Of the van door, a trashed leotard, and an exciting delivery

This week seemed to be full of DIY projects for me. It's Thursday and I've completed two projects. I guess it only seems like I did more because I have kids to take care of and we all know where the priority usually goes...

So the first thing on my mental list was the second thing I did. The electric lock on the van stuck in the locked position so we couldn't open the door. As luck would have it, it's the door next to Margo's chair (she's one), so we were needing to kneel inside the vehicle while hefting Margo into the seat. Not the worst thing ever, but tough on the knees and/or back. I guess we would have had the same scenario had the other door frozen instead, seeing as how Margo's chair would obstruct the entry of the other kids into the van.

Anyway, I did a short online search to get my bearings and I was off! I proceeded to take the inside panel off the stricken door. I was surprised to find a rubberish plastic shield behind that. Surprised because usually the shield is a heavy paper that one usually must rip through to do anything in the door. With the rubbery stuff peeled away I found the lock motor casing. Had to drill a hole to get at the one screw holding it in place. Did that, took out the screw and promptly dropped it down into the far recesses of the inside of the door. I'd just have to deal with that later.

I didn't have a Torx driver small enough to take the casing apart, but a pair of needlenose were enough to loosen the screws. With the casing open, I removed a worm gear assembly and the lock motor. I took a look in my loose bolts tin and found a bolt to replace the one I dropped (but it's a Philips head, which will make for easy removal if we decide to put a new motor in). With the rest put all back together the door is now openable and lockable, albeit in the old-timey manual fashion.

The project that shouldered its way to the top of the list was the sudden appearance of an error code on our washing machine (F51, for those interested) which means the rotor position sensor was off. Assuming the worst (needing part replacement) I took the washer apart, found the sensor and everything looked okay. No leaks from the tub or the bearing, the sensor circuit board did not look damaged. Looking around some more I found only one anomaly: a pink piece of clothing jammed between the tub and the drum. Long story short, I put the washer back together and got the piece of clothing out. A small ballet leotard is now on its way to a landfill. No! Wait! I can use that to filter the old acrylic paints my sister gave me!

<Queue the Eagles: "[It's] aaaal-ready gone...">

Dang, sometimes my brain is so slow.

In other news, I received a package from amazon.ca yesterday. One that has me kind of excited. It's a race track! More specifically, a BluTrack. But, this one is green...

Anyway, it was cheaper ($/ft) than buying Hot Wheels track and I wanted something more convenient to store than a 10-ft long cardboard channel (as seen here). There will probably be more written about it later. Maybe even a picture or two.

A stitch in time...

One project that has been on my to-do list for quite some time was to patch one of my pairs of jeans. It had developed a hole in the crotch, but the rest of the garment was intact, almost new-looking even! Well, today I finally did it. I had Jenni set up her sewing machine correctly for denim and I got to work. And work it was! Not because I don't know how to sew, I'm actually decent on a Janome. No. The work came from having three other pairs of similarly afflicted denim that I had accumulated under my dresser with the first pair.

And two more under the bed.

But, before you get too wildly impressed with my feat, I didn't actually patch all the pairs of pants. Three pairs were left off. Jenni thought that pair no. 1 was too short in the leg. Pair no. 2 had a hole too close to the zipper, thought it would be too hard to try and fix. Pair no. 3... I can't remember why I left off pair no. 3.

One of those pairs was chosen to be the donor and the back-side of one pant leg was cut off. From this I had enough patch material to repair the other jeans I pulled out plus the pair I was wearing (hole in the knee and one starting in the crotch). I also switched a rivet button on one pair with the one from the donor pair.

It feels great - like I just went on a pants shopping spree but spent no money and tripled the size of my wearable denim.

Now to knock off one of the other items from my list...