When it comes to compensation for his work repairing KitchenAids, Brett Stern has a unique perspective.
“I get paid in balloons, pies, cookies…” he tells Portland Repair Finder during our visit to his workspace in Northwest Portland. “It’s a pretty sweet deal.”
We first met Brett at a Repair PDX repair cafe event, where he gave us his holographic business card and introduced himself as a KitchenAid repair specialist. Intrigued, we followed up, and found ourselves in a small, spare workspace with a table, a toolbox, and a wall of mounted boxes filled with mechanical bits and bobs.
“My world has always been inventing things and making things and riding my bike,” Brett tells us by way of introduction. Today an industrial designer by trade, he was the type of kid who was always dismantling small appliances, fixing what he could and squirreling away interesting parts from what he couldn’t.
At one point, he gestures toward his organized wall of parts and pieces. “I could say that my world could fit into a 5X7 storage locker – because it has – twice – but I probably still have some nuts and washers that I’ve had since childhood.”
A vintage screw collection
“I’ve learned these sorts of mechanical principles – levers and gravity and centrifugal force. I’ve been taking things apart and fixing them forever. Fixing something is no different to me than making something or designing something or inventing something.”
For someone who has been taking-apart and putting-back-together all his life, Brett finds it natural to pipe up when someone he knows needs something fixed. A neighbor, for example, or a friend. Or, on one occasion, the woman working the balloon counter at Lippman Company – a local (and amazing) party supply store.
“I go to Lippman’s Party Supply from time to time to buy balloons,” Brett tells us, casually, like someone else might say “Every once in a while, I go to the grocery store for milk.”
“For example,” he continues, “every year at the Naked Bike Ride, I cover my bike in balloons and give them away.”
Of course. As one does.
One particular visit to Lippman’s, as Brett was standing at the balloon counter, an employee came up with a balloon-filling tank that he proclaimed broken, and further proclaimed his intent to throw away. The woman working protested, saying it was expensive. The balloon-filling tank sat awkwardly on the counter in a state of limbo – non-functional, with no clear path forward.
Enter Brett. If I fix it, he asked, can I get some balloons?
Brett biked the broken canister home, opened it up – taking note of where each screw went – and found the issue to simply be some dirt that had made its way inside. He cleaned it up, put it back together, and biked back down to Lippman Co.
He was paid in 200 balloons.
Thrilled at a balloon bargain. Photo by Mark Graves for OregonLive, 2018
Brett has volunteered at repair cafes in Portland since their outset – which is where he met his first KitchenAid. Now, he says, if anyone brings one to a repair cafe event, the volunteer who checks them in immediately yells, “Brett!”
“And I’ll take a look at it,” he says. “If I can’t get to it that day, I tell people, ‘here’s my card, I can’t do this now, but I will fix it.’ And for the same price we charge for everything at repair cafes, which is free. Sometimes if people are nice, they’ll bake me a pie or something as a thank you.”
For Brett, someone who already has a career that supports him, the meaning of repairing KitchenAids exists in a separate realm of concern than money. He is “leery of putting [his] shingle out as a KitchenAid repairman.”
“Because once you do that,” he says, “there’s liability involved.”
Also, he points out, there’s the question of what to charge. As an industrial designer, he bills at $150 an hour, which he knows no one is going to pay him to fix a kitchen appliance.
“So in that sense, it’s not really worth my time,” he explains. “But it’s worth my time to fix this thing, and have someone bake me a pie. It’s easier. And it’s community.”
Brett does use his specialized skillset to buy old KitchenAids from Goodwills or yard sales – “I’m looking for them to be broken” – in order to repair and re-sell them, as-is, on Craigslist. He tells everyone who buys a refurbished KitchenAid from him to call him if anything doesn’t work correctly. So far, no one’s called.
The dismantling begins.
As with the balloon-filler, Brett explains, most KitchenAids just require some cleaning. Years of pulverized flour, sugar, and eggs can gunk up and slow down the insides. Although it may seem simple, he realizes that not everyone has his perspective to know how to take apart a machine or see how easy a fix can be.
“With proper maintenance,” Brett says, matter of factly, “there’s no reason these things shouldn’t keep going forever and ever.”