Yeah, but (to paraphrase Chris Rock) what have you done for her lately? 
The handle broke off our dryer so we now open it with a small garden tool. Then the on/off knob broke off. We start it with a flathead. When we get the money we’re going to order the right parts.
…wait Where’s the emoticon that actually is “rolling on floor laughing my ass off?”
Ask the plumber for a quote before you have them do the work. I had one in once to reroute a couple of pipes about a foot. He worked for about an hour, and didn’t put in more than 2 feet of new copper pipe and maybe 6 elbows. The final bill was almost $400, and this was about 7 years ago. Yours might be simpler and faster, but the bill would probably have you swallowing your teeth in astonishment if you’re not expecting it.
And this was why I did the same thing as you when I put in a whole house filter and a new water softener. I got a bunch of elbows and tees and straight pipe, and soldered 10-15 joints before I cut into the functioning plumbing. But it worked flawlessly, and it’s still holding today. I got even luckier with the water softener. The local Menard’s store had some flexible metal connectors designed for connecting water softeners. There was enough flex in them that I didn’t have to worry about cutting a pipe to exactly the right length. Just wrap 'em in teflon tape and screw them together.
My latest fix was the wiper transmission/linkage on my son’s Saturn Ion. They are famous for having a plastic connector that breaks and lets the wipers flop around like your arms do when you’ve slept on them all night long. There are new, aftermarket replacements that make these connectors out of metal, like GM should have done.
The wiper arms were corroded/seized on to the posts, so for most of a week, I spent an hour or so trying to remove them. I kept doping them with penetrating oil and putting a gear puller on them. My wife said she learned several new words that week. Finally, I put the gear puller on the last one, added some fresh penetrating oil, tightened the puller, and walked away for an hour or two. When I came back, I wiggled it, and it popped loose. The new linkage went on fairly quickly, and everything worked like a charm.
I confess: my God status disappeared a few months later when I hooked up her new alternator backwards and her battery wouldn’t charge. (Crappy Chrysler wiring harness design. :rolleyes: )
Mine? My girlfriend at the time, wife currently, spilled some water on the living room table, which apparently got into my less-than-one-month-old MacBook Pro. I was not aware of this and, when my MBP wouldn’t start up, I set up a meeting with the Genius Bar, assuming I just got a defective unit, and they’d swap it out.
So, I get there, they do their diagnostics, and the Genius comes back to me with a look of horror on his face. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there is water damage.” And, sure enough, he shows me the water damage, and it’s unmistakably water damage. There’s a whole trail of dried-out water and the blue-green corrosion on the circuit board where it dripped. He tells me there’s nothing he could do, that’s it requires the replacement of the motherboard/logic board, and it’s basically the highest tier of repairs, $1250 (or something like that.) I bought the thing for like $1600. Well, what can I do? I text my girlfriend-at-the-time/now-wife about the situation, and my puzzlement at the water damage (I really had no idea where it was from, but it was clear that it was water), and she calls me back to explain the happening of the morning. Turns out, there was some water spilled, and it got into the computer. Eh, what can I do about it? I tell them to fix the computer. I need a working laptop; I didn’t care.
The next day (about noon), I had second thoughts. The computer was fucked, right? I can’t make it any worse. This was Apple’s highest repair tier, so I could try fixing it myself and, if I couldn’t, it still would cost me the $1250 or whatever I was going to pay anyway. So I call the Apple Store, and it turns out they haven’t yet sent my computer out. I tell them to cancel the repair and return the computer to me. I pick it up an hour later.
I go to Target and buy the purest isopropyl alcohol they have. I open the MBP, take a Q-tip, dip it into the alcohol, and just start cleaning where the water damage is (evidenced by the blue-green corrosion.) I get it completely clean in about two minutes, put the thing back together, and turn it on.
I honestly did not expect anything to happen. This was just a last ditch, “fuck it” effort. I got the chime. I got the white screen. I got the Apple logo. And, by golly gee, the damn thing booted up fine. I ran diagnostics on it, everything checked out, and I’m writing this post on the same laptop, about two and a half years later. Saved myself over a grand on a $5 solution of alcohol and Q-tips.
Does replacing the on/off switch on my computer mini-tower case count? Not really he-man, but I had to drill a new hole in the plastic case, cut and strip the old leads to the MB, solder them to the new switch and everything. $4 switch saved a $60 case. I mean, if you use hot molten metal to fix something, it’s at least kind of he-manly, right?
Fine. Um… then I killed something with my bare hands and ate it raw. Grrr… OK?
I replaced a motherboard, a CPU, and a power supply. I just kept replacing things till it worked again. So double… no, triple Grrr.
A couple of years ago the outside door handle on my wife’s Isuzu stopped working - you pull it, nothing happens. (The inside handle worked fine, by the way.)
Not looking forward to hundred$+ in repair bills, I got on the net, Googled the problem, and an hour or so later the problem was solved by using a twist-tie. I had to take the door apart, but what the hell - it’s just a car, right? 
Sweet.
