Improvised Quick Fixes

[ceilingwalrus]

Let’s hear some of your best quick fixes or improvised products.

Saw this thread on Reddit on improvised stoves and got me thinking about how amusing the topic is;

/http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7c3rj/pyro_petes_improvised_camp_stoves

[backlash]

I had a windshield wiper stop working in a snow storm.
No way to fix it so I tied a string on it and ran both ends through the wing windows on my truck.
My wife just pulled it back and forth for the next 100 miles.
It took almost 5 min. to fix it after we got home.
She still complains. ;D
AC

[Shamrock1121]

Necessity is the Mother of invention. Nothing makes Hubby and me happier than to work out a problem on the weekend, we're both thinkers. Quick fixes is a sport around here... ;) Or perhaps we've watched too many Red Green shows on PBS.

Even the workers at our True Value store enjoy chatting with us because we're always "looking for something that's not normally used for that task". We like to invent new uses for things.

We have a couple large reticulating umbrellas on our deck to help shade the house in the summer. Kansas wind is brutal on the things, to say the least. One of the hollow tube spines got bent and eventually snapped. We grabbed a piece of oak quarter-round trim from the stash, cut off a 6-inch piece, and whittled it down to fit in the aluminum tubing to bind the two pieces together. Hit it with some Gorilla Glue and it held for another summer...

We hang our laundry in the basement to dry using a series of clothes lines (for things I hang with clothes pins) and a long clothes rod for things I hang on hangers. I put everything that would normally hang on a hanger - on a hanger to dry - and it gets hung on a rod and a ceiling fan blowing on the clothes to dry them quicker.

The fan caused the clothes on hangers to slide together. We solved that problem by putting a foam insulation tube used to cover water pipes (looks like a swim noodle), over the clothes rod. Now the hangers all stay put.

We installed a corner ventless gas fireplace in a former home. Always looking for ways to do things on the cheap (but still looks like quality work), we had a mantal and surround to contend with. Hubby works at a cabinet manufacturing company. We dug through the reject pile and found enough craftsman-style oak door panals and made them into the surround and mantal.

We had to be able to get to the controls on the side, so we held that panal in place with velcro so we could open and close it easily without having a hinge.

-Karen

[zbery1]

The Snow plow keeps hitting our mailboxes so we put the post in a five gallon bucket, poured in concrete and now we just collect the thing from where ever it's been knocked to and set it back up.

[rivahmom]

I had to fix my window blinds because the dogs got the zoomies and ripped them out of clips that were holding them. Like everything else I quickly fix, it invovled duct tape :).