More car repairs

I don't like paying people to do work for me, especially work I feel like I should be doing myself! When it comes to car repairs, however, I mostly have no idea what to do. I have to choice but to employ a garage.

After spending $140 last week to get my car's heater fixed, my wife's car went to the shop this week. Normal service, air filter, leaking power steering, replace the transaxle, and a bad tire pressure sensor causing a valve stem to leak, I left the garage $550 poorer.

The general practice and advice is to never get the extended warranties on anything. However, when it comes to cars I disagree. I drive cars until the wheels fall off, and the extended warranties always pay for themselves.

For this trip, the warranty only covered the axel work. I was very disappointed that more wasn't covered. But regardless, I am in a positive situation where the extended warranty had paid for itself and everything else is,including the  axel work, is now in my favor.

Cars are very expensive. Expensive to buy, maintain, fuel, and insure. But life really would be difficult without them!

Another Car Repair

It's not just your car, it is your freedom! Or is it? 

My car is seven years old and has even driven, on average, 6,000 miles per year - that's it!  6,000 miles is nothing. 

And yet I have poured thousands of dollars in repairs into the car.

Most recently, the heater in the car broke. That was bother $140! And I still need more work done. Two tires are cracked, the car has a squeeze when I go over bumps, and the cabin fan has a tweet. That is a lot more work for a car with $42K miles!

Is it freedom to be tied to so many car repairs? 

Linda's Christmas Present: Final

The final addition to the cabinets is some LED puck lights to the dark desk area of the cabinet.

I bought these battery operated pucks from Walmart. They are Lux by Shift 3 Wireless LED puck light set. The first problem is they take 14 batteries.

Second problem is that they aren't very bright

Final problem, in order to tape them, the tape has to cover the slot used to access the batteries. Which means the next time the batteries need to be changed the tape will have to be removed. And then what?

Nevertheless, the lights are installed and the cabinet is now finished.

Crofton warm mist humidifier: cleaning

I may have a whole house humidifier , but I that doesn't extend into my office. The humidity level can drop into the teens during the winter.

I use a small Crofton humidifier for the office.

Getting it ready for every season requires cleaning the mineral deposits that build up over time.

I start by removing the water jug.

Then remove a screw that was under the jug.

With the screw removed I am able to disassemble the rest of the humidifier.

Next, I scrape and wash off all the white build up. Reassemble. And we are all set for another season of warm mist humidity!

Happy Returns

There is nothing worse than running out of something while in the middle of a project. Especially when the hardware store is twenty minutes away. As a result, I have a habit to over buy. I don't mind overbuying because it allows me to build up a collection of parts and tools for future projects.

However, there are some parts and tools that I will simply never use. For those items, I toss them into a box along with the receipt and every couple of years I make a return trip to the hardware store.

Today is a return trip. I estimate that I have around $300 in returns spread across eight fading receipts. I probably have more I could return, but I think this cartload will be plenty.

Lamp repair

Another lamp broke while house cleaning.

I couldn't do much for the lamp shade (and oddly those tend to be the most expensive part of a lamp). I was able to save the lamp socket with a little electrical tape.

Christmas Decorations

As the seasons and holidays change, so do the decorations. Our collection of Christmas decorations consume no less than twelve plastic totes!

The tree is up, lights and ornaments hung, and now we can enjoy them for the next couple of months.

Linda's Christmas Present Part 6

It doesn't make sense to light a cabinet that has a wooden shelf in it. The answer was to replace the wood shelves with glass shelves.

I contacted Ray Sands Glass and for $150 I received custom made glass shelves.

Christmas Tree Overload

What do you do when your Christmas tree has too many ornaments?

 Go buy a second tree!

The second tree will be for our dinning room.

Linda's Christmas Present Part 7

Linda received eleven feet of cabinets for Christmas. The cabinets came with a built-in desk and an executive desk. That means she needs two office chairs.

I found a great deal on office chairs at Walmart during Black Friday.

The chair was easy to assemble because there weren't many parts.

First, I assembled the base.

And then the bottom of the chair.

The back of the chair is attached by the chair arms.

The final step was to place the chair onto the base.

She now has two new office chairs to go with the cabinet set.

Linda's Christmas Present Part 5

For Christmas, Linda received over eleven feet of cabinets. After they were set up, the next step was to apply three zones of cabinet lighting: white Christmas lights on top and LED tape light for the inside of the cabinet and for under cabinet lighting.

I needed a way to control these three separate zones of lighting in an easy way. Ideally, the lights would run to a light switch, but that was too much work. Instead, I found a remote control system at Lowes under the name of Holiday Living.

This provides a remote control for three power bricks. The remote turns the power on or off, essentially turning the lights that are connected to that brick on or off. 

The remote gives us the capability to have separate control of each zone. For days when we just went accent lighting from the top of the cabinet? We can have it. Or we just want to light up the inside of the cabinet? Or have any combination o the three zones - it is not problem.