Dishwasher

I spent much of my Saturday taking out and putting in dishwashers for my mother-in-law. She was having a new dishwasher delivered, so she needed me to disconnect and remove the old one, and then put in and connect the new one. It took me about an hour to do the old one, and another three hours to do the new one.

On paper, connecting and disconnecting a dishwasher doesn’t look all that difficult. But in practice, good lord, it’s not easy. There’s only three connections to make: electricity, water coming in, water going out. I’ve actually installed a dishwasher before — our own, a couple of years ago. But I only vaguely remember anything about the operation other than it took about two hours.

I don’t even know where to start to explain exactly what took me so long this time. Connection bolts, nuts, and such just weren’t in accessible places; tubes and plugs just didn’t fit together easily; and the instruction booklet wasn’t clear or descriptive. Plus there was water leakage here and there, even though I had the water turned off and knew to handle the hoses properly so any water in them didn’t run out unexpectedly.

Unscrewing a single tube took me half an hour because it was in a difficult location under the washer and was too tight. I had to go through all kinds of hand and arm contortions to get a wrench on the bolt, then I could only turn it maybe 10 degrees at a time, and I couldn’t see the damn thing while my hands were under the machine.

But I eventually got everything done. I really don’t mind doing stuff like that for my mother-in-law. It actually feels good to show I can do something vaguely mechanical. I like being able to point at a machine and say, “I did that.” But it drives me crazy when something that sounds so easy and straight forward turns out to be so damn complicated and time consuming.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com