If the temperature drops and the heat inexplicably does not come on, one of the first things to check is if a child has been playing with the emergency shut-off switch “to see what it does” and has left it in the off position. I am so glad we DID think of that (credit: Paul) because I would have been QUITE EMBARRASSED if we’d called a service company to find out what was wrong with our furnace and it was $160 for them to flip that switch back on.
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I was at Target the other day and they were putting up the Christmas stuff—and what to my wondering eyes did appear but OMG INITIAL ORNAMENTS. The Harvey Lewis ones, silver cursive initials with little rhinestone accents. They didn’t have them last year (and maybe not the year before, either? I can’t remember now), and I read somewhere they they’d been discontinued, and we were missing ONE ornament because I was being all picky/questy/relaxed about finding each one on clearance. So I had all these eBay searches set up, but the initial I needed hardly ever showed up, and when it did it had RED rhinestones instead of CLEAR, or else the seller KNEW people were frantic and so set a price of $20 when the ornaments sold at $6-7 full price.
ANYWAY. I stood there stunned for a minute, then put the initial I needed into my cart, full-price and so glad to pay it.
Congrats on the ornament. That is the best when something like that just falls into place.
My furnace was making this crazy noise and I freaked out and called the furnace people and it turned out to be a ripped/broken/stuck filter, which the guy changed in 15 seconds, all for the bargain price of $99.
We once paid $210 for someone to come flip our emergency switch on. And felt incredibly foolish. The guy felt so bad he gave us a new filter and an overall inspection.
Oh, I love it when things magically reappear when I need them. (Target, I am looking at you and your storage bins.)
I paid a service repair tech $75 to push in the plug on my stove. Not to even, you know, bend over and pick up the cord off the floor and plug it in but just reach over and PUSH IN THE ALREADY PLUGGED IN CORD. Apparently it had somehow worked it’s way loose, no clue how, it’s not like I had ever moved my stove, and it was now not pushed in all the way & the stove was getting just enough power for the clock to work but not the burners or the oven.
For years I kept that invoice, saying “Plugged in stove – $75”, on the wall in my kitchen as a reminder to check everything twice by hand, don’t just glance at it.
I might have framed that!
I would also add to the furnace solutions: make sure you completely closed the panel door after the last time you changed the filter. Thank goodness we had a nice furnace repair guy who talked us through that on the phone for free.
After years of TORMENTING myself over buying matching Xmas stockings, then wanting to have stockings my the kids but not knowing how many/what flavor/IF we could even have kids and is it tempting the fates by purchasing anything now OMG, AND going the initial ornament/pin route (also from Target) for said stockings…THIS year, as we await baby #3, I caved and bought “plain” stockings that are always easy to find and will always match, but I am struggling with, “I want to buy the baby name ornament/pin for this baby NOW, because I will be so upset if I can’t find the letter I need” but…it’s not like we have agreed on a baby name, or that my HUSBAND EVEN KNOWS WHICH FLAVOR OF BABY WE ARE HAVING YET. I just…have a super leading contender name in my head, AND I have known the sex since week 11. So. Yes. This.
*for the kids, not “my” the kids WTH?
We have a gas hot water heater and after we (read: husband) replaced it ourselves (himself) we couldn’t get the pilot light lit for anything. We called a repair guy on a Sunday morning. I think it was even Mother’s Day. The sweet kind repair guy came out right away, climbed up in our attic, showed my husband how to light the pilot light and then wouldn’t charge us. I still love that guy. Still telling that story in just barely relevant situations like this years late.
My husband leaned a spare mattress up against our emergency furnace switch right before going out of town, so there I was very pregnant and panicked about how to deal with a house that was going to be too cold to live in within a day. My neighbor was having some construction done at the same time so I spent a couple hours convinced that they had shut my gas off somehow accidentally and then I spent quite a bit of time reading the furnace service manual and swapping out all the fuses, which all looked perfectly fine. I finally got in touch with my husband who suggested looking at the switch behind the mattress. I felt sort of dumb, but it was only our second winter in this house and at least I know how to change the fuses now?
In a previous house my landlord installed a new furnace without installing the filter and I spent the whole winter wondering how in the world my foster dog was managing to shed so much directly into the floor vents. I even had to close the vent next to the stove so that the stove stayed clean. (The dog was a German shepherd mix who shed like crazy. You could vacuum, leave the house for two hours, and come back to hair balls under the coffee table.) We didn’t realize that the filter was completely missing until the next winter. I didn’t think I needed to inspect a brand new furnace!
I once had an apartment maintenance man come out to fix my oven because it was broken. Turns out, it was my first experience with an oven that had a temperature dial AND and on/off dial. Embarrassing.
I just took my car in today to have the formerly-cigarette-lighter-now-a-GPS-charger thingy fixed. There was no current and it wouldn’t charge my GPS. Was it an unplugged fuse or a total malfunction of the devise? Nope. There was a piece of paper stuck in it. Embarrassing. My husband (who drove another car down with me in case this problem needed all day attention from the car shop) was mortified.
We just went into a total panic when our water pressure suddenly went to zero for no known reason. Apparently Hubby had flicked some switch in the crawl space accidentally not realizing what is was, I guess(???). Luckily, he remembered flicking the random switch – because when he flicked it back the water magically appeared again. Thank God, because he would have died if we had a repairman come out to “fix” that.
As for your initial issue – YAY! But you should have just asked me, we’ve had the initials in Target for the past couple of years. I would have gladly bought and sent you one.
I once called a repair company to come fix our air conditioner only to find out the filter was clogged with dirt. So embarrassing! AND the repairman was my age and totally adorable. Even worse!
Seeing lovely initial ornaments is one of the only things that makes me regret our children having the same first initial. I’m so glad you found the missing letter!
This has happened to us TWICE with our water heater. The first time, in our first house, we moved in and ran out of hot water after 1 day. Turns out that there is a “Vacation Mode” it was in, that keeps the water in it warm but doesn’t refill it?
Fast forward 5 years: we move into a new house, after a WEEK the water is cold all the time. I send husband down to check for vacation mode, but our 3 year old has taken the liberty of turning the dial ALL the way down (Dial is accessible, and about a foot from his car door). He tells us now that if you touch the dial, you have to take cold baths.
Also interesting to note: I am the one who messes with dangerous stuff in our house. Our son knows that Mommy is the only one who can touch or light the pilot on all our gas devices. Mommy is the one who does all the wiring. Daddy changes filters and fixes toilets. I guess that’s why he went to law school.
I can so identify with the ornament thing. When I bought our stockings years ago, we had two kids but I bought an extra stocking for an imaginary oops baby, we’ve actually used it quite a few times for a visiting grandparent. I have the initial pins from Target on each one but my Zack has had a sideways N on his for years because that is a letter that I’ve just never been able to find.