Cha-Ching! Making $1,200 Weekend Cash With Scotch Tape. DIY!

When it rains, it pours. Why does it have to be that the cosmos is somehow bent on delivering bad news, challenging events, breakdowns, overgrowth, and holes dug by large dogs all at once?!

Case in point, my arborvitae need a serious trimming right now, before it gets any warmer. I should have listened to my instincts and pruned them back last fall. So now, it's a big job ahead of me since I got an estimate for a professional to tackle the task and was quoted $800. Frankly, that's a fair price. I have a lot of tall arborvitaes. Then, our TV which is only 3 years old, has ceased to work. Black screen. Nothing.

I searched the internet, as we do these days, for some advice on what the problem might be and how much it would likely cost to fix it. Sometimes, it's just as economical to replace a TV these days, rather than spend the dollars on 'fixes' that might not even work. But one YouTube Video presenter caught my attention. I'll share his video here. What intrigued me was that he allegedly demonstrates how to fix the same problem on the same model TV that I have with - are you ready - a piece of Scotch Tape.

Well, whether you have time to view the video right now or not, I can tell you that with my cursory knowledge of electronic equipment and experience inside radio stations where we do actually 'fix' things with tape, loose wires, smoke, and mirrors, his assertion was plausible. So I watched the video and, you know what? I'm going to try it.

I mean, what have I got to lose? It'll take about half an hour and we'll see. As he points out in the video, it doesn't fix the problem but alleviates the symptom and the result is you're able to watch TV again, and you've only shelled out whatever you paid for the tape. It's either this or I spend $400 on a new TV. So, the way I see it, if it works, I've made $400, because I was going to spend it anyway.

Now, the arborvitae......I already own a good hedge trimmer, so if I take 5 or 6 hours this weekend and don't fall off of the ladder and break my neck, I'll be saving $800 that the professional was going to charge me. A small fee compared to a hospital stay, for sure, but I think I've got this.

So, it's going to be a $1,200 weekend if everything goes well. Wish me luck. DIY!!!