The Ice-Maker Line Lesson

Homeowners stuff is so weird. Being a homeowner and adulting in that fashion, is still so weird to me. Some days are better than others. On the one hand you can paint and decorate and mess things up and not worry about losing a deposit. On another hand, you pay (sometimes in more ways than one,) for everything you mess up.

Water is a force to be reckoned with in most walks of life, but especially in a house. Pipes and stuff are serious business. I'm two types of people weirdly melded into one: I won't ever pretend to know more than I know, if it can get me into trouble, but I love a challenge and refuse to believe I can't find a way to figure something out or make things work. Sounds like a recipe for disaster right? I'm relatively careful.

Friday afternoon I get home in a storm, with groceries and kid, and I hear this faint noise from behind my fridge. The fridge is on, running properly and I think, "Huh? Have I never keyed into that sound before?" I go about my Friday evening routines and then come back to make tea and it's louder, it's almost like a weird hissing sound. I move the fridge and start digging around and there it was: a water leak from the ice maker line.

It was small but the more I started messing with it, the worse it got. I stood there calling my kiddo for help to get towels and just took a breath, "Okay, who do I call?!?" My husband was not my first call, nope not on a Friday during dinner service. I called my local friend who's husband was quite handy and had helped with weird things I'd never know in the past. She didn't answer. I knew there had to be a water shut off but how much do I mess with things? I called the front line of the restaurant and asked for my husband saying it was "Important." I'd never called that number before. Ever. 

He told me to shut off the water under the sink. First knob, water still going, my daughter reported back. Second knob, my daughter said same thing, no result. It wasn't working and I was freaking out. My husband told me to go outside and hit the main water shut off. Yeah that wasn't happening. That thing needed a serious tool to get it to chill. Back to the under the sink situation.

As I was meddling down under there my husband zipped home and I was picturing me twisting too much and breaking it worse, having some newer, worse leak and I just kept poking around. I had found a 3rd knob. Turn, turn, and done. Off. Of course that's when hubby arrived. Crisis averted?

Behind my fridge was disgusting. Lots of old dog food crumbs, fallen magnets, a broken something and so much crud and I was appalled. It looked moldy. Mold is the devil. There was a small hole of separation from wall to floor and that's when the panic set in...what if that thing leaked all day and there is MOLD under there now and it just keeps growing mold because we live in Florida?

I took off any clothing that was essential because I have the worst luck ever with bleach. I always stain something and usually it's clothing that I actually like. So in my bra and underpants in my kitchen on a Friday evening I'm on my hands and knees on the tile floor scrubbing with bleach all the yuck. It is also fun to note that since pregnancy I have had a fantastic aversion to certain cleaning supply smells. It makes it fun, really, and bleach is the number one offender.

I gave up and kept all the water in the kitchen shut off knowing that Saturday afternoon I could tackle the project. I Googled things and looked on YouTube. It seemed pretty straight forward, nothing to scary. I went to Lowe's armed with knowledge.

We had a play date that ran awkwardly long. It was a whole weird thing where they ended up at our house even though we started at the park and things just snowballed. It was okay. We get along but I had stuff to do and the play date ran twice as long as I'd planned. When I stopped and began I got out the video tutorial to go with the kit I bought...uh OH, the video said the kit I got was not preferred.

I packed up the kid. Back to Lowe's. Every non-fun outing requires a lot of negotiation between my daughter and I. There are many agreements of doing a good job. She loves the hardware store but when you go there needing help and guidance and needing to use massive amounts of patience? She grows tired and fast. 

I got round two of what I thought I need and with a back-up plan. I was ready to attack! I'm a practical person and I believe that most things can be done with an open mind, some specifically situational and learned tools, and some confidence. I realized how annoyingly strange it was all installed to begin with and became defeated pretty fast. I even tried to just rig it through Tuesday to work so that my husband could more expertly repair it on his day off, with no child under feet and asking for snacks as you are using the wrench.

It was when I got creative that I realized again, in all my over-buying for other options and in all my optimism and "Can-do" attitude that it didn't fit properly. We had to go back to Lowe's again. I was tired, but I wanted working kitchen water, so I had to finish. I had a great crying jag, balled up on my kitchen floor. My daughter came to console me. And we gathered up for the last trip. 

Immediately at the returns desk, my daughter recognized the cashier as the one from our first return and said, "Excuse me we need to return all of this, because like none of it worked for my mom and we need kitchen water and she said it doesn't work." The cashier found her endearing and said, "Well I'm sure your mom knows!" 

I had cried off my make-up and I'm sure had the look of determination, exhaustion and anger plastered on my naturally blemished face and the cashier that helped us twice said, "Oh, no, you're back," in a sweet way of saying she had hoped we'd fixed it last time. The one genius thing I did was grab an exact piece from the mis-matched size of the first part of the connector and took it with me. I marched right up to someone and said "THIS, I NEED THIS SIZE, AS A CAP OR STOPPER FOR WATER TO CLOSE A PIPE PLEASE."

When we got to the register with our friendly cashier that had helped us with multiple things earlier, my daughter said, "Yeah we had to come back because my mom had like a MAJOR meltdown in the kitchen." I laughed and said, "That's true. Mommy did have a meltdown."

I had given up on repairing the ice maker line. After 3 trips to Lowe's no one in my house needed ice ever again. Ever heard of ice cube trays? Had we become lazy millennial people? No thank you. I could have got the power drill and make the hole bigger but the problem was the connector sizes were different on the pipe side than the fridge side, which was why it was set up so badly to begin with. I then realized that in all my master plans of 2019 a dishwasher was my black Friday goal and the ice maker line goes right behind, so we should just do one big install in a few months.

I got the correct cap sizes, turned knobs back on and have been enjoying water ever since. I used the wrench properly and everything! I told my husband the ice maker news and he accepted it gracefully. I slept better knowing that I'd solved part of an issue and would live to tell the tale.

I don't feel like I bit off more than I could chew and I certainly didn't mess around with something I couldn't handle. I felt like I should have gone more with my intuition on a lot. My husband actually really supported my handling it myself and said, "You can totally do this, you're smart enough to find your way around everything." Even when he got called to come help he was patient and understanding that water leaks are no joke.

My lesson was a balance in what was all worth it really. It needed a safe fix of course, but when my sanity, my abilities and just how poorly it was set up to begin with came into play I had to make some educated decisions and maybe lose a luxury for a bit until we could have a more detailed repair later.

I felt accomplished and like I learned a lot, although slightly disappointed I couldn't write a post about my success of replacing the whole line. Perhaps that will be an end of year thing. Homeowners stuff is no joke though and I feel like there are some intense growing pains that go with it all, but I have to take it like I take everything else, one day at a time. Happy Monday!