Jake Ludington’s Digital Lifestyle

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We lost the keys to our riding lawn mower – not just one, both of them. While it crossed my mind that hot-wiring the lawn mower should be fairly easy, for the long haul, replacing the key makes more sense. The question becomes, where do you get a replacement lawn mower key? Direct from the manufacturer? If they sell one, sure. Maybe I can buy a lawn mower key from Home Depot where I bought the mower – not according to employees at two different stores I checked. If you can find a lawn mower repair shop in your area, call them and they may have a lawn mower key in stock. The keys are universal across most brands and even extend to snow blowers. My solution turned out to be the Arnold #1K-100 Universal Ignition Key. Problem solved for under $2.00. I’m expecting to find the original key any day now after finding a replacement.

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One of the guys I met at Yanik Silver’s recent Underground conference sells garage doors online. I’m paying more attention to home improvement stuff since buying a house in April 2008, so I started asking about what’s cool in the garage door installation business.

I don’t currently need a garage door opener, because we have a car port, but the Hormann Supramatic E makes me want a garage. Just like the German engineering that goes into a BMW, Mini Cooper, or Mercedes, the Hormann Supramatic takes automatic garage door openers up a notch by opening 50% faster than standard openers. It’s also much quieter than most garage doors, so you won’t hear the garage door opening on your attached garage. For the security conscious, the Hormann Supramatic E is an electric garage door operator that can’t be forced open. Not sure if you can get the Supramatic E in the U.S. or not, but if you live in the U.K. or most of the EU, it’s the garage door opener to drool over.

If you plan on installing a new garage door anywhere in the world, I highly recommend watching this video on how to measure for you new garage door. It will save you a ton of time and money in a DIY garage door installation.

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I got burned out on floor installations after finishing the hardwood throughout most of the house and opted to hire someone to install the the remaining bathroom floor. The installers were going to tack on an extra charge to remove the toilet in the bathroom and expect me to hire a plumber to put it back. This seemed a little silly considering how easy removing and installing a toilet is in general. To remove the toilet, you basically just need to make sure the water to the toilet is shut off, you get all the water out of the toilet bowl and toilet basin, and you carefully remove the toilet from the floor by removing the floor bolts and breaking the caulking seal around the bottom of the toilet.

Installing the toilet is just as easy – you scrape the remains of the old wax ring from the flange on the floor and from the horn on the bottom of the toilet. Seat a new wax ring on the toilet, then carefully place the toilet over the floor bolts and tighten back in place. Connect the water, check for leaks and you’re back in business.

Here’s a video showing you all the steps of both removal and replacement:

At the same time, I decided to also swap out the flapper valve on our other toilet because the old one frequently required jiggling the handle to make it stop running. My friend Tim Carter of Ask the Builder has a great video on this if you don’t already know how to do it:

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