As Murphy’s law states “
If anything can go wrong, it will”, combined with the fact that things always seem to happen in three’s - the last few weeks have been a surreal homeowners nightmare.
To set the right frame of reference for my stress…
Since we are both working from home now, we are being even more cautious about spending, because we never know which month is going to be the least productive, and we have this huge mortgage to pay. I’m a lot more anal about it than Tif is, but then again it’s typical of me to stress about money. On top of that, we’ve recently decided to take our house off the market for sale since the area we live in is a little saturated at the moment. On top of that, we are about to incur another mortgage for an additional structure we plan to build in the back of our home. The last thing I want to happen is to have to something in our house break.
A little information about our shower is needed here:
The way our shower was designed, we aren’t supposed to have a shower curtain. It’s designed to be open to the rest of the bathroom. We were supposed to just have to wipe down the ledges around the tub and the floor after we shower. It was waterproof by design, Ha, fat chance. Nice little scam the builder pulled on us.
The first month we were in the house we realized that I needed to re caulk around the tub, and we were getting water leaking all over the place. Also, if you actually think about it, who has the time to wipe it down after every shower. Imagine standing there naked, sopping up pools of water from the ledges around your tub/shower and then wiping up the wet floor. Needless to say there were a lot of wet towels we had to dry on a daily basis.
On a trip to Portland Oregon, we bought a shower curtain that hangs from the ceiling and provides 360 degrees of protection from having to wipe up water from any of the tub ledges or the floor. We eventually took down the wall side of the curtain, so we have to put a towel down on that side of the tub ledge to catch water from pooling. So now we have 1 wet towel a day as opposed to many.
About a week and ½ ago, Tif and I were getting ready to go… somewhere… I had just taken a shower and was in the bedroom getting dressed when Tif calls to me from across the house.
“Have you seen this?”, she says. I come back into the bathroom and our shower curtain is detached from 1 of the 3 points from which it’s suspended from the ceiling.
That’s odd, I was just in there and it was fine. I climb up to see if I can re-attach it, and it appears that the threading for the pole has snapped off into threaded fixture to which it’s holding onto the ceiling. “Damnit.” I can’t fix that.
Since I’m writing this quite a bit later, I can’t recall the exact time frame, but it feels in my mind that in the next moment after realizing that the shower curtain was gonna have to come down temporarily until I can order the part from Oregon, Tif also tells me that the clothes dryer isn’t heating.
WHAT!?
As you can imagine, these two things happening almost simultaneously is a pretty bad combination. No shower curtain means more wet towels, and no dryer means we live in a rainforest of wet towels and wet floors and wet laundry that we had just washed.
Damnit, Damnit, Damint.
After a day of putting it off, the pile of wet towels calls to me from the corner of the room… “you better call
Rejuvenation and order the part to fix the shower curtain.”
I do so, and 46 dollars later, I wait patiently for the remainder of the week and the full week following for the part to arrive.
During this time, I have been in denial that the dryer is really broken, and hoping that it’ll miraculously fix itself. I keep shoving a wet towel or two into it to see how long it’ll take to dry with cool air. For the record, it’ll never happen. I would have had better luck constructing a clothes line out of popsicle sticks and dental floss and stood in front of it trying to blow them dry with a whistle.
I finally break down, get a roll of quarters and haul a few loads of wet laundry to the washateria near our home.
I’ve forgotten how much I hate laundrymats. Luckily, I only had to dry clothes there, so I was in and out within an hour both times I had to go.
The weekend arrives and we have house guests, 1 adult and 3 kids. Needless to say I’m a little embarrassed that the showering conditions are the way they are for our guests, but they don’t even seem to notice since they all take baths.
Monday arrives and since its Columbus Day, the mail isn’t running. I seem to have dodged the “things break in 3’s” curse, which is the last thing on my mind, as I’m really stressing out about when the part for our shower is coming. I finally call the store in Portland again and get a tracking number. UPS shows a Tuesday delivery. Yippee! Tomorrow I can fix the shower curtain.
I make a phone call to my Dad to ask questions about diagnosing my dryer problem. Tif thinks it’s the heating element, so I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay a service man to come check it out if I can fix it myself. I start in with small talk with my mother and she mentions that she’s doing laundry. Perfect segue into my problem.
