Fix it up...

Every week I try to catch the "this old house" hour on PBS. I like watching "this old house" to see them renovate old buildings and see the newest stuff out on the market for houses. I try and see if I can get ideas for our house with some of the bigger ideas. I have actually started to plan how to build a permanent display case in the basement so Jen can show off her Disney stuff. It might wait until the basement remodel or I could do it earlier if I wanted to. It's fun to lay it out in my mind and think of all the little stuff like lights, electric, accessibility.

The other half of the house is "ask this old house". This is a half hour where Joe Schmo e-mails the guys and ask typical questions of common household projects. Even though our house is only 10 years old it was lived in hard and has some issues. I have actually solved two problems with the house by watching the show. The first was a squeaky second story floor. I should have thrown down a bunch of screws when I had the carpet up, but it wasn't squeaking then (of course). They showed a gadget that allows you to run a screw into the floor (through the carpet) and into the rafters. And when you are done, the screws are designed to break off just below the floor board so nothing sticks up. I am thinking great invention, but it probably costs alot or is only available on-line, but after some research I found out they sold it at Menards and Home Depot for $20. I went to Menards and got it cheaper than that. The screws are a little pricey, but worth it rather than pulling up carpet and all the other hassle. So I threw a bunch of these screws into the floor and pretty much solved the problem. I might have to put in some more screws later on since it seems like the squeak is caused by the weather outside and humidity in the house. The second problem that we had is the door on our bedroom wouldn't stay opened. You can tell by the finish on the door that it wasn't the original door and the hobbled together door frame that doesn't quite match. I believe that the door was kicked in at some point. (Like I said the house was lived in pretty hard.) So the door won't stay opened and we were using a door stop to prop it open, and then all of a sudden I saw an episode of "ask this old house" where he had a similar problem. Turns out the door wasn't squared up when it was installed (like all the other half-assed stuff in this house). I am thinking great, now I have to tear the door apart to square it up, but then the host gave a quick fix for the problem. All I had to do is take the pins out of the door and bang them with a hammer to bend them and lo and behold it worked. A year of dealing with this messed up door and it took 5 minutes to fix. Cool. The other part of the show that makes me laugh is when they send the landscaping guy out to help a viewer with their landscaping project and he puts the shovel blade in the ground and it goes all the way down to the top of the blade. Every time I say to myself, "let see how easy you would have it with some good old Indiana clay".