repairing things

Had a microwave poop out on us the other day, which I diagnosed as the door switch (the fuse-like thing inside that makes sure the door connection is sealed before it puts out heat). Wasn't something I was comfortable fixing myself, but it didn't matter, since, at 10, they no longer make out model or parts for it. We had a guy out who apologized for being unable to do anything with it, so I had to get a new one, though I was able to reinstall the trim (it's an under the counter model).

Weirdly, at the same time our top loading washing machine broke, or specifically, the hubcap-looking wheel/agitator came loose, which thankfully just means swapping out for a new one. Pretty straight forward.

Shit like that *always* happens at the same time. Rule of threes and all that.

Our overflow pipe has been pissing out water for the last couple of weeks - the one from the water tank in the loft that comes out under the eaves of the roof. I've worked out how to turn the water off in the street, so I did that, then got up in the loft, removed the ball valve and bent the metal shaft down slightly, hoping that means the tank will fill slightly lower and not reach the overflow.

It's currently the hottest September on record in the UK and fuck ME was it hot up there. I was running with so much sweat I couldn't see and when I came down I smelt like a swamp. It's not dripping right now, so fingers crossed...

when I was doing an electrical apprenticeship I sweated out in so many dusty lofts. The worst one was the housing office in Bradford during a heatwave. All the dust sticks to you. I constantly felt like passing out, knowing that if I did there was only a thin piece of plasterboard between the widely spaced ceiling joists protecting me from a 50 ft plummett to certain injury or death!

Nothing like an existential threat to keep you conscious!

toilet leak, the seal where the pipe from the cistern enters the bowl has worked use over the years and now it trickles along the outside of the bowl when i flush. but a) it's clean water and b) it's only during the flush, so like an eggcup-full.

landlord's plumber has been around and because it's boxed in and access is difficult he's proposed replacing the entire thing, cistern, bowl, etc. and the *unrelated* vanity unit when it's really only one seal that needs attention.

he's also the gas check man and had already talked about replacing the cooked (doesn't meet current regs) and the boiler (inefficient).

ironically, the one non-working thing in the flat is the washing machine, none of the above is fatally broken. so all basically off-topic, sorry.

which can lead to your car failing a smog/emissions test ... so not 100% useless ime

― sarahell, Saturday, September 9, 2023 2:48 PM (two days ago)

that's cause you live in commiefornia

this is essentially what happened to me a few years ago and i wound up paying something like £800 for the parts and labour, it was totally insane. i feel that i got completely swizzed. but if your landlord's paying for it...

xpost

i can't help but feel that these several thousand pounds worth of changes (most of which don't really need doing) will affect my rent sooner or later.

(next door's rent was put up 17% after she complained that the water pouring through her ceiling was making the pace uninhabitable. 6 months later the flat is for sale and she has to find somewhere new)

got a new washing machine and half way through its first wash cycle was getting the error code for water issues and was furiously convinced I'd been sold a dud. Couldn't find any kinks in the hose or waste pipe, and even heard the water rushing into the tank when I turned the it on. I spent a fruitless hour fucking about with the machine and then the same booking a hotpoint engineer. Then I checked again because you get charged £70 if the engineer finds out the fault is your own dumbass doing. After further investigation I discovered when the machine was out of the bay the hose was ok and then was being stressed back into a water blocking kink out of my sight when it was pushed back towards the wall...duh. So now I realise in future: don't turn the water on until you've pushed the machine back towards the wall in the bay because at least then it won't even start a wash cycle if this irksome shit happens and you'll know what the problem is straight away.

the plumber took the cupboard door off its hinges to give himself better access. (he then left it outdoors for 3 weeks until i brought it in, but hey). four and a half months later(!) he has finished in the cupboard but the door is still unattached. the screws, god knows where those are.

i went and had a look for new screws yesterday. i need exactly 9, they sell them in packets of 250.

There's an old-school hardware down the street that sells screws and bolts individually, for 8¢ or 12¢.

And each time I go in, this old man follows me back there and watches me like a hawk as I pick them out from the giant drawers.

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

I think taking them out and putting them back but mixing them up would be worse!

local hardware place sells screws individually and because they were visibly different i got enough to replace the hinges on all 3 doors, not just the one that's currently unhinged. so, 27 (actually 30) rather than 9. £2. which is a bargain until you consider they were only £3.50 for 250 screws which makes this v expensive on a per-screw basis.

