One Thing Leads to Another

Ah, the joys of home ownership. If one thing needs repair, it usually cascades into several. See my previous post, The Homeowner Begets. We’ve had an annoying problem with dishwasher odor, even after we’ve run a dishwasher cleaner. If plumbers are going to come fix one thing, we may as well have them fix several items. The master bath sink, washer taps, and hose tap all had a leakage problem. They were fixed, along with installing a cap on a gas tap on our upper deck.

The plumber’s visit got Julian thinking: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single-basin stainless steel sink with a restaurant-style faucet? On last week’s trip to the hardware store, we gawked at sinks and faucets. We haven’t pulled the trigger – yet.

But wait! There’s more! To access the faucets for the washer, we had to take off the folding doors to the laundry alcove. These doors were warped when we moved in (or so we thought), so we decided to replace them. The doors we bought were damaged when we opened the packages. Julian exchanged one, but the new one came without the installation hardware. He spent hours on the phone haggling with the manufacturer and the hardware store. He finally wound up with two that were reasonably intact, but required painting. So our garage turned into a painter’s studio. Last night we installed the doors. Julian’s cursing could have been heard two towns away, but they finally fit in place. The problem is they look just as warped as the original set. It turned out that the track for the doors was installed improperly.

The plumber added another potentially expensive insight on his visit. The garbage disposal is over 20 years old and probably merits replacing. The assault on our bank accounts continues…