Breaking House
Posted: March 8, 2010 | Categories: The House
OK, so we’ve been in this house for a whole 16 days. It’s a great house in a great neighborhood. It’s not fancy, but it’s…grand. Unfortunately, the builder didn’t do a great job on the finishing. It was a spec house and therefore doesn’t have ANY upgrades. That’s OK though, we love the house and have a whole big list of things we’d like to upgrade over the next 10 years (just in time to sell it when the kids graduate from High School).
We started having all sorts of little problems though. Light bulbs are going out (no big deal) but when I went to replace the bulbs in my closet, new bulbs didn’t fix the problem. Interesting… When my brother in law was here, I asked him to take a pass at inserting the bulbs and he couldn’t make them work either. He said ‘well, it’s either the ballast or a problem with the switch.’ Well, I knew the ballast could be a problem, and that was where I was going to go next, but the switch? Really? Well, trusting my brother in law, I immediately grabbed a screwdriver and started unscrewing the switch from the wall. As I pried the switch away from the wall (it was stuck with paint) all of a sudden something fell on the floor and the lights started working. Huh? That was interesting. Here the builder (a little lazy I’d say) just stuck the wires into the little holes on the switch and the plastic holding them tight broke. I immediately wrapped the wire around the screw and tightened it down and it’s working now. Cool.
The light in the master bathroom went out, so I grabbed a step ladder and a replacement bulb and went to work. As soon as I touched the light fixture – light came on. Magic!
Anne (not Anna) cooked a great dinner last night and I was getting ready to help with the dishes. Looking at the dishwasher – we noticed that it’s wasn’t mounted into the hole under the counter. It was just stuck in there and was wobbly as…well as something. Looks like I’m going to have to fix that.
As Anne started doing the dishes (remember, I was going to help) she turned to me and said “there’s no hot water.” Huh? Really? OK – I headed out to the garage and found that the pilot light on the water heater (a massive 75 gallon one mind you) was off. I spent about 30 minutes trying to light it and just couldn’t. Good thing my brother in law was there – he played with it for about 15 minutes and couldn’t get it working either (good thing to know it wasn’t me). He said it was probably the thermocouple and off I went to Home Depot (at 8:00 PM on a Saturday night after drinking beer with my brothers all day). He told me to get one of every kind they had, good thing they only had one kind.
Anyway, he installed it (after much poking around and concern about getting the old one out) and within minutes it was working again. The house is only 10 years old; I hope every week isn’t going to be like this. Of course, it’s at the end of the first 10, so I’m sure there are going to be a lot of little things I’m going to have to fix.
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