When Susan and I got married twenty-one years ago, our dear friend Carol bought us a wooden serving tray. It’s made of slats of wood, with two handles that swivel. Susan loves it and still uses it. A few years ago, one of the side slats came loose. Whenever it comes loose, Susan lines up the holes where the staple used to go and pushes it back together.

A few weeks ago, I decided to fix it for her. First, I needed some wood glue. That part was easy. Next, I needed a clamp long enough to hold the thing together while the glue dried. This is called a “trigger clamp.” I found a 12″ one locally for around $20. I don’t know that I will ever use it again, which puts it in the same category as 75% of the rest of my tools.

Good as new!

Around the same time we received this tray, my dad gave me a copy of the Fix-It-Yourself Manual from Reader’s Digest. I got rid of the book when the Internet became everyone’s source of reference material, but I probably shouldn’t have. Most home repairs, from replacing a garbage disposal to patching drywall, haven’t changed significantly in the past twenty (or even fifty) years.

About three years ago, I got into a fight with our sliding shower doors. One stopped sliding, which was okay, but then the second one began to implode. I had never seen the types of wheels used to keep sliding shower doors rolling until the time I got trapped inside the shower and had to force one of the doors open. After a good shove, I saw tiny bearings fall down into the shower pan and roll around before going down the drain. For the past three years, Susan and I have developed different techniques for taking showers. I have found that by pushing the bottom of the door along with my foot, you can balance the door’s weight and get it to slide, kind of. Susan’s solution was to simply quit closing the door. We got so desperate at one point that we considered replacing the entire shower, although we got cold feet when we got the $5,000 estimate.

I decided last week to fix the shower doors. On YouTube, I watched several videos by handymen who showed how easy the doors were to fix. After removing a tiny block at the bottom of the doors, they lift up and off a rolling track, just like closet doors. When I removed ours, I found one wheel, and three spots where wheels had once been. The two packages of replacement wheels at Home Depot were 3.50 each. I replaced the wheels in about five minutes while Susan cleaned the doors and replaced the bottom guide piece.

We have been fighting those doors for three years. Excluding the drive time to and from Home Depot, the total time to replace them was ten minutes, and that’s only because I had never done it before. I could do it next time in half that time.

Last month, the ice maker in our refrigerator stopped working. So far, we’ve put two bags of ice into the ice bin until we can figure out what to do. YouTube, don’t fail me now…