Fridgemageddon
When we bought our house, part of the agreement was that the old residents would leave the appliances in the kitchen. All of the appliances were next to new and since we were coming from an apartment, anything would be better than the propane powered camp stove and well water we were used to functioning with.
We have been fortunate that the appliances have lasted this long without any maintenance. That was bound to end at some point. If for no other reason that pure entertainment folks.
The fridge is a 60/40 split and the freezer door has a water dispenser on it. This is great, except for the fact that you can never fit anything large into either side. Fuck you 9×13 pan, I will make you fit. About a month ago we noticed that the middle beam that splits the fridge and freezer was extremely hot to the touch. Like burn your skin hot. Clearly not something that should be ignored. We pulled the fridge away from the wall and hoovered the shit out of the back vent, clearing away as much dust as possible. That seemed to solve the problem so we went about our merry business.
Until Tuesday night. I had made dinner and went to have a glass of milk. Except the milk wasn’t as cold as it should of been. DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER. This was my first warning sign. I thought to myself….”self, this is strange, perhaps it is because it is so hot out and the air has been on and the appliances are being so overworked with the heat”. But really lady, that’s just a crock of shit. I still turned up the fridge so that it would get a little colder and figured I’d check it in the morning before I went to work. Because avoidance seemed like the best option at that time.
Fast forward to about 6:55 am Tuesday morning when I poured out a glass of what appeared to be a combination of milk and cottage cheese and I knew that Fridgemageddon had hit on the hottest week of the year. We are currently hitting temps of 98 degrees and I’m ready for a snow storm. We chucked out half the fridge, salvaged what we could, and I called the first appliance repair place I found in the phone book.
I scheduled a repair technician to come around 2 pm the same day and since I had time I decided to clean the whole fridge; unable to do anything solo, including pee, Cardin was attached to my side as I was cleaning. I had cleaned off the door of the fridge with some paper towel and left the roll on the kitchen floor figuring I’d go back and use it again. I was washing the shelves off as Cardin wandered into the living room and started playing; assuming she was playing with her toys.
Remember when your parents always used to tell you they had eyes in the back of their head? Listen Lady, I don’t think mine have grown in yet because I didn’t see this shit coming. When I went to check on her she had grabbed my lone roll of paper towel and unrolled the entire thing all over the living floor and much of it was on the cat; she was prancing all over it as though it was the yellow brick road and she was off to see the wizard. I was so dumbfounded that about the only thing I could do was look around for Toto.
About 2 pm the technican showed up and 6 screw’s later he had figured out that we had a bad heater and that the whole heating element was covered in an inch of ice which was not allowing the air to be pushed into the fridge and thus cool it down. He was in my house for less than 20 minutes and charged me $185 to fix my problem. We had to let the fridge and freezer defrost for the remainder of the day before we could plug it back in, but it seems to have resolved our problem.
Certainly better than going out and having to buy a new fridge, but still, one of the major downfalls of being a homeowner.