(42p for 30 at box prices so i paid almost 5x)

door now attached. hadn't figured on having to jack the door up a bit to get it to reach the hinges but it was nothing a few bits of cardboard couldn't cure. had forgotten how cock-eyed the door used to hang anyway because, like every single thing in this flat, it was done on the cheap.

(another example of this is the line of blue tiles in amongst the 5 lines of white tiles in the bathroom, one colour metric, the other imperial so the joins don't line up)

(another example being the bedroom door, which is an old front door, compete with yale lock)

What's the worst that's going to happen? I grab a handful and make out like a bandit with $1.56 worth of stock?

have been working on my pops kitchen sink/dishwasher situation lately, and patronizing his local home depot

and it is fascinating, the usual sales associates wandering around, but also there are no checkout lanes, only individual self checkout stations however each station has a cashier, just kind of standing there to scan your things

could be a geographical anomaly but I suspect theft is such an issue that we don't deserve hardware stores anymore

As per the commentary on the 'continuing with CDs' thread, my kid got given a CD player. It had a 3-pin connector plug on it, so I figured I'd just cut that off and put on a regular UK plug. But there's no earth wire in there - just the blue and brown ones. I've wired the thing up, just to see if the CD player works as much as anything but am I going to a) give someone an electric shock or ii) burn the house down?

I've done some basic Googling and not *all* devices require the earth wire apparently - saw things like electric drills and vacuum cleaners mentioned.

If it is expecting a 120vac 60 Hz power input and you hit it with 230vac then option ii is a possibility. But if it expects UK power and not weedy US power, then no.

Option a can happen with an ungrounded device and also don't touch any capacitors if you are poking around inside the guts.

there's a bunch of interesting details in the link from the other CD thread where this came up

https://www.hifiwigwam.com/threads/what-sort-of-plug-is-this.122336/

It's probably not modern compliant, but it is to British Standard. The design means the earth pin connects before the others. The non-compliant bit is that the sockets aren't shuttered. IIRC, the socket is part shrouded, so the pins are covered when they're live and not fully inserted, so safe enough.

Thanks Jaq and sleeve (and NickB elsewhere). This place continues to be the sanest place on the web.

Interesting! Thanks for that link sleeve, have never seen one of those.

This is good:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090828/oregon-right-to-repair-sb-1596-parts-pairing

too bad for the owners of 2013 Audis, which apparently are exceptionally stupidly designed with proprietary parts and manuals.

cars are an entire thing, though

I recently repaired a sewing machine on behalf of a community repair café where I hope it will be used to repair many clothes and homeware items. I was lucky to find on ebay a random lot of parts that happened to contain exactly the small part I needed. It runs beautifully.

wow. yes!!!

That's so cool! Bravo!

Also cool to find out repair cafés are a thing. https://www.repaircafe.org/en/cafe/long-beach-repair-cafe-ca/ There's one close that reopened yesterday after 3 years.

~Hope to repair to the repair cafe soon~.

was gonna say plax that’s just a lovely thing to have done, both repairing the thing itself and the ends to which it can now be used. fantastic.

Thanks everyone for the nice replies. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action at then end of the month. The repair café is at a community garden that a friend helped found that is really incredible and connects all kinds of local groups they do all kinds of interesting activities. Its very active and has birthed all kinds of initiatives. My friend is really involved with several orgs for asylum seekers and refugees so that is a big part of it.

I serviced all the machines they already use and someone used one to repair a costume that was in the St Patrick's day parade in Dublin. The one I repaired is a new acquisition - a 1960s Brother that is closer to an industrial machine than today's domestic plastic nonsense. Before returning it I will be redoing the topstitching on all the jeans I altered for my bf recently.

There is also a guy who sharpens knives and repairs garden tools.

That's great, plax! Some people I know in a local town are wanting to do something like that and planning their first "repair cafe" for June. They just started recruiting repairers, hope their message finds those people.

I'm still banging on about visible mending but can only hope to brush the hem of former ilxor elmo argonaut's garment in this regard. I hope to spend more time on sashiko and also machine sewing this year, but I'm finding that it would be nice to have some company and conversation to go with this hand-work. Why sewing circles have been a thing since forever.

