So, we replaced our major source of heat in the house with a wood pellet stove in the living room with the oil furnace as a back up in case the weather got so horribly cold that we could not keep the house warm enough.

The is just one problem with wood heat – it’s dry. Really really dry. Like dries out your nose and your skin and makes you cough and gives you winter itch dry. So, we needed a source of moisture.

As some of you know, the DH and I have used racks over the floor furnace forced air vents to dry clothes in the winter time; as a source of moisture, it works really well, but we no longer have floor vents that are in operation except when the weather is really cold and we turn on the furnace. So, we were looking at humidifiers when one of the big ones at my office died and they were going to just throw it in the dumpster.

I looked at it; the power lights were on but the fans did not work. Which meant that something was not working between where the power came in and whatever was controlling the fans.
(Warning: Be aware that working with electrical appliances takes care; when testing individual components with a voltage tester, the tester leads were touching the components at all times to determine if power was going through; no one should ever use allow any part of their body to touch electrical sources)

This humidifier has two rheostat sorts of switches – one which says Humidity on it and one which says Fan Speed on it. The fan speed switch was the culprit, the DH found by using an voltage tester on it. As you can see from this photo (and I’m sorry that the labeling is not coming out very well; the call out on the right is indicating the black electrical power lead which comes INTO the switch. The call out on the left indicates the blue and red leads which go out of the switch to the fans. The switch controls the amount of power going to the fans and thereby controls the fan speed. Because the switch is buggered in some way, no power was getting to the fans at all.

The switch itself consisted of the outer knob which is attached to a soldered circuit card with power leads attached. This is what the switch actually looks like when you get it out of the little box. At the top of the photo, you can see the black power lead coming into the circuit board; the blue and red leads which went to the fans are at the bottom. The every-trusty DH’s hand is holding the actual knob which was used to set the fan speed.

First, we went to our local appliance parts supply store with the model number of the humidifier and the actual switch and the little box sort of thing it was housed in because that had all sorts of labels on it that we thought the appliance guy would find useful. No luck – the humidifier is not being made any longer and the manufacturer which made the actual part is no longer making that part and there is no substitute, according to the clerk’s database (Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that IMHO, there has to be someone out there who is making this sort of thing – I think the clerk in the parts place was not knowledgeable enough to look at the item, identify it in terms of what it was – “oh, that’s a 2 amp rheostat umpty ump,” and find us another one – he only knew enough to look at the database that said ‘no sub’ on it).

So, we were dead in the water. We could not replace that part.

Try strategy number two: Figure out what the switch actually did in the system and see if we could figure out a work-around. By using his tester, the DH figured out that the switch was really the gatekeeper for the power going to the fans, so we decided to ‘hot wire’ the thing so that there was a direct connection between the power supply (the plug in the wall) and the fans themselves. We did not particularly care how much humidity there was; just that there was humidity, which meant that if the fans ran, that is what we’d get. So, the DH fastened the black power line directly to the red and blue lines going to the fans under an electrical screw nut (see photograph).

This is NOT an elegant solution. I don’t even know if my high school physics teacher would OK it. And the way we control this thing is: plug in the wall/the fans work; plug out of the wall/the fans don’t work. Pretty crude.

But we do have a big humidifier now (that thing has two bottles that are probably two gallons apiece) that we use when we are in the house and it kept another piece of electrical appliance stuff out of the landfill.

And seriously, the only tools it took to do this job were:
A Phillips head screw driver
A voltage tester
Wire cutters
Electric nut
and some time.

Now, I realize that a voltage tester is not necessarily in every apartment or house tool box, but it’s definitely worthwhile to have one and learn how to use it and learn what you can use it FOR. In this case, by attaching the leads to the power and then to various parts of the humidifier, the DH was able to determine that a) the motors attached to the fans actually worked (thus eliminating the fans as the culprits in the case), and that b) the switch which controlled the power going to the motors on the fans was the ‘fan speed’ switch and that was the gatekeeper that was broken. Again, once you have identified where the issue is, then the solution can be very simple: Either replace (if the part is still made or if there is a substitute) or do a work around.