Our 5-year old TigerShark automatic pool vacuum had loose tread belts. They would slip off and the vacuum would stop before the cycle was done. I ordered replacements and downloaded the instructions for replacement. This is a very well-designed device and it is literally one of the greatest purchases I ever made. However, they neglected to mention that 2 of the screws you need to remove are in a very tight space. No matter how I tried, my hands could not fit in there to turn the driver. What to do… what to do… Bingo! I remembered the bendy-necked screw-driver I impulse-bought at Lowes 6 months ago. Sure enough, I was able to maneuver the flexible shaft into the tight spot and get the bit into the screw. Bing, bang, boom. Done deal. Two screws removed. New belts put on. Vacuum good as new.
Dontcha hate it when you have the blood dribbling down off your chin, the doorbell rings, and the girlscout selling thin mints freaks out?
Last summer, a mouse that had built a nest inside my air conditioner condenser unit managed to short himself across the startup capacitor. Lovely smell. Anyway, I just removed the cap and brought it to an HVAC store, got another one and installed it, and saved myself a $400 HVAC repair and 2 days without AC.
Not exactly a repair, but might help other cheapskates.
I wanted a motion sensor overhead light fixture in the garage. I was too cheap to pay for the ones I found and too lazy to want to do the wiring for a new fixture. Then it hit me, there was an empty outlet on the ceiling where the door opener plugged in.
So, out of the box of “stuff I might use someday” came a ceiling box, a porcelain light socket and a hedge clippered extension cord. Wired up, mounted on rafters and plugged into a $12 “SensorPlug” by Andev and I had my light.
A while back we had a weird bathroom problem - whenever we flushed the turlet, the bathtub gurgled loudly. It seemed to get worse every day.
So after I did some research on the Information Superhighway, I found the fix. I climbed up onto the roof with my hose in my hand (no, not that hose), then crammed it down into the stink pipe. I fed it down until it met resistance, then jammed it up and down several times, freeing the clog of leaves that had accumulated there probably since Eisenhower was in office.
Raced back into the house, did the royal flush, and voila! No more gurgle. I only wish the interweb experts had given me a heads up to the fact that the end of my hose would be smeared with shit when I pulled it out of the pipe.
mmm
Having spent the last 46 years of my life as a mechanic fixing things has just been a part of my life. I do have a few proud moments that stand out though. I ran the diesel truck shop for a large coffee company. The owner of the company layed off 50% of the employees to get to one that he absolutely hated. She was trouble! He did not have enough people left to run his pouch pack machines, the ones that put the coffee in those little 1.5 oz mylar bags. Anyway he asked me if their was anything I could do to speed up the machines. The machines were about 50 years old and their were 15 of them. To make a long story short I spent about 300.00 per machine and within one week had more than trippled production. My reward, once production had gotten all caught up and a new line mechanic was trained to take over the line I was fired! My immediate boss felt threatened by me and I had taken a temporary leave of absense for a tendenitis issue. I didn’t get the paperwork in on time. 16 years with the company, I got a btter job anyway when I left.
I fixed my SIL’s toaster oven-the bakelite side piece had broken into 5 pieces. I glued it back together, and reinforced it with epoxy cement. I also glued black the door handle. $5.00 worth of glue and a few hour’s time, and its as good as new! One man’s protest against “throw away” culture!
I have an ancient dryer I acquired a number of years ago for $50 from someone doing an upgrade. One day it stopped putting out any heat, so I disassembled it (nowhere near as easy as I had anticipated) and found the problem, a broken coil in the heating element. I did some searching on the internet and ordered a part for 18 bucks and change, including shipping. I figure it would have cost me that much to take it to the dump.
I was very pleased with myself.
I am not a computer expert. I don’t know much about them, other than what I have picked up after years of living with my boyfriend.
My sister had an alienware laptop with a “bad hard drive” that she just didn’t want to deal with. She wanted a smaller and lighter laptop. So, she gave it to my boyfriend (seriously, a $2k+ laptop that is only 2 years old). Her one requirement was that he send her any data from the hard drive that he manages to save.
So, we got it to our house and I started playing around with it. I fiddled with this and that and did some research on the internet. I spent $10 on a Windows repair program. I fiddled some more.
Basically, the hard drive wasn’t dead. But there were so many corrupted files on the computer that it was pretty much dead. In the course of my fiddling, I somehow managed to fix the dang thing.
My sister insisted she doesn’t want it back, even though it wasn’t really dead and only cost $10 to fix.
So now my boyfriend has a super sweet gaming laptop that can play Star Wars The Old Republic on the highest graphics settings without a blip in game play. He’s over the moon and plans to send my sister a thank you gift.
I have a very old Nokia 2610 cell phone; It just does the basics, phone, text and contacts list. I honestly love what it does for me. It never drops calls and the battery lasts 3-4 days. All my friends kid me about it being a dinosaur. As it is 9 years old it is (was) a bit battered looking and I had to tape the battery cover on.
I found a complete fascia kit (front, back,battery cover and keypad) on Ebay for 4.99 and 2.89 shipping from China. It arrived yesterday with a complementary t6 driver…my phone now looks, and works like brand new. Woo Hoo
