Mr. Fix-It

I've told you all about my washer woes and how I had resorted to physical abuse to get it to do as it's told. A couple of months ago, it got to the point that even that didn't work. It would take me an entire day to finish 1 load of laundry because it would stop w/ an error every few minutes. My laundry room is in the basement, so unless I babysat it, it might sit there for hours flashing an error code before I came down to find it stopped yet again. It was frustrating to say the least.

Since I didn't feel like paying $800 to get it fixed by the Sears guy (his estimate -- $675 for the part, $125 installation), I got online to do more research. Turns out a lot of people are having the same problem. I found out I could buy the part for $250 online and install it myself, or better yet, some people were trying to fix the part in question, the central control unit. And they were succeeding! Basically they recommended taking out the circuit board and resoldering all the relays. Sounded easy, though I don't know how to solder anything. And what's a relay?

When Grandpa Dave (Doug's dad) came to visit us for Christmas, I asked him to bring his soldering iron and give it a try. I showed him the information from the internet (which was pretty vague, in my opinion) and he went to work. An hour later, I had a washing machine in good order. It's been thru about 10 washes now w/o a single problem.

I was/am extremely excited about this, but honestly, not too surprised that Dad was able to fix it. He has repaired numerous things at our house here and back in NC. Last weekend it was the washer, a leak on our water heater, a hose on our water softener, the train that goes under our Christmas tree, one of the reindeer in our yard, a small chair, numerous items that needed super-gluing, and probably something else I'm forgetting. He also helped Doug sand and repaint a bookcase. The last visit before that it was our doorbell. "Maybe Dad can fix it" is a common phrase in our house. We are extremely blessed to have such a handy guy in the family.

This past week I ran over Claire's watch w/ the vacuum cleaner, rendering the face cracked and useless. Later when she was looking for it, I told her it was broken because I had run over it w/ the vacuum. After a couple seconds of careful thought, she said, "Maybe Grandpa can fix it." I hated to tell her that there were some things that even Grandpa couldn't do.