Yes, you CAN do things like this.

Meat thermometer. This particular probe is actually no longer being manufactured by Taylor. The closest level of digital meat probe that they have is this one, which as you can see from the link at Amazon, is $25+. This new one has more bells and whistles; it folds up and it runs on 2 AA batteries. Taylor Meat Probe

We actually own several of these more primitive digital probes and one of them is my go-to SOIL thermometer. When I went to use it the other day (to write a post, actually), I discovered it did not work anymore. This is a simple piece of equipment and it’s battery operated, so that chances that something other than a dead battery was the issue were pretty small. My biggest issue was actually finding what other batteries could be exchanged for the battery which was inside the case. I found my exchange here. battery exchange chart
and was able to find the right battery at my local drug store.

Fixing this probe was simplicity itself:
Open up the case using the blade of a knife or a dime.

Using something non-metal, like the top of a pen, push out the battery, which was held in place by a metal clip.

Using a cotton topped swab, clean out the area (not with acetone or anything like that because it IS plastic in there) where the battery WAS.

Using fingers or something plastic (the end of that pen again), push the battery, business side down(that’s the part on any battery that sticks up — all batteries have a flat side and a side with a protrusion on it; the ‘sticky-outy thing’ is the business end of a battery).

Clip the case back together.

Wa-la. Working meat probe. The battery cost me $5.00; I’m sure there are sites on the internet where I could have gotten it cheaper but the shipping would have probably brought it over. But it kept another piece of something out of the landfill and I fixed it myself.

Example Number Two:
Oil Filled Radiator Heater. I love these things; we have two that we use to keep the odd corners of Chez Siberia warm when people are there and the regular heat does not go there (we have an extension on the house where it’s just tooooo far away from the furnace. No amount of insulating ductwork or fans can keep the air warm when it gets to that place. It’s just easier to have a heater on when a person is working in that area of the house. We also use them out in the workroom of the garage, basement, etc.). This one ‘died’ last winter and we’d never gotten around to seeing what we could do with it. Unfortunately, my son started working on it and by the time I could get my camera out, he’d fixed the problem but I’ll describe it to you so that you can fix this yourself.

There are two ‘points of failure’ in these units:
The electronics themselves.
The controls for the electronics.
Considering that all controls are made out of cheap plastic, the chances that it was the electronics was the point of failure was actually pretty small.

Here is what the controller looks like — this one comes off my stove but all knobs are like this. In this oil-filled radiator, there are two; one which operates like a rheostat and just rotates through Min-Max and the other one, which actually is involved with the power itself, which clicks through off/low/medium/high.

Again, like the probe, the trick is to get at the business end of things, which is underneath this cover. At the top of the cover, in an oval depression above the top control knob, is a Phillips head ™ screw. Undoing that allowed the entire front plate to be loosened and taken off so that my son could look at ‘where the rubber meets the road’, knobwise. The lower knob, the one involved with the power itself, once he took it off, showed that the inner tube of the knob (see the photo of the stove knob? They are all like that; that inner tube clips over a metal rod that is the switch that rotates from off to on/low/medium etc.) had a crack in both sides. It no longer gripped the metal rod so you could not turn the power on. He repaired the tube with some packing and electrical tape, made it tight enough on the inside of the tube to grip the metal rod, and turned the radiator back into a functioning appliance. If the knob had not been salvageable, he could have taken it to an appliance store and found a knob that was the same size to replace it with. It might now have exactly matched in terms of shape or color but we’re talking about an item which is not exactly sitting out all the time or used in a place where appearance is exactly a crucial element.

Again — this is not necessarily an expensive item; you can pick these up at home/garden centers, hardware stores, Amazon, etc. for $45 on up to several hundred dollars. But with literally less than 10 minutes work, my son, with a screw driver, some tape and a little ingenuity, turned something that would have ended up in the landfill, back into use. The only point of fear someone should have about trying to fix something like this is to first make sure the item is unplugged from the electrical outlet first.

