My question has to do with battery leakage and items ceasing to work because of that leakage. I had some wintertime battery powered strings of mini lights that were quite lovely, but suddenly stopped working due to battery leaking. Well, they were cheap.
However the remote for my skylight stopped working suddenly, and I found that tell tale blue mark from the batteries inside, with no sign of leakage on the batteries themselves. This is an expensive item! And worked fine just last week. I tried multiple sets of new batteries.
Have any of you had success cleaning out that blue corrosion to make a object functional again?
Yes. Take some sand paper, fine and get off the corrosion. CLR might work but make sure it is completely dry before trying the batteries. You can always call the manufacture on the remote or try to reset the remote and then see if it works.
I’ve sometimes had luck restoring things that have had battery acid leak and sometimes not. Agree that cleaning contacts is key. I’ve used alcohol and a q-tip plus a bit of baking soda.
My contact Rx is less than 2 years old (over one) and because of that, it is not considered valid in our state (is valid in some states). So, I cannot order refills of contacts here in the USA.
I had an appointment with an optometrist in April but, because of covid it was cancelled. Currently, I’m not inclined even if they are opening this week to go. I don’t feel ready yet for that close contact.
Apparently the regulations are different outside the USA and I found that they consider less than 2 year old scripts to be valid. Vision Direct in the UK seems to be legit and just wondered if anyone has experience with them or other companies.
1-800-contacts has an online feature for prescription renewal. We used it for H last time. You enter in all your info over the phone and then take this online test and it might also take a close up pic of your eye. It was very easy and free. I wouldn’t do it long term, but it was just a renewal. He didn’t want his prescription changed and he has no major risk factors.
I need to try to get him an exam again. If it proves difficult, we might go this route again
I’m planning to have my downstairs floor refinished in the next eight to ten months. They’re really worn and haven’t done well since we moved in seven and a half years ago. When I have it done, what do I do w/ all my furniture? Shove it into the one room that won’t be touched? Do DH – and my dogs!! – need to vacate the house entirely for the three or so days it will take? I assume so. And, if so, where do we go? – a hotel? an AirBnB? I’m just trying to envision how this is going to work.
I had carpet put in one room once and hardwood floors installed in another. The workers moved all the furniture into a different room and they were creative - the couch ended up on it’s side, etc.
We also had our kitchen floor hardwood floors refinished as part of the kitchen reno. We could still walk on it unless it had polyurethane that was drying. It was easy to avoid. If you can’t avoid walking through that space then maybe you can move out for a day or two. Three days seems a bit long. The poly phase was a bit smelly but not too bad. The sanding phase was very dusty, even though our kitchen has a door. Sawdust creeped out underneath the door a bit.
When we did ours way back when, we shoved everything into the kitchen, and went to a hotel for a night. I think it was only one night… we had about 8-900 sq ft of floor.
If you use a water-based polyurethane they should be able do it in one day if they only do two coats (most recommend 3). If you use an oil-based poly, it will take much longer. If you stain the floor, that will add a day. If you have a lot of floor, that will add time.
You are supposed to keep dogs off the new floor for quite a while because their nails can easily scratch the floor until the finish fully cures.
When we had our floor installed, it sure did get dust everywhere when they sand, even tho there were doors and they hung heavy vinyl to protect the kitchen. The fumes bothered us for weeks, so we didn’t move in until They no longer bothered anyone. It really depends on the coating/finish used. The floor company you use should be able to let yo7 imperial how long to vacate and any other limitations.
You can move the furniture or pay most companies so they will do the furniture moving.
Thank you for bringing this up. Ours also need refinishing but there’s no place to put everything except upstairs or in the laundry room (tiny) or bathrooms. I’m thinking we will have to move most of the furniture to the garage…
Quite frankly I’m considering having it replaced with prefinished full thickness planks just to avoid the expense of removing all the furniture.
Last year we got prefinished for that reason. The floor people moved the furniture, I put felt under all of it, and they even moved it to one side, did the floor and moved it to the other side. Never leaving the room.
In my house I feel like it would have been pretty difficult to remove the old 3/4" T&G oak without also doing substantial damage to the moldings around the walls and doorways, which were installed on top of the wood floor. If you have to remove/replace/repaint the moldings, that adds significantly to the cost and PITA factor.
Another thing you could consider, if the floor just looks dirty, dingy or tired but doesn’t have any damage, is getting the floors deep-cleaned and buffed. We did this in our house before selling it, and they came out looking like they had just been refinished, at a much cheaper price than refinishing.
We had several rooms refinished about 2 years ago w/ polyurethane. Decided to do it in 2 phases, for both cost, and because I didn’t want to move out.
Since we split the job into 2, my problem was not the furniture, but the odor. I thought I could live elsewhere in the house. The odor was SO BAD, I wish I moved out of the house for over a week. I’m very sensitive to odors, so it may be different for you.
We were advised the same for pets. It takes awhile to fully cure, and dogs can scratch the new finish more easily. Since we have pets, we decided to use polyurethane over water based hoping the durability was better over time. However, I may consider water-based for the second phase. No rooms abut, so a slightly different top finish won’t matter.
We had water based on the 2nd fl and personally, I will never go that way again. Was not durable. This was several years after the 1st fl and looks much worse today. I don’t know if that’s common. All the guys recommended what they called a “gym coat.” And none were willing to move furniture. We called the girls’ husky friends to help. We slept in another room, far away. Worst case, find a hotel room.
If there’s a space problem, why not consider a “Pods” storage unit that sits in your driveway? I think those guys give the option of moving things for you, for a cost, of course.
But back to the bath mat. I love the gold color. (All my mother’s “good” towels were gold, when it was hard to find.) I recently went through my own old towels. (I called then camp towels, cuz as the towels aged, the girls took them to camp.) Sorry to say, all my Martha Stewarts (your photo) should be tossed. Just didn’t age well. Fringed, pulls, holes.
I have also had a poor experience with a water based finish on my new hardwood floors. It looked great, but it did not hold up when there was a big spill that was immediately wiped up. The water got into the wood which expanded, tented up, then contracted when it dried, leaving big gaps. The installers insisted that the water based Bona finish was the best. I should have gone with my gut and gotten a quality oil based finish. I’ve had many spills on my other floors with no problems.
Next door neighbor hired a Pod and a moving crew—put furniture, etc in Pod while refinishers did their thing. The family lived in the basement for the better part of a week. She says she’d do the same thing again although it was clearly a more expensive option. It gave her time to thoroughly clean up sawdust residue, etc before returning furniture. As I recall, there was quite a mess! Don’t know details about which finishes she chose but her floors are beautiful. Is there a rule of thumb regarding how often floors require finishing?