Month: August 2012

DIY bunkbed repair

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I’m filing this under the “Techie” category, simply because I’m so proud of myself for making it work! 🙂

Use toothpicks to fill stripped wood screw holes!

Four of the boys sleep on bunkbeds, and the eldest has his own futon. One of the bunkbeds has a metal frame, and the other is wood. I’ve noticed in recent weeks that the wood bed was getting wobbly, so I decided to investigate this weekend. I tried tightening the bolts (2 on each corner, so 8 total), and 6 out of the 8 were stripped!!

That was really scary, and I said an earnest thank-you prayer that the bed didn’t fall apart with someone (or two someones!) on it. The bolts are about 4″ long, so they would have had to wiggle a lot to work their way out, but still … something had to be done immediately.

I Googled “how to fix stripped wood screw” and was directed to a page with some great DIY tips. I decided to try the toothpick trick, and it worked!

Reinsert the bolt and torque it down; the toothpicks work as shims to fill in the stripped hole.

In essence, you insert 2-3 toothpicks into the stripped hole, then reinsert the bolt and torque it down till it’s good and snug. I did go ahead and disassemble the bunkbed and made it into two twin beds, because the boys were getting tired of the bunkbed, anyway, and I figured there would be less pressure on the bolts this way.

P.S. Super huge thanks to my almost-13yo who helped me separate the top & bottom bunks! It was certainly not a one-person job, and with my gimp knee, I was doing good just to get up off the floor from working on the bolts! 🙂

Ta-da! Nice & snug bolt!

Erasing Thorns (Prayer Devotional for the week of August 19, 2012)

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My kids like to doodle and sketch during church, and I don’t mind because it keeps them quiet (most of the time, but not always – as those who sit around us regularly can attest, but I digress …). Recently, one of the little guys decided to draw a potted fern that was on the stairs in front of the stage.

He carefully sketched each section of the ornate planter but paused before beginning the greenery. He leaned over and whispered, “I’m just going to draw a different plant.” I mouthed back OK, and glanced over occasionally to watch his progress. He began with some graceful, swirly strokes, and as he filled in the lines with leaves here and there, it began to take on the look of an ivy. Then, he added a few sharp triangles along the vines and filled them in hard and black. Thorns. He drew a while longer, and then stopped to examine his work.

Methodically, he went back through the drawing and erased every thorn. He began drawing flowers in their places. As I watched him, I thought to myself: If only it were that easy!  If only we could simply erase the irritating, painful interruptions in life and replace them with loveliness. If only we could just do away with the sharp hurt that pricks our hearts.

How often do we sit and fume, dwelling on the thorns in life? We have figurative pencils in our hands, and we press harder on the page, scribbling the thorn until it gets darker and more prominent. Eventually, we forget the rest of the picture that God is trying to draw for our lives, because we are so focused on that pesky thorn!

Like the Apostle Paul’s experience in 2 Corinthians 12, God may not completely erase the thorns in our lives. Those painful times can teach us important lessons. We can either let the thorns get the best of us, or we can take Paul’s example and willfully decide to praise God, anyway. We can turn those thorns into flowers by the way we choose to think about them. We can even thank God for the thorn (that’s a difficult one, I know!) because walking through the experience with him draws us closer together.