The Joy of Fixing Things (And Why I Always Try First)

If something breaks, my first instinct is always the same—how can I fix it?

It’s not something I think about. It’s just how I’m wired.

Starting Small: Fixing the Door Lock

I took some time to fix our bathroom door lock the other night. It had stopped working and led to a few awkward moments.

It had been broken for weeks, but I kept putting it off—until it became unavoidable.

I removed the lock, straightened the cam with a quick tap, added some WD40, and put it back together.

It worked perfectly. Smooth and solid again.

It took 10 minutes. The real question was—why didn’t I fix it sooner?

Learning by Doing

The benefits of fixing are obvious—time, money, and understanding.

Our fridge started making a noise that gradually got worse. The fan bearing had worn, causing it to rub and eventually fail.

I tried a quick fix using a makeshift bush. It worked briefly, then failed again.

Eventually I replaced the motor and fan properly—and the problem was solved.

Fixing it taught me how the system actually worked—not just how to replace parts.

When Fixing Gets More Complex

Some problems aren’t simple.

The tumble dryer had been repaired multiple times—belts, heaters, resets—but the real issue was the tension pulley seizing.

Not Everything Works First Time

The first fix didn’t last.

I eventually replaced the pulley with a different design using proper bearings.

That solved it properly—and improved the original design.

The Bigger Pattern

This isn’t just about fixing things. It’s a way of thinking.

When something breaks, you can either replace it—or understand it.

Fixing forces you to slow down and learn how the system actually works.

Where This Shows Up

• How I Think (Visual Thinking) — how I naturally break down systems
• LEGO Technic — where this mindset started
• Modern Cars — why overcomplicated systems fail

What This Means

Fixing things isn’t just practical—it’s a way of understanding systems.

Replacing something is often quicker, but fixing it builds knowledge and confidence.

In practice, that means taking the time to understand how things work rather than immediately replacing them.

Not everything needs replacing—sometimes it just needs understanding.

I spend a lot of time fixing and simplifying systems, whether that’s physical or digital.

You can take a look at my TechFix service if you’ve got something that should be fixable but isn’t.

Building the Megaden: A Reclaimed Timber Garden Room

The Megaden started as an idea that sat in my head for years.

I had sketches, materials collected around the garden, and a rough picture of how it might eventually come together.

Eventually, I decided to actually build it.

So the Megaden is nearing completion. Standing on stilts, it's made from mainly reclaimed timber. The doors and windows we picked up from gumtree, the main supports are scaffold boards from a local farmer and the walls are finished with pallet wood.

We did have to buy some new parts for it including the roof, insulation, waterproof builders membrane, the electrics, and screws and coach bolts, but I think it's still mainly emainly reclaimed materials.

It is a whopping 3.6 meters by 2.4 meters inside. Outside has a covered deck which is another 3.6 meters by 1.7 meters.

I have to say I have loved every minute of the build. There is something so satisfying about working with wood and especially nearly free wood at that. Building something is also brilliant and gives a great sense of achievement.

So what's a Megaden? It's a place the boys and me can hang out, play games, and chill. It is a hideaway at the end of the garden that is removed from the house.

Designing the Megaden

I had many, many designs in my head before I started, I had them sketched out on paper long before I started. How big would it be? What shape would it be? how would the roof pitch, how does everything join together? How would I get electrics to it? How would I make it watertight?

A lot of the project was mentally assembled long before any timber was cut. I could already picture how the structure, roof, electrics, and layout would fit together.

Building with Reclaimed Materials

I have been collecting materials for years, squirreling away timber around the garden. The doors and windows have been lying under tarpaulins for over a year behind the shed. A length of about 30 meters of armored cable for the electrics has been hanging on my garage wall for about 15 years. It was leftover from a job my Dad did many moons ago.

The main structure sits on 100mm by 100mm by 3m long treated fence posts bolted into fence spikes and hammered into the ground. I used 8 spikes in total, one in each corner and one more each on the two longer outside runs.

With the spike and posts in place, the scaffold boards were clamped in place front and back, then drilled and secured with M10 coach bolts. Ratchet straps were used to pull the posts back into the square while the top boards were put into place.

With metal joist hangers I fitted more scaffold boards between the front and back boards to create a floor structure for both the inside and deck areas. These boards are long and heavy and give a sturdy frame really quickly.

