When a night table drawer broke...

 It was way back in 2012 when we moved from our apartment to our house. Back then we did know little of the real world!

Anyway, in 2003 we did buy our bedroom's furniture at Mio and we still have it! We have of course then moved it through the three places where we have lived, but when we moved to the house we had some sort of company helping us out with the actual transportation and when we got our bedroom's furniture home, one of the drawers in one of the nighttable was just not opening/closing as it should anymore.

We asked whoever helped us moving to check it out and the result after he dismounted it/mounted it back was that he removed some of the small balls in the bearing in the drawer slide and that the drawer was somewhat closing and opening again.

The working slide

After 14 years I decided it was time to finally fix it properly. So I started to dismount it and try to squeeze back the small balls but it turned out that the slide was not really straight and even though I half succeeded in the putting things back in order it was not really great anyway.

The broken slide

It took so much time to fix mounting/dismounting

I then concluded the best was to buy a new slide and that turned out to not be an easy operation anyway as the measures can vary a lot. So, eventually, after going through few shops I concluded that I could pray that I would find the right one online and I sort of did.

New and old slide

Old and new

I mounted it then and sadly I could not secure the last screw as the premade holes were of course not in the right position. 

I could not fix the holes just right

The final step was therefore to drill a new hole. I am not super duper happy of that but I think that was maybe the best thing to do and now at least the drawer seems to be working better than before. Maybe this was just a lot of fuzz for such a small improvement, afterall the drawer have been working fine for twelves years...

There, now we have drilled enough holes and secured the slide.

Having a vision (or more than one)

Sometimes, when things break, one can't wait forever to get them repair. 

If we think about my attempt to destroy the (probable) original floor with vinager (which I mentioned here), I did apply oil on the tiles and it looks definitely better. I think some more treatments (and probably, a general one to the whole floor) will make it proper.

That was an easy fix, which didn't require an external intervention.

When we think instead about the kitchen stairs, the topic is more complicated. That is possibly something we can't fix by ourselves. Well, we could, but it would sum up on the list of tons of things we keep fighting with every day and I am not sure when we will actually get them done. At least, a temporary patch that would allow us to walk over it, that is.

 

The stairs have been patched

The company that will fix us new stairs during the autumn came also for handling the patch. 

When looking at it, it was nothing that absurd that we couldn't have been thinking about it ourselves, but yes. That was a couple of hours of their expertise vs our attempts.

The main structure of the fix

I am looking forward to have this fixed properly (and this is what I am thinking here when using the word "vision") but I am glad to be able to walk on the stairs without doing some acrobatics.

Talking of vision, I have a quite long term plan to crash myself over the area behind the pool. I have tried to fight ground elder for years and I keep doing that.

This year I have so far expanded the area that I have tidied up a little bit more. Of course, the ambition is to try to cover as much as possible of it, but between other emergency actions and the fact that I should really focus on windows and door restauration, I will probably not meet my target neither this year.

The area cleaned up of weeds (see the difference with the ground elder ocean on the left)

I am trying some new plants this time

I must say that the work around this is very satisfactory. Although it is always a bit irritating to see leaves of ground elder pop up there and then even if I have tried to be thorough in the removal. 

There is always something new broken

For everything we fix, there is always at least one new item/part/element/whatever that gets broken. 

I do realize that we are supposed to keep ourselves very busy, but sometimes I would like a bit of mercy to be able also to have some progresses, especially right now where everything is languishing due to the pandemic.

That the stairs would give up soon, it was just matter of time. We saw it coming and it took forever to find a company that could handle the job. Then, thanks to corona, they didn't have time for us anymore this spring so we booked the fixing of the stairs up for this autumn.

Stairs have collapsed

They have come for a short inspection and they will patch the stairs so that we can use them to the moment that they will redo them for us.

Smaller, but still significative damage, was done by me while trying to handle the regular thousands of liters of cat pee that I find sprayed there and then in the house. 

I usually use vinegar for handling the pee and I took the bottle from the basement. Sadly, it wasn't properly closed, so while walking on the platform from the stairs to the kitchen, I manage to spill some of it on the concrete, probably original floor. 

Good job, Arianna!

I didn't think about it there and then as I was rushing through the cat pee cleaning operation for then starting the day and when I thought of going and check how it went, I realized I had destroyed the floor.

I am not trying to threat it with some special oil, but the result so far is no good.

Just oiled, that looks good. Sadly, not the same result when it get dried..