Paper Towels and Spackling Compound

[shereads]

What's the most inept emergency repair job you've done - home, car, dog, whatever has needed repairing when you lacked the time or the funds to have it repaired professionally?

I once replaced a rotted baseboard with a tightly wadded ball of paper towels and some spackling compound, sculpted into the shape of a baseboard. That was ten years ago. It's still there. Doesn't look bad, actually.

 

[SummerMorning]

Probably fixing my bike's broken gear shift by removing all the gears except one...

...it worked until the bike broke in half on its own.

 

[cloudy]

Many moons ago, my nissan 200sx (anyone remember those?) had a starter that was fried, so we put in a push-button starter on the dash - turn the key, then push the button.

It was still there, still being used years later when I sold it at almost 300,000 miles.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Too numerous to name. I'm the King of Bondo.

Bondo'd a broken refrigerator door. (My food smelled like solvent for weeks.) Bondo'd up a mouse hole. When I was a grad student, I used to do furniture touch-up & repair for a couple of furniture stores. Bondo and epoxy were my two right-hand men.

Put in a shower surround in the iupstairs bathroom that left a 3/4" gap between the surround and the tub at one end. Too thin for tile, so what to fill it with? I ended up using wadded tinfoil and tub caulk, and it's been deteriorating ever since. God only knows what's going on beneath it. I'm afraid to look.

---dr.M.

 

[cloudy]

Too numerous to name. I'm the King of Bondo.

Bondo'd a broken refrigerator door. (My food smelled like solvent for weeks.) Bondo'd up a mouse hole. When I was a grad student, I used to do furniture touch-up & repair for a couple of furniture stores. Bondo and epoxy were my two right-hand men.

Put in a shower surround in the iupstairs bathroom that left a 3/4" gap between the surround and the tub at one end. Too thin for tile, so what to fill it with? I ended up using wadded tinfoil and tub caulk, and it's been deteriorating ever since. God only knows what's going on beneath it. I'm afraid to look.

---dr.M.

My husband calls me the queen of tape. I firmly believe that if you have duct tape, a screwdriver and a pair of pliers you can fix anything.

 

[SummerMorning]

Don't forget a hammer and nails

 

[shereads]

Put in a shower surround in the iupstairs bathroom that left a 3/4" gap between the surround and the tub at one end. Too thin for tile, so what to fill it with? I ended up using wadded tinfoil and tub caulk, and it's been deteriorating ever since. God only knows what's going on beneath it. I'm afraid to look.

That's the beauty of home repair! You don't have to look.

When I first bought my house, I used to panic every time a ceiling caved in or a septic tank exploded. I had a recurring nightmare where I was running around trying to patch vast door-sized holes in the outer walls, with sheets of plywood and spackling compound. Eventually, I learned to take minor homeowner emergencies in stride.

For example, a few weeks ago I was watering plants on the front deck and the heel of my shoe went through a soft-ish spot in the wood. Some poking around with a fingertip revealed lots of soft-ish spots. Solution? I don't wear high-heeled shoes when I water the plants. I wait until I've changed out of my work clothes, and I wear flats.

It's saving me hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars that some carpenter would only use to buy Peach Scnapps and crack.

(Caulk is too soft for sculpting, Dr. Mabeuse. Try spackle. With enough paper support, it can be forced to hold almost any shape with minimal sag. It's not waterproof, of course, so you might want to paint on some clear shellac.

 

[oggbashan]

Mended a car exhaust with a baked bean can and fencing wire. Lasted six months.

I sold a wreck of a car at an auction. It made £30 for spares. I had listed all the faults I knew about - worn back axle, faulty steering, brakes, and gearbox that growled. There were rustholes in the doors and wings that a crow could fly through.

Two months later I had a phone call from the new owner. Her husband had bought it for £400 after answering an ad with a mobile phone number and arranging to meet the seller on a layby on our local by-pass. I didn't believe people were that naive!

She asked whether there had been anything wrong with it when I sold it. I took a deep breath and told her. Her husband was going to get a good telling-off when he got home. He'd bought it for her to use on school runs.

They came over to see me, in that car, at the weekend because I had the copy of the declaration I'd made about its condition when I sold it at auction.

The holes in the metalwork had been filled with glazed cardboard, including a Kellogg's Special K packet, then sprayed over with underseal then paint. The brake pads had been packed with exhaust cement. The back axle and gearbox were full of shredded pantyhose. Apparently that will cure gear noise - for about twenty miles. The certificate of roadworthiness was from a stolen batch.

They never did find the seller. She had noticed the Kellogg's logo under the paint and then looked further.

There are repairs and...

Og

PS. He looked as if he would be in the dog house for a year.

 

[raphy]

Many moons ago, my nissan 200sx (anyone remember those?) had a starter that was fried, so we put in a push-button starter on the dash - turn the key, then push the button.

It was still there, still being used years later when I sold it at almost 300,000 miles.

Remember them? They still make them and they're still getting mixed reviews. I owned one about a year ago, a 1988 model that looked like it should have had a horizontal red light in the nose, like KITT from Knight Rider.

As for fixing stuff, Gaffer Tape is the be all and end all of fixing stuff. You guys in the US call it 'Duct Tape', but so far I haven't found a version of duct tape with a black backing.

And without the black backing, it isn't Gaffer Tape, because Gaffer Tape is like The Force. It has a dark side, a light side, and holds the universe together.

Raph, ex-roadie and sound engineer and devotee of gaffer tape and all things black.

 

[cloudy]

Aren't they 240sx's now?

Mine was an 82 coupe, not the hatchback. I loved that car! Drove it all the way through college.

At one point the coil went out and I was too damn lazy to put a new one in. Fortunately, it was a manual transmission, so when it went dead as I was cruising down the road, I just popped the clutch and kept going.

