When all else fails - just bodge it

“Are you sure we shouldn’t just pay someone to fix it?”

I shook my head and patted my wife patronisingly on her shoulders. How could she ask such a thing? Does she not know me yet? Of course we don’t need to get someone in. Of course I can fix it.

Was I not the man who fitted an actual radiator? True I was also the man who made a complete mess of it but none the less, the radiator is still fixed to the wall and gets hot doesn’t it?

If I can do that, then surely I can fix a simple fridge shelf?

Surely?

We fell in love with our fridge the first time we saw it online. It just looked so nice. It wasn’t box-shaped, it wasn’t white, it wasn’t modern. It looked great.

Also, it wasn’t too expensive. Not as bad much as the big name equivalents anyway.

And so we bought it.

Nice, isn’t it?

Creamy, curvy and retro – just like me – ahem….

Anyway…

We loved the fridge so much that when the small notice came at payment, saying that the maker was no longer actually operating, meaning that spares would be a bit of an issue – we batted not one single eyelash between us. Who cares, we thought, it doesn’t have to work, it just has to look pretty.

And then, last week, one of the shelves buckled under the weight of all the pickle jars with just one scoop of pickle in them that have been left there for years. No one will ever use the last scoop of pickle as they know they would have to clean and recycle the jar and so they just accumulate in the fridge. At last, the weight had become too much for the plastic brackets and down it all came.

Google only came up for one suggestion for parts and they were out of stock and so I had to get my tool box out.

Much to my wife and children’s delight.

Any chance to mock and deride my manly DIY abilities always cheers them up. Jo left for work, and the boys left for school extremely content in the knowledge that I was about to totally cock things up and leave us needing a completely new fridge.

Well, I thought, I’ll show you lot!

What I needed was to not only make the shelf useable but also to do it with as near an invisible fix as possible. I wanted them to come home and to see a mend that was so subtle that they would even forget it had ever been broken. Strong but hidden. That’s the effect I was going for.

I think I cracked it. What do you think? Look hard though – because you can barely see the join!