Well, I have a home "improvement" story...
For a couple of years in the '80s, prior to buying my first house, I lived in a small apartment building near the corner of Bloor and Palmerston in Toronto. It was three floors, and had been built as a triplex with one apartment on each floor. However, over the years, the 2nd and 3rd floor had been subdivided into one bedroom apartments, though in my case we shared a hallway - my bedroom and bathroom were on the same hallway as the bachelor apartment at the back of the 3rd level (very weird, when I think about it now...). Anyway, the building was owned by a Chinese family by the name of Wong; the daughter was a friend of my part-time employer. Mr. Wong's maintenance was a tad odd, to say the least.
One Saturday morning, my downstairs neighbor, Barb, heard a knock on the door and answered it to find Mr. Wong standing there. Mr. Wong's English wasn't terribly good, but he asked Barb for a slice of bread. She wondered if she'd heard him correctly.
"Bread?"
"Yes, a slice of bread"
"Ok...would you like it toasted?"
"No, no - just bread"
"Buttered? Jam?" asked the increasingly perplexed Barb.
"No, just bread please," said Mr. Wong.
So, off she went and got him a slice of bread. Extremely curious by now, she peered out the front door into the foyer to see what he did with it.
For a number of weeks, we'd had hole in the drywall right by the front door - I don't remember now what caused it. To Barb's astonishment, Mr. Wong busily stuffed the bread in the hole and proceeded to apply spackle.
So...if the hardware store is closed or you're too cheap for one of those fiberglass patches, there's always bread!
(Just don't blame me if you get mice, the bread shrinks or some blue fuzzy stuff grows on your wall!)
