As far back as I can remember, my bathtub drained water (albeit slowly) with the stopper engaged. After getting the tub refinished, I felt like it was finally time to fix the problem. I went to Ace Hardware and bought the only tub drain linkage assembly they had in stock. Wouldn’t you know it–it didn’t fit. The only place I could find one that looked similar to the existing one was Amazon, so I bought and installed it and it’s still not quite right. While it is preventing the water from draining when engaged, the stopper mechanism won’t go all the way up. I tried adjusting it numerous times, of course, but tired of that after a while, so I still need to tweak that down the road. The more important point is that it technically works.
But, my greatest triumph this year was fixing the window in my office (Jake’s former bedroom), which I did today. The window has been stuck shut forever (for quite possibly 15 years–that’s what I’m going with, anyway). After watching a bunch of videos and taking apart one of the windows that actually worked, I decided to purchase new parts for it–namely spiral tilt window balances and pivot shoes. I figured one of those parts had to be at fault, but guess what? After taking everything apart, I found out that one of the pivot shoes was getting stuck on a screw at the bottom of the window frame. But, I could not see this problem until disassembling the entire window, so I replaced the parts anyway. It was the bottom half of the window that was stuck and it got the new balances. The top half was off track and it definitely needed new pivot shoes, so not all was lost. I am so happy the window works again. I just hope that screw doesn’t come loose again, but at least I know what to look for if it does.