“I wanna ask Dad a ‘laundry’ question”… “my dryer runs fine, but has stopped heating.”
Then the strangest thing happens… My mother of all people starts in on how she used to fix the heating element on her old dryer, and starts to explain the intricacies of how to check to see if the heating element is glowing or not. If you knew my mother, you would be just as dumbfounded as I was. She’s basically like June Cleaver – but from Texas. She’s always been a house wife, never had to work at a “job” outside the home. She’s just not the screwdriver wielding type.
Inspired, I walk away from the phone call feeling that if my Mother can fix a dryer, then I sure as heck can. Tomorrow I’m gonna tear into that sucker.
Monday evening comes, and as usual, Tif needs me to run to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner. On my return, she asks me if I have my best sense of humor on. Puzzled, I say “sure, what’s going on…?” As she walks over to the sink, turns on the water and hits the switch for the garbage disposal.
Click, click. And a nasty smell, like a burning clutch or a burned up motor fills the air.
Oh great. Number 3 has just reared it’s ugly head. The garbage disposal has died. I just shake my head and smile. I have no clue how to fix one of these! I carefully reach under the sink to unplug it, praying that I don’t get electrocuted.
For the humor of it, I call my parents, who know about the things breaking in our house, just to tell them of the latest appliance to break. They have no words of wisdom, except that “they break” and we all laugh at the timing of the occurrence.
We also place a call to Tif’s parents who have also been informed of our homeowners nightmares. Surprisingly, Tif’s mother launches into the garbage disposal repair manual in her head and tells us of the magical “reset” switch on the bottom of the unit.
I’m freaked out at this point.
Both of our mothers have more knowledge than our fathers when it comes to home appliance repair!
I locate the red reset button, press it back in, and plug the disposal back in. IT WORKS! Holy crap!
I’m speechless at this point. I’m not believing that Tif’s mother and my Mother have both given me repair advice. This gives me a ton of hope for tomorrows dryer repair project.
Tuesday morning I wake and start disassembling the dryer as Tif gets ready for her lunch meeting. I take my mothers advise, locate the heating element and turn the dryer on to see if the heating element is even heating up. It’s not.
Over the next few hours I disassemble the dryer, and research on-line for help diagnosing the problem. I finally get the heating element out of the unit, and can find nothing wrong with the element itself. I run a current through it with my voltage meter as well as all of the other parts near it. I finally pinpoint 1 part that won’t allow a current to pass through and decide that it is the part that’s malfunctioning.
During the diagnosis, The UPS man delivers our shower curtain part. All of this is coming together.
As I wait for Tif to return from her lunch appointment I start working on repairing the shower curtain. The only thing I have to do is cut the pole to 18 inches and screw it into the ceiling.
I can’t find my hack saw.
What have I done with it? After searching for almost an hour, I’ve succumb to the fact that I have probably packed it deep in the attic, and might have to go to Home Depot to have them cut it. I remember that along with the hack saw, my Dad bought me a Dremel tool. After consulting with him, my Dad says that I should be able to cut the pole with my Dremel, so I cautiously proceed, being careful to avoid kicking metal shavings into my eyes or shaving off a finger.
Feeling pretty damn handy, I screw the newly cut pole into the ceiling, and wait for Tif to have time to help me attach the curtain ring to the poles.
I take off to the Sears parts warehouse to get the Thermal Cut-Off Fuse / High-Temp thermostat combo kit I believe I need to repair the dryer. I’ll be thrilled if the $24.89 it cost me actually fixes the problem.
I reassemble the dryer with the new part aside from attaching the backing panel, and start the dryer – anxiously waiting to see if the heating element glows.
Never since being 5 or 6 and seeing Rudolph’s nose glow through a snow storm on TV have I been so happy to see a glowing red light. Hot damn! I fixed the dryer!
It’s about 3;30 at this point and we are expecting company for dinner in a few hours. I quickly reassemble the dryer, put it back in place, and throw a few wet towels in to dry.
I help Tif straighten the house and she helps me reattach the shower curtain ring to the poles in the ceiling, all with about 45 minutes or so to spare before our guests are to arrive.
I shower, and along with the water, a feeling of pride washes over me. It feels good to tackle a project, not know the outcome, and come out victorious.
“How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You” – James Taylor
