Fixing super-fancy blinds with not-super-fancy hacks

When we did the final walk-through of our condo before settlement, we forgot to notice that one set of blinds hadn't been fixed.  The previous owner had claimed she would repair them prior to the sale -- or rather, her proxy/friend had agreed, since the previous owner herself is in a nursing home and not super able to manage her own affairs.

These are super fancy blinds: they're honeycomb with double-layering, and can be raised up from the bottom or lowered from the top.  They have pull cords at the side, but they don't have those long strings that are choking hazards; the pull cords have a ratchet mechanism, so if you pull a cord toward the left, say, it comes out about a foot while ratcheting up the blinds a foot, and then it itself springs back into original place.  Then you pull it again to ratchet up the blinds another foot, and it springs back, etc.  It's sort of like a pump handle, but it's a pull handle, instead.  I'd never seen these!

We have lots and lots of windows in the new condo (yay!) and they're all very large and quite tall, and consequently all these blinds are likewise very large and tall, and I'm sure they are very pricey.  And because the blinds throughout the place all match each other, we don't really want to buy one new blind that clashes with the rest, so fixing this would mean tracking down the original manufacturer and make and model.  Ugh.  I suppose we could have tried to insist post-settlement that the owner make good on this, but she is in a nursing home and we did sign off on the walk-through that things looked okay.

So I decided to try a DIY repair.  After all, if it works, it's a YAY repair; if it doesn't, we're no worse off.

Here's what was wrong with the blinds.

1. They'd split in half: somewhere in the middle, they'd come unglued, so a lower portion of honeycomb was sitting on the bottom bar, and an upper portion of honeycomb was hanging from the top bar, and in between, there was just space and the two nylon cords that raise or lower the bottom bar.
2. Except that the bottom bar couldn't be raised or lowered, because the ratchet string had gotten detached from its mechanism, and was now lying on the window sill like a snake soaking up the sunshine.

We had a work crew in the condo replacing some flooring, patching up holes, repainting, and performing other happy cosmetic tasks.  They declared themselves at a loss to fix the blind (which I hadn't even asked them to do, so I'm fine with that), but they had ladders set up, so they could get the blind down and hand it over to me for my own personalized and creative patching.

It's hard to see the stitches,
but here's where I sewed the top and bottom together.

To fix the first (that the blind was split in half), I got a needle and thread.  Perhaps I could have tried glue, but the original glue failed, and I didn't want to have to repeat these efforts if my own glue did the same.  I know that stitching will make that one row of the blinds look a little different, so we're not going for Better Homes and Gardens here.  

From the other side, you can't see the stitches at all. 

To fix the second (that the pull-cord had become detached from the ratchet mechanism), I could see the internal cord was (phew!!!) luckily still intact, and held from sliding down further inside by a fortuitously placed knot.  I used needle-nosed pliers to grip that string and pull it further out, agains the tension of the internal spring.  

On one side the cord is attached with this bead-like thing.
On the other side, the bead was missing and the cord was detached.

The bead-like clamp that had held the ratchet string to that internal string was broken, so I just tied them together, and dabbed a bit of superglue onto the knot for good measure. 

On the other side, I just tied it with a knot.  
No bead.  It's not elegant, but it works.

And here's what the blinds look like, now that they're up.

Like, you can see that there's one line that's different, but it's not horrendous, really.  For a 10-minute, $0 fix, I count that as a YAY!

The making of the chair cake

 Many years ago, one of my colleagues was awarded an endowed chair. This is a big deal for professor. The ordinary course of possible promotions for a professor in the tenure-track is that you start as an "assistant professor", eventually get tenure and promoted to "associate professor", and then, if you keep doing really good work, you get promoted to "full professor". But if you're lucky – if a wealthy donor has given money for a chairship and the people ahead of you retire or leave the college so that the chairship opens up again – you might get this extra decoration: being named to an endowed chair. Unlike being a department chair, it usually doesn't come with a lot of extra work. Instead, it comes with a bit of research money, and with a long and fancy title, including the name of the donor.

When my colleague was awarded this chairship, the department had a party for him, and our department coordinator bought a fancy cake for him from a nearby bakery in the shape of a chair.

