Busy day fixing the car, painting and hanging some drywall.

Yesterday, with all the rain and all, was one of those days that I just didn't feel like doing much.  I did start building my shelves and hung them on the wall, though.  Can you ever have too much storage and shelving?  I think not.  If I'm not careful, this room will be just a bunch of shelves and closets.  We need a bigger house.  So, as I sat in the nursery, listening to Fox News, I was hatching a plan to build some built in shelves.  I decided a set of floating shelves would look nice behind the door to the room.  Kinda there, yet kinda out of the way.  This is what I drew up:

So, with my plans in hand, I head out to the garage, crank the heat and start cutting and assembling the shelves.  I decided to just do them out of 2X4's covered with drywall.  Here they are and here they are hung up:

Starting to look like my little diagram doesn't it?  I did put up the drywall and some corner bead on the shelves today but I had to get Mrs. K's car fixed so I put this project on hold to get her car done.

Now, when one of our cars is parked in the garage that means something's broken and either parts are on the way or the car is in pieces waiting for parts to be ordered.  Basically, it means that things are not running along smoothly in the household, as it usually is.  Not really.  So, when Mrs. K and I were heading back from KY I roll my window down just the tiniest bit and try to roll the window back up.  Guess what?  It doesn't go back up.  Now, if any of you out there own a BMW we all know that those darn window regulators must be built by Fisher Price or something.  In other words, they do not last at all.  I already "modified" the driver's and passenger's side regulators with nylon zip ties.  The driver's side held up.  The passenger side, not so much.  Now, this is a great, cheap fix, we're talking 10 or 20 cents to fix versus 100 dollars for the part.  I'll go with the cheaper fix. 

In this case, I went ahead and ordered a new regulator instead of trying to redo the zip tie fix thinking that the cable snapped since the last time I had it out of the car the cable did fall off of the pulley and while I was putting it back on I thought I damaged it.  I'll just go ahead and reinforce the new one with the zip ties anyhow:

A sad sight, I know. 

Now, the dealer wants over 150 dollars for this part, an OEM part online is 100, I went ahead and bought the aftermarket part for 60 dollars.  I thought, I would be "modifying" anyhow so it should be stronger than the dealer part anyhow.

Quality looks just as bad as the original part.

This is the zip tie modification.  It's crazy, the part that engages the cable is plastic around a metal "slug" fused to the cable.  The plastic is where this part fails, The zip ties engage the cable more securely to the plastic.

Now, this will be the third time I've fixed the windows on this car so it went really quickly this time.

 

This is the best designed door release cable I've ever come across.  Kinda makes you think that the engineers knew that these doors would be taken apart ALOT! to fix the window regulators.

 This is the airbag held out of the way with a bungee cord.  It would suck if this thing went off in my face.

This is the window regulator motor.

 

The inards all put back together.  Make sure you test the operation of the window before you get to this point and way before you get the door panel back on.

Be sure to have plenty of these door panel clips on hand because they do get damaged very easily if you're not careful.

 So, the car is put back together and I just saved about 300 dollars off of the dealer's price for parts and labor.  Not too bad for about 45 minutes of work.  I make lawyer money now!

Okay, shelves started, Mrs. K's car fixed, Baby shower dinner with Jenny's office, thank you you guys!  Now, time to get back to those paintings I started earlier.  This is how they are progressing so far:

Whew!  Long day, time for bed.