Okay, back to the actual DIY disasters...
My ex's father was a man who was parsimonious to a degree that would have embarrassed Jack Benny. He was also fairly smart and clever, had grown up in the Great Depression and WWII and was determined that he would do things himself as much as possible. Unfortunately, if he needed a part he wouldn't go out to buy one- he would improvise from what was at hand. The results:

-when he was mowing the lawn one day, the lawnmower shot a piece of gravel that shattered the light by the driveway. Rather than go out and get a new glass globe for it, he took a gallon pickle jar and washed it out and painted the inside white. It stayed that way for a good fifteen years.

-he had an old Buick station wagon, just like the one they drove on The Brady Bunch. It had the headlights with the little doors that closed down over them when not in use. Apparently the vacuum actuator stopped working on one side, so he measured the opening and cut a chunk of tree branch to fit. Remember "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex was forced to watch movies with his eyelids held open? It looked a lot like that.

-the water heater didn't really work properly, so the ex's mother would run out of hot water while running laundry. His answer? Put on the kettle and add the hot water to the machine as it was running.

-he had a Saab turbo that he loved and polished to a gleam. One day I looked under the hood and found that he had lost the cap to the brake fluid reservoir. He replaced it with the cap from a soda bottle.

-his wife drove a Chrysler station wagon for a few years. Apparently the dashboard lights didn't work because the fuse kept blowing, so he wrapped the fuse in foil from the pack of cigarettes he had in his pocket. The following day he came home to find the fire department there, putting out his wife's car.

-he had a thing about it being too quiet. Every room had a radio in it, hooked up to the light switch so that if you turned on the light you'd be comforted by the sounds of the Big Band era station he preferred. I was a little taken aback by this happening when I went to take a shit, but when I went out to the barn to get a saw and switched on the light and heard Tommy Dorsey coming from the milkhouse, I got creeped out.

And I won't even start on his substitutions in recipes. Suffice it to say that dinner at that house was always a culinary adventure...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:18, 3 replies)

I had to look up parsimonious
It's good to keep learning at my age.
( girlinthehole, Fri 4 Apr 2008, 17:27, closed)

more!
More X-Dad-in-law stories!! He sounds like a fine example of yankee ingenuity.
(sar "though she be but little she is fierce", Fri 4 Apr 2008, 23:01, closed)

Big Band is great!
That man had taste.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Sat 5 Apr 2008, 7:28, closed)