View from the North 40: What makes my peasant heart sing

My husband, John, and I come from a long line of peasant stock, hellbent do-it-yourselfers, who don’t put a price on our time but feel all the richer for our experiences, skills earned, pennies saved, materials reused and reimagined, and wheels reinvented.

No time is wasted DIYing project until money is wasted on buying something new.

But it takes a certain mindset to value the homemade and jerry-rigged over shiny new things. Plus, we have had to tolerate some hurtful language leveled at us, like junk hoarding, slapdash, haphazard, time wasting, inappropriate use of tools and not OSHA compliant.

And, OK, I admit there’s some truth to those accusations, but I also think that too much trying to fit the mold, consumerism and following the step-by-step directions because you have the just-right tools and materials stifles innovation. I prefer language like imagination, exploring possibilities, invention, reimagining, improvising, life hack and patenting.

Last weekend, I had a whole project ready to work on, I just needed to change out one attachment to turn my angle grinder into a hand sander, and the whole project skidded to a halt sideways, half hanging over a ditch, because I didn’t have a tool that I now know is pin spanner wrench to remove a nut on the grinder. I know, you’re thinking, “It’s a nut, dummy, get a wrench.”

But, no, this wasn’t a nut nut. This nut looked like a large washer with two sides of its circular shape cut off and one hole on either side of the threaded post. The two holes were the key to loosening the washer-nut, but I needed the pin wrench, which looks like a standard wrench wrench, but there are two short, thick pins jutting from the face of the wrench, one near each end of the U-shaped head. I could find no such thing in the shop. Anywhere.

I figured, then, I should be able to spin the washer-nut thing, why else flatten the two sides? But the washer-nut was set into a depression so the only way the wrench would fit securely was to slide it on perpendicular to normal so the handle couldn’t be use for leverage, but it was impossible to loosen the nut by spinning the wrench.

This seemed like a ploy to make me buy a tool that I needed for exactly 17 seconds of work. Like generational trauma raising its fist in anger, I could hear my ancestors cry of, “No! Don’t waste your time and pay a bajillion dollars for this. Find a cheaper way. We have faith in you!”

I was in the process of finding some flat iron and a couple bolts to make my own pin wrench — and feeling all clever and problem-solverish — when John got home and declared he’d removed that washer-nut before but needed a moment to think about how he did it. OK, me and the ancestors were good with a few minutes of humming the Jeopardy tune.

Then John sent me for the large wrenches. I tried to save us a little time by telling him that I tried those wrenches and neither works, to which he replied with a side-eye look that said, “Hey! Have a little faith.” To which I replied with raised eyebrows and jeez-Louise eyes that said, “Ah-ight, fine. I’ll get the wrenches.”

Get this, he slid one wrench over the washer-nut perpendicular to the washer, like I did, but then he used the other wrench to turn the first wrench. I was, like, “Daaaang, my man. You smart.” I straight up high-fived him for myself and our ancestors.

I never would’ve thought of that two-wrench tool hack, but I redeemed myself the other day when we were trying to figure out what to do with the cat door — well, technically it’s a cat hole my father-in-law cut into the sliding metal door used as the outside entrance to the shop entrance. The problem is that a hole, by nature, freely lets everything in and out — feral cats, raccoons, birds, the wind, the cold, the heat, rain, snow, skunks. You get it.

We’ve been covering the hole with a metal plate screwed to the door. A simple but inelegant solution that’s also proving inconvenient now that we live at the shop and would like an easier way to let the cat use the opening on random occasions. We invested — not spent or wasted — considerable time thinking about different types of flapping, sliding or hinged doors, a removable plug for the hole, even.

Then it occurred to me that one of those magnetic signs you can stick to a vehicle door would work.

Only because I didn’t know where to find a discarded one, I called around about getting new magnetic material, and, I kid you not, I found more than twice what I needed — brand new, $3. Three bucks. That’s it.

I wasted maybe 10 minutes finding and buying it. Picked it up on the direct route from work to home. Took three minutes to cut the piece I need and slapped it over the hole, bammo, it works like a dream.

I couldn’t be prouder, and neither could the ancestors. The only thing slightly better than a do-it-yourself project with materials and tools you already have is when a bargain so good it’s a steal works as good as you imagined it would.

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This is definitely one measure of success in my world at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .