Category Archives: DIY

It’s usually the little things

Found water sitting at the bottom of the boot of our 2002 Maytag Neptune front load washer this morning. This has happened before when I had barn clothes to wash during my milkmaid career and straw would make its way into the drain.

It’s an easy fix on our machine: undo the two screws that hold the door and two on the other side, and then remove the front panel. Inside you’ll find a cute little drain held on by two spring clamps.

Using pliers, or your fingers if you are strong, undo the clamps and remove the drain. I usually slide the clamps onto the drain so I don’t lose them!

Inside the top of the drain I found a little piece of plastic. Once that was removed, I put the drain in the sink and ran some water through it, which dislodged some disgusting slime. Yuck.

A little troublemaker

I put the drain back on, reinstalled the clamp and poured a little water into the boot to ensure I had the clamps snugly attached. Front panel and door reinstalled, a five minute fix!

Bucket List

Hail to the 5-gallon bucket, the ubiquitous hold-all and do-all. Preppers seems to have a million uses for them, so look for them on the coat of arms of some future post-apocalyptic government. I am not a prepper, but I like to be prepared, and have many empty 5-gallon bucket, so I reserve the right to some day become a prepper. I’m ready!

I love using these buckets in the garden for weeding, but have always wished I could get the handle to stand up to make the bucket easier to grab and go. This week I cracked it. Bucket, meet bungee cord.

The handle stays up, so I won’t be grabbing the side of the bucket to move it when I’m on my hands and knees in a flower bed, which has always meant eventually breaking chips off the side of the bucket. And it’s easily reversible if I want to let the handle fold back down.

The bucket handles are mostly made of metal with a plastic piece that you hold. That plastic piece seems to break down long before the bucket does, and carrying a heavy bucket while only grabbing the thin metal bit is uncomfortable, so I take a piece of old water hose, cut off a suitable length, split it lengthways, and tape it over the handle. Ready for a few more years of puttering.

Electrical tape, because my father used electrical tape to mend everything, and I have many vintage rolls to get through.

Brain portrait

A friend asked me what I’ve been up to lately. I said I’ve been in my shop fixing an old school desk that was wiggly because the glue holding it together had dried out. She asked me to send a picture, so I did.

I was going to delete the photo, but then decided it is possibly the best portrait I could ever make of my brain: quite messy but also reasonably organized, full of stuff I probably should have gotten rid of ages ago, practical, a mix of old and new, slightly scattered, but all mine.

Yes, you wags, a bit unglued, too!

Small victories

Yesterday I had two DIY victories. One was repairing a bathroom sink that wouldn’t hold water when the stopper was in place. Turns out it was easily fixed by undoing the nut underneath, lifting the drain piece up, removing the disgusting plumber’s putty that had started to disintegrate, putting a generous amount of fresh putty around the drain, and reattaching the whole thing.

The other repair success was a burner on our Maytag MGS5770 gas stove that was sometimes difficult to light. A repair person who fixed something else on the stove a few years ago said the whole burner would have to be replaced, at a cost of $50-$75 for the part plus a $75 service call, but it wasn’t bad enough to bother with that expense and faff.

My list of home repair projects has benefited from the latest pandemic advice to stay at home, which we have been doing since before Christmas anyway, so I decided to tackle this burner. When cleaning the burner holes didn’t improve anything, I examined one of the other burners and observed how the spark from the electrode lit the gas coming out of a hole directly under it. On the faulty burner, that electrode was ever so slightly twisted, perhaps a couple of millimetres off, so I took a pair of pliers and gently twisted the electrode so it pointed directly down over that hole. It worked perfectly, and now the burner lights immediately and much more safely.

As these little niggling projects had simmered away in the background for years, they weren’t obviously going to massively change our lives, but the small victories were satisfying and very much felt like putting things in order in a disordered world.

Ignitor at 6 o’clock
Me in my father’s propane delivery truck circa 1969 reminding you to be careful when working on anything powered by gas…never mind that he used to drop the shiny 100 pound tanks in the background off the back of this flat-bed truck and roll them across people’s lawns by kicking them with his foot.

Hot enough to fry an egg

Finding our hens panting in their nesting boxes on this sweltering day reminded me I was going to make a screen door for the henhouse. Kind of late to start today, so found this mysterious screen from heaven-knows-what and stuck it in the door with clamps.

The henhouse started life as a smelt shack about 60 years ago and was my playhouse from about 1968 until I was probably far too old to be playing. It has been a henhouse for the past four years. It is in remarkably good shape for something that was basically ignored for three decades, with only a tiny bit of rot in one corner that I easily fixed with my basic carpentry skills. It could use a fresh coat of paint. And it still needs a screen door.

Opening and closing

Last time I bought paint, the clerk gave me a can opener.