 

[Guest]

Bondo and [E]poxy were my two right-hand men.

Mab., good opening sentence?

I've done lots of clothes mending with tape, glue and safety-pins. For house stuff I do it like a professional (even some electrical work).

Perdita

 

[raphy]

Aren't they 240sx's now?

Mine was an 82 coupe, not the hatchback. I loved that car! Drove it all the way through college.

At one point the coil went out and I was too damn lazy to put a new one in. Fortunately, it was a manual transmission, so when it went dead as I was cruising down the road, I just popped the clutch and kept going.

Not in Europe. 240SX over here because they develop (I believe) 240 hp. 200SX in Europe because they use a 2.0 turbo engine.

 

[cloudy]

Not in Europe. 240SX over here because they develop (I believe) 240 hp. 200SX in Europe because they use a 2.0 turbo engine.

Sorry. My bad.

Cloudy (ignorant American)

 

[raphy]

Sorry. My bad.

No problem. A few years ago I used to be a car geek. Not so much anymore, but the 200SX hasn't changed any since I last looked

 

[shereads]

They came over to see me, in that car, at the weekend because I had the copy of the declaration I'd made about its condition when I sold it at auction.

The holes in the metalwork had been filled with glazed cardboard, including a Kellogg's Special K packet, then sprayed over with underseal then paint. The brake pads had been packed with exhaust cement. The back axle and gearbox were full of shredded pantyhose. Apparently that will cure gear noise - for about twenty miles. The certificate of roadworthiness was from a stolen batch.

Damn. If you had written this a month ago, I might have kept my old Honda.

 

[shereads]

For house stuff I do it like a professional (even some electrical work).

Ever receive a severe electrical shock while trying to make the exhaust fan over the stove stop making a buzzing noise? Which you did by yanking out the wires with your hands? Which evidently caused a small flash fire while you were stunned, because when you looked up, there was minor smoke damage to the cabinets?

No?

Me neither.

 

[shereads]

Bondo and Epoxy sound like characters from Shakespeare.

 

[neonlyte]

I could have sworn it said 'spanking compounds'.

I'm really bad with anything electrical, nearly as bad as I am with plumbing. It is always the one joint that is impossible to reach that leaks, one day I arrived at my shop to find water running out of the front door, you guessed it, I'd 'repaired' the dishwasher. The flood shorted out the electrics. I was wandering around in the dark, terrified to turn on the power in case I fried, searching for a torch. I learn't a great lesson.

Always leave a torch where you know you can find it.

NL

 

[Guest]

Sher, when I had just moved to SF with two young sons and was in the process of getting divorced, getting a new job, finding schools for the boys, and having found a new home, I was awakened one night by the alarm clock on my new home's stove. I could not figure out how to turn it off, it kept going off every 15 minutes. After an hour or more of getting up to hit what seemed only a snooze button I pulled off the top parts of the stove and found the clock connection. I stood there in the middle of the night, physically and emotionally exhausted, staving off a depressive episode, and decided I'd just pull out the wiring that led to the clock. I actually thought I might be electrocuted and die, vs. merely undoing the clock. I did it.

pointlessly, Perdita

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I love the fix-it and car repair shows on TV. Everything is clean and new, all the nuts come off the bolts, the car engines are spotless, and everything fits.

Then you try and do something on your own. The nuts are all rounded and rusted onto the bolts, you slice off the tops of your knuckles when the wrench slips, there's so much grease and crud on car engines that you can't see anything, and the part that was so easy to reach on TV is way under the engine and positioned between two razor-sharp pieces of rust.

Those shows are handyman pornography. They make it look like fun.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

The nuts are all rounded and rusted onto the bolts, you slice off the tops of your knuckles when the wrench slips

I donated a perfectly nice gas barbcue grill to the Salvation Army because the propane tank was rusted onto the hose attachment and couldn't be replaced.

I bought two different brands of stuff that's guaranteed to loosen rusty bolts. Nothing.

I bought a new wrench set because men told me I must be using the wrong wrenches. Nothing.

One of them came to the house to show me what I was doing wrong, because "it can't be that difficult to loosen a rusty bolt." He got all red-faced and used the most dreadful language before he gave up.



He agreed that it was a nice wrench set, though.

"Simple Jobs That Can't Be Done." It should be a nightly show on the Home & Garden network.

 

[champagne1982]

[...]
"Simple Jobs That Can't Be Done." It should be a nightly show on the Home & Garden network.

My dad calls that the "homos and gays channel". No offence meant to the boys in pink...

 

[SeaCat]

In my mostly humble opinion,

No tool kit is complete without those few things which can fix anything. Duct Tape, Vice Grip Pliers, Liquid Weld, Bailing Wire, A Coffee Can, and of course a large bottle of Tequila.

Cat

 

[Weird Harold]

What's the most inept emergency repair job you've done

I don't do Inept repairs. Even if they're "temporary fixes" that last forever they're always as 'ept' as I can make them.

I one replace the ignition advance spring with a piece cut from an aluminum can to get a stalled car to run long enough to limp the 30 miles to the nearest town.

Just recently, I replaced the O-ring in the kitchen faucet with a bead of RTV (tm) Silicon Compound until the maintenance man could get around to fixing the leak.

My bookcase is made of scrap-wood and string and has supported over 500 lbs of books (1,447 paperbacks at last count) for over five years. (I ran out of kite string, so part of it is supported by 50 Wt Cotton thread.)

I've towed a car with 100 lb test clothesline.

I wasn't satisfied with the air volume the pump for my air-mattress put out, so I adapted a pill bottle, a waterbed fill adapter and garden hose to replace the 1/4 inch hose it came with.

Those are just a small sample of the many "adaptations" I've come up with over the years.