Handymancapped

Sorry, this isn't going to be a recap of 2012, nor a 2013 resolutions post, rather a post about my "handymancapped" husband whom I love very dearly, but isn't the most skilled at fixing things.

So Sunday night we got home at 10:30pm after 9 days in Kansas City only to find that one of our neighbors had completely snow-blowed our driveway and walkways. It was absolutely glorious after a stressful day of traveling with a trying toddler to see that the 8 inches of standing snow was cleared. We're still not sure which neighbor did the deed, but either way we felt very blessed and thankful for them.

As I was getting Drew ready for bed, I felt his frigid toes and remembered that we needed to do a few things before bed including turning the heat back up. (We always adjust the temperature based on seasonality when we're going to be gone for long periods of time to save energy.) Anyway, once my baby was tucked into bed, I went downstairs to adjust the heat before I forgot and hit the hay.

That's when I found this....

The right number was what I turned the heat back up to when I realized that the left number was what the temperature was in the house. To save you some time, we ultimately found that our furnace wasn't working properly and that our temperature was slowly dropping inside the house. Thankfully we had just gotten some new windows, but we were still worried about pipes bursting seeing as how it was like 18 degrees outside.

Thus, my not-so-handy husband called my uncle, who's in the heating business, for some advice to see what we could do. Between Derek, his father and my uncle, they all figured out that it was the flame sensor. After trying to clean it for a bit, it still was not working and we decided to bite the bullet and have someone come out that evening.

Understanding that it was going to be super expensive for someone to come out near midnight on a Sunday, we called a local company who said they'd be there within 30 minutes. We were exhausted and thankful it would (hopefully) be a quick fix. And in case you're worried, we had a space heater in Drew's room and he was perfectly cozy with warm fingers each time I checked him.

Then at 12:25am, the tech arrived and was in and out within 5 minutes, working on the furnace for only 2 and doing paperwork for 3. Essentially, Derek had cleaned the wrong side of the flame sensor and if he had only youtubed 'cleaning the flame sensor' and watched any of the TONS of how-to videos, we would have saved ourselves from spending $73 per minute for the man to come out. {big sigh}

Derek admits he's not the most handy, but it was almost embarrassing watching this technician just simply wipe a tiny piece with a steal brush for just over a minute. Looking at the bright side, it wasn't like we needed a new furnace and we could sleep without worries, but I still gave am giving Derek a hard time. I'm pretty sure we will be the talk of the water cooler with the technician and his co-workers this week. I guess you live and you learn!

By 12:50am, though, we were warming up and crashed for the night. .... my handymancapped husband and me.