My wife and I moved into this house about a year and a half ago.  It’s a nice house, we both like it.  It’s an old house–built in 1949.  But I’ve slowly come to the realization that this house has it in for me.  I don’t know why.  My guess is that this house is either built on a Native American burial site, or else it’s one of the seven gateways to hell.  Either way, I have decided to chronicle the house’s attempts on my life and/or sanity.

Take today, for example…but first, some background.  Our dishwasher died about 6 months ago.  It was an old Whirlpool model from the early 80’s that came with the house.  We had been saving up for a new one, but hadn’t gotten around to buying one yet.  Then a friend FB’d (that’s hip, internet lingo for “Facebooked”) that she was selling her twice-used, stainless steel dishwasher for cheap (long story, if it were interesting, she’d blog about it).  Voila, I thought.

And so, quite innocuously, begins a story of mayhem, destruction, and INSANITY…

We went over to my friends’ house to checkity check this dishwasher (it’s fine).  My wife wanted to know the dimensions to make sure that it would fit where ours was.  I assured her that it would, since these things are standardized…oh how little I knew.  According to the installation instructions, the new dishwasher required at least 34 1/4 inches in height.  The space where our old dishwasher was, was only 33 1/4 inches high.  I checked that unit’s manual (thank you internet), and it claimed to need a space at least 34 1/4 inches high.  So, I thought, they both need the same amount of space; so, even though that amount of space does not exist under my counter, the new unit must fit since the old one does–it’s called “logic,” you should look into it sometime (and showering).

So, I cut out of work early one day (today) and got home at 1 o’clock in order to pull out the old dishwasher, load it into a pickup that I was borrowing, take it to the dump, go to my friends’ house, pick up the new one, install the new one.  Estimated time: 2.0 hours.

I unscrewed the unit from the top of the counter, unhooked the power, drain, and water.  All it needed now was a quick tug and out it would come…and out it would come…and OUT it would–what the h-word?  I got down on my knees to see what could possibly be keeping my dishwasher from sliding out from its nook.  The answer?  It was that inch discrepancy between the height needed, according to the manual (34 1/4 inches) and the actual height available (33 1/4 inches).  Instead of making the counters one inch higher, the original installers of this dishwasher had cut a square hole, the size of the dishwasher’s footprint in the floor and placed it directly on the sub-floor.  Which, coincidentally, is one inch lower than the rest of my kitchen.

Fine, I’ll just lift and pull, no problem.  The problem arose from a little-known law of physics that states that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  Those two objects were the top of the dishwasher and the bottom of the counter-top.  You see, after dropping my dishwasher into a one inch deep hole, the installers had built the counter around it.  My dishwasher was stuck in the nook.

After much deliberation and wasted energy trying to will the dishwasher out, I realized that the only thing to do was to remove the counter from over the dishwasher.  Luckily, I was blessed with the strength of 3 dozen mountain goats, so it was not much of a problem for me.  Of course, I nailed the cabinet above the dishwasher with my head.  I don’t think I did any permanent damage to the cabinet, but I swear I saw stars.

SO, I get the old one to the dump and the new one to my house…five hours after starting.  No problem, the new one will just slide in there, I’ll hook it up, put my counter top back on.  BOOM, done in thirty minutes…wrong.  It turns out that the drain outlet on the new one is smaller than my old one.  So, my old drain pipe does not fit on it.  Luckily, my friend gave me the drain pipe that came with this one, only problem is it’s too short to reach from my dishwasher to the sink, where it drains.  After much finagling, I manage to jury rig it to the old, existing drain tube.  No word yet on whether this works or whether it just routes dirty dish water into my cabinets.  I’ll keep you updated.

So, now I can just slide the stupid dishwasher into the hole.  But no, the legs on this unit are slightly more towards the front of the unit that my old one…so the hole in the floor is just barely too small for this to drop into.  So, at this point, I give up for the night and cry and then write about it for nobody to read because, let’s face it, this post has gotten waaaaay out of hand is getting pretty boring.

I guess I’ll try again tomorrow.