Corina’s Dad Howard has to be one of the handiest people in the world. This isn’t anything new to me, as this has been proven over and over again in the last 5 years that I have known him. He’s built box car racers out of scrap wood and plastic chairs. He’s made a trailer wagon for a tricycle. He built the 12 foot arches that served as the backdrop for our wedding. He is just generally really handy and resourceful.

So tonight I came to him with a small problem. We are selling our glass top Ikea Magiker coffee table, which although really nice, is just too big for our living room. The legs were a little wonky so I went about tightening them only to find one of the Allen screws holding the leg together was totally stripped. Since I didn’t have any screws of that size I asked Howard if he might have a screw the same size as the one from the coffee table.

So off to the garage we went in search of a new screw. He wanted to get a bolt that was the next size up, which we were able to find after a little bit of searching. He then pulled out his Tap and Dye set for re-threading the old hole in the metal. I had no idea you could even do that, yet he had a whole 60 piece kit for just that purpose. He put the leg into the vice grip and re-threaded the hole in no time. The leg had a mounting bracket that now needed a larger hole for the bolt to fit through, so he fired up the drill press and I can say I helped in this whole process as I lowered the press and drilled the new, larger hole. I then used a ratchet to get the new bolt tightly secured into place. The only problem now was that the bolt head was too tall and would keep the mounting piece from sitting flush against the wood of the table. No problem for Howard. He just pulls out his grinder and works the bolt head down until it sat flush. There were sparks flying 5 feet in every direction. All told this took about 10 minutes and I had a good as new table leg.

And to think all I asked was if he had a screw to simply replace the one I already had.