Our Fridge Died, and We Couldn’t Get It Out of Our Motorhome!
It wouldn’t fit through the door, and we had to take out the driver’s side window.
13 months ago, my husband and I left our California home and birth state in our motorhome’s rearview window. We officially became full-time RVers. It wasn’t that hard of a transition for us. We’d crossed the country three times by then and knew we were ready to give up our brick-and-mortar home for a one on wheels. It didn’t actually have brick, but you get the gist of it.
There are a lot of pluses to the lifestyle. No mortgage is a big one. The property taxes and fire insurance in California for our house were staggering. We are thrilled to be free of that burden.
Seeing the United States in our traveling house has been great. We have met so many wonderful people and had many fabulous adventures. RVers are great people. We have made lifetime friends that we can visit all over America. We’ve seen 26 states on this particular journey.
There are some minuses to being on the road full-time. Many of them revolve around self-care. Making doctor, dentist, veterinarian, and eye doctor appointments is a real pain in the backside. I was thrilled to finally get an appointment last week to have my hair trimmed and get a pedicure and a manicure. It had been well over a year since my hair was cut, and my paws and claws looked pretty brutal.
Dealing with repairs when your rig is your home brings extra challenges. The RV Industry has been a mess because of COVID. Between being unable to get parts from overseas manufacturers and not having enough employees, dealers are backed up on repairs for months. When we were at Lazy Day’s trading in our Fleetwood Discovery for our Entegra Anthem, we met couples that had been there for months waiting on parts. 🤦♀️
This brings me to our own refrigerator problem. When it died, it took two days to get a mobile repairman out to look at it. He didn’t offer much hope when we described our issue over the phone and told him it was a Samsung. He looked up our error codes and made an appointment to come to the RV park and see what he could do.
Anthony from Patriot Appliance Repair in Bangor, Maine, was fantastic! He found a burned-out computer board, I’ll call it that. I don’t know its official name. He ordered a replacement and hoped it could be overnighted to him. It showed up in two days, and Anthony installed it right away. The fridge still didn’t work. He said it would need a new compressor, which may not even work, and suggested we get a new fridge. 😣
Getting the broken refrigerator out of the motorhome and a new one in was not something we could do on our own. I called the local dealer, Webb RV, and they said they were booked until October. Before I started to cry, the man on the phone told me they had an employee who worked after hours for people and asked if I wanted to give him my number. I didn’t hesitate.
To make a long story short, the Webb RV employee, Chris, wound up being the answer to a prayer. He came to the campground that night when he finished work and measured to see if we could get the fridge out of the door. That was a big NO. I’d heard stories of people having to take out their front windshield to get an appliance out, and I was distraught. 😨
Chris measured Tommy’s driver’s side window and said he could get the old fridge out and the new one in through it. He would be off on Saturday and talked about bringing a few guys to help. Tommy told Chris that he didn’t think he’d be of much help, but he was wrong. My husband did so much preparation that Chris only needed one helper, and he cut his estimated price in half. They finished everything in a few hours, and I was amazed and pleased.
I’m fighting with the warranty company now, and that’s a long tale that I will write about when I have the check from the company in my hand. It could take a while.
Speaking of long hauls, this post has gone on long enough. I wanted to share this story with my pals who have been asking about the situation and enlighten anyone thinking about taking to the road on a long-term basis. There are challenges that people don’t think about. Thanks for taking the time to read my story.
If you’d like to read more about the RV lifestyle you can check out these posts.
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