We’ve had an email from long time Recycle This-er Alice in Blogland:

I just killed my stainless steel on-the-hob kettle! Left it on the hob too long – I forgot about it ‘cos the whistle broke ages ago.

They do burn through eventually but I’ve never seen it happen before. It’s started leaking at the seam around the bottom where the sides join the base, and I’m a bit stuck for either re-uses or how to recycle it. Anyone got any ideas?

I think kettles with removable lids look mighty cute as plant pots but with the leak, you might want to put the pot on a plastic saucer in the kettle to catch overspill water – or it might be easier to seal the leak if you know it doesn’t have to be heat-proof too (for example, some waterproof silicone sealant might do the job well enough to use it as a plant pot but would make your tea somewhat plasticky and poisonous…).

Any other ideas for reuses? What about kettle that you refill through the spout so have less reuse-as-a-pot potential?

Anyone got any repair advice or words of caution?

We had an email from Richard the other day:

I have recently designed and restored a cast iron roll top bath. I’ve taken an antique original bath and I have recently designed and restored a cast iron roll top bath. I’ve taken an antique original bath and have given it a bespoke twist using ceramic handmade mosaics as decoration. With the iron legs chromed too I feel it would stand out in any bathroom.

Replica cast iron baths take large amounts of energy to produce and thus leave a large carbon foot print. This is my greener alternative!

This is a great idea – there are so many old baths dumped because they’re no longer pretty but this now is pretty flash.

Our bath in our last house was very old – the original one when bathrooms were installed in the houses in the 1960s (when the council decided that the 60 year old houses weren’t actually “temporary housing” as planned) – and as a result, the enamel was damaged & stained by water deposits. It was always our plan to explore re-enamelling it but as with many things in our lives, we never got around to it. Has anyone else had any experience re-surfacing a bath? Did you do it yourself or is it a job for a professional?

A lot of baths nowadays seem to be made from plastic or fibreglass – not quite so cold but more prone to cracking that a solid hunk of metal. Has anyone fixed a damaged plastic/fibreglass bath?

Two “repair this” posts in a row – something I usually try to avoid but this is a bit of an urgent one from Kate:

Help! My wellies are leaking! How can I fix them?!

It’s a similar, just slightly more heavy duty, problem to that of my leaky trainers – you need something that will seal the hole but remain flexible (unlike, say, superglue) because it’ll crack when dry. Alice’s waterpoof trouser question might also suggest some mending solutions.

My first thought was puncture repair kit – something suggested a lot to solve my trainer problem – but a quick Google suggests that’s not guaranteed to work. Further in that forum thread, someone mentions that wellington boot repair kits exist – presumably just a heavier duty version than standard bike tyre puncture repair kits.

If it’s only a small leak, a quick bodge not-really-fix would be to put your socked feet into plastic bags before sliding them into your wellies – at least that would keep your feet dry. Depending where the hole/split is, a strip of gaffer tape might also help reduce moisture incursion in the short term until a more permanent fix can take place.

Any other suggestions?

(If you can’t fix them and end up getting a new pair – don’t forget to reuse or recycle your old pair.)

I suspect this is a lesson in why you shouldn’t clean wearing nice clothes and definitely why you shouldn’t use bleach, m’kay but I thought I’d ask anyway.

I managed to flick bleach all over one of my favourite t-shirts but I’m not quite ready to give up on it just yet. The shirt has a printed design on it so I can’t bleach and re-dye the whole shirt.

Googling around, I’ve seen some suggestions of disguising the pale dots with permanent marker – the shirt is brown though so I don’t know if I’ll find a pen to match.

The design is a bright cartoon design so I might get away with adding some “noise” to the picture with fabric paint or reverse/normal appliqué.

Failing all that, I guess I could make something else with the fabric/design or since it fits well, take it apart to make a pattern to use to make my own fitted t-shirts in the future. I’d really like to keep it as a tshirt though – any other suggestions?

• Now the rush to the holidays is out of the way, it’s a perfect time to catch up with fixing and mending stuff around the home and those dozens of jumpers snagged by cats over the first properly chilly bit of the season (… just me?). The Craft blog recently had a roundup of some fab repair projects to get fixing juices flowing.
• MJ over at Making Do with the Not So New posted about a great scheme someone has set up in her area – community give and take chests. Perfect for things not suitable for a charity shop (such as food or once-used bottles of bathroom supplies) or things too small to warrant a Freecycle/Freegle posting.
• MJ also linked to webecca’s yarn winder (swifts) tutorials – made re-using random household objects such as clothes pegs and coathangers.
• Crafting a Green World’s Becky linked to a video tutorial on making cute little handbags from the covers of old, damaged hardback books.
• Craftstylish’s Cal has written a great how-to on replacing a coat lining to breath new life into a tattered vintage coat. The same idea can also be extended to making a coat that bit warmer for winter.
• Finally, reuse old drinking straws and expanded foam packaging to make handy storage for seed beads. It would work for actual seeds too – easy to sprinkle them out at planting time.

(Photo by Diane Gilleland for Craft)