That is, they are big enough that you can do things with them, or modify them in a certain way, or are worth working with because they are made well or out of good solid stuff. And I’m here to tell you that many times, it’s worth it. Today’s experiment (which is actually just a variation of the theme I explored before) is making over another sweater which is very nice but which has a neck that I hated. Now, I realize some of you are asking yourself, “Why did you buy two sweaters with the same bad neck?” At the time, the price was right and I forgot what would happen to me if I wore a turtleneck like that in a very heated office environment (can we say “hot flash”? Bet you could).

So, as you saw if you viewed the videos, I had already decided that the best use I could get out of the tunic-length sweater was by making a deep vee-neck out of it so that I can wear other tops underneath it. I marked the vee-neck and ran myself some contrasting stitching around the vee and the back of the neck so that I had a guideline to use the ‘fake commercial seam-finishing stretch stitch’ that I have on my sewing machine.

Now, there are various ways to finish off a neck like this. I could have ripped down the knitted tube that was used for the turtleneck and used the yarn to knit a band around the neck. To do that,
1. Mark the center of the vee in the front of the sweater with a safety pin. You will want to make sure that you pick up that stitch.
2. Start picking up the stitches at the center back of the neck and pick up 8 stitches, skip one stitch in the sweater, pick up the next 8 stitches and so on until you get down to the stitch on the safety pin. Pick that one up and put a marker in it. Continue on picking up the rest of the stitches, as noted all the way to where you started. Work in ribbing for 2″, decreasing 1 st every row, each side of the center st of the V-neck. Bind off all stitches loosely.

Another method is to sew ribbed knitted material or very stretchy knitted material in a band on the neck. Measure around the neck, cut the band twice as wide as you want it and an inch longer than the neck measurement. Pin around the neck and sew a narrow hem. Flip the ends to the inside and cross over one another at the front and hand sew down.

A third way of treating this (and frankly the way I did it) is to use a narrow strip of stretchy knitted material as a binding. Starting at the back, pin the strip flush with the edge and sew around, stretching it a little bit as you go to pull the neck in a little bit. At the beginning, fold over the edge of the binding fabric and sew over the original edge of the strip. Then, folding over one edge and stretching it a little bit, bring the strip over to the inside and pin all around the edge. This hides the raw sweater edge inside the binding, finishes off the the neck line of the sweater and voila!

But here is as good an example and demonstration of the unfairness of it. I recently bought these shoes. Now, never let it be said that Aunt Toby doesn’t look for quality but in terms of women’s shoes in this country, the whole issue of quality is moot. If you can find a pair made out of leather with a supportive inside that fits you and is comfortable, that is almost the most you can expect. The concept of a ‘quality women’s shoe’ just doesn’t even come into the same radar screen with men’s shoes. A large part of that is the whole ‘women buy for fashion; men buy for wearing..and wearing..and wearing.’ So, men by and large are willing to spend a good dollar for a solid pair of leather shoes with good soles and heels that they will wear to work. They might have two or three pairs of shoes that they wear to work and rotate through during the week, but those are still pairs of shoes that are being worn 260 days a year and will usually last 3-4 years if they are cared for. If they are taken to the shoe repairman for new soles and heels and cared for, then they can last decades. Why? Largely because the inputs into the shoes are tough and first class: heavier leathers, solid soles (with multiple layers of tough materials in them) and heels.

Women’s shoes? Not so much. And these shoes “ri-cheer” are a good example. Yes, they are leather and they have an absolutely fantastic insole system (which is frankly why I bought them; I wear a 6 D and have some, ahem, foot issues, so a shoe that I can put on where my foot let out that “ mmmmmmmm” is a shoe that I am going to buy. If it is fairly stylish, that is the cherry on the sundae). They are a heeled oxford style, which has been fairly popular for the past couple of years and continues to be so.