A few years back, after my colleague retired, I was awarded the chairship (yay!).  I told my good friend in the math department that I wanted to have a chair cake, like my predecessor had.  The bakery, however, was no longer making specially shaped cakes, however, so my friend decided to try her own hand at it.  I have to say, I was super impressed with her version!

Then I retired, and the friend that made the chair cake for me was awarded the chairship, and so I knew she needed a chair cake, too. 

On a lark, I called the original bakery, just to see if they'd be willing to attempt to re-create this cake. The person at the other end was incredulous, telling me that it would take a month of preparation and would cost at least $500. He repeated multiple times that they were professionals, and that the general public really had no idea how much work goes into making such a cake. He was on such a rant about this that it was a little hard to get off the telephone.

At any rate, I made the cake the day before the party in the course of a few hours, and it didn't cost $500. I used my normal go-to "Brazilian chocolate coffee cake" recipe, doubling the batch. I poured the batter into a large rectangular sheet pan. When the cake was done, I cut it into three pieces: the first was slightly larger than half of the sheet pan, and then from the smaller of those two pieces I cut out a footstool, leaving the remainder in a U shape. The U-shaped became the armrests and back of the chair. Then, since I make marzipan in December, I made a batch of marzipan pillows. 

(It might not be the most elegant cake out there, but it was nonetheless a great hit at the party.  And I'm so glad to be able to celebrate my friend this way!)

A tale of two wash rags

Did I mention we're down-sizing further?  We are.  

This time we're down-sizing a LOT.  The last time we moved, it looked on paper like a massive down-sizing: we went from a many-bedroomed house with a large yard and a 2-car garage to a 2.5-bedroom row house with no yard and street parking.   

But then, it was easy to give away things by categories.  Basically, stuff that had belonged to the children went away, either to the children or into "the cloud" (thrift shops, freecycle). Similarly, yard stuff disappeared from our lives.  

This time, on paper it looks like not as big a change.  But that's because on paper, the square footage listed for our row home doesn't count our current basement, nor hallways.  It doesn't count storage closets.  And this time, as we move into a condo, we're reducing our living space by a something like 30%, but we're giving up essentially ALL of the basement/back porch storage spaces. 

And that means we have to think about every little thing: where is it going to go?

We have to think about big things, too, of course.  But this particular post is about how all those tiny little things seem to really add up.  As a particular example, these two wash rags have been dogging me.

One of these is a wash cloth that's part of a towel set my husband brought into the marriage nearly three decades ago.  He still uses the towels (which I've patched once or twice, even; he likes the towels that much).  But he doesn't use wash cloths, so this particular one just keeps moving from linen closet to linen closet as we move.  Now that we won't have a linen closet, what do we do with it?  Do we continue to store it even though we don't use it (because it matches his towel)? We could certainly use that storage space for something we do use. 

The other wash rag is a Captain America one we got for one of my sons at some yard sale. My sons flew the coop without it, and so I've stored it in the "Super Hero Dinner" box, but never actually used it at one of our family Super Hero dinners.  

Neither wash rag is in particularly awesome shape. If we don't keep them, where do they go?

Clearly, deciding what to do with two washrags is not a momentous decision. I merely photographed these because they are emblematic examples of the many, many tiny little decisions that we're making as we think about what to keep and what to try to get rid of responsibly. 

I really want our new smaller space to not feel cluttered, and I know that means jettisoning much of what we have. At the same time, I want this new space to be livable, and that means having necessary supplies on hand. So, all of these tiny little decisions accumulate.

***

(Just in case you're wondering, we're putting the larger washrag into our "Free" box, and I'm going to put the Captain America washrag in with our kitchen dish rags, because I think it will be funny to use it in the new kitchen.)

Getting those wood scraps out of the basement

We moved into this row house only a half-dozen years ago. We were looking for a place in the city which would accommodate our bike habit, knowing that most row houses aren't super bike friendly: the main access is up a flight of stairs and then straight into the living room. We love biking, but don't want our bikes in the living room.  

When we toured this particular house, there were already a bunch of other possible buyers up in the living room, so we took a detour through the side entrance, and discovered that there's easy access from the street to a large basement area, with lots of storage for bikes.  Beyond the bike storage area (what else would you use it for?!?), there's a basement room with a woodworking area, and spaces for canning shelves, and even a bathroom.  We fell in love with this place just for the basement alone.  (It turns out the rest of the house is nice, too.)

