Holes in Your Window Screens? That's an Easy Thing to Repair

Your standard maintenance and spring cleaning should include washing your home’s windows, inside and out. Once you’ve compared a clean window and a dirty one side-by-side, you’ll see why. At the same time, it’s a good idea to check the window screens and repair any that have developed holes since your last window-cleaning session. 

You could take a damaged screen to the local hardware store to have it repaired – at a pretty impressive cost, I might add – or you could do it yourself with some basic tools. For modern metal-framed screens, you only need one specialized tool – cleverly called a “screen tool” – and chances are good that it’ll cost less than five bucks. Replacement screen is available at the local BigBox store in both fiberglass and aluminum varieties, as well as different colors. Once you’ve removed a screen from the window, replacing the mesh should take only a few minutes for fiberglass screen, though significantly longer if you use metal mesh.

Flat Tire on Your Wheelbarrow or Dolly? No Problem

If you have a flat tire on a bicycle, it’s no big deal to change it – mainly because almost all bike tires have inner tubes. But very little else around the house has an inner tube, so if you find a flat on your wheelbarrow, a two-wheel dolly or a small garden-tractor tire, you might well have yourself a head-scratcher. Look at the picture over there: the tire (blue) must form an airtight seal against the rim (#4, gray) or any air you pump into it just comes out around the edge, or bead, of the tire. If you want to pump air into that tire, you need to force the bead up against the rim - all the way around and on both sides. 

Tubeless tire separated from rim

It’s gonna take some ingenuity, but you can do it without taking the wheel to your local tire shop. All you need is a way to compress the tire. I usually use a band clamp, but for larger wheels a big ‘ol tie-down strap might be more in order. In a pinch, you can do the same thing with some rope and a stick, though you’ll probably need a helper for that method.