About those appliances, part 2
I figured you would be here, waiting with bated breath to hear what happened in the in-law apartment when the appliance scourge struck!
You see, when we built the house, whatever we put in the main house, the mother-in-law wanted one of equal opulence and value put into her granny flat. Whether it was granite floor tile, a flat screen TV, a jacuzzi tub with a shower surround, (even though she never took a shower in her life), we catered to her every whim, right down to the double door fridge with water and ice dispensers in the door. The apartment turned out beautiful. Fit for a queen! Right down to the beautiful oak hardwood flooring in the kitchen/living room area. Is the foreshadowing working for you yet?
Nanny actually did much better with her appliances than we did. No midnight raids on the self-cleaning oven by the fire department (probably because she hasn’t cooked a meal since 2004). I’m sure I saw her secretly smirking every time I had trouble with our appliances, thinking I was careless, or didn’t know how to use the new-fangled gear properly. Whereas our appliances took the usual beating of a busy family, hers suffered from under-use! And that was precisely the reason the nanny fridge finally took its revenge early in July.
It had been an unusually cool summer. Last July had been hotter than hell, but this year, the mercury hadn’t ventured past ten degrees celsius in weeks. This monday morning was an exception! Hot humid weather had us digging our shorts and tank tops out of storage, and by ten o’clock am., we were gasping for ice water. The poor old fridge out in Nanny-land just couldn’t keep up with the demand. The climate out in her flat, made worse by her oxygen generator throwing off heat like a sonofabitch, caused the icemaker to thaw the ice it had in storage just enough to stick it all together into one gigantic mass. It bravely tried to send water to the ice maker, but the backlog was too great, and the water line froze solid, causing the valve to freeze up at the bottom of the unit, and the waterline expanded and popped out of its mount. Uh oh!
The trouble made itself known at first by a slight leak under the fridge, something I had seen often out in our kitchen, usually caused by the cooling unit frosting up in back of the fridge, resulting in my having to call the appliance repairman. I dutifully took out the phone book and thumbed over to the dog-eared page where the appropriate repair service was circled in red ink. Disappointingly, the repairman couldn’t get in until Thursday, so we shoved some old towels under the fridge and hoped for the best. We should have hoped harder!
Although we had been dutifully changing the towels, by Wednesday, the bloodhound-like nose of the mother-in-law’s homecare worker detected an unusual odor coming from the downstairs sector of the granny flat. She went to investigate, and minutes later an exclamation of “Holy Shit!!!” resounded through the apartment and out to where I was sitting in my office, going through my morning email. I ran to the scene of the disaster to find the water dripping down through the bedroom ceiling, pieces of soggy gyproc and seam tape all over the soaked mattress, and the carpet, squishy-soaking wet. My first instinct was to call Paul, who told me to call the insurance company, and it wasn’t long before a claims adjuster showed up at the door.
I have to say, the insurance company was great. in no time we had a contracting company on site, ripping up the ruined mess in the downstairs bedroom, and new flooring and carpet was ordered. They even moved out all of the mother-in-law’s furniture and stored it in their warehouse until the remediation was completed. For what we thought was just a simple leak, the damage so far has surpassed twenty-six thousand dollars. Thank God for insurance! The adjuster told me that they handle at least a half dozen calls a day for water damage, what with the new fangled appliances and main-floor laundry rooms, and bathtub overflows, etc. Methinks that with many people looking for an opportunity to cheat the system, it’s a prime way for some folks to get their home a facelift for cheap! No wonder home owners insurance rates have gone through the roof!
So the nanny flat is almost back to normal now, and I no longer have her occupying space in my family room watching The Price is Right and the soaps on TV while I am trying to work. Although the fridge has been repaired, I doubt that Paul will turn the water back on to the ice and water dispenser. The appliance repairman told us that the modern appliances are only built to last five to ten years! At the prices charged for a new fridge, it’s cheaper to go buy ice, and a styrofoam cooler and get your groceries fresh every day. You’d still have money left over to sponsor a child in Ethiopia!
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