But the heels? OMG. Unlike the heels on men’s dress shoes, which by their nature are flat and broad, and solid, heels on women’s dressier shoes are plastic. Now, I’ve seen some that are solid plastic, solid plastic which have been covered with the same material as the shoe body is, and then there is this type here: hollow. With a tap at the bottom that fits in like a plug.

I caught the edge of the tap and it yanked right out. The heel itself is attached to the shoe with adhesives and perhaps some sort of nail-gun/staple affair, but the tap at the bottom of the heel just fits in with two little plastic extensions. You can see that in the photograph. But the tap was not glued to the heel itself.

Cheap. Very cheap. And the horrible thing is this: Luxury brand shoes are made…just…the…same…way.

In the same factories in China.

OK..so I really liked these shoes. That foot bed ‘had me at hello’. So, here’s how to fix this – this is a repair you really and truly CAN do at home.

All you need:
Roll of duct tape or other non-stretchy, tough tape
Adhesive that will work on plastic, leather, glass, metal (not wood or carpenter’s glue).
A toothpick or Popsickle™ stick to put the glue onto the tap
A paper towel

How to:
Pull out the tap a little bit more so that you have room to work in terms of getting the glue onto the surfaces.
Squeeze out a bit of adhesive onto the toothpick or stick and carefully smear it on the inside surface of the tap AND onto the matching edges of the heel.

Carefully squeeze the tap back into place so that the extensions go into their respective holes.

Press down hard.

Put the shoe ON and with a piece of newspaper on the floor or something else to protect the floor, step down and put your weight on to the heel. Take the shoe off.

Using the paper towel, wipe off any of the adhesive that has been squeezed out between the bottom surface of the heel and the tap.

Take about six inches of duct tape, and rip in half the long ways.

Take one piece and put in over the tap and pulling slightly, stick it to the side of the shoe. Do the same thing to the other side of the tape and the other side of the shoe.
Let dry and cure overnight.

However, having said that, I would hazard to say that probably 80% – 90% of the umbrellas stuffed into closet corners, thrown into the backs of cars and generally hanging around are not damaged in this way. They are damaged THIS way: The thread tying the umbrella cover to the bottom of the rib has rotted out and failed, leaving the seam in the cover to start to open up and making the umbrella looking rather sad, and a bit less efficient on the protection end of things.

One of the reasons why we can fix this umbrella so easily is that, as you can see from this picture, at the bottom the the rib is an eyelet. Very clever. Not all umbrellas or even all folding umbrellas use this little bit of design. Other umbrellas use a plastic cap attached to the edges of the cover which is used to pull that bit of the cover over the rib and secure it. The problem with those is that if the thread fails (and it seems that the thread is the ‘point of failure’ as engineers would put it), and you lose the cap, you are in a bit of a pickle. But with this umbrella, we’ve got this: As you can see, the end point of the edge of the cover seam is attached with thread there. And that is how we will fix this one and do the repair.

Now, if you have someone to lend a hand to help, this goes much faster, but still, it’s not difficult at all.
You will need:
Polyester thread to match the color of the cover.
A needle with an eye big enough to accept two pieces of thread but which is also thin enough to get through the eyelet on the rib.

How To:
–Measure out two 12″ pieces of thread and thread the needled with them.
–Put a knot at the ends.
–Sew up the end of the seam if that is opening up, ending your last stitch at the very edge of the cover.
–With the umbrella open (it helps if you’ve got it up on a table or counter), pull the cover down (you can use the thread to do this or have a helper pull the fabric down) and put the needle through the eyelet.
–Pull the thread tight, so that the edge of the cover is right down on top of the eyelet.
secure with the needle into the edge of the cover where it meets the eyelet.
–Do that 3-4 more times, then secure the thread in the cover and make a knot there.

Wa-la.
Umbrella fixed. Looks good.
Pat yourself on the back. One umbrella back on line. One umbrella kept out of the landfill.

