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Tag Archives: Cameron Village Handyman

Plumbing awaits no virus. Drips and leaks are drips and leaks through fair weather and foul.

Consider the mudroom sink. Hearty, robust, good for washing pets or boots or anything in between.

Almost a throwback to the legendary farm sink where Grandma canned vegetables and strawberry jam.

Mudroom faucets are also usually more functional than decorative. This is the mudroom after all.
A gooseneck spout complete with a garden hose attachment thread is the very epitome of life in
a household mudroom.

So naturally with a drip or leak the guiding principle is simple: Expensive repairs with inadequate
replacement hardware must be avoided wherever possible.

Fortunately, I happen to have an extensive assortment of washers from the Pleistocene onboard my truck.

Yes, there was a time in America when a jar of washers was the only item necessary to fix just about
any faucet in a typical home. Bathtub, lavatory, kitchen, cutoff valves and even the outside hose bib
were all repairable with little more than an adjustable wrench and screwdriver.

Since all this hardware was also from the Pleistocene repairing 2 cutoff valves and the hot and
cold handles on the sink made for a straightforward service call.

I even threw in a chichi new handle set from my legendary salvage hardware box as part of the job.

Your mileage may vary since this type of fixit is increasingly uncommon in the 21st Century,
but this time everything went well with no trauma attached to changing mudroom routines because
of new or awkward modern hardware.

Many times have I reiterated a reiteration I reiterated many times in the past but still am I surprised when I must reiterate my reiteration yet again.

To wit: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SIMPLE JOB

People ask what will be the cost to fix this? Many times I answer: ” I have no idea” and this is why:
THERE REALLY IS NO SUCH THING AS A SIMPLE JOB.

Many jobs are not straightforward out-of-the-box repairs.

The other day I went to tighten a stretched out cable for a suspended bird feeder.

Simple enough.

Loosen the clamps, pull up the slack and tighten the clamps once again.

Unfortunately, the cable had not stretched. The fascia board loosely attached to the house was the culprit and became even looser when I stretched the cable taut.

Yikes!

20 feet above ground on a ladder and a good chunk of the afternoon to detach and reattach everything properly with reinforced hardware so the bird feeder cable would not sag was the actual repair requirement.

And this is not the first time things went awry in a quick hurry.

CLICK LINK HERE

CLICK LINK HERE

So reiterate after me:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SIMPLE JOB.

A new toy for the backyard woodlot!

Cut a railroad tie into a big piece and a little piece, cross lap the little piece and big piece
together to form an L support for an old car spring, attach a pivot bracket and 6 foot length of
1 inch square tube above the car spring, force the axe handle remnant into a 1 inch diameter
galvanized nipple and bolt axe assembly into the business end of the tube, make a box of sufficient
dimension to hold 5 standard red bricks and use U-bolts to attach the counterweight above the
axe head and voila! a beautiful backyard wood splitting tool modeled on some of the European
versions seen on the Internet will appear before your very eyes!

Now your mileage may vary but my cash layout for this little project was $12.00 to buy the
railroad tie from Home Depot, $2.00 to buy a 1 inch galvanized steel nipple, $11.00 for
miscellaneous u-bolts, lag bolts, washers and nuts etc. for a grand total of about $25.00
cash money USD!

The car spring came from my friendly local mechanic (Thanks Rocky!), the tube and bracket,
bricks, plywood etc. came from my junk pile and of course, the inspiration came from
the Internet (thanks Youtube!)

To quote the legendary George Peppard, Leader of the A Team: ” I love it when a plan comes together!”

Happy firewood splitting everyone!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

A DIY no frill cabinet shelf pull out.

Back in the good ole days before fancy wire baskets and dovetail joint trays,
plywood was the material of choice to make cabinet pull out shelves.

Yup! This was some kind of fancy!

With ordinary plywood a 31 inch wide shelf can easily support any number
of heavy pots and pans.

Hardly gets anymore straightforward than this.

3/4 inch plywood shelf cut to size attached with two side drawer glides and a front
edge of clear pine.

The visible surface can be covered with vinyl shelf liner, 1/8 inch melamine masonite, FRP,
or even Formica.

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Melamine masonite liner.

The video:

punchlist3
To paraphrase the legendary Forrest Gump: punch lists are like a box of chocolates,
you never know what you will get when the telephone rings.

A staple of the Fixit Catalog Of Necessary Projects, punchlists are the jobs leftover
when the rest of the construction crew is gone and finished with their work.

Who knew parking space stripes could be too long and would need to be partially
erased? And yet there was the task on the job board list: black out excess parking
space stripes!

And so I did.

Enjoy.

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Work in progress. Layout lines and spacer set. Striper cart ready to roll.

Live video of white line erasure in progress.

Okay, summer is officially here!

Now is a good time to look back at all the Springtime Spruce up repairs
completed between thundershowers and routine maintenance chores here
in beautiful downtown Raleigh.

For example, door jamb repairs remain a popular option for many people with
spring fever.

Here:

ViviLnk

ViviLnk


Here:
ViviLnk

ViviLnk


And the finished job here:
ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Sometimes a window sill or two could use some tender loving care:

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Up on a ladder again!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Brand new maintenance free PVC replacement sills will do the job every time!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

And, nothing like a nice new fence to shape up the yard.

Sometimes you need a fancy homemade right angle layout tool to make
straight lines for the fence posts!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Of course, no fence is complete without a gate latch:

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

And yes, with all the rain this Iris bloomed early and often!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Just a small sample of the mischief and merriment from Spring 2016!

(There was a soffit repair with blurry pictures which I cannot post! Darnit!)

Blurry Picture Soffit Repair (See the beautiful tongue and groove board patch? Yeah,
neither can I! -sigh- )

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

So now I brace for the heat and humidity of the Dog Days Of August! Call me a with work order!
We can laugh together in the steamy Southern Sunshine!

Oh, yeah, there was a rebuilt kitchen drawer this spring as well. Amazing how often kitchen drawers
need help! Quite a few have come my way over the years!

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

If you want to see some of these repairs live on camera, I made videos wayback long ago! Yes!

CLICK THIS LINK HERE FOR A WINDOW SILL REPAIR

CLICK THIS LINK HERE FOR A DOOR JAMB REPAIR

StorageCrate2

Framed pictures and plaques suffer nicks and dings and other damage when they lean
against each other stored on a shelf or worse, stacked flat on top of each other in a pile.

With the variable length, width and thickness of a typical framed picture and
plaque collection storage and transport is an adventure at best.

One solution is to pack them vertically in individual partitions protected from
any potential injury.

This crate made with pegboard sidewalls and adjustable partitions created with
dowels solves many storage and transport requirements.

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

ViviLnk

Yes! (Some!) window sash repairs are possible. This latch rail was probably destroyed by
a wood virus, not water rot or insects. So, overall, frame stiles were repairable with a
new latch rail inserted in place of the badly decomposed original. A cheaper, faster
alternative to the special order replacement kit which can take up to 3 weeks to arrive.
As Hannibal Smith famously said: “I love it when a plan comes together!”

This, of course, is not my first rodeo.

A previous wildly improbable wood damage repair can be found AT THIS LINK.

And here find TWO sash repairs from the wayback machine in the days before insulated glass!

WAYBACK SASH REPAIR #1

WAYBACK SASH REPAIR #2