Home maintenance 101

I’m getting my feet wet with home maintenance. It seems that every light bulb in this house was installed at the same time because every day a light blows. First the porch light. I knew it worked because I saw it turn on when as I was discovering which switch turned on which light — this house many light switches. Later I went to turn it on and nothing. My first thought, if you can believe it, was that the light didn’t work… that the wiring must be bad. Stop laughing…. I’m new to this! Besides, the light fixture was kind of loose on the wall… but I knew it had worked previously. I thought maybe I imagined it and it never worked. After two days of worrying about whether to report it to the management company, it suddenly occurred to me that the bulb might be burned out. I guess you could say a light bulb went off over my head! So got my ladder, figured out how to remove the top of the light, changed the bulb and it worked!

Then the light in my bedroom burned out. It’s a ceiling fan light—the ball kind. So I got my ladder and tried to unscrew the little nubs they call screws. But they were so tight and small that I could get a grip on them. The only tools I had were a hammer, Phillips head screw driver and the other kind of screw driver (name?). Anyway, none of those would work… what could I use? I went and got my eyebrow tweasers, but they didn’t work. So I ended up going to Target to buy a pair of pliers. Then yesterday, when I got home from work I noticed one of my bathroom lights is burned out. I was too tired and mentally drained to deal with it so that’s a project for today.

I’ve already called the management company about some other repairs that needed to be done around here. The dryer line (vent, shaft, whatever it’s called) appears to be clogged with lint so it needs to be dealt with before I can hook up the dryer. I reported it earlier in the week and they said they’d send someone out Wednesday or Thursday. Well no one came. Yesterday Helen from the management company called to let me know someone was coming out that morning. I asked if anything would be left, paperwork-wise, indicating the work had been done and she said yes, a copy of the work order would be left.

I told her about another problem I had with the closet door the night before and asked if the repairman could also fix that. Somehow the front closet door got locked. My first thought was that one of the kids had accidentally locked it while playing hide and seek in the house. But they both denied doing it—but then they usually deny everything. I thought, well I’ll just stick a pin in the little hole that is usually on door knobs… but there was no hole. I went to look at the pantry door knob which is the same kind. No lock on the inside… and why would you put a lock on the inside of a closet door anyway? I thought some more and decided to unscrew the door knob and get it unlocked that way. No luck. I got the door knob off but I couldn’t get it to unlock AND to make matters worse, the inside door knob needs to be connected to the outside door knob, so I had to hold on to it to keep it from falling into the closet! Then I couldn’t put the other door knob back on for the same reason. ARGGHHH!!!

When I got home from work, the kids told me that a man had been there and he had fixed the closet door knob (as well as tightened my paper towel holder screws which I thought were tight enough). There was no work order left so I don’t know if the dryer shaft had been fixed and it was after hours so I couldn’t call to ask. I don’t know if I should hook up the dryer but I HAVE to do laundry this weekend. The towel bar and toilet paper holder that were loose and supposed to be fixed were still loose. And now the garage door will not respond to my car openers. It will only open when I press the opener installed in the garage by the kitchen door. I will have to call the management company AGAIN to get this dealt with and I know they are going to think I’m a difficult tenant.