Lucky us. Apparently as we slid in the basket with a knife in it, a blade slashed the gasket—only thing we can figure, since only we have ever used it or had access to it. Apparently it leaks slightly on the right side, but runs down the ell in the door bottom to finally drip out on the left side…
And we did so much dish-washing with Christmas cooking, we had a leaky dishwasher door, the leaky dishwasher connection involving the garbage disposal, the leaky sink drain involved with the same connection, and a leaking pet watering bowl. It’s a wonder we didn’t flood the house.
We have now met with a workman who will install the tile and do our counter and build a little sofit to stand the lights off above the mirror.We are going to buy the tile ourselves and let this guy do it—which saves a little over what the shop would have charged.
Jane has spent the day in the attic installing a ventilation fan: I have spent the day in the bathroom handing her things through the ceiling.
Did I mention our lovely insurance won’t handle the kitchen floor situation without a 25% increase for 3 years in our insurance cost? So we have a screwed-up kitchen floor. They say it can take a week or so to really dry, so maybe it will flatten some more. The kitchen floor is going to have to wait. We’ll do that installation ourselves, and that’s behind our other problems.
And the dishwasher screwed up the washing of the last load and didn’t drain properly, so we now have to wonder if there’s another problem…
*shakes head* When things go pear shaped, they really do, don’t they? Lazarus Long had it right regarding Murphy!
My dishwasher went on strike after going out of warranty. I think it’s an electrical problem, possibly within the unit, but I don’t know, and don’t feel like paying another large amount to find out just now. So I’m doing hand dishwashing, with a dishwasher in the house. Sigh.
My master bathroom’s tub drainage problem, inherited from the previous owner, requires a major overhaul to fix: yank out the tub (therefore yank out the wall tile and flooring), see how badly screwed up the piping below the tub really is, repair/replace whatever’s needed, put back the tub, redo the tile and floor. Essentially, completely remodel the master bathroom. Several thousand dollars when I priced it a couple of years ago. (If it were simply tiling the floor, I might attempt that myself, but I want it watertight and professionally done. Plumbling? Hahaha.) — So, I have been using the guest bathroom (which is actually bigger and nicer) but is on the opposite side of the house. Sigh.
Can the plumbing in question be accessed from underneath? Because holes in ceilings are easier to deal with than ripping out the entire tub.
Oh my, you are having a bad start to the year. Are you trying to get it all out of the way early on? Bad luck with the dishwasher. I’m always wondering how long my dishwasher will last. It was my parent’s originally and must now be over 15 years old.
As for insurance companies – meh. Always so willing to take your money, different matter when you actually need them to pay out of course.
Aaahh … dishwashers. The timer on ours is erratic and occasionally sticks somewhere in the dry cycle. We have to watch it so it doesn’t burn up. And if it looks like it is going to stick we just advance it a little and it then goes to the end of cycle.
Well there’s your problem; don’t put knives in the dishwasher. That is one thing that I always hand wash. I have a vague feeling that the dishwasher ruins the edge.
But seriously, I wish you luck with the plumbing. I am resolved to call a plumber for most anything. I have flooded the house twice trying to be handy. The last time I needed a plumber and an electrician to right my wrong.
Dang… as previously noted, this year isn’t off to an auspicious beginning for you all! But perhaps then, you *are* just getting it all out of the way early! *keeps fingers crossed* 🙂
Perhaps I’ll do EFT for your dishwasher and floor! Even if it helps a little, then it’s worth it, eh?
And yah, insurance is the biggest scam since ‘religion’ (sorry but that’s how I see it). At least for the insurance, you may actually get something for your money, however measly it may be.
Anyway, good luck and I’ll also send some positive energy your way to give you a lift thru all this.
THis dishwasher is a 2 year old GE, from Lowes. And I’m about ready to head for customer service and have a fit.
Jane’s half frozen: she’s been in the attic for hours. She wants to finish the wiring today—so that we have a bathroom light.
Did you buy the
vigextended warranty? Major appliances these days seem to have a wimpy warranty, unless you pay extra for the store warranty. Otherwise, you are twisting in the wind after about 3 months, when your expensive refrigerator/washer/chest freezer conks out.I don’t think we did on the dishwasher: we had to get a washer and drier about the same time, and I’ve got all kinds of paperwork on them—but I can’t find a thing on the dishwasher…wouldn’t you know?
I believe the only dishwashers worth owning are Bosch. Any problems my girlfriend’s has are installation related. The dishwasher itself just works day in and day out and it was a used on when we got it.
I will never buy anything but Bosch.
Phil Brown
Well under UK law (irrelevant I know 🙂 ) you’d probably still have a case. Appliances here have to last a reasonable amount of time. Defining ‘reasonable’ is the trick of course but I think failing after two years would fit. I’m pretty sure you could get it repaired for free but might have to get an engineer’s report. There’s a tendency here for retailers to mutter about ’12 month warranty’ as if to suggest 12 months is the cut off point. You lose the right to a full refund or replace after ‘a short time (couple weeks)’ but the only other change is that after six months you have to prove it’s a fault rather then them having to prove it isn’t.
Certainly worth discussing – if the retailer doesn’t play ball I’d write a polite letter to GE. Address it to someone as high up in that division as you can. Point out you’re an international celebrity 😀
Oh right, anruec, CJ could do the “bard” thing and ridicule GE in a book! That would teach them to dis her.
The Whilpool Gold 2300 is a Consumer Reports best buy, it’s about $500, and available at Lowes. The Bosch is one of their “recommended models, but not counted as a “best buy”. Just saying…..
