If you have played an inventor with the Ambitions expansion pack for very long, you may have seen them have a wish to "repair a salvaged item."  If you couldn't figure out how to do that - you're in good company!

Inventor Sims often cruise the junkyard looking for scrap and treasure.  While you're there, you may notice some seriously scruffy-looking items.  A washing machine with scorch marks, or a busted and blackened coffee table.  (Most of the broken items at the scrap yards seem to have been discarded after a fire.  Maybe you should have made a Firefighter Sim instead!)

If you click on these items, you have the option to "Salvage."  Once you get home, you can (theoretically) take these items out of your Family Inventory and place them on your lot.  

Here we run into the first problem: sometimes salvaged items get stuck in your Family Inventory.  From what I have read online, this seems to happen most often with the globe, and the big expensive statue.  (The one that looks really sharp.)

Unfortunately I have yet to find a way to get those things out of your Family Inventory.  If you know of a trick to clean these stuck items, please let us know!

Let's say you are able to get the salvage item out of your Family Inventory.  Well great, now you have some ugly furniture or appliances just sitting there!  Just what everyone wants, right?  

If you click on the items, sometimes you can use the appliances.  But there is no option to repair, re-upholster, refurbish, or otherwise clean up these items.  You may have the option to replace it for a sum, which is almost as much as just buying a new one.  

But your Sim had a wish to restore something!  What's the deal?

It's a bug.  Sorry.  Maybe one day  a patch will make this article obsolete!  Until then, there is a way that you can restore these items.

Phone the repair service, and DO NOT interact with the repair person.  Let them putter around fixing things.  At some point after they fix all the broken items on your lot, they will freeze in place.  DO NOT reset or interact with them!  

Although it looks like the repair person is stuck, they are actually restoring all of those salvaged items!  

This process can take a long time, depending on what you brought home from the junk yard, and how many junked items you have.  One Simmer reported that it took nine in-game hours before the repair person finally left!  

Once the repair person leaves, you will find yourself with a pile of shiny new objects, all for just the $50 service call!

Of course, if you lack the patience, and your Inventor has enough skill, you can just blow all that stuff up for scrap.  To save your ammunition, try arranging all of the junked items together in a tight cluster, then detonate the item in the center.  The explosion will take out all of the surrounding items, too.  More bang for your buck - literally!