Without a access to a boat upon which to lavish my mad maintenance skills, I have been  knocking out the repair projects at home with alacrity. In the last two weeks I have replaced two of the original doors that had been molested by our dogs over the years and were looking pretty shabby.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Doors.

This triumph comes close on the heels of my tiny bathroom toilet and molding update, wherein I replaced a 1964 25 gallon per flush American Standard pink toilet with an Earth loving 1.6 gallon dual flush unit.

As a recovering Southern Baptist, I believe that idle hands truly are the Devil’s workshop. Without a boat to potter about on, I could easily resort to loitering on some street corner with a pack of Lucky Strikes rolled into my T-Shirt sleeve, hassling passers-by. For this reason I am grateful that we live in a house that seems to be falling down around our ears. There is never a day that we can’t pitch our eyes in any direction and find a construction, gardening, livestock or automobile project upon which we may toil.

Melissa herding a wayfaring duck.Why he waddled into our yard, we do not know. We do not need, nor do we want another animal to care for.

Imagine my joy then, when Melissa opened the door to the microwave oven and the handle came off in her hand. Five years earlier, I had repaired the handle with West Systems epoxy after a similar event. I continue to be impressed by how useful epoxy can be. At the time I was building our rowing pram Puddler and, as the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.

This time, the handle seemed to be beyond repair. Besides, I had fixed it with epoxy once. What’s the fun in fixing stuff the same way over and over again? I briefly considered buying a new handle but was quickly dissuaded from this plan when I saw the price. $78 dollars for a handle to a 15  year old microwave? That, gentle reader, is not how I roll.

After the obligatory visit to Lowes where I stared dumbly at various doodads for an hour, I flashed on a solution. Melissa had salvaged some old teak (or maybe mahogany) from the marina gate about a year ago and we had some pewter cabinet handles kicking around the garage. I could post date the sleek, black microwave with wood and pewter and save a few bucks at the same time

Above, a bit of salvaged mahogany and two drawer pulls we had kicking around.
The old handle is below. the broken piece had been mended with West Systems Epoxy for five years before failing. A replacement handle was $80 dollars!

So, long story slightly less long, I give you our new, kicky microwave door handles.

Not found in any store

I sure hope Moonrise sells soon. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this level of handy-manliness.