Since 1997, HomeTips has guided millions of homeowners with original, expert advice for DIY home improvement and repair. Founder Don Vandervort, a nationally recognized authority, has written more than 30 books and countless magazine articles, been a host on HGTV, and served as MSN's home improvement expert. MORE
My mom lives with us, and her TV had turned into a thin red line. She started watching just the line and listening to the news and her shows instead of watching. This just seemed too sad during the holidays so we decided to take her TV in to get fixed, even though buying a new TV would’ve been cheaper than having it fixed.
We lugged the thing off her shelf. Holding the TV was like carrying a dead moose in a two ton suitcase, and just as bulky. After wrestling it into the car and dropping it at the TV fixit guy’s place (let’s just call him Scandalously Overpriced), we came home. That night it seemed like every electrical appliance we owned decided to go the way of the TV. In protest, one by one, they were all breaking. The toaster oven decided its new setting was Burn Everything. The VCR in the bedroom kept spitting out every tape we stuck in like it had suddenly gotten taste in movies. The VCR in the living room (one of those dual DVD/VHS things, the hybrid car of video) decided the DVD we stuck in there was never going to come out again. We could not get the thing to open, and when it finally did open, the disc was magically gone. Still hiding inside. We had to take a screwdriver to remove the whole top panel, and there was the DVD just hanging out in there, looking innocent, smoking a cigarette.
I don’t like going inside electronic equipment. There is a reason there’s a guy in a dank little office in Burbank who spends his life squinting into the netherworld of dark spaces and charging me up the wazoo for fiddling with those green plates that have shiny metal dots. I know what I’m good at. Breaking things.
