Categories: Fix itHow-toMark's blogOurFixitUpLife

Zen and the art of home maintenance, i.e. Fixing annoying stuff!

Home maintenance is about doing the little things easily sometimes. Like fixing this cutting board.

Home maintenance, to me, is about way more than caulking windows or sprucing up the lawn before cold weather hits. So much of it is about the little, daily nags that cost us time and joy like a leaky faucet that drips, drips, drips happiness all day long.

For example, the cutting board I use all the time but put off fixing!

Home maintenance is about doing the little things easily sometimes. Like fixing this cutting board.

When you do DIY like we do, sometimes things break or wear out. We make this stuff from scratch. No factory or team of engineers. Just us. So, you can see the not-so-attached ‘foot’ on my cutting board.

One of the four ‘feet’ on my cutting board came off. You can see where it was.

I made this cutting board from counter material left over from our kitchen renovation. But, like everyone in the world, I made kids’ lunches and went grocery shopping—yes, I’m a paper bags guy; who’s with me!?—instead of fixing it. Still, it was wearing on me.

At the same time, I didn’t want the joy of home maintenance to be washed out by doing a fix I’d only have to do again later. Enter Original Gorilla Glue. And an orange. We’ll get to the citrus in a minute.

Original Gorilla Glue in my kitchen.

My mighty 5-in-1 painter’s tool is a home maintenance hero. I used it to scrape up the old glue.

It took almost nothing to remove the old glue, but removing it is actually kind of important.

There is no adhesive in the world that sticks to dust. A little sandpaper cleans up both surfaces.

Because glue does not stick to dust or debris, I sanded both surfaces to clean them up.

Wet the surface first, then apply a bit of Gorilla Glue.

Original Gorilla Glue is a simple, three-stepper: Damp it, Glue it, Clamp-it.

Gorilla Glue is powerful. I used the weight of an orange to ‘clamp’ the repair. Gorilla Glue is a little more powerful than a single piece of fruit. See below.

Step 3 in the Damp-Glue-Clamp series is to clamp it. I used an orange. (I should have actually used a clamp.)

I didn’t really need to do anything, but I’m me. So I cleaned up the squeeze-out from my repair with a razor blade.

Gorilla Glue both stuck to my home maintenance repair and the squeeze-out was easy to remove with a razor blade.

One last thing. Gorilla Glue is powerhouse. You don’t need a gallon of it. The right amount is the best amount!

A little dab can do ya! Also, there is my orange.

Mark

Mark is a licensed contractor, tool expert, wood and outdoor enthusiast, and elite Spartan Race competitor. He writes about home improvement and tools for national magazines and websites, and teaches hands-on clinics for other remodeling professionals. Check out his book, The Carpenter's Notebook.

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