Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It

I was chatting with a few people at the exclusive soft opening of a new local pie restaurant (see how I just dropped that in there? I make myself sound SO important) when the topic of fixing things came up.

I had never considered “fixing things” as a good conversation topic, but it’s actually great at generating discussion. Everyone seems to have at least one really good fix-it story and a number of failed fix-it stories, and everyone can relate to everyone else.

I think I’ve told fix-it stories on the blog in the past, so I won’t delve into them here. After all, I already told you about my ordeal involving the air conditioner this past summer. I thought I was going to be able to fix it after unscrewing the panel, but apparently air conditioners are very complicated and cannot be fixed by the tried and true methods of (a) restarting them and (b) shaking them. And so I suffered.

What’s the most impressive thing you’ve fixed? You can define “impressive” in your own way–sometimes it might mean that you used duct tape in a creative manner.

2 thoughts on “Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It”

  1. I fixed my toilet in Korea one weekend. I couldn’t ask the landlord for help (I don’t speak Korean, he didn’t speak English…see the problem?) and my boss lived all the way in Seoul. So, I removed the lid to the toilet tank, took a picture with my phone of the broken piece, walked down the street, found a store that looked like a hardware store, went in and showed my picture to the man there, took the replacement piece home and fixed my toilet.

    I felt like Wonder Woman. I even Skyped my dad to tell him.

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  2. Two recent events definitely qualify as “impressive fixing” in my books:

    My improvised bungee cord cover (hooded sweatshirt) when I was moving my couch a few months back, which I blogged about (https://katyisms.com/2012/05/21/there-i-fixed-it ), and just a few weeks ago when assembling my tv wall unit thing, where I needed a rubber mallet or hammer to knock the boards together, and I substituted a rubber handled can-opener for the task.

    I can’t take credit for the thinking up the clever use of a kitchen tool as a “real” tool, as growing up (and still today), my mom considered a flat-head screwdriver and a butter knife to be pretty much the same thing. I really should have broken down and asked to borrow a hammer hours before I ended up doing so that day, because sadly the can-opener did not survive the ordeal and is now held together with duct tape.

    Reply

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