The day everything broke

    Alternate title: the day I wished I had a landlord.  Alternate alternate title: sometimes being an adult is expensive.

    Kevin and I have owned our place for just over a year, and it's gone pretty smoothly.  I love DIY projects and I'm lucky to have such a handy husband.  So far the only thing we had to call a professional for was a broken garbage disposal that we weren't 100% sure needed to be replaced (turns out that thing was most definitely dead--and smelled like death too!).

    Other fixes were totally doable: painting, refinishing our cabinets, in-wall speaker system, etc.  We were DIY warriors....until the day that everything broke.  Nothing will knock you off of your DIY high horse like a broken air conditioner in the summer heat.  Not only is it something that the average person just isn't familiar with, but your motivation to take on a DIY project substantially decreases as the temperature in your house increases (this is a scientific fact I'm sure).  Now, it should be said that rarely do appliances just up and die with no warning.  The fridge had been making sounds for a month that we ignored.  The microwave had issues from the beginning.  But the AC unit broke without giving us any sign..on one of the hottest days of the year.  And on this very same day, the fridge finally decided it stop keeping our food cold for good and the microwave wouldn't open.

{Yikes!}

    The moment I saw that thermostat reading, I immediately wished that we had a landlord I could call up to fix it for us.  Luckily, the heating and cooling company that we found said they'd be here in 90 minutes.  Unluckily, being homeowners meant that we'd be paying some unknown amount of money in just a matter of hours.  There's nothing scarier than inviting some repairman into your house when you have no idea what could possibly be wrong.  They could tell you anything.  I hate being so vulnerable, but I was freaking hot!  Who knows how much I would have forked over just to be comfortable again.

    After a little searching on Yelp, we chose an appliance repairman to take a look at the fridge.  The next day the fridge repairman came (I was happy I wasn't asking him to work in an 83 degree environment thanks to the previous day's fix).  

{Grr. Broken appliance #2}

    Even though it was only the fridge portion that wasn't staying cold, the broken part was actually in the freezer so I had to move everything into a cooler with ice.  Twenty four hours (and more money) later that was fixed up too.  Lesson learned: when your refrigerator starts to make weird noises, don't look at your spouse and say "what's that?" like we did.  Call someone to help before you start having to toss food that's starting to spoil.  A repairman isn't cheap but neither is replacing a whole fridge worth of groceries!

    It was sad that by the time we got around to the microwave a few days later (the only appliance that we actually had to fully replace) I wasn't even that excited about getting to pick out a new one.  I thought I'd be ecstatic to be appliance shopping.  Instead I let Kevin find a good deal and that was that.  The install didn't go as smoothly as he planned but after a couple of day's work, it was up and running.  I realize that by showing you the picture below I'm totally spoiling another project that we finished but hadn't yet shared the details on.  Yes, that backsplash is a DIY project that we took on a little while ago.  Tutorial to come soon I promise.

{Pardon the mess. This was after Kevin installed the new microwave but before cleanup!}

    I love being a homeowner but some things just don't go as planned (like when your AC, fridge, and microwave die all on the same day).  But it's worth it!  Sorry for this bummer of a post but I'm just keeping it real today.  Sometimes being an adult is expensive.