fixes

Ah, the joy of living in a vintage home…

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…is constantly going down the rabbit hole of things needing to be fixed.  The hubs thought it would be awesome to put some old jazz on the hi-fi while we enjoy our Sunday coffee; there’s something about an old scratchy record playing through all the speakers in the house that’s just FUN.  But his “let’s put on a record” turned into “shoot, I have to replace the stylus”…  which turned into “this stylus is really light, I have to counterbalance the weight to make it sound perfect”.  20 minutes of tweaking, and over a dozen listens to the first few seconds of “The Birth of a Band” (off the “The Birth of a Band” album by Quincy Jones) later, we’re back in business.

He earned his coffee for that one!  That was quite a workout.

About a month ago he actually took the whole thing apart, because it needed a new motor and idler wheel (which turns the platter of the turntable).  It’s a good thing he’s an AV specialist, because if anyone else had touched it I would have needed a Xanax.

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It’s been working beautifully so far, and now we finally have an excuse to add to our record collection.  Yay!

A friendly public service announcement from Biohazard Manor.

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It’s never a good thing when you say something to your husband that makes him bolt out of the room.  This morning, that something was “Darnit, the shower never got hot for me this morning”.

Seconds later, I joined Jack in the garage to drag a mountain of soaking wet boxes and other house stuff away out of our utility room in the garage. Turns out the hot water heater had burst.  Sigh.

This time, I did what we forgot to do when our water main burst over the winter: I found the paperwork for our home warranty and called them first.  While Jack worked on shutting off the water, I called their customer service line and gave them all the details.  Hopefully sometime today, we’ll have a plumber on their way out to fix the problem or recommend a new one.  And all but the $100 deductible will be covered by the warranty.  Not how we wanted to spend our Memorial Day, but it is what it is.

So a friendly word of advice: if you are thinking about buying an old home, spend the $400-500 on a warranty.  (Or ask the sellers to buy one for the first year as part of the deal.)  When things in the house are this old, you never know what’s going to go *pppffftttt* and when.