The Rentals

Here we are once again, me on my side of my blog writing, and you on your side of the blog reading.  I had a good weekend, I hope you guys did as well.  My parents came into town for their yearly vacation so my bride and I spent the whole weekend trying to entertain them.  I don’t know if they’re trying to pay me back from when I was kid and lived with them or what, but they sure have become needy and demanding.  We had to have constant entertainment for them, and they seemed to always be hungry.  No lie, my bride and I are in the kitchen cooking dinner and from the couch we hear, “I sure am hungry, we don’t eat as late you guys do.”  I’m cooking as fast as I can mom, I’m sure you don’t want to eat your chicken raw, I hear bad things can happen.  One morning I’m in the kitchen making breakfast, my parents walk in and proclaim that they’re ready for breakfast.  I tell them that we’ll be having cinnamon rolls and they are almost ready, so they decide to just have cake for breakfast.  Then when I pull the cinnamon rolls out of the oven, they say, well I wouldn’t have had cake if I knew you were making cinnamon rolls.  Really folks?  Was I really this bad and annoying?  It didn’t even stop with food, a picture was knocked off of a wall, we hear it hit the floor so my bride and I go to investigate thinking a cat has done something, what do we find? Our picture that used to be on the wall stacked on a bookshelf, I know our cats, they don’t stack.  It would have taken just as much time to hang the picture back on the nail.   I half expected them to give me the, “Are we there yet” when we went out Saturday!  The other times they have come to the house they came to help us move, do some yard work and meet my bride’s dad.  Apparently I’ve learned that when they come there needs to be tasks laid out for them to do or else they’re going to get bored!  Apparently they see my house as their house as well, because my dad got up from the table, turned on the weather channel and promptly feel asleep.  Welcome home dad, welcome home…
I really do love my parents, and I’m very thankful for everything they’ve given me, so don’t think I’m just off bashing my parents.  It was just to the point of being comical this weekend with the goings on that just weren’t expected from my parents.

Cha-Ching!

I hope everyone had as good of a weekend as I did.  Nothing special happened, I just didn’t have to work.  Well I guess I did have to work, just a different type of work, yard work.  A while back I had my old push mower die on me so I had to get a new one.  Well I didn’t really know what to do with my old dead mower so it just sat behind the shed letting the grass grow up around it.  (And yes I did do redneck fixes on it to keep it running as long as I could, but it finally just couldn’t take it anymore.)  Well, my bride has been on me for a while, I guess about 2 years, about getting rid of it. Since I was in the yard working yesterday it seemed like the perfect day to do something with the old mower.  I’ve heard rumors about people cashing in scrap metal for money so I thought there had to be some big bucks in this.  I tell my bride, we’re cashing in this old mower and some other scrap metal and we’re going to have ourselves a date night!  We load up our old rusted and holey fire pit, some random car parts that I’ve gotten out of the ditch from in front of our house, and the old mower.   I just know in my heart that I’ve got at least 40 dollars of metal in the bed of my truck.  I pull up to the scrap metal place beaming with pride and thoughts of big bucks.  I back up to the scale and we start unloading.  I’m watching the weight increase on the digital screen, 75, 90, 124 pounds!  JACKPOT!  We’re going to Western Sizzler tonight, put on your fancy blue jeans, and a shirt that doesn’t have a hole, we’re living the high life!  Aw man, I just can’t wait to have all these bills counted out into my hand.  I’m doing the old Cha-Ching fast food commercial dance in my head.  Now, my bride has stayed in the truck for all of this, and her window doesn’t roll down, if you remember from last week, so she has no idea what’s going on.  This is going to be the surprise of her life.  I walk inside the place to settle up my tab and end up having the biggest surprise of my life.  We went from Western Sizzler to sharing a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.  I walked away with a hole whopping $7.20, I spent more in gas driving to the place than I made.  Talk about a blow to your ego!  The ride up there was filled talking of ways to spend this money!  Now I have to get back in the truck and hand over a 5, two 1’s and two dimes?  Ouch, I’m never going to hear the end of this one.

There, I fixed it

As of May 2nd, I became the proud 100% owner of a 2005 F150.  That’s right the last payment was sent in and the truck is mine after 6 long years of making payments.  The last three May’s in a row something has happened to my truck that has cost us a lot of money.  With the last payment being made and the truck officially mine, I had a feeling that this May was going to be the worst May of all.  I was on pins and needles all month, and on June 1st I was happy to report that nothing happened to the truck!  Well Sunday August 7th, my luck ran out.  My lovely bride rolled down the passenger side window to talk to a friend, and as she rolled the window back up we heard a loud, CRACK followed by a POP.  My bride thought the window broke, but I knew what happened, because a few Mays ago the same thing happened to the driver’s side window.  The pulley system that rolls the window up and down snapped and so the window fell down inside the door.  The last time I had to get this fixed it cost me 360 bucks.  With my bride’s birthday coming up and our first anniversary looming , I really wasn’t too hip to dropping that kind of cash to fix a stinking window.  What to do, what to do…  I know I’ll get my redneck on!

I started this repair job off the right way, at Home Depot!  What redneck can’t fix their car with building supplies bought from the home depot?  I knew to fix the window properly I’d need two small C-Clamps and four rubber washers.

I didn’t take any pictures of me taking the door apart, so the next photo is of the C-clamp in place.  I raised the window to its shut position, I then positioned the C-clamp on the track right below the bottom of the window on the right side of the door.

One side down, now to the left side track.  This side proved to be a bit more difficult due to there being no space for my hand or clamp at the bottom of the window.  Again tapping my inner redneck I decide this is nothing that a scrap piece of trim and a coping saw couldn’t fix.

So I cut two pieces of the trim, one to be the stop for the window, and the other make a wedge to keep the stop in the track and in position.  Next I took my handy C-Clamp and clamped the trim in place.

Now for the fun of putting the door back together.  Because I’m left with this hot mess.

First I need to put the moisture barrier back in place.

With that done I bring the door panel back and take a look at it.

I snap the door pannel back in place after returning the hanging door handle to his home.

Then I need to hook the wires back to my electric door controls.

And snap them back into place.

Next the speaker needs to be put back into his hole, making sure I have clearance around one of my C-clamps. (Something I probably should have done before this step)

Lucky for me there was clearance, Clarance.  I Returned all the trim, and the job is complete.

So, there you go, if you have an F-150 that has the window break like this and don’t want to spend the money to get it properly fixed and you don’t like the look of ducktape on your car, follow these instructions and you’ll be good to go.  Other than the gallons of sweat I lost, the R rated words that were dropped and the skin and blood left inside my door it’s a pretty simple process.  Just don’t forget to put a sticker on the door that says “winder don’t work”.