Going for the Gold

We have a new dishwasher! It's our second major appliance purchase of our marriage, the first being the clothes washer and dryer we bought in 1997 to replace those we lost in The Flood. (Technically, we had bought the ones that eventually got flooded, too, but replacing them just a few months later qualifies as a "wash," doesn't it? That's a pun on at least a couple levels!)

The old dishwasher's internal parts--the dish racks, their levers, the wheels--had been deteriorating for quite some time. Each time some plastic part cracked or broke off, Susan improvised with rubber bands to hold something in place, or made do without (and rolling a loaded dish rack in and out with three of its four wheels missing makes for exercise). "Someday" we would have to get a new dishwasher.

The straw that broke these camels' backs was the first weekend of February when Susan's family stayed with us to celebrate a late family Christmas. The dishwasher chose that weekend, of all weekends, to spring some inexplicable leak, and the solution was to stuff a towel under the door of the dishwasher each time we ran it. We could have called an appliance repairperson to take a look at it and charge too much to patch a machine that needed replacing anyway; but clearly it was a sign, the dishwasher reaching out to tell us to pull the plug, put it out of its misery, and to buy fresh.

So we did. Or, rather, Susan did. She found a dishwasher she liked at Lowe's: a Whirlpool Gold. Lowe's contracted Custom Aire to deliver and install it, which they did this afternoon. The installation involved a shutoff valve that didn't, water spraying all over the kitchen floor, and some post-installation mopping. However, Susan already has had the opportunity to run a load of dishes in it, and says she, "I like it. It got our dishes clean, and I would drink out of our glasses. It didn't leak. It wasn't any softer [quieter] than our old one, but it's not particularly loud. Lots of room. And I had help loading because the girls thought it was kind of novel to use the new dishwasher."

There you have it, folks--incontrovertible proof that it was a purchase well made. Next major purchase: a laptop computer. Stay tuned!