My Dishwasher Has A Soul!

Her Name is Bessie!

Alright I know this might sound weird, and maybe it is, I didn't get the title Wacky Dad for nothing.  I have been in a serious power struggle for the past few weeks with my dishwasher.  You need a little history about this dishwasher, so here goes.  As some of you know I am a contractor, and run jobs for Legacy Custom Remodeling in Rhode Island.  You have to forgive the plug, but this company has a lot of my blood, sweat, and tears in it, so I am shameless when it comes to promoting it!  Back to the story.  I was demolishing a kitchen, and a bunch of other rooms in a customer's house.  They told me to get rid of the dishwasher.  I asked why since it looked pretty new.  Apparently it didn't match the color scheme - they wanted stainless steel.  Being the scrounge that I am I saw dollar signs, and I opted to take it home and recycle it, instead of putting it in the dumpster.  It is a Kitchen-Aid, and is a pretty expensive model, and since mine was one step ahead of Fred Flintstone's dishwasher, I figured it would be a welcome upgrade.  I was right, I installed it, and it fired up and worked fine for a couple of years.  I guess around 2 years into it I had to replace some kind of over temp switch in it.  I diagnosed it online through Google, and bought the $30 switch at a local appliance repair shop.  I got another good year and a half out of it until recently my old girl started getting ornery again. I'd start a load, and come back 1/2 hour later and the clean light would be flashing - which it never does.  Again I Googled it and found a reset code online that would get the machine to run again, but much to my chagrin, I would get it to "wash" a load and then the damned thing would crap out again.  Something had to be wrong, and I was almost at the point where I thought I would have to break down and get a new one.  My wife even suggested calling an appliance repairman.  Of course she knows that this is the ultimate slap in the face to a Costantino male.  We would shoot a damned appliance guy if he showed up at the house.  If it's broken we can fix it, period!  Another day or so passed a light shined down from heaven on me and the back of a beat up old pickup truck.  It carried a precious cargo, a beat up Kitchen-Aid dishwasher!  Since I knew the guy who owned the truck, and knew that the dishwasher was destined for the scrapyard, I asked him if I could have it.  You know, everyone needs a parts dishwasher!  I took it home, and it sat for a couple of days.  I had temporarily gotten my dishwasher to work by whacking the shit out of the top panel, where I know the circuit board is installed. Eventually it crapped out again, so I woke up early the next morning and opened up the parts dishwasher and removed it's "brain" and installed it in mine.  I started it up and all systems seemed to be a go.  Unfortunately I had to get to work, so I couldn't stand next to it and listen to it run it's 90 minute cycle.  When I got home our babysitter told me that it finished it's cycle, and seemed to be working, but she seemed a little hesitant when she answered me.  In my gut I knew something was still going on with my old pal.  We ate dinner and I ran it through a cycle.  It seemed to run through fine, but when I opened it up and checked the dishes the stuff looked like it does when the dog licks them clean.  Sort of clean, but just a bit sketchy!  I tried again, and got the same results.  I came to the conclusion that I had some sort of water pressure problem - it looked like it was cleaning with dirty water.  Tonight after we got home I decided to take one more crack at the thing.  I took both dish racks out of Bessie (that is her name - yeah the dishwasher!) and started taking things apart.  I made it all the way into the bowels of the beast where I found some unnameable crap that was horrifying, but oddly beautiful to look at.  Beautiful because in my meat head heart, I knew I had found the problem!  Glass, plastic, sludge, some type of fabric, you name it, I found it!  With my head shoved up the rear end of Bessie, and my daughter Abby dutifully holding the flashlight at something close to steady, I cleaned the thing to perfection!  In a few minutes I put it back together and ran it through the long cycle with a load of dishes to really let the thing purge itself out.  It was the longest 90 minutes of my life!  I must have spent at least a half hour with my ear pasted to the door, listening to the cleaning sounds that were hidden from my view.  It sounded strong, powerful, like a young dishwasher!  The moment of truth finally came!!!  Ok wait for it....Shaaazaaam!  The dishes were all sparkling like friggin' crystal!  I mean this thing is cleaning like brand damned new!  It was like having an old friend cured from a disease.  I love that old dishwasher, and the more I work on it, and the more it performs for me, the more I like it.  I'm what I would call a born mechanic, I have worked on and fixed crap my whole life.  When you own a machine and put your heart and soul into it, they seem to take on a life of their own.  They become like family, sometimes they can be a pain in the ass, but you still love them for what they do and who they are.  I swear that old dishwasher of mine has a soul, and tonight she is doing her duty as finely as any fancy new dishwasher out there!  Nice job Bessie!

Love,

Wacky Dad