I used reclaimed timber to make the deck from old fence boards made from pressure-treated timber.

For the inside, I put down a waterproof membrane over the joists and laid a layer of 11mm OSB.

The walls were made from CLS timber buttons, which were then clad in 11mm OSB, with a layer of builders membrane and then an outer layer of more fence boards. Inside got some foil-backed insulation before being framed inside with reclaimed pallet wood. Pallets are a real pain to dismantle and there are many videos on YouTube on how to do it quickly.

I have never had much success and is a very manual process of splitting the board and hammering out the nails. I did come up with a simpler way of taking them apart using an old car jack and spinning it up using an impact wrench. It basically just pushed the pallet boards apart with force rather than hammering. The boards had the nails removed and then sanded using a belt sander before nailing to the walls.

Learning as I Went

For the electrics, I ordered a shed/garage consumer unit from eBay. It has 2 RCB circuits on it. One for wall sockets and one for a light circuit. Amazon delivered the cable, sockets (with USB), and lights (thanks to prime).

The plan was for 3 double sockets mounted in the walls, 2 lights inside, and two lights on the deck. The boys wanted the PS3 moved into the mega den along with a TV on the wall. I wanted a mini-fridge.

My dad came down for the weekend to help with the installation. He likes this sort of work, running in cables and connecting things. I have some sort of certificate that I gained at university that I believe qualifies me for electrical installation, but that is a while ago now. I'll need to dig this out and check at some stage.

Starting with the consumer unit I had already pulled the wire armored cable in through the floor and up the cavity in the wall. Black and red and armored core as earth. We did a quick google on connection as the unit arrived with no instructions. It's basically a common neutral and common earth. The live wire goes into a master breaker which supplies the two other breakers for lights and sockets.

With a good day's work done, the electrics were commissioned and working.

Why It Was Worth Building

We have been living with the Megaden for a few weeks now and it's brilliant. Thankfully it's dry inside too as we have had a couple of sleepovers in it. The Old Sofa fits perfectly, and the PS3 has just enough wifi signal from an extender in the house.

One night there was a meteor shower, and we sat on the deck in sleeping bags at two in the morning watching meteors cross the sky through the open doors.

Looking back, moments like that were probably the real reason for building it.

In all, I would say the Megaden cost about £500 to build, which I think is quite good as it's a bit more sturdy than a run-of-the-mill summer house and hopefully will last for many years. I still need to paint it. I have the paint but need to find the time now.

Looking back, the Megaden was never really just about building a garden room.

It was about creating something from imagination, reclaimed materials, and problem solving—and ending up with a place full of memories afterwards.

This also connects closely to my thoughts on LEGO Technic and engineering mindset and how understanding structures and systems started early for me.

It links naturally to my reflections on visual thinking, especially mentally modelling projects before building them.

A lot of the same thinking also appears in my post about fixing things instead of replacing them.

I’ve always enjoyed building, fixing, and simplifying things—whether physical or digital.

A lot of the same thinking that went into the Megaden now goes into helping people untangle technical problems and improve systems.

You can take a look at my TechFix service if that sounds useful.

Why I Keep Coming Back to Arduino Projects

I’ve always enjoyed projects that combine software, electronics, and problem solving.

That’s probably why I keep finding myself buying Arduino kits, even when I already have unfinished projects sitting in drawers.

But when "The Most Complete Arduino Starter Kit" appears on Amazon prime at more than 50% off, Hey it would be rude not to. I looked at all the accessories and found myself clicking the buy with one click button and less than 24 hrs later it arrived.

Tech Christmas Day... The box was full of all sorts of colored bits.

This is the 3rd Arduino I've bought over a number of years. The first was a simple learn-to program an Arduino kit and came with some basic electronic components.

Why Arduino Interested Me

An Arduino is a solid-state microcomputer with onboard input and output pins exposed. It's basically a circuit board with a controller about the size of a playing card. It's blue, not that it matters. It's like a mini PLC or Programmable Logic Controller. It can sense the outside world with connected sensors and be programmed to do something that can affect that world. 

What fascinated me was the connection between software and the physical world. Code could suddenly control motors, lights, sensors, and real objects rather than just things on a screen.

