Basically, daddy is in charge of the house's maintenance as:
(1) He has more money than I do.
(2) He is the head of the house.
The first one is ----> our washing machine:
According to daddy, this washing machine of ours has been standing where it belongs for at least the past 15 years. It was still working fine until few months ago when the machine began to show some old signs of 'aging'. It was spinning slowly, the laundry was not dried, the water did not drained by itself, the timer was not working, water overloading the level it should be and etc. So, I gave up on using the washing machine and I did the laundry myself with my own bare hands. I was practically hand washing the laundry for at least 2 months and the difficult part was when I need to wash the bedsheets.
Anyway, if I wanted, I could have easily sent the bedsheets to the laundry shop. But since I can still managed to do it myself, why should I waste $$$ on laundry outside. Alright, maybe just a bit of nagging and complaining while I washed the bedsheets because hey!, it was really hard to wash such big spread of cloth, not to mention one but a few bedsheets at a time. And twisting it dry as well.
Daddy put in some effort also and patience a lot, no denying. He went through internet research to actually find out what was wrong with the machine. The result of his research was, the machine was clogged, hence it can't functioned properly. Nothing to do with the motor nor the electronic plate. We just need to drain out the dirt that was clogging in the tubes of the machine.
And another, our washing machine is the front load type and seeing the rubber door casket so dirty, daddy dismantled it to wash. But after dismantling it, he can't fixed it back! The rubber can't be installed back where it belongs even with the help of several human powers (mum, dad and bro) pulling, pressing and fixing the rubber together at the same time. One obvious reason, the rubber was old and has loosen its elasticity.
So, off we hunted for a new rubber door casket replacement and it took like several weeks before we finally managed to get a new one! Ok...the several weeks delay was because I had to call in to the ELBA spare part outlet to check, but I kept on delaying, no time, not free....bla bla bla...
So, eventually I made the call finally and found out that the spare part rubber door casket was available for RM66. The problem was we need to get it from the outlet and this outlet was actually located in Kepong. Considering the distance, we decided to give another try at a nearby electrical shop to see whether the shop does sell spare parts apart from electrical appliances. Lucky us! We managed to get the same spare part but at a higher price of RM85. Daddy said it was ok because the RM 20 difference can be calculated as the petrol and time wasted for us to go all the way to Kepong.
And it was pretty easy fixing a brand new rubber door casket and daddy did it alone himself this time with no help at all to press the rubber side by side or whatever. So, it was the rubber's elasticity problem because we had so many attempts with the old one and failed miserably.
Daddy unclogged the dirt, fixed the rubber door and tested the machine few times after that. Trial runs were successful! Our washing machine is all healthy again! Daddy even painted it.
Looks brand new after paint. Daddy said no point throwing it away when he was 100% sure he can fixed it. And also, because he knew the problem was not associated with the motor or electrical plate. If it was, it's definitely harder to fix. There goes, I salute his patience because if I'm the one willing to fork out money, I would have bought a new one considering this was rather old and not performing already after more than 10 years of service to the household.
Anyway, it is functioning well now just like it's brand new. I'm so glad as I need no longer be part time Filipino maid washing away the laundry. Hehehe.....hope this machine stays with us!
The second one is ----> our staircase:
Our wooden parquet staircase was plagued with termites and we only found out about it recently, a few months back when we noticed the differences on the surface of the parquets. Rather headache at first because we need to do something about it and we knew that that something could be very costly because it involves professional services. We nearly engaged those termites/pest buster! And it could meant fees like RM2-3k easily for a treatment. After listening to explanations and advises from the professionals, we decided to install the bait ourselves because coincidentally daddy stumbled upon a website that sells termite bait for USD 26 per box.
We ordered 3 boxes and installed 2 boxes at the staircase. We hope it will worked because basically the bait functions as the termite's food. The worker termites will feed on it and brings the poison back to the nest for the rest of the colony. After nearly 3 weeks, we noticed that there were still obvious differences to the damage of the wooden parquets before and after installing the baits. So, there could be only one reason. The termites were obviously not feeding on the baits! The baits were not working and the termites were still feeding on the wooden parquets, that's why the damages continued to worsen.
Our guessing was correct! The termites were still roaming around, leaving the baits untouched! So, we did one final step......to dismantle the infected wooden stairs on our own. Basically, it's daddy's hardwork because he worked on the stairs all by his own. I don't know how to help because it's a man's job but anyway I did help on the cleaning and tidying. He dug out all the wooden planks and the view of the damages by the termites were really disgusting. On the process of digging the wooden planks, we had to have an insecticide on stand-by because every time you dug a piece of wooden plank, there were lots of termites crawling underneath! Yucks!!
After digging the wooden planks, which was the hardest part, daddy put cement as the second step. Hopefully, by disconnecting the termites pathway to their underground nest, we will be able to control the whole situation from getting worse.
After laying cement.We just need to paint it as the final step and so far, daddy had already done that half-way last Saturday. A little bit more to go and our new steps will be ready in no time!
Painted the stairs in 'honey' colour. Should have chosen a darker shade.Bravo to daddy for all the hard work done!
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