House Woes #1

Another story from a long, long time ago…

Back in 2002, my wife and I were living in the first house we purchased. It was quite nice, a two-story/three bedroom thing with shiny dark hardwood floors, a fireplace, and built-in bookshelves that all made it feel like home. What we didn’t know was how much of a fixer-upper we had taken on.

Now, I’m not a big believer in karma, so I don’t necessarily think there’s any correlation between the hidden problems we’d begin to find in this house and our past behavior. But if you’re the sort of person who DOES believe in it, we must surely be horrible people.

I’m talking Bonnie and Clyde bad. Charles Manson bad.

Milli Vanilli bad.

This all started with the washing machine. Our experience with the Jackson house taught me that unless they’re brand new, whatever appliances you buy with a house can best be thought of like disposable contact lenses…everybody hangs onto them a little longer than they probably should, and whatever use you get out of them after the first few days should really be thought of as borrowed time that you’re not really entitled to.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when, during our second week of living in the house, something broke in the washing machine.

Now, at this point let me say that I am not, by nature, a mechanical person. Not per se. I wasn’t born a natural Mr. Fixit, I’ve sort of grown into that role in our household by the necessity that comes with living a certain lifestyle, described as, say, meager. Or paltry.

And of course growing up, I hated helping my father fix all the things that perpetually seem to break around the house – cars, appliances, the furnace, etc. – mostly because: 1) the repair always involved a complicated set of tools I didn’t know how to use (vice grips? channel locks?); 2) the broken object being fixed or replaced had a function which I had no grasp of at age 10 or 12 (carburetor? manifold? bearings?) 3) if the repair had to be done outside it unfailingly involved cold, miserable weather; and 4) having to repair things was a constant reminder of how much money our family didn’t have. (Are we poor? Seriously, we’re really poor, aren’t we? Then why can’t we just hire a furnace company to fix this, like Tommy’s parents did?)

And, oh yes, my role in helping my father was perpetually that of flashlight holder, I almost forgot to add that.

So I never learned much mechanically. Until the Jackson house came along.

My wife announced this the way wives always do.

Um, honey?

The washing machine didn’t seem to be spinning as fast as it should. That it didn’t seem to really want to agitate things this week, in the strict sense of the word. It’s heart just wasn’t in the work, it kind of looked tired…

And what was my response? Why, to boldly go, of course. This is what men do.

So I traipsed on down to the basement, laid my tool box on the floor next to the washing machine to size up the situation, and decided the first step was to turn off the water supply to the washing machine, completely confident that I could figure this thing out.

Now, I hadn’t meant for this to turn into a plumbing repair job.

But I reached up to shut off the water supply, and discovered the valve didn’t really want to seem to turn as much as I WANTED it to turn. So what to do?

Obvious answer, of course, to use the first tool the male mind reaches for to solve most any problem: brute force.

So this time, I twisted reeeeaaallll hard on the handle. Which would become the first of many times when the Jackson house would give me even more than I possibly could have wished for – oh joy! -- because instead of just a handle, wow!, I got an entire length of copper pipe which snapped away from the wall.

Whoever suggested that the sound of rushing water is supposed to be one of those soothing sounds that lulls the mind into thinking happy thoughts of rainbows and unicorns, I discovered, was quite incorrect. That somehow, even under stressful conditions like the ones I was finding myself in, I took little comfort in hearing the quiet swooshing sound – ‘ssssssssssssssssssssss’ – as a glorious waterfall roared out of a tiny ½ inch wide corroded copper pipe above me.

And so began the first steps of my long journey to becoming the licensed family plumber; finding the main water shutoff valve for the entire house (the first of several times this would be done); the trip to Lowe’s (again, the first of many times for this to happen); and a quick lesson in soldering copper pipe from a Lowe’s associate.

So that the lesson you don’t take from all this is -- wow, he tried that, maybe I should too! – I’ll add, finally, that some three hours and forty dollars worth of supplies later, the pipes were still leaking, the water was never turned on again that night, and my wife and I finally agreed that what we really needed wasn’t more DIY info from Home and Garden tv, or another book on home repair, what we really needed was a plumber.

Who my wife called the next morning, at a cost of some $60, ironically about that same amount that we could have spent for an appliance repair guy to make a service call to look at our washing machine...

And tell us we just really needed to buy a new one.