Well come along for the ride and find out why on earth I am writing a tale about 4 fridges.
Our tale begins about a month and a half ago. Of course, Mr. T was out of town because that is always when these things happen.
We woke to a funny smell in the house. I had smelled this smell before. To me, it smelled like burning plastic. Try as we might, we could not figure out the cause of the smell. I had smelled that smell about 2 years prior when Mr. T was out of town as well. That time we had a problem with our whole house’s electrical panel and had I not caught it in time, we could have had a house fire. Thankfully, I acted quickly and had great people who came to help me, so one day spent in the house with no electricity (while it was 19 degrees outside…brrr) and a team who helped figure out the problem = no house burned to the ground. All my years as a girl scout and camping came in really handy that day.
Anyway, back to our current tale. As I had smelled that smell before and knew the seriousness of it, I tried really hard to figure it out, but I couldn’t. The girls and I had our co-op that day. Off we went, me hoping that there wouldn’t be a serious problem while we were gone.
When we got home, I had a free afternoon and had planned to do a little bit of cleaning and then sew some American Girl doll chef sets. Of course, as soon as I finished the yucky cleaning work is when the fun began. Snowflake was walking through the kitchen and says to me, “Mommy, why is there this huge puddle of water in the kitchen.” My kids are forever spilling water when they get water from the door water and ice dispenser so I initially thought it was just one of those spills, but I went to investigate anyway. The puddle was much larger and water was dripping down the front of the fridge from the ice dispenser. Of course, the first thing that goes through my mind is that ice just got stuck in there and melted. I opened the freezer to find a whole different story. The refrigerator and freezer(fridge #1 in our tale) were not working at all. The ice cream looked like soup, the ice was all slowly melting, and our freezer storage of waffles was defrosted. I now knew exactly what that smell was.
Of course me being the budget living person that I am, my first thought was of all that food and all that money I was going to lose if I didn’t do something quickly. We have an outside fridge (fridge #2 in our tale), which I quickly turned on as we only use it a few times a year when we need the extra space. I waited a small time to let it start cooling. Then I forced asked my girlies to help me. We grabbed our reusable grocery bags and took load after load out to the other fridge. Now with that part of the ‘crisis’ solved, I could move on to what to do next.
We have a home warranty on our home because we have a 25 year old A/C unit that when it goes will have to be brought up to code and will cost between $8,000 and $10,000…so the home warranty will be paid for until that goes. Thankfully in situations like this, I get to call them and let them deal with it. They couldn’t get anyone out to our house until 3 days later. Can someone tell me why no one seems to think it is a big deal that I have no fridge?…cause at this point no one seemed to think anything of it. Um, Hello! I have a family and lots of food ($) in that fridge. Me being me, I insisted they find someone who could come sooner. They did.
We were told the fridge (#1) could be fixed, wait for it….next week. Again no mention of what to do with no fridge for a week. Of course, I have my outside fridge, but they didn’t know that as we don’t pay extra to cover a 2nd 20+ year old fridge we use a couple of times a year. Anyway, long story shorter, we talked to the warranty company and they were willing to reimburse us for renting a fridge for the week, enter fridge #3 in our tale. Which means the whole carting of the food occurred again to bring it all back in the house. We are so glad we got the rental fridge because we experienced quite a number of REALLY rainy days and it was so nice not to traipse outside in the wet for every meal or snack that needed something from the refrigerator. I soooo sound like a spoiled westerner don’t I?!
2 refrigerators in 1 kitchen…we are classy like that! |
One week later the man comes back out to fix the fridge, he tells us the compressor is all burnt up and that the warranty company is making him put in a new compressor even though some line is also burnt up and he knows it isn’t going to work to fix the refrigerator. When he was talking to the warranty company he told them, “I’ll be back.” I was not happy with that idea. I didn’t want to go through this again in a month. While he was still here at the house and before he started putting in the new compressor, I called the warranty company and expressed my dissatisfaction with their solution. The lady on the phone told me, “He didn’t tell us the fix wouldn’t hold, he just told us he would be back. Unless he tells us the fix won’t hold, he has to put in the new part. We won’t replace your refrigerator.” Um, so you’re telling me you are going to fix my fridge when it won’t last over semantics?! Yep!
I tell this to the repairman and ask if he will tell them this exact phrase if he believes the phrase to be true. He was an older gentleman and was NONE too happy about this. He wanted to tell me all about how that is what he said and maybe they don’t speak English well and such and so on. I was just thinking, can you just say the phrase you said so we can get this over with.
Of course, he said the phrase with the correct words, and we were told we would get a new fridge! They offered us a dumb fridge as a replacement or a too small cash out. Which of course required some negotiating and some using the “right phrases” again. Which this time meant I had to play their game and go line for line over the exact size and features of our current broken fridge until we came to the one that was missing and meant an extra $400 to our settlement. Thank goodness because I couldn’t have bought a fridge for what they were offering.
Another 1.5 weeks with the rental fridge – which means 2 fridges in my kitchen for 2.5 weeks….yippee! But at least I have an indoor working fridge for all that time.
Then voila, our gorgeous new fridge(fridge #4) was delivered!
What you see at the bottom there is a project I have been working on and will begin posting about next week. I was working to de-clutter my old fridge before it died. Which is the only reason I even have pictures of the old fridge. So, look for more pictures of my new fridge in those posts about my new command center coming up starting next week!
I hope you enjoyed my tale of four refrigerators. We are very happy with #4…long may she live!
our fridge isn’t working right now too! everything moved to the basement fridge, luckily we have one. I kinda want to have to get a new one, we’ll see what they say.
That was a crazy frig story and I am glad it all worked out in the end, really I am.
Mr. T
I’m glad it worked out for us too, honey! Thanks for checking out my blog today! You made me smile… 🙂
What a saga! I linked in a pizza made with roast chicken leftovers to Live.Laugh. Rowe’s linky party. Have a great week.
Yes it was! Thanks for stopping by and reading my saga.
Indeed! It’s always too soon when they go, so long life is wished for your fridge! Good to see your persistence. I could take some lessons from you! That is so not me, but it sure does pay off to keep at it, doesn’t it?
Liz
Great fridge story! It’s always a pain when things break down but I think a fridge has to be the worst. Glad it all worked out for you!
You are right, it is a pain when things break, but thankfully it all worked out well for us!
Oh dear! These things can be really frustrating. Congrats on the new fridge, can’t wait to see your project.Thanks for linking up at Friday Fun Party. Have a nice weekend. 🙂
Yikes! here’ to hoping #4 is a magic number! I found you six sisters blog hop…
That is really nice and I hope you love it! I hope you will link this up starting Wednesday at The CSI Project. The challenge of the week is kitchen makeovers and decor.
Come on over each day for a tutorial then the competition begins Wednesday.Each week is a new challenge.
Come on over!
http://www.thecsiproject.com
Thanks so much! I hope I can remember by Wednesday!…hehe!