(photo at the top courtesy of Jon Tintin Jordan)

Now, it’s not that Aunt Toby and the DH are willing to sleep on burlap sacks. A good closely woven cotton (ok, perhaps with a bit of poly in it) sheet set is a joy to sleep on (especially after they are freshly put on the bed, after you’ve had a nice hot bath, and..oh, we won’t go there) and anything else can be frankly annoying. But one problem with sheet sets is this: The sheet where, ahem, the rubber meets the road, is the sheet that starts to wear out first. And unless your linen closet is stocked 100% with one single color (no prints, no weird stuff, no 1970s hippy dippy Indian prints in gold and burgundy) and it’s the same color, then if you wear out the bottom 25% of your bottom fitted sheet (I’m talking to you, Mr. “Won’t trim the toenails”), then you have a flat and two or more pillow cases that do not go with anything else.

Instant candidates for the rag bag or out into the garbage and off into the landfill far away. And usually that flat and the pillow cases are in just fine condition, thank you very much. So, pitching all of that, no matter how much you paid for the sheet set can be more than a bit of a waste.

Many of us who read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series may recall her description of making sheets: Because the looms for muslin did not make the fabric wide enough for sheets, the girls and women would have to take two lengths (long enough to tuck under the mattress at both ends) and oh-so-carefully seam them up the middle with teeny little stitches, in a flat way, to make two flat sheets (America had to go without fitted sheets until an African America inventor, Bertha Berman, was awarded the patent for the invention in October, 1959. Bertha Berman Patent).

The really good thing about linens, under the Laura Ingalls Wilder regime, is that as the middle of the sheet wore out (and the middle of the sheets always wore out first, especially if one sheet was perpetually used as the bottom sheet), the household sewer could take out the stitches, flip the two halves and resew up the outside edges now to the center seam and the center area which was now worn, would be on the outside. The sheet would wear evenly that way and by the time it was done for, it really was worn out and probably would be taken apart, sewn up into something like curtains or used for other things. Once America had two nice matching flat sheets, households could just rotate through the flats and wear them out evenly that way also.

But we, post-Bertha Berman, buy our sheets in sets, with only one fitted bottom sheet, which wears out and leaves us hanging out there with the extra flat sheet and the pillow cases. Cannon Mills, et al. should raise their glasses on a regular basis to Bertha Berman for insuring that they have a steady market in households that have to throw out the usable rest of sheet sets and buy entirely new sheet sets just because the fitted bottom sheet has worn.

And so, Aunt Toby and the DH have found themselves with a bottom flat queen sized sheet from a very nice set which frankly someone (cough) put his toe nails through … and which I am not willing to pitch. I realize there are people (I can hear the eyeballs rolling back into people’s heads right now), regular readers all, who are now saying to themselves, “Oh, no, now she’s going to tell us to repair the damn sheet.”

Yep, that is exactly what Aunt Toby is going to show you how to do. This is frankly a patch job. I admit it, but it’s at the bottom 25% of the sheet; no one but the inhabitants of my bedroom will ever see it and all it will do is provide the DH and me with a certain feeling of Puritanial thriftiness that a) we could still keep using all of the sheet set and b) that we would not be putting more stuff into the landfill that truly does not belong there.

Here’s what you do:
Using a lightweight iron-on fusible interfacing, pull the edges of the rip together and iron a piece over to hold everything in place. If there are other odd holes, patch with small pieces.

Make two patches. The first one, for the underside of the sheet, should not only go over the ripped places, but over the entire worn area. If you are not sure how far that extends, hold the sheet up to the light – you’ll be able to more easily see through the worn area. Make the patch for the underside slightly larger than the worn area, pin on top and sew that on. Don’t bother with hemming the patch; use your zigzag stitch. I also go across a couple of times to hold everything in place. The second patch, for the top, should just go across the actual rip itself. Between these two patches, you will have a solid, well wearing area that should withstand even the thorniest toe nails.

Fabrics to use. On this sheet, I used a shirt weight linen – because I’ve got it from a project I did for the DH. Other fabrics you can use are muslin (regular or bleached, though bleached will not wear as well; bleaching will weaken the fibers). Just make sure the fabric has been washed in hot water, dried and ironed flat.

