Question of the Day, Fri, Jan 20

Good morning! And TGIF!

Our dishwasher bit the dust this past Monday. I was doing a load of dishes and after I started up the dishwasher, I went down to the basement and did my 3 miles on the treadmill. Came back upstairs and I could smell something burning, along with the odor or bleach or chlorine. The dishwasher had no lights on and I knew it hadn't run through the whole cycle. Sure enough, when I checked it out, it had died. We called the repair person and he is coming this afternoon to try to fix it (I hope he can......or we will be going to the dishwasher store right away tonight for another dishwasher. I just hate doing dishes.)

In order for the the repair person to come this afternoon, Rick will be taking some vacation time from work so that hecan be at home to let him in the house. WIth the cats, we don't automatically keep the doors unlocked....even though we know our repair people very well, I worry about the cats getting out. And well, let's face it....our world is not as safe as it used to be, so I'd worry about that as well. We figured that three hours of vacation time would be better than worrying about the cats and the house all day.

When we had a plumbing issue in the basement, we kept the outside basement door unlocked, but we locked the door to the upstairs. Again, it's not that we don't trust our repair people.....we just worry about the cats getting out.

So....my question to you is: When you need a repair person to come into your house to work on something, how do you deal with it? Do you stay home (take vacation or time off work)? Do you keep the door locked, but put an outside key some where? Or do you simply keep your door unlocked for the person to come inside? How do you deal with home repairs when you can't fix the problem and you work during the day?

Later this morning repairmen are coming to put in our new Dishwasher,(it died a couple of weeks ago), and to do some other stuff, the only one I have to worry about is Casey, so I'll lock him up in my room. The other three are too timid to go anywhere near a repairman or an open door, and yes, I'll be home.

I'm lucky l work 5 minutes from home and l only work until 2.p.m, so usually they come after that. But if it was work that could only be done in the morning l work for my friends so they would let me go home for whatever time l had to be there for.

Where the cats are concerned l must be there so l can have them safely in another room just incase the door gets opened

Sine I don't work, I am usually the one home to deal with these things. On some days Aaron has the option to work from home. If I don't feel comfortable being alone with a particular person or if it something extremely technical that I think it would be best for him to keep an eye on, he will stay home to oversee. I think the last time he was home for something like that was a little over a year ago when we had the wood stove installed. That was a fairly involved process and I was glad to have him home to answer some of their questions.

I live in a garden apartment, and maintenence has the key to get in. Normally I don't care if they enter.. I know them well and trust them, but I worry they'd leave the door open and the cats would run out. They know I have cats, but I still worry. I try to set up a time frame for them for when I am home for lunch or as them to come in on saturday morning.

Neither one of us has a regular "9 to 5" job on weekdays only, so usually we can arrange for repairs or big deliveries to be made when one of us can be home. Jamie is locked in the living room or bedroom at such times regardless of who's home.

WELL... Larry - my DH - is usually able to repair almost anything that goes wrong in the house - he is very handy :lol3:. BUT if we need someone to come over for a repair - I am always home and let them in. :nod:

DH or I have always taken time off of work.  Now I'm home so it's not as big of an issue; which I like better.  But I still actually prefer it if DH can be home to talk to the repair person himself if it's something he is more familiar with. 

You don't trust anyone around here so one of us is home when this happens.

Usually leave the surveillance to my FIL or my mother....if I can´t do it by my own.... sometimes the guys came in saturday, so usually I´m at home...

We still rent, so if there is anything we can't fix we give the landlord a call. We're usually both at work during the day, so the landlord just comes by and lets them in and lets them out. We get notice before they come in, so I can hide my valuables (not that I really have any lol) and whatnot 

Since we're both retired we don't have that problem anymore.  But when we were working, I would try to give the repair person my office phone number (it was only around 12 miles from home) and give me 30 minutes notice so that I could get home to meet him.     Or we'd try to arrange for the last appointment of the day so that one of us could manage to get home to meet them.    It really is a pain and not all repairmen work on Saturdays.