A Roseville appliance repair company named for a Minnesota stone

The name comes from the Lake Superior agate, Minnesota’s state gemstone. It is a banded stone, red and orange in rings, and the glaciers that scraped across this state carried agates far from the big lake and scattered them through gravel across much of Minnesota. People still find them in places that seem to have nothing to do with Lake Superior, which is part of their charm. We liked the idea of something plain and local that turns up where you least expect it and holds up for a very long time. That is roughly what we hope a repair can be: a dryer, washer or refrigerator that keeps working long after you stopped thinking about it. We are an appliance company, not a rock shop, so that is about as far as the metaphor goes.

We are independent and we only work in the home. A text gives you the two-hour arrival slot. The technician starts by asking about the noise, the smell, the error code or the load it quit on, then brings out the meter, because readings beat hunches. The bad part gets a plain name instead of a model number, and the job gets one price in writing. Your yes puts the $89 inside that price; your no keeps the total at $89 flat. Since the truck stocks what these machines wear out, many jobs close that same afternoon. When a part is missing we order it, and that second drive over is never billed. We run a full cycle, sweep up and write the warranty onto the invoice. A machine past saving gets called exactly that.

We are based in Roseville and work across St. Paul and the Ramsey County cities around it: Maplewood, Shoreview, New Brighton, Arden Hills, Little Canada, Vadnais Heights, White Bear Lake, Falcon Heights, North St. Paul and Mounds View. That is a mix of old duplexes and foursquares near Como Lake, postwar ramblers along Larpenteur Avenue and wooded split-levels by Snail Lake, and the machines in them live different lives. The list stays at six. Refrigerators and freezers lead it, the garage spare and basement chest included, plus whatever ice maker came built into them. Washers of either loading style and gas or electric dryers follow, then dishwashers, then the cooking side: wall ovens, ranges, induction and glass cooktops. Keeping the list short lets the truck carry the inlet valves, drain pumps, igniters and defrost heaters these homes go through.