Today when putting painting supplies away, I noticed this tool is also a paint can closer.

I assumed the flat end was the opener (which it is) and the other end was a bottle opener, for whatever reason in the 21st century when hardly any bottle cap needs to be pried off. Turns out the bottle opener part is for pushing down the can lid, using the sticking-out part as a lever. It works ok – probably really well on an unused can of paint – but I was dealing with a 19-year-old can, so a rubber mallet was more effective to get a good seal.

Paint Can Openers | Anthony & Co.
http://www.anthonyco.com/paintcanopeners.php

How to keep paint usable for two decades? Seal the can as tightly as possible, probably with a rubber mallet and not the closing tool, then turn the can upside down and store in a cool, dry area. The paint seals the lid completely. It will thicken over time, and can get sort of weird, but just strain it through cheesecloth or old pantyhose and you might be able to paint over a patch in a wall, as I just did. I bought what I thought was pricey paint for the inside of our house in 2002, and it still looks fresh and the leftover paint pretty much still matches after all these years.

One last tip: when you first invert that sealed paint can, put it in a cardboard box for a few hours to test that the lid is firmly attached and not leaking. Paint spilled all over your shelf and/or floor is the mistake I made so you don’t have to!

It’s the little things

I searched the Miele Canada website for a replacement part for our S7000 upright vacuum cleaner. They didn’t what I needed, but they do have 3D4U, a series of 3D printing files that anyone can download from Thingiverse. These are accessories rather than spare parts: an attachment to vacuum dust while you drill a hole, smaller-than-normal nozzle attachments for cleaning, a coffee bag clip that lets you add a pouring nozzle to your bag of beans, even an attachment to help you blow soap bubbles with your vacuum!

Miele say they are the first domestic appliance manufacturer to offer 3D printing accessories. That’s a great first step, and here’s hoping Miele and all other manufacturers of everything start making free 3D printing files of their spare parts available, especially for people like me who prefer to fix things when I can to keep as much as possible out the waste stream.

It’s impossible for companies to keep every part of every machine they have ever made in stock, but they could easily make the 3D printing files available. How many small appliances get tossed every year because a knob breaks or a little part cracks? I had to toss a stick blender last year only because a cheap plastic gear stripped after a few years of occasional use. I don’t own a 3D printer, but our public library system has some available, and perhaps printing kiosks could be a small business in future (if they aren’t already).

Zip ties to the rescue

I’m not going to call this post “Nice Rack”

Canadian purveyors of incredibly tempting woodworking and gardening stuff, Lee Valley, just emailed a link to plans for a clever tool rack designed by former store employee Charles Mak. With a free PDF of the detailed plans and lots of helpful photos, this should be something even I can make with my limited shop tools and rough carpentry skills.

Precious Plastic and Fixing#Fashion

Great episode of BBC World Service’s People Fixing The World podcast about the Precious Plastic movement. It’s been interesting watching founder Dave Hakkens create this international open source community, then step back recently to allow others to take the reins. When I think of open source, I think more of computer code than management styles, but there would be no way for Hakkens to have created this open community and then tried to control it from above. He is letting it evolve beyond him.

Precious Plastic is now under the umbrella of One Army, which includes their new initiative to fix fast fashion waste called, sensibly, Fixing Fashion. Their website is full of information on how to mend, care for, and repurpose your clothing, with the aim to have us think of old clothes as a resource and not waste, just as Precious Plastic did.

I have been mending my clothes again of late, so this comes at the perfect time to help me advance my skills. I have a 1970s sewing machine, but have been patching by hand: holes in jeans, the elbow of a hoodie, sewing up ripped seams on t-shirts. I’m using the thread I have on hand, and am not worrying about it all looking nice or matching. I can darn socks because my mother has always knit them and I watched her keep them wearable forever by mending holes toes and heels.

My only tip to pass on is to patch or mend before a hole emerges, when the fibres are just starting to look thin, then you are reinforcing what is already there and that is much easier. This requires examining your clothes regularly as you launder them, so having fewer clothes helps.

In two generations my family went from having a closet that was just a couple of hooks behind the door to a big walk-in room. Who do we think we are, and what would the ancestors think of who we have become?

Don’t Smash That Button

I’ve used this Instructable a few times to revive temperamental remote control buttons, and it is a very satisfying and easy job. Getting the plastic case apart is usually the most difficult part and just takes a bit of patience.

A bit of tinfoil from my hat.
Bonus tip: single use super glues can be used more than once, just stick some Blu Tack on the end and hack off when you want a little dab.

I fixed our DVD player remote yesterday and was surprised to see the original batteries from 2006 were still installed. They feel very light (7 grams less than a Duracell), and look like cheapies, but must be the best batteries ever made.

0% mercury, 100% magic.