC70 stopped working properly. When the button’s pressed down, it’d go down partially and crookedly. When the button’s pressed up, it wouldn’t budge, so I’d have to press both of my palms on the window to push it up to its closed position.
With the winter season going into full swing shortly, I decided to fix it myself upon learning from a local service that they’d charge somewhere around $700 to fix it. By watching several YouTube videos on different Volvo models with the same issue being fixed, I had a general idea what the culprit was and how to go about fixing it. Upon removing the door panel, sure enough, a tiny plastic window slide regulator was busted and became detached from the arm that goes up and down. It was a simple task of replacing this cheap plastic that cost $5.99.
I couldn’t believe that a car like Volvo would use a cheap plastic part as a window regulator, but it did last 16 years so I’m hoping that the newly replaced one will last me for the rest of the car’s life. What appeared initially as a daunting task turned out to be one of the easiest fixes I’ve ever done. In fact, it was simpler than replacing a headlight bulb.
4 Likes