giving the maytag repair man a run for his money

A few days ago Mike told me that the milk was warm when he took it out of the fridge. I checked and sure enough he was right. Mike adjusted the temperature and we waited, no change. The freezer was still working away so we figured the fridge was okay, but maybe in need of a minor repair. Now this sort of thing is entirely Mike's domain. I have little, if anything, to do with any kind of home repair that may be necessary. This of course were before the days when Mike had only one functioning hand.

Our amatuer diagnosis was overly dusty coils. A quick check behind the toe plate (is that what's it's called?) confirms that. I take the back panel off the fridge and we dust the hell out of the coils. We hope the problem is solved and head out for Thanksgiving dinner.

Oh I should mention, that I had been tracking the temperature in the fridge to see what exactly we were dealing with.....



Yep, how redneck is that? First the two by four security system and now this. That would be our barometer that I took down off the wall and stuck in the fridge to track any temperature changes. And there was none. Definitely the dusting we did will only help the fridge in the long run, but it did not solve the problem. Back to square one.

At one stage of his life, Mike's stepdad owned an appliance repair business. Clearly he is our go-to guy for these sorts of things, problem being we couldn't seem to track down either him or Grandma Sandi.

So I did the next best thing. I googled it and found what I thought could be the answer.



And before Mike knew what was going on I had the back panel inside the freezer off, uncovering fins that were encased with ice and not allowing any air circulation down to the fridge compartment.



A little bit of attention from my trusty hair dryer had the fridge back in working order in no time. And google tells me it will continue to work until the ice builds up again. And I am still surprised I figured it out. Although, Mike is tired of hearing about how awesome I am.