What do you get when you cross a DIY-obsessed homeowner with a
state-mandated stay-at-home order? A long list of home-improvement
stories, broken down by difficulty level!
Stuff that was easy
When
I first received my stay-at-home orders, I was initially a human
whirlwind of activity. Spending 18 hours a day staring at the dirty
surfaces in your house is enough to get even the most unmotivated among
us to start wiping things down.
I
swept floors, mopped floors, and polished floors. I scrubbed walls and
baseboards, I scrubbed greasy light switches and door handles, I
scrubbed bathroom tiles until they were almost white again!
Even
after a good scrubbing, I realized that the walls in the guest room
were never going to lose all their stains, so I painted them instead!
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| One wall painted, 3 to go! |
This was a fun project because I mixed the paint from a collection of
cans I've been accumulating for years, collected from Freecycle and the
side of the road. I ended up doing blue on three sides with a darker
blue accent wall! I've never painted a room before, and I surprisingly
enjoyed it. Who knew that cutting in edges (the part that initially gave
me the heebie-jeebies!) could be so gratifying?
The
handrail brackets on the basement staircase snapped in half sometime in
the spring, so I took a trip to Community Forklift and found
delightfully cheap replacements. This time, the handrail didn't require a handyman—I was able to fix it myself in only a few minutes.
The
threshold for my front door has been cracked for some time, so I made a
new one out of some wood I had lying around, varnished it, and nailed
it in. Another successful task with a minimum of effort!
Unfortunately, that was the last of the minimum effort. Some of the other things I attempted did not go nearly so well.
Stuff that was hard
If you recall from the last time I fixed my kitchen sink, the faucet would only turn off if you angled the very wobbly handle just a little left
of six o'clock, and that meant it was usually dripping. I was nervous
about this fix, because my kitchen sink was only held onto the
countertop by a slapdash contraption attached to the bottom of the
faucet, so a replacement faucet was probably going to require a
replacement contraption. But I went ahead with it, because the sink was
getting more annoying to use with every twist of the handle, and being
home alone with it 24 hours a day was not improving our relationship.
The faucet removal was a challenge, but the installation was
surprisingly easy (although the manufacturer forgot to include an
important rubber washer, it was fortunately the same size as the one
from my old faucet). But the foretold new contraption that holds the
sink to the countertop is even more slapdash than the last one. It
involves levers made of wood blocks that put pressure on the cracked
countertop and rotting cabinet. So I fully expect this fix to only last
another year before something falls apart. I have learned one lesson
from all my frustrating repairs, though: keep the manual! The faucet
manual is wrapped in plastic and taped to the underside of the sink so
I'll never lose it!
My
house gets no shade, so every summer, I cover the skylights with a
solar screen to block some of the heat. For years, I've been wanting to
do the same to my bay window, but I couldn't come up with a practical
way to do it. I wanted to go all fancy with a roll-up screen...but
finally this year, I decided any jury-rigged screen was better than none
at all, so I hung the screen on suction cups! It looks silly, but
maybe, just maybe, it helps a little with the heat.
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| Professional window screening at its finest |
Another
thing you tend to notice when your office is right next to your
bathroom, is just how noisy your toilet is. And when you start paying
attention to that, you start to notice how low the water in the bowl is.
And then you do some investigating and learn that both issues are
symptoms of a faulty fill valve. Rather than buy a new fill valve (which
is astonishingly cheap at seven dollars, but very bulky and plasticky
and wasteful), you think maybe you can just replace the rubber washer
inside the fill valve. But unfortunately, the only washer available does
not fit, so you're out a couple bucks and still have a noisy toilet.
Finally, you concede and buy the seven dollar hunk of plastic. You have
difficulties with the locknut, but eventually you prevail. After only a
few weeks of prep work, you have fixed your toilet, and you have the
Instagram post to prove it! Doesn't that happen to you all the time? It
happened to me!
Still more stuff
When
I started writing this post, I was going to say that I hadn't
accomplished much over the 4 months I've been quarantining, but after
writing it all out, I realize it actually was quite a lot. I'm sorry for
making you read all that. In fact, I'm so sorry, that I cut out the
part about the three projects I still haven't completed, just to make it
shorter!
Since the
pandemic continues unabated, I'm sure I'll keep on plugging away at
those, and have plenty more projects to keep me busy over the
next few months. Until I write again, stay safe, stay home, and home improve!
