Newsletter chitchat - August 27th, 2024

[Cassel]

Are you a DIY fan? What kind of things do you do as DIY?

Do you recycle clothes or furniture?

Do you fix things around your place on your own?

Show us some pictures if you have some.

[Joyce Nease]

Good job!  It looks great, and, believe me, as your get older, you will be as glad for the rails as the grandchildren!  Lol!

Yes, my husband and I were always DIYers.  Most often because it was cheaper, but also because of the personal satisfaction.

[Cassel]

21 minutes ago, Joyce Nease said:

It looks great, and, believe me, as your get older, you will be as glad for the rails as the grandchildren!  Lol!

Well, three years ago, I fell on the stairs. Over time, they became "off-level". One morning, it was raining slightly, and I was holding my grandson's hand (he was just 12 months old), and my shoe slipped on the uneven step. I had a bad fall. My grandson did too, but he only fell ON the step. I had a nasty bruise for weeks. We added a 2x4 where I could at least hold something and the stairs were leveled within days. My husband also bought that anti-slip paint and painted all the steps with it (it is like paint with sand in it).

[Corrie Kinkel]

We used to do a lot of DIY in our younger days but my husband is no longer up for it. He does only some small repairs if necessary. The last 2 days we have had the stairs (indoors) renovated and a couple of weeks ago some small parts of the old stairs had to get a lick of paint before the work would start. Very reluctantly he did so and with a lot a pauses, but it was way to little to get someone to do it. And he wouldn't let me do it either. The new stairs turned out very nice, we are happy with it. Tomorrow I'll take some photos, now it is too dark to do so.

[Michele]

Having been a single mom, I became fairly good at DIY. Hanging shelves, fixing plumbing problems, assembling furniture, etc. I enjoyed every bit of it. 

[Anne Lamp]

I still do some minor repairs around the house, but not as much as I used to do.  I have replaced kitchen and bathroom faucets, and drain pipes.  About the only electrical stuff I do is replacing a wall switch or outlet, and then only if I have the power turned off. I have put together some things, I guess the biggest project of that kind was my kitchen table and chairs that had to be assembled.  My age is catching up with me and I don't have the strength or agility to do anything major anymore.  Oh well such is life.

[Susan Ewart]

We've done DIY stuff for years.  Lots of house stuff, I guess that's more reno than DIY, still it's stuff we did ourselves.  I have done DIY stuff for photo lights and scrims (diffusion screen).  I used chicken coup lights for my first lighting set up that I had to add diffusion to it with foam core as the light bulbs stuck out past the dish part of the light.  and being the duct tape queen, I taped it all closed and had no way to change out the light bulbs!  I also made foam core frames to attach diffusion material to.  And I've done the normal kind of stuff, like using picture frames to make a magnet board (still in use in my studio).  And when I did craft shows, I made most of the display props because buying the was not in the budget.  

I'm lucky to have a handy husband who is good with plumbing and electrical (he took a home owners electrical course at the university which helped immensely).  But the money saved in car repair has been the best for our finances.  His dad was a heavy duty mechanic so my husband was brought up learning how to rebuild engines, which is what he has done for our vehicles in the far past. And being in the tire industry (first in service and now in logistics) we have acquired a tire changing machine and balancer so we don't have book an appt for tire change over when the snow flies and everyone else is trying to do the same.

Now, though, it seems like a chore to have to do DIY stuff because getting it done for me(or buying the right thing) is so much more expensive than it used to be.