Little Things . . .

We have lived in the same place now for  17 years.  Our home is paid for and we have not outstanding debts.  But little things keep arising.  Such is life.

The other day, Judie was in the guest bathroom, and had bit of a tussle with a shower door.  All I know is that she came in to the den and said, "I have a problem."  The issue was one of the two shower doors shattered in to a jillion pieces.  She needed help cleaning up.  She had a broom and shovel scoop.

I went into the garage and got my industrial vacuum cleaner.  And I spent maybe 20 minutes sucking up the glass pieces.  Some of the glass even got into the toilet bowl.  I fished that out very easily.  I left the glass in the shower/tub for the repairman to clean up.

We called the folks that did our main bathroom remodeling for us and they sent out a tradesman.  He measured the door and said, "No problem."   We wait now for the new door.  He will also lubricate the old door that is remaining and get all of it back in good working order.

Then the exit door to the garage acted up.  The latch stuck.  The bolt stuck fully retracted so that one can not close the door and expect it to stay closed.  So I disassembled the door knob and I figured the spring internal to the mechanism had broken and thus did not push the bolt out to engage the door jamb.  I had fixed this once before so it was not a new job to me.

We went to Lowe's and found the part.  There are two companies that make this kind of product and they are slightly but uniquely different.  I was able to find an exact match, purchased it and went home.  I had to fix the door face to adapt to the face plate.  The old latch had rounded corners and this was squared off.  I had to do a little chisel work to remove a little of the wood material so that the face plate fit in place.  Not a big job.

We reassembled the door knob.  Its an easy job to do but one that requires three or four hands for a while.  I did the hard part and Judie started the screws and we got it all back together again.

This is like fixing toilet flapper valves, install toilet flush units, etc.  I am the handy man that does this.  I have acquired some rather special tools.  I have the "T" handle to turn off the main water valve.  I had to also get the tool to open the main shut off valve.  The city had replaced all the meters with electronic reporting meters and thus did not want the normal house owner tinkering around with their meters.  So they made it had to get into.  Well there is a tool for that too, I call it a key latch device that allows one to open the meter cover.  I have had to assist a neighbor in turning off their water at the meter. so have become the go to guy.

Any way the stuff in the house is wearing out and has had repair calls here and there.  The wine cooler broke down, the washing machine door seal gave up the ghost, the control panel for the upper electric oven has had to be replaced.  I do not do those jobs but we know who to call when we need help.