But having a large basement comes with consequences.  My dad used to say, "stuff fills to expand all available space".  And indeed, we've filled the basement up -- with canning jars, off-season supplies like Christmas decorations, family memorabilia that we're going to look at "someday", and with wood.

The wood in the basement; oy.  I never bought wood; but I trash-picked all sorts of wood-based objects for my projects.  I made shelves out of a dining-room table with a broken leg; I found bed slats that turned into cow shelves. I love making things with wood.  But the excess, it multiplied like bunnies.

I read somewhere on the internet (meaning I have no idea if it's actually true) that one of the things that hoarders hoard -- one of those things that's incredibly challenging to get out of their houses -- is wood scraps.  Now that I'm moving, I know I have to clean out the basement, and the wood scraps seem to sit in every corner.  

Or rather they seemed to sit in every corner.  I've spent about two weeks sawing them into smaller pieces and boxing them up, so I can get rid of them. I know that Habitat Restore will take a lot of supplies, but wood scraps are NOT one of the things they want.  I have a friend who heats his home with wood, and if I saw the scraps into manageable pieces, he can take them.  

So that's what I've been doing: turning my "just in case" wood scraps into warmth for his home.  Apparently, I had a lot of "just in case" -- how could I get SO MUCH wood in just 6 years?  It never feels like I'm bringing home so much, and the basement never looked super junky.  But somehow, I have now filled nine boxes with firewood for my friend.

I will say, the basement is starting to look a bit more wide-open than it had before.  Getting stuff for free is a thrill, but getting rid of stuff in a way that is creative and generous is also fulfilling.  And that's what I'm enjoying now. 

There's a lot more de-junking to go -- some of which is sitting on shelves we've made with scrap lumber, and the shelves themselves will need to be de-junked, too.  But getting this wood carved up has been cathartic.  Good-bye, wood scraps!  Be warmth and light to my friend.

Fluffy stuff (from inside a couch)

A while back, I curbed-picked two couch cushions -- the big kind, not that you sit on, but that you lean against at the back of the couch.  I thought maybe they'd be a better color or more comfy than our current cushions.

The verdict: Really, these turned out to be about the same in terms of comfort as our current cushions, and the color wasn't that much of an improvement. Now, years later, it's time to release these back into the world.

I could just put them back at the curb for the trash haulers; after all, that's where I found them first.  But that is a LOT of stuff to head to a landfill or get burnt into poisonous gasses and ashes.  So I'm trying to find another way to put them to use.

The first step, of course, was disassembling them. I zipped off the outer blue covers; the blue upholstery fabric will make great fancy bags. That's the easy part.  The insides, to my surprise, weren't solid foam blocks, but white fluffy stuff: fiberfill!

Underneath the blue upholstery fabric
were white cotton (?) liners containing fluffy fiberfill.

Fiberfill (sometimes called polyfill) is the stuff that crafters use to fill teddy bears and other stuffed animals.  I went through a decade of making just such little animals for family and friends.  Nowadays, a one-pound bag of this sells for about $8 or $9.  And here, I have a bonanza on my hands!

But what to do with this myself? I'm no longer in the animal-making mode, and I don't really want to start up a new hobby just because I happen to have a glut of something I don't want anyway.  Instead, here's what I've tried so far:

• I called our local recycling center.  I assured them I know that they don't take it, but do they know anyone who does?  The woman who answered the phone commiserated with me; she hates to see how much stuff goes to waste, but says that she doesn't know of takers.  Instead, the only option she knew of is to be resigned to seeing it go in to the waste stream, where it would get burned. 
• I listed the fiberfill on Freecycle.  No takers.  Sigh.
• We had a bunch of pillows that have gotten packed down over the years.  I haven't replaced them because -- well, the usual, because I hate buying new stuff that will eventually go into the garbage.  In this instance, though, I took advantage of the fluffy bonanza.  I cut open the ends of the flat pillows, trashed the flat-mashed innards, repacked the pillows with fluffy fiber fill, and sewed the ends up.  Four "new" fluffy pillows, for free!  