I'm told it's a good idea to have people sign a disclaimer in case anything happens when repairing, although this is yet to be implemented.

I love a good stitch and bitch.

I've got a newer plasticky Singer sewing machine that I have been too timid to use on jeans myself. But I took two pairs of jeans to alterations to have them patch kneeholes and other assorted rips from the inside with denim from other jeans. So it's visible patching but neatly done with denim. Very happy with my 2 latest repaired jeans.

Oh you can definitely use a domestic machine to patch/darn denim! By all means if the alterations people do a good job I'm not telling you not to give them your business but your machine should be able to handle it. I'm talking about redoing the top stitching over the flat felled seams, particularly at points where a flat felled seam meets a flat felled seam and I lose count of how many layers of denim there are!

You know one thing about repairing clothes (and other things too) is that the crappy stuff is hard to repair.

I rate myself as 'barely competent' at sewing but I am happy to do basic repair tasks. However, I've decided its just not worth it to bother with fast fashion stuff at all. Same thing with poorly made electronics etc.

Re clothing, I have to think about how to make repairs still "formal" -- like as soon as I fix something, no matter how cool it is, it turns into a piece of casual clothing, because now it might be "artsy" but it's not professional. I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated. And I don't mean starting with a super high fashion garment which is always going to look elevated. Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

I'm a curvy person, I need clothing to have swing and ease, and things are going to rub together and wear out. I know people say "buy high quality and it will last 10/20/30 years" but moths happen and wear happens and no matter how great the fibers and construction are, nothing lasts forever.

Maybe there's too much casual clothing out there that only looks "nice" when it's brand new.

yes! i feel good stuff only really becomes mine after a year or so of washing and wearing. the good clothes look and feel and wear at their best then.

agree on formal mending though - i have no skill in this area at all, so if necessary i'll send it out to get done well (luckily being in london there are some good services for this). frequently though I'll just ask the local dry cleaner to do it. i don't mind a bit of visible mending on my clothes, but as you say it does move them from formal work wear to informal at home wear.

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.

The Repair Shop is now also in australia but i'm thinking the quality standards aren't quite as high...

a kid bought in a model of the Flying Scotsman which wasn't running. they fixed the motor and all but either didn't notice or didn't care that the entire front bogie was missing, so instead of being a 4-6-2 it was a 0-6-2.

(i did wonder if they'd even know what the Flying Scotsman was but it spent some time i australia at the end of the 80s, set a bunch of records there)

on topic, i'm trying to fix the floorboards that the plumber left untidy after he'd done replacing some pipes. in the hallway (1m x 2m) he left 3 boards un-nailed and another one split in half. but the entire area had been covered with hardboard (nailed) and then a layer of cork (glued) and he'd removed this from around the boards he needed access to, but didn't for the rest of the hallway, so there's a 5m difference in heights in random places. he'd put the carpet back down, without even picking up all the nails he'd pulled.

it's slow going, mainly because i don't have the tools. plan is to screw down the loose boards (i don't have a hammer). but some of them he's cut in places where they are no joists underneath. and, of course, there are now additional pipes there.

i would love to be better at formal mending. i made an instagram account lately and it 25% gives me repairing videos. I've seen some techniques that are just amazing and would love to try.

― plax (ico), Tuesday, April 2, 2024 1:21 PM (three weeks ago)

this is the stuff I learned to do as a teenager when I worked for a theater costume shop. of course that was 30+ years ago so I could probably use some remedial lessons.

I need work clothes. I need to think about how mending can still be elevated.

I think it depends on the garment ... as in, pants, dress, shirt ... a huge rip in the knee of a pair of dress pants is likely not going to something you can mend and have look normal, but inseams and hems and belt loops you can definitely do. In terms of feminine tops and dresses, currently there is so much "fussiness" in design with bows and buttons and contrast colors, I think you've got a leeway there.

it's slow going, mainly because i don't have the tools. plan is to screw down the loose boards (i don't have a hammer). but some of them he's cut in places where they are no joists underneath. and, of course, there are now additional pipes there.

In a way, screws are better than nails as it's a lot easier to take them out again if you need to or if you mess up. A cheap cordless screwdriver would save you a bit of time. Not sure about the unsupported ends though - if you're not able to fix a supporting beam underneath, it might be easier to buy a new board