That Is Our Choices!

Above: from the town's official newsletter

Pardon that I'm breathless, weak in the knees, I am so relieved. I fixed the dishwasher. It has taken all month. Please understand that the Divine kitchen sink -- a single sink -- is an inch too narrow to hold a nine-inch dinner plate. I'm not exaggerating. There is no space for a rack or drainboard. The dishwasher solves this. Otherwise I do dishes by washing and immediately rinsing, drying, and storing each piece before I can wash another; or do them outside.

After installing first a new latch and then a new motherboard and the dishwasher still wouldn't start, I put off and put off installing the third new part after it arrived. I couldn't face failure, nor $125 for an appliance-repairman housecall (that doesn't include labor and parts) after the $207 already spent on new parts; or a sickening $750 for a new dishwasher. Buying a used model would need a truck and friends to haul the used one in and haul the fritzed one away -- to where?

Fed up with being responsible for everything, absolutely everything, with yet more snakes wriggling out of my fireplace (!), I cried while unboxing the third new part and facing the screws and wires and pressure of high-stakes better-do-it-right -- without knowing how! Why not just call a repair place?! I almost did.

Yet if I installed the part and the machine didn't work, I'd be no worse off than I was. I gave it one last shot. It worked. The stress in my body released all at once. Shaking, I carefully placed a single dish inside, and sat next to it reading a book for two hours as it cycled, in case it flooded (flooded the new kitchen flooring and all the related, detailed wood-filler, paint and caulking?! I would die!) or exploded, etc. Works great.

I had promised myself ice cream if I repaired it. Actually, I promised myself fine pearl earrings but that money went for replacement parts. I was, and remain, too spent to go get ice cream. And so ends the month of Clean It Up, Fix It Up, Paint It Up -- the City of Pacific's motto. That is our choices!

DIYing is an Art, Like Everything Else

I lowered the Maytag's top onto an exercise mat, sliced into the dishwasher's bottom which is mere cardboard covered with foil, and used my voltage meter seeking weak electrical links. Taped it up when I found nothing wrong. Then it remained to lift the dishwasher upright. Tried and couldn't. (100 pounds? 150 pounds?) I wondered who I might call and what I should pay them, and imagined the gossip they would spread. Disheartened, I left it this way for four days.

The fifth day, after morning coffee, like Popeye on spinach I righted the dishwasher on the first try, a miracle. Then with a star-nosed screwdriver I removed the inside of its door, exposing wires both live and dead. Online forums and YouTube videos recommended a new latch, $12, as a first step toward repair. This didn't fix it, and God arranged a minor electrical shock to further humble me. Second-tier solution: a new $125 motherboard. While waiting for its delivery I dismantled and cleaned the machine's interior, down to its motor. Reassembly left me with two extra screws. I knew this was not right. Cue up the circus music, because I had installed a part upside down. Five or six days passed before I summoned the heart to undo and fix it.

A 1990s course called "How to Build a Computer" taught me it is insanely easy and no parts inside electronics are fragile, so replacing a motherboard does not scare me, plus YouTube demonstrations showed repairs on machines similar to mine. Installed the new motherboard. Now all the wires were hot. Still the dishwasher wouldn't start.

Online fix-it forums revealed arcane knowledge about secret codes for resetting dishwasher programming. Tried all of these codes. Glory be, three of the green LED lights lit up. Much heartened, I pressed the dishwasher's Start button but in vain. YouTube sages indicated a possibly malfunctioning touchpad. Paid $72 and the new touchpad is on its way.

Wouldn't it be nice if that fixed it? A new dishwasher is $750. I have learned a lot. A lot.

What's the Most Bourgeois Thing You Own?

This question came up in conversation: "What's the most bourgeois thing you own?"

I said, "Let me go on vacation for five days and think about it," and flew off and upon my return nominated among all my bourgeois items, which include a fanny pack, a terracotta garlic keeper, and one Coach handbag, my portable Maytag dishwasher I was not quite bourgeois enough to have disassembled and cleaned at a cost of $85 for a housecall plus $85 per hour, when I thought I could and oughta do it myself.

 I laid all the pieces out exploded-like.

Unskilled and unsmart, I took a plumbing wrench to the plastic screw that holds down the entire wash assembly, and immediately stripped it -- it was soft, like clay! Unable to proceed, with shame I called the Maytag repair place and said, "My Maytag portable dishwasher leaves particles on the dishes and I have very hard water. I think it needs to be cleaned out."

The holy of holies, clean.

"Aww," said the woman who answered the phone, "just buy a bottle of C.L.R. and pour in a cup and run through the cycle three or four times." Without telling her I had stripped the screw, I said I thought I needed more help than that and asked to talk to the repair person, who jeered and tried to put me off by saying it cost $85 just for him to come to the house and C.L.R. was all I needed. That's country service for you.

Caustic C.L.R. (Calcium Lime Rust) did not fix the worsening problem. Every two months or so I watched You Tubes about dishwasher repair. I showed a friend the stripped screw and he managed to undo it, and today I took the whole assembly apart, unscrewing layer by plastic layer, scrubbing their calcium deposits into the slop sink with a toothbrush. The nitty gritty was guck caught in the fine filter at the very bottom. By sheer luck I wiggled its retainer loose and cleaned and reassembled the whole thing, and now it purrs like a kitten.

What will I do with my saved $85? Get a gel manicure and an Internet signal booster.