Maintenance Man Envy

It's true, sometimes I have Maintenance Man Envy (MME)... I guess MME can apply to both my friends who live in apartments and can just call maintenance to come fix stuff that is broken. It can also apply to my married friends, who have their own live-in maintenance man to fix the broken stuff. Sigh. This weekend was a weekend of MME...

Last week I started writing a post about my terrible day, but decided it broke the "no whining on the blog" rule, so I didn't finish it. Nonetheless, on Tuesday my upright freezer in the garage began chirping like a dying tortured bird. Awesome. After being gone last weekend, being busy most nights this past week, and just being behind on life, I had quite a list for Saturday... which had to be scrapped to fix the freezer.

I could tell by the dying bird cheep the fan was dying on the freezer. I don't know how I knew, but I knew. So I went on RepairClinic.com, a cool fix your own appliance website where you can find parts for your appliance. After reading the assessment info, I was even more convinced the fan was dying. So I ordered the new fan assemby for pick up at their Canton location. I picked up the part at the end of the day Friday. Saturday morning I slept later than originally planned, but got to work on the freezer by about 9:30 am. First step: Empty the freezer, which has a lot in it (some of which has been lost in the depths for quite awhile). I put meat in a couple coolers, ice cream jammed into the fridge freezer, and random stuff into other bins and buckets. Killian came out to the garage with me and kept me company while I emptied. We definitely have mice in the garage, so I figured letting the cat roam for a few hours was probably a good move anyway.

Step Two: Disassembly. The evaporator fan is accessible by removing all the shelves in the freezer, removing the back panels, and then the fan / motor. It wasn't the easiest space to access since there was a layer of ice on the bottom of the freezer, so I'm hunched in there, half kneeling on ice, half in the freezer, definitely a compromising position. At one point Killian came over, purring, trying to sit on my lap (consider my precarious position that didn't provide for a lap in the first place). She kept meowing, purring, meowing. I looked down to see the dead mouse she'd placed at my feet. Yum. I finished the disassembly before removing the mouse... the funny part about removing the mouse was that as I picked it up, it became clear that it has been dead for quite some time. So my brilliant cat found me an already dead mouse from some corner of the garage - what a hunter!

Step Three: Much swearing. I mean, reassembly. The new motor looked good (despite horribly sketchy directions) and I could see how to reinstall it without too much trouble... EXCEPT that the old motor had metal housing on it - presumably to buffer it from the insulation it is mounted in and to protect it. The new motor didn't have housing at all. So I tried unsuccessfully to remove the old housing to reuse it. Nope. It was permanently mounted- and was slightly smaller than the new motor anyway. I decided to head for Aco to see what I could come up with- maybe an electrical socket box? With both motors in my purse, I perused my options, tried different boxes, and finally asked for help. Mark B is the Aco guy. He's always there, always greets people, and always has answers. Mark B and I returned to the electrical box selection and he helped me choose a blue plastic electrical box. My only fear was the hole in the back of the freezser - I knew it was too small for this box (actually for any of the boxes). Oh well, I'm sure I can figure something out.

Step Four: More swear words and quite the hack job. I had to chisel pieces off the box. I moved the freezer, hoping I could go in through the back to install the box so as to avoid cutting the inside wall. But no, the big grill and other scary important freezer parts were between me and the new box location... so I pulled out my tin snips and began attempting to cut through the metal freezer wall to make room for the box. It isn't pretty. It took awhile, some bleeding from my newly acquired finger slices, some bending of the newly cut areas, and finally I was able to mount the box to the wall, the motor and fan assembly into the box, the panels back on... and the moment of truth... oh yeah, and somewhere in here I had to run to Aco again to get new screws to mount the back panel with since the originals weren't in good shape and I'd forgotten to buy some during my previous trip to Aco. The good thing is that there is a panel that covers the hacked in box so no one can tell what a hack job it really is. :)

Step Five: Does it work? As I finished putting the back panel on, I had a moment of panic. What if I plug it in and it is still chirping? Answer: I will cry. There's no crying in baseball, but I knew without a doubt if I plugged it in and it wasn't working, I would cry. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then plugged it in. There was a nice quiet whirr of a working fan. The dying bird was gone. It began getting cold immediately. Thank God! I gave it a quick clean and reloaded it as fast as possible because I was now running late to go try on bridesmaid dresses.

Step Six: Yes, I still have MME, but I do get immense satisfaction from being able to fix things myself, especially when you have to hack a bunch of stuff to make it work right. It did occur to me though, that repair projects have very little face value. When you do a home improvement / painting / decorating project, you may spend that same 6 hours on it, but when you're done you walk into a room and it's like "oooh look, that 6 hours was so worth it! It looks great!" Repairs of the unseen nature are less rewarding. My freezer looks the same, it does the same thing (keeps food cold). Fixing it was necessary so it could continue doing the same job, but it's not a hugely rewarding thing... although if I hadn't done it, the ruined food wouldn't be so rewarding either. I don't know.

I often think our spiritual life is like that too. I may not do many big heroic saintly deeds, but I am called to be faithful in the little things, the unseen moments, tasks, challenges. We are called to love our brothers and sisters in so many way, usually they go unnoticed, unseen, and no one makes a big deal about it. And that's okay because God sees.

and I guess God sees my working freezer too :D