Happy sheets!

But it is coming – get over it.

So the best thing, actually, that you can do right now is look at your calendar, wherever you are, and ask yourself the following question: When is the farthest we can count on daytime temperatures staying above 55 degrees F?

In my area, that time is probably mid-late October. Yes, we get frosts and freezes during that period, but we still can have most of a day where the temperature (especially if it’s sunny) over 55 degrees F. And having that date for yourself is a really useful thing because 55 degrees F. is the drying and curing temperature for lots of materials that you might want to be using between now and when winter shuts things down. Materials such as:

Paint: both latex and oil need hours of temperatures at 55 degrees F or better to dry on the surface and cure underneath.
Caulk of all types
Gypsum wall board compound
Glues and adhesives of various types

Ah, I see the light dawning. Aunt Toby is talking about the dreaded home projects which many families undertake in the fall to get ready for the winter. Whether you are replacing windows or just caulking around them; painting the outside of the house when the bugs are not as ferocious, or just doing ordinary maintenance when it’s a lot more pleasant to work than it is in July and August, looking at the calendar NOW and figuring out how much time you have to actually get things done (barring any awful rain and that can happen also) will help you plan.

Some things take longer than others. The DH and our son caulked all the windows in the house in a couple of hours (but then, we have a house with only three bedrooms so if you have a larger home, your mileage, as they say, may vary. Doing a home paint job takes so much prep work, that this is something that you might want to start right NOW, in order to be able to still have daytime temps over 50 degrees F to work with.

You have more leeway, naturally, with indoor projects, but again, the 55 degrees F still applies. So if you want to rip out some walls, put in insulation, wallboard and wall board compound, and then paint, this is still something you want to keep an eye on. We ended up having to do a ceiling repair in our living room in early November and even with fans, the wallboard compound and then the paint seemed to take weeks to finally dry up enough. As it was, there was still a section where we had to rip out the next summer and redo it because some moisture got trapped and we got bubbling and blistering coming to the surface.
So: check your calendar and think: “When will the daytime temps get below 55 degrees F?” And start thinking about what energy saving and maintenance projects you need to take care of between now….and then.

Waistbands are tricky like that. When you put the waistband on, you are raising the item on your body. And then there is the whole ‘weight gain and/or loss’ thing. I tend to gain in the front of my stomach and even if everything ends up the same circumference, more inches in the front pulls the item toward the front, throws off the side seams, and generally makes your Aunty extremely grouchy. Same deal when I lose weight – the front drops down because the waistband is too big. Fixing a waistband is one of those onerous tasks that causes more women to end up putting safety pins in than any other, I think.

Enter the DH – or more correctly, the DH’s dress slacks, which I have taken in and out on numerous occasions when he, too, has gone through some body changes. This was not a terribly difficult task, as men’s dress slacks have a waistband which is split in the center back. As a matter of fact, the two pieces of the waistband are put onto the center back seam without it being sewn all the way first (the light is beginning to dawn, right?), so that tailors can make their adjustment without having to take the waistband off first.

Women’s clothing, on the other hand, generally has a one-piece waistband on it. To fix a problem you have to take the entire waistband off and then do the adjustment at whatever seam and then fiddle around with making the waistband smaller and yada yada yada. Hair-pulling ensues.

So, since I don’t want to have to do THAT anymore, here’s what I did:
I measured all the way around the waist on the pants and added the amount I would to put the pants closures on. Then I added an inch for every place I was going to split the waistband.

I split my waistband actually in two places (the zip is in the left side seam): the right side seam and the back center seam.

I opened up the center back and side seams of the pants about two inches, applied the waistband pieces there, sewed up the waistband seam and the side seam and the waistband seam and the back center seam in one go.

I folded over the waistband, sewed it down.

Done. Best fitting waistband I ever had. And if I need to take it out, I can just open up the waistband where I sewed it down at the the back center seam and the side seam, open the waistband down as far as I want to get more breathing room, and resew it.

