You mean this is bad, as in, Not A Good Thing To Do?!?? 
My roomate and I shared an apartment for 6 months with no ashtrays. Why would we spend 2 dollars on an ashtray when we could use half empty pop cans for free?!
My friend bought my parents Camaro and since the interior was sun-rotted and gross, he also bought 3 sheets (one for each bucket seat in the front and one for the whole backseat), duct tape and sharpie markers. My friend, my ex and I spent the better part of an afternoon “decorating” his new seat covers.
That was the pimpest ride EVAR.
I love it! Reminds me of the time I had a hole in my black stockings. I stopped them from running with clear fingernail polish, then used a black magic marker on my fish-belly white leg to help hide it.
There were five kids in our family, growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, who got our driver’s licenses fairly close together. My dad decided to buy Ford Pintos from various rental agencies for us to drive to jobs, school, etc. At one point we had about 3-4 Pintos in different paint jobs lined up at the curb outside our house. Anyway, my brother and I were sharing a particularly shabby Pinto and we had just enough money to keep gas in the car. When the arm rest on the passenger side fell off, my brother fashioned a door pull out of a metal clothes hanger and duct tape. When the floor of the car starting rusting and holes appeared, he took a bathmat and duct taped it to the remaining edges. I think we eked out about another year’s use out of that car before he sold it for $50.00 and a case of beer. Then Dad bought another Pinto to replace it.
Well, she was quite proud of her ingenuity! Insisted on telling everyone about it then showing off her handiwork.
I have been know to “fix” scuffed shoes with magic markers.
When I was a kid and didn’t have pierced ears I would make clip earrings out of paperclips and old buttons.
Paperclips can also make gnarly barrettes.
I drove a 1983 hatchback Civic that had a horribly smashed in back end for years. For the last part, it had no back bumper, which exposed that the green paint job had not been under the bumper, which left a silver stripe across the back.
I fixed the alignment of my headlight by jamming a rock under the bulb.
My college roommate and I got a couch for free somewhere. It had no cushions. We cut a matress down to fit with a knife and tinsnips. At the end of the school year, we just pushed it over the railing into the lawn and then into the dumpster.
When my cheap briefcase got scuffed so the white fabric showed from underneath the black vinyl, I just colored it with a black marker. You can hardly tell.
Until you pick one up by accident and take a swig. :smack:
I’m born-and-bred ghetto, so I’ve got plenty. Hell, I’ve got plenty going on as we speak.
The linoleum in the bathroom was torn and ugly, so I ripped it up. I couldn’t find any I liked or any that I found cheap enough, so it’s still the bare cement in there. I’m planning on slapping a coat of marine paint on it. What?
Several years ago I had two terriers who dug a hole in my carpet – a literal hole all the way down to the cement floor, about 5" in diameter. A chair covers it just fine.
I’ve several music posters [collector’s items] on the wall here in my computer room. They really should have some kind of protective shield over them, but I found stacking our old textbooks [that we keep meaning to get rid of] on the floor in front of that wall keeps my dogs at a good enough distance.
- chatleaine, who just put out her cigarette in a soda can.
Thank you!
My Blazer’s lights have been wonky since I got it.
The part where you screw it in place rusted through on one of them. Now I know how to fix it.
Well, duct tape can also fix up a misaligned head light - so far the tape on my car’s light has lasted for 5 years now.
My mother did not want to give up a cabinet to put the dishwasher under when she had her new house built, especially when her portable dishwasher had a butcherblock-looking top. Well, she put that dishwasher in the kitchen and then installed it permant hook ups by using radiator hose to hook it to the plumbing down through a hole that used to be a register to a heating duct. She moved the duct. It worked well, she did not give up her cabinet, and we did not have to hook that dishwasher up to the sink every time we used it. She called this afro-engineering.
BTW I see your duct tape and raise you chewing gum. Many repair in my mother’s house was effected by careful application of chewing gum.
My first car (1982 Buick Sklyark) got to be very ghetto in it’s final days (circa 1994).
Each car door has 2 handles that will open the door, the inside and the outside, right? Right. Of my 2-door car’s 4 door handles, only one of them worked. The driver outside handle. I couldn’t open my passenger door at all, so any passenegers had to either climb accross my seat or ride in the back. And, the driver’s inside handle was broken, so once I was in the car, I actually had to roll the window down and use the outside handle to let myself out. Also, in that car I drove around with a dead battery for almost 2 months. I had to get a jump every time I started the car – the alternator worked fine, so once it turned over it was fine. I just didn’t have $50 for a battery.
<esoteric>this is what rap is, upper class kids, using ghetto as an adjective</esoteric>
Who’s upper class? 
In a similar way, some buddies and I discovered that we could use beer bottle caps as tiny little ashtrays.
“Damn! The ashtrays are full! Better open more beer…”
(We didn’t use empty beer bottles, of course, because there was the chance that after a few beers, we might forget which bottle was the ashtray and take a drink.)
Till my current wife and I moved in together, I used an old wire spool as a coffee table. For a few months I drove an old Ford Fairmont station wagon. The back drivers side door was welded shut, the headliner was stapled to the ceiling, the floor had pieces of plywood covering the rusted out spots, and a wing window was siliconed closed. I bought the car for $300 at an auction and found a bunch of recent receipts in the glove box. $850 for a new transmission, $1420 for wheels and tires, and $450 to have the AC fixed. And the previous owner lost the car because he couldn’t pay an $85 towing fee.
In my first apartment, a rather large hole appeared mysteriously one morning after a rather good party. My roommate and I, neither of us having the inclination or knowledge of drywall patching, stuffed the hole full of paper toweling and the spackled over it. We didn’t have any white paint, so we used Wite-out to paint it a white that matched the rest of the wall in no way whatsoever.
I still haven’t figured out how or why we actually owned a tub of Spackle.
Not sure if it’s ghetto, but it gave me a shitload of street cred back in the day. My first car was a '76 Cutlass. Since I was 17 and my friends and I were too young to drink, we had to improvise.
(Now, this may be more redneck, judgement call)
I took the hose that fed the windshield washer fluid and rerouted it into the car just under the dash. Fill the tank under the hood with booze, and press the wash button when your Coke needs a boost. Added bonus: Who the hell would think to check the washer fluid tank to gtet you on open container?