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| 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
