Well, it's been the month of everything breaking.
My car windshield has a crack in it, because a pebble flew out of a dump truck and hit it. It started as a tiny hole, but is now a crack covering half the windshield. Ugh!
The garbage disposal completely died. I mean completely. All the usual tricks didn't work. The the worst part is, the darn thing is only two years old. Gah!
The window crank on Hubby's 1997 Honda also decided to break off, so we'd need pliers to open the window! One thing after another.
There's a list of a million other things that need fixed, too, and I was freaking out a little bit about how much it would cost to take care of all this stuff. All of this while I'm trying really hard not to put anything on the credit card. (We've had a lot of big bills lately, some of which were a surprise, and I had to take money out of savings to cover them. I hate that.) I'm trying to pay cash and minimize spending so we can free up money to do some much needed home repairs.
Hubby is NOT handy. He always gives me this speech about how we live in a specialist economy and he specializes so he can pay money to other specialists to fix things. Read: He's too chicken to try to fix stuff, and that's his excuse. So if something is broken and I don't want to part with the money, it's my job, my project.
I'm just now starting to tackle this list, garbage disposal first. It costs at least $200 to get the plumber out here, and I was having dread thinking about spending that.
The good news is, I decided to save the money on the plumber and replace the garbage disposal myself. I watched a Youtube video, and then it only took me 30 minutes. And it works! It was easier than I thought it would be. I paid about $100 for the actual disposal, and zero for labor, other than anxiety about messing it up.
So, the plan is to use the $200 I would have spent on the garbage disposal to replace the windshield on the car. We have a local company that is affordable, and comes to your house and does the whole thing in your driveway.
As for Hubby's car. My dad was a mechanic and I half know my way around cars. I was thinking of trying to repair it myself, and if I can't just having a back-up plan of a place I can take it to.
I paid $6 for a Chilton's auto manual for the car at a second hand store the other day (since hubby loves this car and has no plans to part with it, I figure it would help to learn how to fix it...) I'll be shopping for the parts today, if I decide I'm going to be brave.
So yes, as my grandma used to say "you never know how strong the tea bag is until it hits hot water" I guess you never know how handy the Thriftorama can be until everything in her life breaks!
I didn't know I was this handy
September 27th, 2015 at 04:40 pm
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September 27th, 2015 at 09:14 pm 1443388470
On your windshield damaged by a rock, I did the same thing once about 20 years ago. I went to an auto body place just for a quote hoping it was not outrageous. It turned out my insurance paid for the whole thing in full and did not raise my rates.
September 27th, 2015 at 09:54 pm 1443390877
Right now my Roomba iRobert isn't working. The battery was replaced in December so it should be good for two years. DH is convinced it's the battery so I'm off to the distributor tomorrow to have it checked. They're a neat little device and I'll be sorry to let it go. The new ones are too expensive for the service performed.
September 27th, 2015 at 10:52 pm 1443394367
I ordered the part for the car door handle. Hopefully it will be pretty straightforward. I'm also prepping to replace the windshield wiper blades. I've done that before, but.... I guess everything in the world has to become needlessly complicated, because even the new blades are no longer standard or like the old ones. There are now parts that need put together!
September 28th, 2015 at 04:19 am 1443413952