Fixing a Car with Floss

Nope, the title is not a metaphor.  I really did "fix" a car with floss.  Driving from Utah to Arizona after Christmas, my friend found herself in a tricky situation.  Hit the solid object ahead in our lane, hit the truck in the lane next to us, or run into the shredded tire on our other side.  She slowed down as much as she could and we braced for impact with the solid object which turned out to be a fully-packed carry-on suitcase.  It did a number on her car's low-profile bumper, but nothing else seemed to be wrong, so we threw the blasted suitcase to the side and put the pieces of her bumper in the trunk.  As our speed picked up, we heard loud clicking in the wheel well.  I got out in the sub-freezing weather in the middle of nowhere to check.  I couldn't see anything.  We tried again.  Same thing.  I checked again but still couldn't find anything.  After several repeats of this, I climbed further under the car to realize a connector that held three pieces of overlapping plastic together was gone.  When the car started moving, the plastic would move into the wheel well.  I needed a way to stabilize the plastic.  We didn't have duct tape or any kind of tape.  Then I thought of floss.  If I used several strands and threaded them through the hole in each of the pieces, I could tie them together.  As I was working, a cop came up to see what was going on.  I asked if he had any medical tape.  He said no. He asked if we had brought the suitcase.  I said no.  He left to go get the suitcase.  Huge help.  I finished tying off the floss, and we started driving.  No noise!  We stopped at the next gas station where I bought duct tape to wrap around the floss.  This fix held up for over a year until she was able to get her car fixed.  I think Macgyver would have been proud.

Hamster Home

I bought a hamster.  A cute, tiny Roborovski hamster the size of a golf ball.  Because she is so small, I thought the cage from the pet store was plenty big.  After doing some research, I found out these little critters have so much energy that they need a bigger space to run and play.  No pet store sold a cage that fit the bill, so I found ideas online for how to build my own out of a clear, plastic storage box.  Some people use glass aquariums, but they are heavy and expensive.  The box was about $15 at the home improvement store.

I cut out the middle of the lid, drilled holes every 1.5 inches around the edge, then used zip ties to attach metal wire mesh.  I covered the edges with duct tape (white to be fancy) to avoid cuts on the sharp edges.  I also drilled a hole in a side wall to attach the water bottle.  Based on her body language, the fur ball is much happier in her new home.

Rotting Wood and Putty

Our storm door is old - in fact it may date back to when the house was built in the 40's.  Every time I opened the door, the handle would nearly come off in my hand through the rotting hole it was sitting in.  Hello project!  I went to the hardware store and found a wood composite puddy and molded it into the rotting wood hole.  After it dried, I screwed the handle back on with some new screws and the handle worked as good as new!

Cleaning and Tuning a Piano

Everyone in our house plays the piano so we thought it was a good idea to pick up a free piano listed on a local list serve.  With the help of my brother, his truck, and six other guys, we got the piano home.  The real winners in this situation were the previous owners who got the piano moved out of their house for free.  Upon inspection, we found that most of the keys were chipped, it was badly out of tune, the soft pedal wasn't attached, the damper pedal only worked on some of the keys, some keys were sticking, and the bottom of the bench was broken.  I figured this was a good opportunity to try some things I would never try on a piano in better shape.  First, I fixed the bottom of the piano bench with some wood glue and nails.  Next, I took off each key to clean and file it down to remove as much of the chipped edges as possible.  I cleaned out underneath the keys as well which solved the sticking keys problem (that part was pretty gross).  Some of the felt pads had deteriorated so I bought some felt and made replacement pads.

At this point we could put music in the bench and play the keys without cutting our fingers or having the keys stick. It still sounded terrible.  I watched some YouTube videos and got some ideas of how to reattach and adjust the pedals which worked pretty well. Some of the notes still do not respond to the damper pedal which means there are other issues with those individual notes. I ordered a tuning kit online and with the help of apps and my instrument tuner, I was able to tune most of the keys. The bottom and top five notes would not register with the tools I was using, but we don't play those notes enough to justify spending money on software for the problem so I just made sure the notes were progressive, hehe. Tuning is a very tedious process because most of the notes have two or three strings which each have to be tuned individually.  I did not do this in one day (and in case you are wondering, songs played on a partly-tuned piano sound even worse than a fully out-of-tune piano).   

Overall, the piano looks and sounds better than it did before, so I will call it a success.  It's not perfect, but I learned a lot about piano's!

Lopsided Bush

Spring is here and so are the weeds.  Our yard is more of the English garden style - a bit more wild and free.  However, it is getting a little too wild - the largest bush in the yard had a lot of dead space in the middle and was starting to grow heavy on the outside and take over the porch.  The edge between the grass and the flower beds had all but disappeared, so little by little I'm starting to work on it between rain storms.  There is still a lot of work to do, but I pruned down the bush with a saw and took a shovel to the edge of the lawn while pulling some of the weeds along the way.  The only saw I had was a hack saw.  It took forever.  Buy a wood saw.

Interior Re-design and Bug Bombs

Interior design is fun, but it can also get expensive.  A common alternative to interior design is called interior redesign where one takes the existing furniture they have to create a new space.  Yesterday I decided something needed to be done with our basement since we recently got rid of the couch there.  I figured with the extra space it would be a good opportunity to move the treadmill over from the other side of the stairs and create a workout space.  This is interior redesign in its most basic form.  I tried out the new space and it works great so far.

Another issue in this space was the spider crickets.  I'm not posting a picture because, hello, no.  We found a bug bomb to be the most effective solution.  We lit it in the morning on a bucket and let it do its thing while we were all at work.  We rewashed all the towels stored in the area to be on the safe side then vacuumed up the still-twitching bugs that had crawled out onto the floor.  Over the next several months, we continued to pick up dead bugs which meant the pesticide was still working.  Yay for poison.

Corroded Battery Terminal

Cars break down, it's what they do.  My dad has had to remind me of that whenever things go wrong with my not-so-new 2001 Corolla.  Typically, I wouldn't consider changing a dead battery an issue, but it becomes one when the terminal breaks after years of use and corrosion.  It becomes an even bigger issue when the bolt connecting the broken terminal to the cable won't come loose, your car is parked half-way in the garage at night during a rain storm, and you have a dinner appointment with a friend in two hours.  After conferring with my friend Josh in AZ over text, using a lot of WD40, praying, and finally figuring out how to position two wrenches to apply enough pressure to loosen the bolt, I was finally able to replace the terminal 1 1/2 hours later.  The bottom right picture shows all that was left of the old terminal after the saga.  My arm was sore the next day, but my car starts now!