Some things broken; some things fixed

I don't think I mentioned this previously on the blog, but the dishwasher broke on Friday. Its tiny "clean" light blinked and blinked and blinked, but believe me, those dishes were not clean. A-1 Maintenance Master to the rescue. A very nice man came today and checked it out. Dis-assembled the whole thing, got down to where the motor lives, and discovered:

A NAIL.

I am not kidding. I can't figure out how a nail got down in there, but there it was, making the motor (and thus the washer) inoperable.

The machine is back together and humming away now.

In other news, we have a leak in the roof and/or chimney. We discovered this because Jake was up in the attic to deal with the critter situation. Without the critter situation, we wouldn't know about the leak. Thanks, critters! Your work here is done. Now please leave. I wonder if the critters read the blog. That would explain why they don't fall for the traps. They know we're after them.

The slate roof guy tells us that it's a chimney problem, so we need a mason. We're working on finding one. I am a little exhausted by 83 Durant at the moment. Oh, and by the way, for those who already read the previous chimney post (WHHHHHAT #3) it's not even that chimney. All this time, I've been worried about the back chimney (what's with the hole? where does the water go?) when the front chimney was the real problem. [FYI, The front chimney vents the furnace; the back chimney vents the stove.] I still find chimneys mysterious and perhaps a bit ominous.

Several Small Projects

We've been busy here with Mom propelling the completion of several small projects. Jake added a new shelf into this cabinet in the kitchen, making it much more useful for all the stuff we need to fit in there. In the shot of the finished shelf, you can also see our terrific new work light, which arrived for Christmas from Ernta Claus. It's just what we needed!

Jake also fixed the front of this small kitchen drawer. It was broken when we moved in, and we haven't been able to use it. Now it's a helpful home for various bags.


Jake also installed a new shelf over the radiator. It fits nicely here, and holds cookbooks and such. Check out the bookends!














While Jake worked on the shelf, I worked on organizing some of our tools and home-fix-it equipment, which was in a sorry state of disarray. It still is, but somewhat less so. I found several baggies of various pieces of hardware, which I organized and put in my favorite old school tupperware cups (that we have never used). I then used my favorite label maker to create labels. This worked for about 3 seconds, when the labels popped off. With the added adhesive powers of the hot glue gun, they stayed on, but I'm not sure that these little containers will really be the final resting place for the screws and nails and such.

"I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

The laundry room saga continues. On Monday, I discovered a small leak on the floor by the new washing machine (see previous post). Said washing machine was only at its ONE MONTH anniversary, so I was totally freaked out by this development. A call to Dracut appliance informed us that we're still completely under warranty, and we were quickly set up with a very nice repair guy for today. The leak was a bit of a fluke; we haven't been able to replicate it. Repair guy re-balanced the machine and we think all is well.

Meanwhile, while repair guy was in the laundry room, I turned off the dryer by opening the door. The load was done anyway, so I didn't think anything of it. A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to dry the latest load, and discovered that I had broken the dryer while the repair guy was here looking at the washer. The little latch in the door was broken, thus the dryer would not turn on because the door wouldn't stay closed. I called my in-house repair guy, also known as Jake. We unscrewed the door, and discovered that no, I did not break the latch -- someone else had broken it and repaired it with duct tape. So we did the same, and put the door back together again. Figuring we may well have to dis-assemble and re-assemble the door again at some point, Jake pushed the two pieces back together, and uttered the immortal line: "I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

So they're sitting there on the window sill, while we wait to see if the dryer notices. So far, so good. Stay tuned.

More nano-projects

The energy efficiency guy from the gas company suggested that we put some insulation up on the hatch to the attic. So today I made nice with the pink panther, using my ever trusty staple gun.

Also, we had some drainage issues in the driveway. Pile of leaves were getting stuck in the drain pipe, shown here. Check it out, we finally found a grate that fits right in there.

Plumbing Project #2

After our first bad experience with a plumbing project ("shower head melee" as I like to call it), you'd think we would have learned. A few days after we moved in, we discovered that the washing machine hoses were put on wrong -- the hot water input was cold and the cold was hot. This wasn't a huge deal, since we could just set the dial to the opposite of the water temperature we wanted, but it meant there was no cold water rinse (since the machine didn't have a setting for hot water rinse).

So we've been talking about doing this for a while. Today, I decided to LOOK at the washer and see what this might involve. I noticed that the connectors at the point of the washer were kinda old, so I put the slightest bit of pressure on them, just to see how they were connected....and a trickle of water appeared. ARGH!

Jake found the wrench and worked the connectors back into place. Then he went back to the other end of the hoses, where they hook up to the water, and switched them at that point. He is a bit wet after this, but thankfully, he caught most of the water with his shirt. And lo and behold, it works! No plumber needed (so far, fingers crossed) and I just completed a successful load with the new set-up.

Hooray for Jake!