So you could connect a light sensor and measure when it gets dark. When it does it can switch on a light. It can be so much cleverer than that though. It can measure how dark it is and can be programmed to adjust how bright the light is.

That was about as far as my projects got with the first one. Although I did make a bubble machine for the boys. It used a servo to dip a bubble eye in a bowl of fairy liquid, raise it up rotate it and a fan would turn on and blow bubbles. It would then lower back into the liquid and repeat. It wrecked the servo eventually as the fairy liquid dripped into its gears of the servo. It was fun when it lasted and the boys enjoyed it.

Projects That Never Quite Finished

The second one I bought a few years later was an Arduino Yun (posh model with Wifi) it was bought with a plan to solve my leaving the garage door opener problem. I can't see the door from the house so would forget and go to bed and wake in the morning to the realization that the door had been open all night.

The door is electric so the plan is to add a couple of limit switches and feed them to the Arduino. It would be programmed to tell me past a certain time that the door was still open. It would tell me via wifi and I would be able to press a button and it would close. This project will still happen someday. I've probably had the Yun for 3 years now.

And on to the third Arduino. It's an R3. I have no idea what's this means. I guess it's probably revision 3 but I still have to read the manual. Out of the box, it looked the same, it plugged into my Mac with a USB cable that provided power and the ability to download programs. I skimmed through the 3 pages of windows installation to get to the Mac installation. Which was 1. download the zip. File 2. extract and run the programming package.

So what came in the box besides the Arduino? Lots of things.

Learning Through Experimentation

The manual comes with 100 or so tutorials on things to make.

Building Things Together

Why did I buy another Arduino? Here comes the excuse... I would like Jamie (age 9) to get involved and what better way to get some son Dad time with Tech than to build things together.

We have done the first couple of projects and so far so good. Jamie has learned a resistor can change the brightness of an LED... The bigger the resistor the less bright the LED gets.

There’s something satisfying about learning these concepts physically rather than just reading about them. Changing a resistor and immediately seeing the LED dim makes electronics feel real very quickly.

I'm looking forward to getting into the more complicated projects and hopefully, as I/we will learn more about the Arduino programming language Also hopefully the Yun will be pulled from my desk drawer and be put into action for its original purpose of telling me when I have left the garage door open. Who knows I might get Jamie to build this project.

Looking back, Arduino projects were never really about finishing perfect products.

They were about experimenting, learning, solving small problems, and understanding how software and hardware interact with the real world.

That curiosity has never really gone away.

This also connects closely to my reflections on LEGO Technic and engineering mindset, where my fascination with mechanisms and systems probably began.

It links naturally to my thoughts on early computing and programming and how experimentation shaped the way I learned technology.

A lot of the same mindset also appears in my post about fixing things instead of replacing them.

I’ve always enjoyed experimenting with technology, understanding how systems work, and solving practical problems.

A lot of that same thinking now goes into helping simplify technical issues and improve digital systems.

You can take a look at my TechFix service if that sounds useful.

I Have the Maker’s Itch

I’ve always had the urge to make things.

If I see something interesting, my first thought is rarely “I should buy one.” It’s usually “How could I build that?”

Projects tend to sit in my head for weeks, months, or sometimes years before I finally start building them.

So I have an affliction with making stuff. I always have some project or other on the go. I get a whacky desire to make something and mull it over for weeks, months, or years before having to start.

If I don’t start I just keep thinking about it and thinking about it! I am either planning, making, fixing, or repurposing something. I have many projects on the go at one time.

I have to say I enjoy the whole process. I see something and think I can make one of those. I don't have much of a desire to buy it but given the chance to build or make it. How can I build that? and then I'm off.

Projects That Stay in My Head

The perfect project is something that takes a long time and has many stages to it. It can evolve and be shaped. I love to spend time subconsciously sketching out in my mind how I can make parts, how I can adapt parts, and how I can engineer something. It's those moments when I am waiting or daydreaming I will be engineering something in my head.

Looking back now, I can see this connects strongly to how I think visually. A lot of projects are mentally assembled long before anything physical gets built.

