Old House Problems

My house in Hintonburg is a little over 100 years old, which is pretty old for Canadian standards. It has lots of quirks...and more than a few problems to go along with them.

Oddly enough, if I was living in a new home every little problem would annoy me - a new home should be perfect. But this home literally has no completely straight walls or floors. Everywhere you look you can see some slight imperfection. Nothing is catastrophic but because there are so many little issues I don't mind any of them.

That said, there is a difference between problems affecting aesthetics and those affecting functionality. The former is no big deal but the latter can be downright annoying. And the worst is when it feels like everything is breaking at the same time. Just this week, for example, my garage door started jamming up, my kitchen sink stopped working and my freezer started leaking! Argh, there's only so much a man can take! Amazingly enough though, I was able to fix all three issues without too much fuss.

First, the sink. It turns out the screw in the middle of the sink was just loose. I tightened that up and now the sink drains fine.

Second, the garage door. Again, all it required was for me to tighten some bolts in the door. It's now back to its pre-jamming-but-rickety-old self.

Marshmallow keeping an eye on my work

Finally, the leaky freezer (which is part of the fridge). For weeks now my freezer has been occasionally leaking water and I had no idea why. It turns out there's a hole in the back of the fridge where water drains into and that was frozen over. So that had to be de-thawed and a little rubber piece that allows the water to drain had to be cleaned out.

A blow dryer is a legitimate tool

My hands have the scars to show for all this work but still it feels good that I was able to fix all these problems myself.* Who knew I could become such a handyman?!

Band-aids - proof of battle damage

* I can't take full credit for fixing the freezer issue. My good friend D noticed the problem and sent me a youtube video that showed me how to fix the problem.