Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Repair Guy

 Well, speaking of being an impostor, I spent the last weekend pretending I'm an appliance repairman. That's twice this month I've had a washing machine apart in the house to fix it. It was the dishwasher earlier this month, this weekend it was the clothes washer.


I joked to Rhonda as she was lending me a hand with the dishwasher that when I die and she goes through my photo reels, it won't be salacious photos of me with another partner, it'll just be thousands of pictures of the wiring harnesses, pump innards and valve bodies. Scandalous nudity indeed. 


I said it earlier this year; on one hand, I'm grateful that I have the knowledge to do some of these repairs - and the know-how to watch YouTube videos and read exploded view drawings on Parts Select. It not only saves me money but it helps when things go wrong to be able to handle the situation until I can get someone out to fix it. 

On the other hand, I blew a full evening and an entire weekend fixing this goddamn thing. I had other things I wanted to do. But I got it fixed. Eventually. I think I ran through every single other system in the dryer and was on the last one before I found the problem - a dirty lid switch. 


Which is where I argue that doing these repairs is much harder for me as an amateur than it would be for a professional repair person. They've seen it all before and probably would have gone, "Oh, these Amana washers, 9 times out of 10 it's a dirty lid switch." They'd then proceed to spray it with some weird shit called "Miracle Repair All" and give me a bill for $500. I sprayed it too - I guess my time is worth $500. 

But I suppose that's just being a dad and owning a home. At least I got all fixed. And you won't catch me complaining about it when it helps me fix my guitar or an amp that's on the fritz. 

Oh, and these photos? They're not just from this weekend's challenge. There are photos from the clothes washer, dishwasher, camper, clothes dryer and Jonas's computer. All from the last year or so. 

Maybe I got into the wrong line of work. 




1 comment:

The Navigator said...

When our old washer was acting up, one of the issues that happened a lot was the coin trap. It did it's job, captured coins, but you had to go in through the bottom of the washer to clear it out. Yeah, I saved money doing it myself, but the frustration may not have been worth it.