Learning Through Making

Building the boy's Jeep was a perfect example of this. It had lots of parts, it required research, it needed different types of skills and I had to adapt and repurpose things. The front steering mechanism was a problem I spent ages thinking about. I needed a way of having a 3 axis mount that could swivel in all three directions. I'd sketch out diagrams, play with bits of metal, Lie in bed awake thinking how to solve the problem. Inspiration and a final solution came while in the local hardware store. Large eye bolts normally used for gates bolted together in an X-Y-Z orientation were a quick reasonably cheap and strong solution. Relief, I can stop thinking about that problem.

The Joy of Solving Problems

Both my boys sleep in custom beds I have made. Jamie wanted a high sleeper in the shape of a Campervan, and Thomas wanted a Pirate Ship. Both required research, planning, and design. The Campervan was drawn out using a digital projector that beamed the outline of a Campervan onto a giant sheet of MDF that I then traced around with a black Sharpie.

It has working lights a real sliding door, and a surfboard as a ladder to get to the top bunk.

Thomas's Pirate Ship bed is a similar construction and has an anchor, a ship's wheel, and a bell (last orders at the bar type bell from eBay). The anchor and ship's wheel were cut out on my mini X-carve CNC machine.

I am a bit of a petrol head and one of the big projects I wanted to do was build my own car (I mentioned this in previous posts). My first attempt was to dismantle my mum's Mini Clubman estate when it was parked up after terminally failing its MOT. I didn’t get very far. I was only 12 and had a limited budget and tools. Years later I set about researching and choosing something new I could build, I had the maker's itch that needed to be scratched. It was a long project that took 4 years to build and get on the road. I took my time and enjoyed all the detailed parts of the build. Again I loved all the little projects and spent lots of time daydreaming solutions along the way.

Why I Keep Making Things

This year is no exception. I started collecting materials to make a “Mega Den" for the boys... A sheltered hangout In the garden that we can escape to, we can draw, play games, and pretend we are on holiday all while still in the garden at home. It needed to be bigger than the fort (another scrap wood project I made a few years ago).

I found some windows free from Gumtree, and some old doors also from Gumtree, and they sat under a tarpaulin for over a year as I planned out in my head how I could use them. A chance discussion with a farmer saw me collecting 12 scaffold boards and I had enough to get started.

I have spent a few happy weeks and evenings sawing, hammering, and drilling to get to the stage of something resembling a "summerhouse" no MegaDen in the back of the garden. Roofing materials arrive next week and it will be fully watertight and ready for action.

Electrics arrived this week (thanks to Amazon Prime) and a length of armored cable that I have squirreled away in the garage for over 10 years will see power running up under the grass for lights and sockets.

A couple of weeks should see it finished and that will be another project completed, and I can stop thinking about it.

There is more in the pipeline…

I have to build another Jeep. I have all the parts. The boys are bigger now and starting to outgrow the first one. I want to make something all metal and try to use the full 900W capacity of the motor's power in this one. (The Jeep currently is only using a third of that)
I need to build a double computer desk for the boys. They will have a workstation and storage each for homework and school projects

I have an Arduino Yun bought with the sole purpose of warning when the garage door has been left open and it's dark. I can’t see the door from the house unless I go outside. It has an electric opener and the plan is for it to email me to tell me it is open and from my phone, I'll be able to close it. It will involve some wiring and some code but I have planned out in my head what it needs to do. I am tempted to also connect the Arduino to a Speaker and have it play the Thunderbirds theme via WAV file when the door is opened. But that might annoy my neighbors

So yeah, I have the maker's itch and the only way to stop it is to keep on making.

I think of projects as good therapy, and if you remember that 80's kid's TV program "Why Don't You"...

P.S... top marks if anyone knows the next line?

Looking back, I think making things has always been a form of problem solving, creativity, and probably even therapy for me.

Some people switch off by relaxing. I seem to switch off by building, fixing, planning, and figuring things out.

The only real cure for the maker’s itch is to keep making.

A lot of this connects closely to my reflections on LEGO Technic and engineering mindset, where my fascination with systems and mechanisms probably began.

It also links naturally to my thoughts on visual thinking and mentally modelling projects before building them.

Many of these ideas also appear in my posts about fixing things instead of replacing them and building the Megaden.

I’ve always enjoyed building, fixing, adapting, and simplifying things—whether physical or digital.

A lot of the same mindset now goes into helping people untangle technical problems and improve systems.

You can take a look at my TechFix service if that sounds useful.