How to Clean your Oven Door Glass

Cleaning the interior glass on your oven door is probably something that you don't think about that often. Over time the glass is going to get dirty from drips and spills.

Fran thought it was time to clean the glass on our oven door. First, you have to access the glass, our oven door happens to have 3 sets of glass one on the inside, outside, and one in the middle. This means that we had to take the door apart to be able to access and clean them.

Open your oven door and you should see four screws like the one in this picture in each corner of the door.

First, take note as to what type of screwdriver you need, some will be a star-type bit or it could be a square, or Phillips head, mine happened to be square.

The two screws on the top should also hold the handle on so when you take these out the handle is going to come off.

When you remove the last screw on the bottom of the door, be careful as this will separate the oven door from the casing. So hold the bottom or place a box under the door to support it.

On most oven doors the four screws will separate the casing from the door.

This was not the case with our door we still had to remove five screws pictured here.

Three across the top and one on each side. These screws can be removed with your standard Phillips head screwdriver.

After we got the door apart we found that we had another four Phillips head screws to remove the middle glass.

Tip for the middle glass screws: Make a mark where the screws are so when you put it back together you know what hole they go into, as ours had several holes across this bracket. Once we had everything apart Fran cleaned the glass with a baking soda paste and water.

Before we started this job we watched the following video. Although it wasn't the same as our oven door it is a great starting point and really helped. I recommend watching this video before you start.

This was a fairly simple do-it-yourself project and watching the video was a huge help. If you are not comfortable taking this on I recommend calling a certified appliance technician.

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Replacing Washing Machine Hoses

How often do you inspect the water supply hoses on your washing machine?

Washing machine hose failure is among the top five reasons for home water damage.

Whether you have the washing machine on the first floor or in the basement of your home the damage can be costly.

When should you replace washing machine hoses? 

• You should replace the hoses every (5) years.
• Replace hoses if you move the washing machine to another location.
• When you buy a new machine always buy new hoses.

We just recently purchased a new washing machine and I didn't replace the hoses. The other day I happened to be in the laundry room. I noticed the washing machine's hot water hose was all swelled up and ready to burst.

Lucky for me that I saw this in time. I turned off the water supply and made a trip to the hardware store for new hoses.

Replacing washing machine water supply hoses is a very easy do-it-yourself project. You can buy rubber washing machine hoses or stainless steel washing machine hoses, I bought the rubber.

 First, make sure that you turn off the water supply. Then unscrew the hoses from the water supply and then the back of the washing machine. You won't need any special plumbing tools, just a pair of adjustable pliers or vise grips.

Irwin 15-9LN Vise Grip 2-7/8-Inch Jaw Capacity 9-Inch Long Nose
I just had one small problem. My washing machine hose connections on the back of the washing machine are inset about 2 inches.

 So my normal vice grips were too big to fit and turn the hose fittings.

I needed a pair of long-nose vice grips as you see in this picture. Once I had this tool the job was simple.

It's a good idea to inspect your water supply line on the washing machine often.

Some other tips are: Never stretch or pull the hoses and make sure you don't have any sharp bends in the hoses.

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Now that you've read this post, take a minute and go check your washing machine water supply hoses.

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Indoor Wireless Outlets

Indoor wireless outlets are just another piece of amazing technology.

Pictured here is my remote with a handy keychain and one of my wireless outlets.

What can you do with wireless outlets? Well, let me tell you. You can use your handy remote to turn on any electronic device that you may desire.

A lamp for across the room, your stereo or radio to turn on some music, a space heater that you may only want to turn on for a little while and then off again.

 My wireless outlets have a range of 80  ft. with 2 plugs in each of the three receivers.

Think about the safety aspect of wireless outlets. You can turn on a lamp in another room before you walk in. You may not have a light switch near you entry door, and if you're coming home in the dark it's just the push of a button on the remote to turn on a light.

We have a poll lamp behind a chair in our living room. Every time we needed some light somebody had to squeeze behind the chair to turn it on.

Our son was visiting last year and I think he got tired of hearing me complain about the poll lamp. So he went out and bought us a set of indoor wireless outlets.

We also have a small bedroom in the house with no wall switch. I plugged in a lamp and now can turn on the light from anywhere in the house.

My wireless outlets were a huge help with the Christmas tree this year. Our tree has all white lights but the kids really like the multi-colored lights.

I set the tree up and plugged it into one wireless outlet. I wrapped multi-colored lights around the tree and plugged them into another wireless outlet.

 So now we have white lights, multi-colored lights, or both with just a push of the button on the remote.

I recommend wireless outlets if you happen to have any of these situations in your home, they sure do come in handy.

As always thanks for stopping by!

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How to re-key with Kwikset

I've always been sort of a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Over the years I think I've become a Jack of all Trades and a master of none.

A while ago my garage door knob broke, it jammed to the point where I couldn't get into the garage. It's a good thing my car was out in the driveway so I could use my garage door remote to get in.

So now I had to completely remove the doorknob and replace it with a new one. The only problem was that I wanted the new one to be keyed the same as all the other locks on the house.

In all my years of DIY, I had no idea of how to re-key a new lock. I thought for sure that I needed to call a  locksmith to do this for me.

So I went to the hardware store and found a door knob that matched the old one. I asked if they could re-key the lock to my current key, and the answer was "No we don't do that here". Then he said, "Why don't you buy a Kwikset with their smart key technology you can re-key it yourself ".

Well, I guess that you do learn something new every day because I've never heard of this technology. After he explained how easy it was I decided to buy it. I've installed door knobs before but that wasn't the part that I was worried about.

Now it was time to re-key this thing so I followed the simple instructions and used a handy little tool that was included with the door knob and my new lock was re-keyed in about 10 seconds.

I thought Wow!! that was really easy so I tried all of my current keys just to make sure and they all work. Now I'm back to one key that fits all of my locks and that's just the way I like it.

There are many reasons that you may want to re-key a lock and you can with Kwikset Smart Key Technology.

Kwikset Smart Key Technology provides many options

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Garage Organization Ideas

Do you have a garage that your car won't fit into? Well, I do, every spring and summer when the weather gets nice enough to leave the car in the driveway I begin to clutter up my garage.

I clutter up my garage with wood for our outdoor fire pit, lawn tools, our grandchildren's outside toys, and whatever else I'm working on for my spring and summer projects.

So that means there is no room for the car. Not to worry though as fall the season approaches I clean up the garage so I can get the car back in. I know the snow will be flying soon and there is no way that I want to be cleaning snow off of the car early in the morning.

It seems that every year I have something new to store away for the winter.

This year I bought a new eight-foot step ladder, something I desperately needed to clean out my gutters.

So I picked up this series of hooks and hung the ladder from existing shelves on the wall.


These hooks a so handy and can be used to hang a variety of things. Luckily there are engineers who think of these handy organizers just for people like me. I clean up my workbench using clear drawer bins for small screws, nuts, bolts, and nails.

You can also find overhead ceiling storage racks, wall shelves, sports equipment storage, and so much more.

Maybe someday I'll have my garage organized to the point where I can keep my car in it all year long. Until then I'll just keep organizing every fall season with these handy tools.

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