I will, in the future, do a version of this on ‘store bought’ slacks and blue jeans so that you can see that you can use this same technique to rescue these pants also.

You will need:
Some sort of firm fabric to make a panel of – it needs to be slightly longer than the fly is, and twice as wide. Firm fabric would be twill, denim, the sort of thing Dockers(tm) or Dickies(tm) pants are made from. If it’s lighter than that, make the panel slightly longer than the fly is and three times as wide You’ll be folding the panel in half if it’s firm fabric, into thirds(with one edge inside) if it’s not very firm. You basically need a panel to put buttonholes into, so you need something firm. I put four 3/4″ buttonholes into my panel, with the first about 3/4″ down from the top. You will be tucking the top edge under the waistband seam, so you will therefore end up with the top buttonhole about 1/2″ down.

Buttons – 3 or 4. I’m using 3/4″ wood buttons that I happened to have around. In your abandoned farm house, unless the owner was one of those (ahem, like I am) stashing sewers and has a big collection of buttons still on the cards, you won’t know the size of the button. And you probably won’t have a measuring tape either. But if you have buttons and don’t know the size, lay a measuring tape or ruler on a flat surface and put one of the buttons on it and measure it. Or, if there is no measuring tape available then compare the size across the widest part of the button with the first joint in your thumb. The average size of that part of a person’s body is actually about an inch and that will be a good estimate for how big the button is. That’s the size of the button hole you need to make. Mark the buttonhole placements evenly down the panel. If you have a sewing machine, use that to make your buttonholes and sew on the panel. If you do not have a sewing machine here’s how to make non-machine buttonholes:

Fold your panel into half (or thirds if it’s not really firm fabric) across the width and run an overcast stitch all the way around. Mark the places where you want your buttonholes down the length, as evenly as you can.
Center across the panel the length of the buttonhole you want to make and draw a line that long.
Take a pair of scissors, or (be careful!) a single edged razor blade or other sharp blade and carefully slit open that line. Do that for all the buttonholes you are going to make.
Take a needle and doubled thread and overcast the edges all around (if you know that arcane thing called a buttonhole stitch, use that :Buttonhole stitch
Then, line up the long side of the panel and sew that to the back side of the front panel of the fly – you’ll know where to sew by the original stitches that are in the front – that ‘j’ shaped stitching line.
Then, line up the buttons on the other side of the fly, to correspond with the buttonholes, and sew those on.

And watch the rest of the sewing adventure (and I promise, no zombies..really…)

Very sad. Because basically, what replacing a zip entails is:
1) Finding another zip. If you have another ‘ready for the dump’ pair of jeans with a good zip, then take THAT zip out to use. WARNING: when you are taking it out, just before you remove the whole thing, take a needle and thread, butt up the top of the metal teeth together and sew firmly just above the teeth. These zippers do not have a top stop on them and as I demonstrated in one of the videos, if you just remove it and do the natural thing (which is to zip the zipper closed), then WHOOPS! the zipper pull comes right off in your hand. No more useful zipper. So, sew it together at the top so that you don’t lose the pull off the ends.
If you do not have another zip to use, buy a 9″ metal toothed zipper (these are marketed as ‘jean zippers”) at your local ‘extremely large national chain of whatever passes as a sewing store” these days.
2) Take out the old zip.
3) Lining up the left hand (as it faces you) top of the new zip and snuggle it up underneath both the waistband and the extra flap (see video). Sew down the zip under the flap and with the fly facing.
4) Lining up the right hand top of the new zip underneath the right hand part (as it faces you) of the fly, pin that down and sew it down to the bottom, being careful to ‘take a left’ when you get close to the bottom of the zipper. Be sure to avoid the metal bottom stop. That is a guaranteed ‘needle buster’ if you hit it. Find it and mark it before you start down.

Enjoy the videos. For those folks who do not want to fiddle with a new zip but who DO wish to not embarrass their friends by walking around with undone flies, see Part 2.