The Long Cut ...we'll get there eventually: Plumb Crazy

We are coming off a big home improvement spree this weekend. Ever since writing out all the things that need to get replaced/repaired at home, I've been eager to start crossing the items off.

Saturday I picked up the dishwasher I ordered at Sears and went about installing it. This is the third dishwasher we have purchased (the second for this house) and the first that I would attempt to install. The "old" dishwasher was only five years old, but it never ever worked well. We learned the hard way that paying a little more for a quality product more than pays for itself in the long run. Never again will we buy an appliance on price alone, or without consulting Consumer Reports first.

Living in an old house means never knowing what you will find when you pull an appliance out. In addition to seeing some ancient God-awful wallpaper, when I pulled out the old dishwasher I discovered that it was attached to the supply line by a copper pipe that had been bent about six times (a big no-no). So before I could even start the installation I had to cut back the pipe and put in a compression fitting to accept a flexible hose. Gee, that makes me sound like I knew what I was doing!

Every connection for a dishwasher is stored underneath it, which means you've got about a three inch space to work in. You somehow have to tighten a bolt with a wrench that is two-and-a-half inches at its head. So everything goes s-l-o-w-l-y. Tighten, remove, tighten, remove. When your done that you go over to the electrical section and scrape your hands up trying twist the wires together. When your all done you cross your fingers, close your eyes, and turn the circuit back on hoping the poorly connected plumbing doesn't leak so bad that it shorts out the poorly wired electrical section and cause your house to get blow'd up. But it worked (!) and the new dishwasher is so friggin' awesome.

I was so full of myself that the next day I decided to install a new faucet in the bathroom (something that wasn't even on my original to-do list). Our old one was falling apart and leaking. For this project I even had the "help" of the seven-year old. I won't bore you again with another plumbing story but, as the photo above shows, we were successful. It took a hacksaw to get the old faucet off, but everything worked out. Thank God you can sand scratches out of Corian.

I now understand why plumbers charge what they do for their work. Not that I'll ever need to use one again.