Home Ownership Bliss

The old dishwasher

Frantically pulling out the old dishwasher


The new dishwasher



Old Lawnboy mower on the left and new Toro on the right

Home ownership is such bliss. If it's not one thing it's another. Before you can get around to making all the home ownership purchases you envision, the things you previously purchased and checked off your list start giving out. We've been in our house almost 17 years now and many of our previous purchases are running out of steam.

A couple months ago we finally replaced our dishwasher. I had replaced a number of parts on it over the years, but it was finally time to give up on it. It was really loud and the cleaning was suspect. It was so loud that we would only run it at night or while we were gone, but one night when we started it the dishwasher sounded like an airplane taking off and that's when we decided it was probably time.

We arranged for delivery of the new dishwasher at which time they were also going to take our old one away. The problem was that we had some activity on Friday night that kept me from disconnecting the old one and then the delivery people called us very early Saturday morning to tell us that they were on their way. I frantically rushed downstairs to remove the old dishwasher and, as usual, things are never as easy as you think they're going to be.

The installation of the new dishwasher took longer than I wanted because I was irritated that the new dishwasher required a "converter" because the water inlet valve connection changed sometime in the past 17 years and the only converter I could find was sold in an overpriced kit along with a bunch of other stuff I didn't really need. I wasted a bunch of time searching for a lone connector before finally biting the bullet and using the kit - Grrrrrr.

The bright spot is that the new dishwasher is so quiet that we don't have to run it while we're asleep and we can even talk to each other while it's running. Who knew?

Last week our 17 year old lawnmower started acting up. I thought I had fixed it with a new spark plug, but it cut out again while Helen was mowing and wouldn't restart. It was a good mower, but it was time for a new one so our Friday night family entertainment became a trip to Home Depot.

Everyone was so excited about the new mower. I went out to try it and Derek and Helen quickly followed me. When it was Helen's turn and she engaged the self propel and saw how easy it was she shot me mean look. Over the years I had replaced the self propel cable on our old mower a couple times, but it's been many years since it last broke and I never fixed it. I figured it wasn't that bad and, besides, it was good exercise.