Refrigerator Repairs

Ever since I moved into my house last summer, I've had trouble with my refrigerator. Even when I first moved in, the freezer was awfully warm. Anything I bought frozen seemed to get all mushy and the temperature hovered around 30 degrees, no matter how high the thermostat was set. After talking to my dad about it, he suggested defrosting the freezer, as it appeared to be full of ice. Well, he was right. The coils in the back of the freezer were covered solid with frost and ice. After thawing it that first time, the freezer seemed to stay cold for awhile - but eventually it would start to warm up and the ice again formed on the back of the wall. This has been ongoing for quite awhile and I've probably thawed out the freezer about five or six different times now.

Needless to say, the process of thawing the freezer out is getting to be quite tiresome. Each time, I've been gradually emptying the freezer out, then when it's nearly or entirely empty, I unplug the fridge, take off the back panel of the freezer, and use a hair dryer and direct it at the ice in the back. In all, it probably takes an hour to an hour in a half to fully thaw the freezer out. The freezer typically stays cool enough for two to three months before the process starts all over again. Well, hopefully I bought the right parts to fix the problem.

Once again, the internet proves to be a wonderful resource in locating parts for appliances and well, anything else, too. And it's also a great resource tool in finding information about these kinds of problems. There's appliance manuals, parts lists, and appliance parts websites out there that gets you everything you need to repair your failing appliances. Last fall, I bought a new timer for my washing machine that was giving me issues, and it's been trouble-free ever since. Today, I purchased a couple of parts for my refrigerator that should stop the freezer from icing up. After doing a great deal of research on the issues plaguing my fridge, I do believe I have the right parts to correct the issue. Now, all I have to do is wait for the parts to come!

It just goes to show you that appliances and electronics today just aren't made as well as they used to be. I know my parents had a Montgomery Ward refrigerator that lasted them a good 20 years before they decided to buy a new one to match their newly-remodeled kitchen. Well, that new fridge barely lasted 10 years before they experienced a similar problem that I'm having with my fridge. They opted to buy a new fridge instead of fixing the problem. I'm hoping to save a great deal of money by trying to fix the issue myself. And if all else fails, I'll go out and buy a new fridge. I'd hate to do that, but it'll be my last resort if I have to. We'll see what happens once those parts come.

Summer Flying By

It's already July 29th, meaning there's only one month of summer weather to enjoy.  Honestly, though, this summer has been one of our coolest in quite some time.  Many of the weather experts around here are comparing it to our last "year without a summer" in 1992.  That year we had a lot of rain and cool temperatures.  This summer, it's just been cool and dry.  I can't remember the last 80 degree day we had and I don't believe we hit 90 degrees yet this summer.  I'm not really complaining about missing the heat and humidity, though.  However, temperatures in the low 80's would be nice to see.  Maybe taking our cool summer into account, mother nature will bless us with an unseasonably mild autumn!  One can only hope.

It's been another very busy month of July - and I am happy to say I have now lived in my new house for a month!  So far nothing extremely wild or crazy has gone on at my new residence.  There is one incidence that was a little troubling during the first few days I officially lived in the house, however.  I had just got home from work around 11:30 PM from afternoon shift and was trying to get into my house from my garage into the kitchen.  I go to unlock the deadbolt, turn the doorknob, but the door would not open.  No matter what I tried, I could not get in.  I even tried getting into the house through the front door but even the screen door was locked!  So I took that door right off, got to the exterior door, and found out I didn't have keys for that door, either.  It was back to the drawing board; which then I finally started taking apart the door knob that was giving me trouble in the garage.  I got out the electric-powered drill and started drilling away at the problematic knob.  The thing is, it was around midnight at that time and the noise coming from the garage was getting pretty loud.  So after awhile I knocked it off - for fear of waking up one of my new neighbors.  I certainly didn't want to piss anyone off the first week I was hear!  And it's not like the house is all that close to the other homes around here.  There's a good distance between homes.  Still, I didn't want to chance it, especially around midnight!  Well needless to say, after about 45 minutes, I eventually got the old doorknob off.  It was certainly a struggle, but I never gave up from getting inside my house!  It ended up being a broken spring inside the doorknob that caused it to fail.  Why couldn't this have happened a week prior when the old owners were still here?

In addition to keeping up with the daily chores of my new house, I have also been busy helping out my dad put new siding and windows on his house.  The project is progressing quite nicely and we're now down to the last wall of this particular phase of the house.  But the last wall certainly isn't going to be the easiest, either.  It's the largest of the walls and there are many obstacles to put the siding around, including about four different windows and utility boxes/meters.  The electric power for the house comes from the roof and runs down the wall through a large piece of conduit, goes to the meter box and through some more conduit into the house where the fuse box is.  My dad put siding up on this wall 15 years ago so there is no more room to pull on the conduit and slide the new siding under it.  So we're thinking of creating a whole new box for all of the different utilities on this particular wall.  It's going to be a challenge and will end up taking a lot of time.  But eventually we'll get it figured out.  The rest of the house looks super nice and it really makes the house stick out as the nicest in the neighborhood now.  

From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like this hectic summer of mine is going to slow down anytime soon.  This weekend is my hometown's annual homecoming celebration - that along with the county fair.  And this is the first time in over three years that I'll be able to attend!  I'm actually looking forward to it, although I don't expect things to be all that different from year's past.  My niece and nephew will also be around, so we'll be busy taking care of them.  Then we'll continue to work on the siding project on my dad's house this next week and then the following weekend, we'll be making a trip down to Wisconsin to visit my sister.  We haven't been down there in six months!  It's been long overdue but you know what?  It's better to be busy than bored out of my mind.  Summertime is when you want to get out and make the most of it.