When Adam and I got back from our vacation this summer, we discovered two rather unhappy facts. 1) Our microwave wouldn’t turn on at all. 2) Our dishwasher no longer worked. It was now more of a dishwetter. Kind of.
I went to Target and bought a new microwave. Adam called a repair company from the dishwasher’s paperwork to come fix it. In the way of such repair companies, they had no record of the first appointment we set. When they came for the second appointment, they didn’t have what they needed to fix the dishwasher. They finally fixed it on the third time.
I often wonder how service providers think people make the money they use to pay for service providers services. I mean, we can work from home with more flexibility than most. But still.
I also remembered sincere appreciation for having a dishwasher, and used more paper plates than we’ve ever used before.
The day after the dishwasher resumed working, Adam was finishing one of the final loads of laundry when the door locker thingy stopped door locking. It made sad sounds of not locking. It’s a side washer, so it just doesn’t work if it’s not locked. This time, I called 1-800-SAMSUNG. They have this rigamarole where you call person one (in this case, she gave her name as Hope Destiny) who passes your information through “a system” (which I can totally picture in my mind and I hate from afar) to a third party who actually schedules the service. So Hope Destiny says things like “You should get a call Friday about when you can schedule.” You spend a week picking up all the spam calls just in case, and then they call during the middle of an important meeting.
The dishwasher had set us back about $360 for a hermetically sealed motor. (It’s almost, but not quite, cheaper to buy a new one.) The wee plastic bit for the washing machine was $60 and the labor was nearly $200. I think I might go into appliance repair for my next job. But they fixed it in one trip and I was grateful for that small mercy.
That same day we noticed that all our beverages in our aged fridge (which we’ve never replaced because it would either need to be counter width or we’d need to renovate that wall, and renovating that wall is a better idea but it’s load bearing and we’ve never gotten around to it) were freezing solid. Like, you know, the milk. And eggs. Frozen eggs are no good. We read internet articles about load-balancing your fridge, and we vacuumed the coils and I pondered whether I could just call the frozen milk ice cream. And then we went online to buy a new ‘fridge (which is nearly the same size but admittedly much nicer). We scheduled the delivery date.
Those delivery dudes were great. But I had a 6 hour delivery window. And I was working from home. And somehow I thought it was a good idea to play a funeral that day because it was with my favorite funeral home and I was working from home anyway. So I called and asked them to shift the delivery time to avoid that window. I think that they may have written down that I specifically wanted it during that window, because just as I was pulling up to the funeral cortege, I got the note that they were on their way. I called my neighbor, fidgeted next to the piper, and played a very allegro taps (ok, not really, but I left immediately thereafter which I don’t usually do).
In a feat of over-scheduling, I also lined up the furnace service folks to come that morning to do the annual service. (I mean, I was already working from home… do you see a trend? Just FYI I often work about 2 hours longer when I work from home because I don’t commute, so my employer is truly not shortchanged by all this.) Well, the furnace guy called me down with this fancy camera he had. “Do you see all that?” He asked? “That’s rust. It’s ready to give at any moment.” On the service report he wrote optimistically “Unit operating at present time”. He gently asked if my carbon monoxide detectors were all up to date.
I’d known this day was long in coming. The furnace was 22 years old and had died on us at least once a year for the last three years. I knew when we did the home inspection that we had an older furnace. It was clearly time to replace it. And there was no way I was replacing the furnace without adding air conditioning, even though we’d need to add a cold air return to the second floor. It’s been very hot these last few summers. So I got two quotes. The first quote, the guy refused to quote me AC. So I went with the second quote.
I got a call last Thursday, right after I signed. “Hey, we had a cancellation for Friday. Would you like us to install then?” Well, I’d been planning on being home Friday anyway, to superintend Grey’s half-day sleepover birthday party. So what’s a little more fun? Thursday night Adam and I frantically clean out the basement and hall closet. Friday morning at 7 am a team of six burly guys arrives and begins taking hacksaws to various parts of my basement infrastructure. I hadn’t quite been warned that the high efficiency AC I ordered came with the world’s most ginormous compressor – thing takes up half the back yard! They ran tubes and wires and vents and gizmos throughout the house, competing for “most noisy” in the latter half of the day with four ten year old boys playing XBox. (Ten year olds won – the workmen were very respectful.)
Of course, I’m not quite done yet. I still need to run the electric for the AC (which is a rather expensive part of the whole project). I just tried to find another good day to work from home for that.
I can only hope that no additional appliances pick that day to shuffle off their mortal coil!
So anyway. It’s been fun.
In moderately related news, we ended up getting four bids for our attic project. One of them came in ridiculously low. Low as in “You don’t really understand this project do you” low. The other three were all right on. And they’re for a number that is just well beyond what I was planning for. We’ve saved for this for quite a while but it’s been an expensive summer (see above). I just can’t justify the cost and disruption and aggravation and stress of the project versus the benefit. So we’re going to shelve it for now. In another two years, we might have saved enough to handle the project price. Or if the housing/construction market slows, those bids might get significantly more aggressive. (Right now it’s definitely a contractor’s market.)
I don’t regret all the cleaning out we’ve done. I’m sad that I still have to share a bathroom with my sons. (Including one legit preteen!) But sometimes you just need to be the grownup who says you haven’t saved enough to do what you want to do.
My Truant Pen 
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