I thought I’d start a thread to collect links to resources for learning. Home stuff, baking, car maintenance, etc.
I found one today about bike maintenance that starts at the very beginning - by a woman who owns a bike shop I really like.
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YESSSSSSSSSSSS
In addition to online resources, I can chitter chatter forever about:
- Crochet (extensive)
- Knitting (moderate)
- Cooking and baking (extensive)
- Language and linguistics (extremely extensive)
I highly recommend Smitten Kitchen and Budget Bytes for great recipes, and The Kitchn for technique info. The Joy of Cooking is an amazing text resource for anyone wanting to learn new things, and Mark Bittman cookbooks are also good, solid resources. Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal is an incredible book for right now – it focuses on economy, resourcefulness, and good food in a way that’s inspiring and comforting both. I also find David Lebovitz recipes to be extremely solid, though they tend to be a little more complex – not finicky, just complex.
Language and linguistics – Language Log is some great reading about linguistics. For practicing a foreign language, I really highly recommend Lang-8, where you write in your target language and native speakers correct you (and you provide the same for them). If anyone wants resources on particular languages or things about linguistics, hit me the fuck up, I can find them for you.
Crochet and knitting – YouTube is king. Ravelry is king. Come to the Share Your WIP! thread for more details. 
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I have been learning tons and tons of electrical/ plumbing/ carpentry stuff. AMA!
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Any important takeaways to share?
(I live in a rental so this is my landlord’s job, but still, I like knowing.)
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Almost everything is on YouTube, but you will cuss and spill things a lot more than the person in the video.
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Well, good thing I practice my cussing, then.
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Smacky is better than me by what I’ve seen of her work but I’ve got a decent amount of remodeling experience like replacing cast iron drain pipe, bath remodeling, etc. and I’m also pretty good at what I call “redneck carpentry” when building things around my little farm that just have to be functional and sturdy rather than pretty. Current project is a smaller coop for my no longer illegally numbered flock of chickens all with materials reclaimed from past projects (obviously still in progress):
Most of my other skill share would be gardening, but we’ve got a thread for that. If anyone is considering chickens or rabbits for meat/fur I could help too. I suppose I could also help with homeschooling question since I’ve been doing that for 7 years now.
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Rabbitarian, I have a skill share request for you: we ate dinner outside in our yard last night… and noticed a rat running over the fence from another yard and jumping up into our lemon tree. I hadn’t even thought about them as a gardening problem because our house itself is very snug and we’re don’t have rat or mouse problems inside. However, I assume they will be a problem for fruit and veggie bearing plants (I’m pretty sure they must be what has eaten a few lemons off the tree). Advice for protecting my precious future tomatoes?
Rodents are a nuisance, here I lose a decent amount of stuff to squirrels. Unfortunately they’re so agile and rats are able climb very well as well as squeeze through holes as small as 1x1” and can chew through anything other than metal wire of at least 20 gauge thickness so really any truly rodent proof protection method would become expensive to build as well as cumbersome to garden around.
Your main option is just to try and control the population via traps, bait (no great effective options that don’t have secondary toxicity risk though), or predators like a TNR’d outdoor cat (mixed effectiveness on rats, they handle juvies but often can’t kill adults).
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I should add that if you’re open to traps I can offer some advice there but I’m by no means an expert.
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In my garden rodents typically go for water containing foods (like tomatoes) so I’ve had success growing extra and putting out water dishes during the hotter months.
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Bait is definitely out, too dangerous to owls and kitties. I’ve used snap traps indoors, wary about those for local wildlife outdoors - I don’t want to trap a jay. Maybe some of the other traps?
I wonder if I can find heavy small-hole chicken wire. Ground squirrels are a thing here too; there’s gotta be something I can use to make small cages for things like tomatoes.
Water dishes is a brilliant idea. If you can’t get rid of them, distract them…
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The only non-rat animal I have ever caught in a snap trap was a chipmunk, and they’re honestly even more of a nuisance so I wasn’t overly upset. You can put the traps inside a covered station to reduce accidents.
It’s not that you CAN’T build a cage, it’s just whether you want to go to the trouble of doing it, making it secure enough to be rodent proof but also not a massive PITA to get at the plant. Because rats will climb many feet up and will also dig under things, so you have to protect so many different angles.
If you really wanted to do it, the best product for the job is 1/2” hardware cloth. It comes in rolls of various widths and lengths. The best way to cut small amounts is a diagonal cutter/plier. I handle wire a lot so I use an angle grinder with a cutting wheel.
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Help me figure this out.
My kitchen has two cupboards that have a drawer at the base with a full sized cabinet door attached. One is for garbage and recycling, one is for under the sink. They are meant to look like this.
But I have a different door style. So a full sized door attached to a drawer at the base.
The full sized doors don’t come with the pre drilled holes for attaching drawers. In fact, they come with pre drilled hinge holes where the drawers are supposed to attach. Here’s a cupboard door and a drawer front.
How do I attach the drawer to the cupboard door? I’m stumped. Do I fill the hinge holes with wood filler?