The Age of Aquarius … with leaky buckets!
To deflect the conversation a bit from erupting dishwasher thoughts to a happier topic, or perhaps better put, “to a topic that puts our current problems in more perspective:” Yesterday friends and I went to the “A Day in Pompeii” exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science, which was superb! They had lots of Pompeian (adj?) frescos with astoundingly bright colors, some fun porn oil lamps (a walking phallus stamped on one), a small bronze of a monkey in a gladiator outfit (I guess the the Romans found anthropomorphizing monkeys irresistable too), cooking equipment, loaded dice, etc. The exhibit had a lot of artefacts, videos, reconstructions of gardens (I want a Pompeian smallish villa and its gardens: the Mediterranean climate would be useful too, mind you).
On the more serious, humane side: they also had some of the plaster casts of people and animals bodies in their death throws. Having spent 10 years doing archaeological and anthropological museum work, I have some North American qualms about displaying human remains (technically, these would be fossils like dinosaur tracks are) but the exhibit of them was handled pretty sensitively and my, how seeing them in person really brought home the tragedy of the loss of life (it was a big relief to discover that most of the population in Pompeii didn’t die, that we know of at least). Many of us were close to or in tears in my party of 7 visiting the exhibit.
I used to fantasize as a child that a volcano like Vesuvius would erupt outside my bedroom window (while I was away) and preserve my room for future archaeologists to find and be amazed at my collection of archaeology books. After seeing the graphic video renditions yesterday of the timing of the various phases of the eruption and the final, overwhelming wave of heated ash that swept through the town, I formally renounce my fantasy.
Unfortunately for those in the New England area, tickets for the exhibit are fully sold out through its run, but it is coming to the Cincinnati Museum Center in March-August and Denver Museum of Nature and Science Sept. through January. Really, really worth seeing if you are anywhere nearby (the way Boston set it up at least: you can avoid the plaster casts and simply look at the copious archaeological artefacts, if you wish).
I’ve been in Pompeii—there are many you never see unless you go there: the one that haunts me are the men trapped in the bathhouse—they may have gone there for shelter. But I fear very many didn’t get away. They had decades of warning, clouds erupting from the mountain, earthquakes, but they learned to ‘take them in stride.’ Some ran; an appeal went out to the Roman navy to pick others up at the shore, and there was some evacuation there—but those who waited at the boathouses at Herculaneum didn’t get picked up—the admiral (Pliny), who’d stopped in the exhausting work (he was over 70) to take dinner at a neighboring estate, and then got sleepy and wanted to take a nap—gas was already infusing the area, and when everyone began to fall asleep they realized something was direly wrong and began to leave. He collapsed. The slaves accompanying him never were found, and possibly were among those who died, if they ran the wrong way; but they didn’t get caught by the pyroclastic flow that came down: when Pliny was found among others, he was said to look as if he were sleeping. His relative, young Pliny, is the one who wrote the account.
Rest assured about the casts: the Romans would be pleased and touched. They made death masks of the departed for viewing, for all time; they built their tombs on roads just outside the wall, providing benches for tired travelers to have lunch, and read the biographical inscriptions…they LIKED company, and would be very glad to be preserved and to leave a ‘memoria’ and ‘exemplum’ among the living. Just have a sandwich, get to know them, and think kindly of them, and you’ll make a departed Roman very pleased.
I’ve been to Pompeii as well, with an art tour in my high school years. That was *mumble* years ago, and I did see the plaster casts of the trapped Pompeiians, including the poor dog. Being teens, we snickered at some of the more erotic mosaics and frescoes, and some of the statues, even though we were supposedly there to appreciate the artistic quality.
I am saddened by the fact that Pompeii, after being preserved for thousands of years, is beginning to crumble because the Italian government can’t afford to protect and preserve what has already been unearthed. Things I saw in my teens are falling apart, either because they are no longer protected from the elements, pot hunters and grave robbers, or the occasional temblor that still shakes the area. We have more warning now, but someday Vesuvius will throw another fit, and all of Naples will suffer.
Oh yes,thank you. You are right that the Romans would have been pleased to have full death casts, not even confined to death masks. That helps a bit for the emotion of the exhibit. My spouse commented afterwards that it would have been nice if those doing the casts included a coin in each for the ghosts’ fees crossing over the Styx.
Oddly enough, the exhibit never mentioned Pliny. I kept on expecting to read a quote from the Younger about the Elder.
In a marvelous piece of linguistic determinism, the Boston Museum of Science had a video intro (pretty certain they, not the Naples & Pompeii archaeologists, were responsible) which intoned “With no word for ‘volcano’ in the Latin language, the people of Pompeii were unprepared for the power of Mount Vesuvius.” A quick search in one of our Latin dictionaries revealed Mons Igneus, but one would indeed suspect that most folk in the area figured this was indeed just another of the mountain’s occassional belches, until it was too late, rather than “gosh, what is Vesuvius turning into?” ” I don’t know. I don’t think I have a word for it, so let’s just ignore it all.”
Of course they had a word for volcano: they had 4 words for volcano: Vesuvius (which was what they called it), AEtna, Strongyli (modern Stromboli) and the Phlegraean Fields, which are a caldera, and they perfectly well knew it was dangerous if you were close to it. They reported dead birds from bad air over the Phlegraean Fields (near Vesuvius)—they perfectly well understood it was bad air that got Pliny the Elder. They were far from fools; and Pliny himself, a naturalist as well as a navy man, probably realized they were in trouble and remembered those birds with a dire feeling of impending doom. They knew perfectly well volcanoes and such places exuded a ‘breath’ that was deadly.