I'm still working on responsibly rehoming the rest. It's hard!  I might someday have to give up and trash these bags; I'll update this post when their fate is determined.

Update:  

Our local creative reuse place DOES gladly take fiberfill, they tell me.  But even before I could take it there, my daughter nabbed it to stuff some creatures she's crocheting for a friend.  So, two good reasons to keep hunting for ways to rehome stuffing responsibly, avoiding burning or burying something that someone else would eventually have to purchase new!

A painting spatula, and a brush bag

I was just touching up the living room walls, and the paint can--now half-empty--was starting to get a little crusty and rusted, the way paint cans do.  

So, as I was taking care of this paint job and also transferring the paint to better containers, it struck that this is a good time to do a little homage to two small painting hacks I've adopted during the last decade: a paint-brush bag and a paint spatula.

These hacks exhibited here.

The paint brush bag: is this something everyone else knows already?  If so, I've been pretty clueless much of my life.  Basically, it's this: if I'm painting something that will require more than one coat, instead of rinsing the paint brush out between uses, I put the bristle end of the brush in a small plastic bag and seal the open end of the bag tightly.

Then, the brush doesn't dry out between uses, but also I don't have to spend time/water rinsing the brush out.  I even have a dedicated little plastic bag that I store with my paint supplies for just this use.  The only time I rinse the brush is when the entire job is done and I'm putting everything away.  When I finish one coat, I just wrap the brush up in the bag, and unwrap it when I'm getting ready to start the next coat. So simple!

As for the spatula:  getting the last paint out of a paint can is just as frugal as getting the last bit of mayonnaise or peanut butter out of a jar.  So when I realized I had acquired more thrifted rubber spatulas than I needed in the kitchen, I dedicated one rubber spatula to the paint supplies box.  For the living room project, I used the spatula to help transfer the paint from the increasingly decrepit can to a pair of glass jars, where it's easy to see and unlikely to go bad.  

I don't put new wine in old skins, but I do put old paint in new jars.
Even when the spatula is washed off,
it still sports a few old paint splotches on the handle.

Rags vs Water smack down: Rags win!

My husband and I spent a lot of time in the car lately, driving back and forth to see some of our distant children and killing lots and lots of bugs on the grille and hood of our car in the process.  When we finally arrived back home, the car was now speckled.

A bug-speckled car is pretty gross (and I'm guessing the bugs agree, not that they could express an opinion about it any longer).  So I set about to clean the car as it was parked along the street.

I used a technique that I learned about long ago from a book called "Speed Cleaning": it's one that is not only speedy -- as the title promises -- but also uses a heck of a lot less water than the way I used to clean floors and other large surfaces (like cars).  And basically, that technique is "more rags, less water".

I took two small buckets (basically, large bowls) out to my car.  When I started, one bucket contained some warm soapy water and about 20 rags made from cut-up t-shirts; the other bucket was empty. I'd use a rag to clean one section of a car until the rag was filthy, and then I'd dump the dirty rag into the dry bucket and pull out a new, clean rag. 

In particular, I never paused to rinse a dirty rag, and I never put a dirty rag into the soapy-water bucket, so the water stayed clean.  Hence, I spent zero time cleaning the rags, only cleaning the car.  And that one little bucket with its quart or two of water was the only water that went to cleaning the car: much less water than spraying with hoses.

For the particularly buggy places that needed a bit of extra scrubbing,  I also nabbed a small bowl of water and a scrubber to help loosen up the junk; I didn't mind dipping the scrubber back into the increasingly dirty water because once the junk was loosened, I could then wipe it off with a clean rag.  The job of the scrubber is to prepare the way for the rag, not to actually clean the car.

One of the things that I have learned to appreciate about this technique is that it's a lot easier to stop in the middle of a cleaning job and come back, if that is necessary. I can use a few clean rags to clean part of a kitchen floor, and there's no giant bucket on wheels blocking my way needing attention if I then decide to go take care of other business. 

When I finished, I had a small pile of dirty rags that then went straight into the laundry room; the washing machine is a much more efficient use of water and time for cleaning those rags out than I am, after all. I also had a small bucket of clean soapy water and a car that has been debugged and prettified. So satisfying!