The DRS News
June 2003
In this issue:
1) Rolling Your Own: Cutting Room AC Filters
2) Dishwashers and Message Whiteboards (…huh?)
3) A Quick Word About Electric Dryer Motors
1) After many years of cutting foam AC filters with scissors, I’ve finally found a better way. It’s another one of those things my teens would use the word ‘duh!’ about.
Visit you craft or fabric store and pickup one of those rotary cutters that the ladies use for fabrics. I’ve used one for years to cut cleaning patches for
firearms, but this use had just never dawned on me.
Lay your filter material out on a cutting board or piece of Plexiglas.
With the old
filter lying on top as a pattern, or, better yet, with a 2 foot
carpenter's square on top as a guide, roll out your filter. Most of these
filters come in 15” x 24” pieces. In some cases, you’ll be able to cut 2 filters for your AC out of one of these inexpensive pieces of ‘universal’ foam.
I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy and fast this is, and how handy one of these cutters can be! As with all
my ‘duh!’ ideas, please let us know of any other uses you may have come up with for one of these, and
I’ll post them for all to share.
2) I install a lot of new dishwashers, and often have the pleasure of disposing of the old ones.
(I’ve tried for years to talk someone into letting me lay one of these beauties on its back in the front yard, minus its door, and planting Petunias in it, but so far, no takers!)
Anyway, with 3 teenage daughters, we’ve been wearing out kitchen message whiteboards faster than telephones.
So, in another one of those ‘duh!’ moments (I seem to have a lot of ‘em since I’ve hit 50), I remembered that several of those old dishwashers had white aluminum panels behind the black or almond ones that were showing. Many older DW’s included several panel colors, and they were easily interchangeable.
So I’ve cut one of these to size (as *large* as possible!) to fit under our phone on the kitchen wall, applied a coat of good car wax, and ‘voila!’ as they say in Freedom Toast country – a new, improved whiteboard! ‘Even rounded the corners a bit to match the rest of our, um, décor, and there you have it!
It’s
lasted quite a while now and has been well tested, so I thought you might want to know about it.
Painted steel might be better for this because you could use magnets on it, but hey, that’s why they make refrigerator doors out of that stuff.
Update: An even more permanent whiteboard consists
of a simple picture frame with a piece of white paper in it. Glass
erases completely and cleanly, and unlike a painted surface, doesn't
stain and need regular scrubbing. Live and learn!
3) We talk to many people confused by electric dryers that run but won’t heat, so let me just mention this in passing.
Dryer motors run
on 120V, while the electric heating system requires 240V. This is why ½ of the
electrical supply can be ‘missing’ and the dryer will still tumble the laundry.
As we’ve said before, don’t be fooled into thinking the dryer’s 240V supply is OK because it’s running.
It’s taken me many years to develop the habit of always, always checking for 240V supply to a no-heat dryer FIRST
- no matter what I'm told even by a homeowner who's a pro
electrician (a long story with a happy ending...)
---
I leave you
with a favorite:
My computer has
a Spell Check...
‘Eye have a spelling chequer, it came with my Pea Sea.
It
plane lee marques for my revue mistakes Aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it, eye am shore your pleas too no.
It’s letter perfect inn its weigh; my chequer tolled me sew.
The motto of this story is very plane two sea. Don’t four get
too ewes you’re brain as well adz you’re knew Pea Sea.’
---
Thanks for allowing me into your inbox again this month. I hope you enjoy reading this little project half as much as I enjoy writing it for you. What
great friends I'm making through this cool medium!
May the Lord bless you
& yours, and may He continue to have mercy on America.
Your friend,
Dave Harnish
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‘By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches,
and honor, and Life’
Prov. 22:4
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Know What You Want…To Get What You Want!
‘The DNA of Success’, by Jack Zufelt (life-changing stuff!):
DNAofSuccess.com
