Me vs. The Ironing Board - How to Fix A Broken Lever On Your Ironing Board

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I've been busy, and haven't sat down to post in ages. Tonight, though, I want to tell about how I conquered my ironing board.

Before I get to that, look at my surprise super awesome present from my husband! I am now the proud owner of a Canon Rebel T1i.

I've been wanting my own digital SLR for ages. Expect good pictures now ;)




On to the ironing board. It's been stuck in the "up" position for the better part of a year, when the lever came out. I did a little searching online, because I couldn't see immediately how to put it back in, and got frustrated with the results. The "hire someone," and "just buy a new one (several times if needed)" attitude was a little irritating. Not to mention wasteful in the second case. It turns out it's not that difficult, it was just hard to see the mechanism!

If you just need to see where the lever goes, look at the last picture.

Otherwise here is an illustrated guide to replacing the lever in an ironing board.


This is what it looked like when the board was stuck open. You can see the metal plate covering the horizontal beam, making it hard to see anything except the vertical rod which has notches on the top (from use)





This is what the mechanism looks like, once it's been collapsed slightly. You can see the ratchet design, the plate with a spring underneath. The plate has an oval opening with the spring pushing it up, but when you press in the direction of the arrow, it becomes a circle, allowing it to move. This is why it will open but not close, in this case.





Here is a shot looking at the open board again. The arrow points to that same plate, which needs to be pushed toward the flat end of the ironing board with a screwdriver (or the original lever, which worked for me)





Once you get it open, here is where the lever gets put back. The dotted line shows the lever behind that horizontal bar.





This is how I made sure the lever wasn't going to fall out again. I think the small tab to the left of my pliers was supposed to hold it in place, but with both of them covering the lever, it should stay in place.






Action shot!




Hopefully this helps others with the same problem.

And hooray for not wasting $15 and not creating extra waste!
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Courtesy of The Crafty Redhead at http://craftyredhead.blogspot.com/2010/01/me-vs-ironing-board.html