Over the past week I’ve had 2 fun little fixes around the house. Just yesterday my very old, but also very awesome Maytag combo washer/dryer stopped working.
Looking up the model number, I’m pretty sure it’s from 2003? Which is pretty crazy, but it really does such a solid job that I’d rather not replace it until it’s absolutely necessary. I know this makes me sound like an old man, but they really don’t make appliances as dependable as they used to.
So, the dryer wasn’t powering up. God bless the internet and all its wisdom, it suggested I check to see if the power tripped, the door switch or a thermal fuse.
I started with the the circuit breaker since that was the simplest for me. All seemed fine there, but I turned it off and on just to give it a shot. No difference.
Next I looked into the door switch. Reading up on it a bit more, it seems like that can be a fairly common issue. I read up on how to replace the part, where to order it and all that good stuff. When I went to test it out, I was in luck (for a change). Just pushing it in all the way and letting pop back out a few times seemed to do the job!
Not 100% sure if it was a little stuck or if something got a bit loose where it’s connected, but I think I might be able to squeak a bit more time out of this fine, reliable appliance!
My other fix was my dishwasher racks. Sadly I didn’t take before and after photos, but both the top and bottom dish racks were getting quite a bit of rust on them. One tine had snapped off from so much rust a few months back, and it looked like a few more were on their way to joint it.
When I looked up the cost of replacing the racks, it wasn’t crazy expensive, but close enough to think about just replacing it altogether.
Doing a bit more research I noticed that its possible to sand of any rust and paint the exposed metal parts of the rack with some special paint that protects the metal and matches the current look of the rack.
I went with UberGoop, and ordered it off of Amazon. It came in a little nail polish looking bottle and also some vinyl caps that could be used to fix tops of the tines that were rusting (though my rust was mostly towards the bottom of the racks).
I had some sandpaper around the house that I used to sand down the racks. I probably could’ve used a Dremel too, but I like the accuracy I get using my hands when I can do it. Once sanded down it was really just applying 2-3 coats of the paint at that point.
I did wear a disposable glove and made sure to keep a finger on the bottle when not dipping into it, to keep it from drying up. Apparently this paint drys very fast!
It dried to a fairly rubbery texture, similar to the texture of the coating on the rack. Honestly, it was very hard to even notice where I applied paint, their light gray color was a perfect match to the rack.
Where I had a lot of damage, I did cut the top of a vinyl cap so there was no cap, and cut the other end so that I could slide it over the tine and the base of the rack. I applied some paint before sliding it on the tine snugly, and also applied some paint where the cut up cap met the tine, to attempt to seal it up for future water. I think it did add a bit more extra support to the really rusted bottoms, but I’ll have to wait and see how it holds up.
All in all, glad I was able to come with 2 fixes that seemed to work without being too duct taped looking.