I have the same dread when it comes to house issues. Repairs that should be minor, it seems to me, are ripe with the potential to become anything but.
The water heater should have been replaced two years ago, if not before, but I had concerns. Over the summer my friend Derek replaced the hardware that sits behind the handle that turns the water on and off and, when it’s working, regulates the temperature. It did wonders in terms of hot showers, but the baths, though occasionally hot, were for the most part lukewarm. But there was never a shortage of hot water at the sinks in both the kitchen and the bathroom. So I envisioned the tile at the head of the tub needing to be torn out. I envisioned walls in the basement needing to be taken down. I envisioned all the pipes needing to be removed and replaced. I envisioned being held responsible for tearing up the street to repair the water mane and being told, nonchalantly, that since I live on a corner there are two streets rather than one, and therefore …
If the bath is tepid, one way to warm it up is to boil a big pot of water on the stove and then, when the tub is almost full, dump it in.
The guy who showed up Tuesday afternoon to install the new water heater looked like the grandpa from The Waltons. “Your stairs here sure are weird,” he said before he’d even reached the front porch. Halfway down the stairs to the basement, he said, “Oh man, this sure is going to be interesting,” and then laughed a little. I told him that today wasn’t the day for small talk or comments about the house. My tone of voice was an assault to my own ears, even as I was speaking: I sounded so much like my mother. Although I’d been told by Stan, who works the phones, that I wouldn’t have to “lift a finger,” I did, in fact, help carry the old water heater up to the kitchen and I helped lower the new one down. On Tuesday night I had a glorious bath, and on Wednesday morning I noticed there was no hot water in the kitchen. That afternoon when I came back from meeting a friend, there was still no hot water. So I called Stan, who told me it was no biggie, that gas bubbles often get trapped immediately following the installation, and proceeded to give me instructions on how to relight the pilot light, and after trying to transcribe a page and a half of his utterly nonsensical rambling I stopped writing and demanded that someone come to my house to show me how to do it. So he put me on hold, and I listened to George Morlan Plumbing commercials for about 12 minutes. An hour later I called back and spoke with Noreen, who told me she wasn’t sure if she could “squeeze me in” that afternoon or not because they have other customers, and I told her that I’d be happy to help her reach a new level of sureness, having spent $733.00 the day before, and at 6:30 a very pleasant, straightforward man arrived and discovered that the reason the pilot light went out is that something had been connected improperly. He fixed that and then showed me how to light the pilot light, which was quite simple. “That sure doesn’t match what Stan told me on the phone,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything,” the man said. “Nice guy, but clueless.”
I wrote the pilot light instructions on a piece of paper and clipped it to my invoice and put it in my file folder marked “House Receipts.” Which was a good thing, because Saturday night the bath wasn’t exactly chilled but it wasn’t hot either. Sunday afternoon I went downstairs, removed the metal safety rim, lay down on my stomach, and had a look. Sure enough, no pilot light. So I relit it. There was something very satisfactory about the sound of a miniature explosion after I’d held down the buttons and counted the seconds, per instructions.
Oddly enough, though, that’s not my complaint. Something was connected incorrectly so, after a bit of bitchiness from me, they came back and fixed it. And then the pilot light went out so I relit it. I am hoping the fact that there have been two issues in less than seven days is a coincidence. But what really pisses me off, for some reason, is the fact that the guy who did the incorrect installation left a couple of metal parts from the old water heater (I presume, and I hope) just sitting on the floor, and when I went in to my laundry room, which sits right behind the water heater, he’d just left the power cord for the washer draped over the dryer. Seriously, pick up after yourself.
Anyhow, I’m now in the process of finding an electrician. There are a couple of things I’d like to have fixed, or replaced, or reinstalled, and rather than picturing having the house torn down in order to determine why an outlet in my kitchen doesn’t work, I’m trying to visualize a nice strand of lights on the front porch, which I’m hoping, naively perhaps, to have up and lit by the longest night of the year, which is next week.
